Emoting

[Jirato]

So what would we have to do to make this work and not have it turn into a horrible powergaming enabler?


Your name would have to appear, properly capitalized, somewhere within the emote.
Your name would need to be highlighted or marked with a symbol for VI players.
The first word of the emote can't start with a pronoun or another player's name.

[Lysse]

I can appreciate the difficulty involved in that, and if it really would be over the top and put a strain on the Staff (I genuinely don't have a frame of reference with coding difficulty, I don't do any coding), then I'd rather the GMs work on something else, to be perfectly frank. I just thought that alternative name placement would be a nice addition.

[Jirato]

What I listed above is actually pretty trivial as far as code work is concerned... But is that really all that there needs to be, or are there other things that should be taken into account that we haven't thought of yet?


One big thing is speech in emotes. It totally bypasses the language system and some other things, to a point we used to have a big alert go off whenever someone did it so we could say "hey, don't do that!". But we've been more lax n it lately because so many people do it and it just seemed like we couldn't control it. And writing code to fix all that and add in the necessary language stuff is NOT trivial.

I'm concerned that allowing custom name placement will actually encourage people to use emote speech more often as well.

[Barius]

Speech in emotes is one of those things that people who come from true roleplaying muds are accustomed to having. I constantly have to rethink how to word things just so I can make GMs happy and eventually I got tired of doing that so yes, I do put speech in emotes. Otherwise I have to separate it and other players can sometimes respond so fast they get theirs in before I can include the rest of what I wanted to do. Plus it's horribly awkward having to work around that all the time. If I thought it'd be plausible, I'd suggest reworking the emote command to catch speech and apply coded language to it. But that's a fight I know I won't win ever.

I know I probably sound grumpy and harsh, but the emote issues have been a thorn in my side since I started playing CLOK and I have very strong views about it. I almost didn't come back to playing because the RP seemed so put-aside and restrictive.

[Lysse]

Personally, I'd be happy with just custom name placement. I don't include speech in my emotes, and I'll continue to leave it out until speech and languages are hard coded to be supported in emotes, for a number of reasons.

I just write up my emote, and then write up my say appropriate to it, and then command stack or save something in the buffer so I can launch both one after the other.

[jilliana]

As a VI player, I like the consideration, but I don't really need a symbol before someone's name in the middle of an emote. If anything, it would be distracting to me.

I came from a game that has a very intricate emoting system and is also predominantly VI and I think we did pretty ok.

Of course, I'm just speaking for myself.

[preiman]

I can see the symbol being of use, mostly so I can be sure who's emote it is. Helpful when there might be several names in it, or if it's being abused, because let's be honest, eventually someone will abuse it, that's just life. If it's possible to misuse a thing, eventually someone will.

[Barius]

I can see the symbol being of use, mostly so I can be sure who's emote it is. Helpful when there might be several names in it, or if it's being abused, because let's be honest, eventually someone will abuse it, that's just life. If it's possible to misuse a thing, eventually someone will.

I can appreciate this sentiment, I really can. Though I want to draw a line between "preventing every single abuse through code" and making a solid attempt at policing the individuals prone to the abuse. But this is just a general statement, not a specific response to this specific part.

[Kunren]

Personally I have had few problems, but that almost certainly because I'm not super RP focused. Sure, it can be awkward having to start every emote with your name, and it takes some planning to make emotes, then speak, instead of putting the speech with the emote, but overall it's not a huge problem IMO.

[Jirato]

I'm not sure how much code work I'll be able to do this week, because work at my real job is really piling up with everyone taking vacation and me being stuck doing the jobs of three people. I'll see if maybe I can start working on a prototype though.

I have next Monday off, maybe I can do something then.

[Jirato]

As for the whole emote speech deal, like I said, we used to give people a slap on the wrist, but we don't really any more. In fact, a few of us were observing some players the other day and someone'special speech seemed so perfectly written and animated they got an RPA for it.

If you feel so strongly about it, I would say go ahead and do it, and don't feel guilty about it. It adds good depth to the conversations.

Just please make sure you're speaking common.

In fact, maybe rather than coding a complete speech detection and language system for the new emote prototype (2 - 3 hours), I'll just add a prevent if it detects quotes and your character sn't using common (10 minutes).

[Jirato]

So, I found some unfinished emote targeting code when I looked at the emote verb earlier, and I don't see where it was announced anywhere on the BBS or the changelog. Not exactly who made it either. It's not exactly what you originally asked for, but might help to hold you over until I can look into how exactly I want to handle name placement.

So yeah, just wanted to point out that this is a thing. It's probably been a thing for quite some time but had a few minor bugs such as working on stealthed gms/hidden people and not dealing with punctuation and not-found targets (would just return your name instead of what you typed). That's all been fixed now, so feel free to use it I guess. Just prefix the target's name with an at sign like so:

emote smiles at @Otarij.
(Jirato smiles at Otarij.)

[OFFDUTY]EAvd>
[TEST] (Jirato smiles at you.)

[Jirato]

emote Smiling at @Otarij, Jirato does something something blah blah blah I suck at RP.
(Smiling at Otarij, Jirato does something something blah blah blah I suck at RP.)

[OFFDUTY]EAvd>
[TEST] (Smiling at you, Jirato does something something blah blah blah I suck at RP.)
[TEST]
[TEST]
emote knows that if you don't specify your name in the emote it'll continue to act as normal.
(Jirato knows that if you don't specify your name in the emote it'll continue to act as normal.)

[OFFDUTY]EAvd>
[TEST] (Jirato knows that if you don't specify your name in the emote it'll continue to act as normal.)

Boom, done.

As for adding thousands of restrictions and controls on this to prevent powergaming and enforce what we feel is "proper" RP... You know what, we should just trust our users to use stuff responsibly. The same way we trust people to not discuss OOC over ESP and such. Yeah, we could lock it down super tight and put a thousand restrictions on it, but those parenthesis are really enough, when it comes down to it. They're what put a big flag on it saying "Hey, this is a custom emote from someone.". And if someone emotes something that isn't kosher, then people can just ignore it. If it gets excessive, they can report it and we can look at blocking that person's emote restrictions. No need to spend hours trying to prevent what might happen when maybe only 1 out of a 100 people will abuse it.

[jilliana]

Thank you Jirato! :)

I really appreciate that the staff reconsidered. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with in the future. :)

[Barius]

What is this feeling?

Is it warm and fuzzy? I think it is.

Thank you, Jirato.

[Lae]

Super excited for this and grateful we are trusted to use it responsibly.

[Alicia]

Takes some getting used to (Especially with a character that referrers to themselves in the third person) but it looks really snazy! Thanks J

[Barius]

Takes some getting used to (Especially with a character that referrers to themselves in the third person) but it looks really snazy! Thanks J

This is just me being curious, but -- what does the character speaking in third person have to do with this? It's not like the targeting will be in dialogue. Will it?

[Fayne]

If you speak in third person while in an emote, it removes your name from the front. So typing 'emote scratches her chin and says, "Fayne is confused."' returns (Scratches her chin and says, "Fayne is confused.")

[Barius]

Oh, I see. Gotcha.

[Jaster]

So what happens if you type, 'emote Fayne scratches her chin and says, "Fayne is confused."'?

[Alicia]

then it would come out normal