Description Toggles.

[LoD]

There have been a few recent posts about manipulating mdesc's (i.e. masks, hoods) that got me to thinking about implementing some toggles every character could use should they so choose.

I have poor vision, and so I associate physical characteristics with people more than the look of their face.  The way they walk, talk, sit and such were all very different and recognizeable.  This led to me thinking that certain events, such as breaking a leg, having an arm in a cast, being struck in the throat, being under the effects of a drug/spice/poison would alter subtle pieces of a person's mannerisms that they might like to change.

Currently we make those changes like this:

>say (in a deep voice) Yo Adrien.
>west walking with a slight limp
>sit with his leg propped up

My question was if people thought a toggle that would semi-permanently input a given voice, walk or movement to your actions would be of interest to people to help convey a temporary (or permanent) status.  These toggles could either reset every login or remain throughout.

Here's an example:

>desc
You are talking normally.
You are walking normally.
You are sitting normally.
You are looking normally.

>change talk in a quiet rasp
Ok.

>change walk shuffling quietly
Ok.

>say Hey friend, got any spice?

In a quiet rasp, the narrow eyed man asks, in sirihish:
  "Hey friend, got any spice?

>north

Shuffling quietly, the narrow eyed man walks north.

Any arguement added would supercede these defaults to allow for people to mix up the messages if the situation called for it, but it might open up some possibilities for maintaining a certain state of being or personalizing your character a bit more to help others relate and recognize them.

It's a rough idea, but comments are welcome.

This isn't meant to replace people using varied or creative emotes during their play, but to provide a way to toggle on certain movement emotes to convey either perament or conditional messages without having to type them out every room, tell, sit or look.

-LoD

[Jakahri]

The idea is good, but flawed, due to the fact that one's character would become dry and bland after hearing them talking "firmly" for the umpteenth time.

However, your quote here:

Any arguement added would supercede these defaults to allow for people to mix up the messages if the situation called for it.

Is your idea's saving grace. As long as the player was allowed to bypass their current settings in order to mix up the messages given, I would be in total support of this idea.

Nice thoughts all around.

[Ghost]

A very good idea actually.

One problem there could be, is that, people could forget about how they toggled their desc and it could cause confusions.  Giving the option to put the descs in the prompt could be a solution for such a problem.

Other than that, it is a really great idea.

[Delirium]

Having seen an idea very much like this in action at another mud I actually have to say I don't like it.  It is way too easy to forget how it's set, and way too easy to simply use the same voice/movement string for every single talk/movement.  It gets very old, very fast, and there's only so many times you can softly, in a sultry lilt, scream that you will kill that motherfucker and all his children, too, before it gets ridiculous.

It also promotes player laziness.. though I get strapped for creativity at times as much as the next person, I don't want to see people "swaggering" with nearly every movement through every room room, or speaking "in a deep, raspy voice" with nearly every single say, which is what will happen the vast majority of the time.  How do I know this?  Because I've seen it in action, and it ain't pretty.

If there are occasions when you want to set a string for movement or speech, or even a simple "tell" emote, that could easily be set up via aliases and triggers with even the most extremely basic MUD clients out there.  The situations in which this could be necessary - a broken arm or leg, a wounded neck, or a spice or drink induced slur - would be brief enough that it isn't necessary to have a string for them.  Just remember to roleplay and describe the motions, or if you must be lazy about it, set up a quick trigger.  It takes all of three minutes, maximum.

Somewhat disjointed I know, but hopefully I got the point across.

[Salt Merchant]

It is way too easy to forget how it's set

Exactly... you end up out of context a lot.

[mansa]

I think it's a nice idea.  Nice like sugar in Coffee.

[Adhira]

Personal opinion only, but I've played a few years on muds that do have this facility.

It drove me insane.

[jhunter]

I like it. I posted this exact idea for movement emotes some time back. Got tired of typing them in each time or changing them in my client depending on the pc. It would be nice if it was something included in the mud's commands.

It would be great with speech and other things as well. The main argument people had was that it would soon become stale, but as you pointed out if any you typed in at the moment took priority then it would help prevent that.


That "it gets old fast argument" is just plain crap. As it is, we already have the same thing with the standard messages. Might as well have the same pc doing it with a bit of flavor and originality that fits the pc.

[LauraMars]

That "it gets old fast argument" is just plain crap. As it is, we already have the same thing with the standard messages. Might as well have the same pc doing it with a bit of flavor and originality that fits the pc.

No it isn't.  For instance, when you say something...

the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "It is hot."

Well, you say it.  The "says" repeat happens every time someone says something because it's just the code that lets you know someone is saying something, obviously.  I don't need to say all this, you all know what it is.  But emotes are modifiers to this code, and the point to them is that they are there to make an otherwise drab but nessesary code unique.

I guess it's hard for me to imagine a whole page of the same emote modifier.  Even a whole page of just plain old coded "says", without emotes, would make my eyes cross.

Quietly, the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "Bibbety."

Quietly, the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "Bobbety."

Quietly, the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "Boo."

Quietly, the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "I eat babies."

Quietly, the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "And your mom."

Quietly, the handy, dandy man says, in sirihish, "And Halaster's mom."

Maybe it's just me.  But why turn an emote into something hard coded like this when it's meant to be, and is, an incredibly fluid and creative modifier?  It's an interesting idea, but I don't know that it's completely nessesary and my opinion is that it's redundant.

I like the coded movement emote idea alot, but the problem I see there is forgetting to turn it off and limping down the road from your sparring related injury for a month, even after you rp that it has healed.  Maybe it could be cleared on quit and revert to normal, like your sneak/run status?

[Morfeus]

Maybe it's just me.  But why turn an emote into something hard coded like this when it's meant to be, and is, an incredibly fluid and creative modifier?

No, it's not just you.  :wink:

[Agent_137]

Hm. tough one.

I don't think it's needed, though. If you have to limp everywhere, simply do this:

alias w west (with a limp)
alias e east (with a limp)
alias s south (with a limp)
alias n north (with a limp)

But even with that, you are conciously adding the emote by using N instead of NORTH. And I think that's a good thing.

alias ' say (in a raspy voice)


And if you run out of the 10 aliases Ginka so kindly provides you, get a free client that has them.

[Nusku]

There's an easier way to do this if you have a client with some basic scripting capabilities. In TinTin variations, it looks roughly like this:

Code Select Expand

#alias {VK_NUMPAD8} {n ($walk)}
#var $walk {with a heavy limp}

From that point on, hitting 8 on the numeric keypad would produce:

The blah blah man walks north with a heavy limp.

[Aldiel]

In dialogue, you want to use tags, like, "in a quiet rasp, the narrow-eyed man asks," only when the meaning cannot fully be expressed simply by what is contained within the quotations.  A good writer should be able to convey everything he or she wants to simply in the dialogue itself.  If you are repeating the same tag over and over again, it gets repetitive and dull.  I can tell you in academic writing the best tag is say or no tag at all.  The larger the tag the more it detracts from the dialogue itself.  With that in mind, repeating the same tag over and over again will seriously detract from the dialogue.  The same thing goes for this walking 'toggle'.  My character walks differently every step of the way.  He might mosey over to the weapons-rack, snatch up a wooden training longsword, amble determinedly into the ring, fight a tiring match, and plod languidly out of the ring.  I never use the same modifier back to back, and some times, I purposefully don't use a modifier at all because I don't want to attract attention to how my character is walking.  I too have played on other MUDs that have this feature, and I really don't like it.  It is one of the many reasons Armageddon has superior RP.  :twisted:

[Anael]

Speaking in soft tones, the shady, badass man exclaims in allundean:
       "We feckin' need to get outta here, Bob!"

[Anonymous]

The repetition that this sort of system results in is one problem.  Another is that in the heat of the moment people forget things.

Smiling brightly, the blonde maiden says:
    "What are you doing here?"

In a light-hearted voice, the tall elf says:
   "I'm here to kill you, bitch."

Smiling brightly, the blonde maiden says:
   "Get back you fucking elf!"

In a light-hearted voice, the tall elf says:
   "Die you lying scum!"

[jhunter]

I don't think this is a very good example of -why- this shouldn't be implemented. First of all, why would someone set this to constantly have their pc speak "smiling brightly" or "In a light-hearted voice"? The use of this with speech would be more to add a particular sound that the pc would have -all- the time. The use of this with speech would be more along the lines of: "In a gravelly voice" or "With a slight lisp", "With a deep bass voice". Something like that, the way the pc speaks -all- the time what it is that is different about how they speak.

Secondly, I don't see how anyone can say they'd prefer someone to have actions/speech with just the plain coded echo over and over again, rather than an echo that is customized for that particular character over and over again. Both are repetitive, one has a little more flavor.

That's all I have to say about it. I just think it would be a very useful addition and noone has yet presented a -good- reason yet why this shouldn't be added in. We'll just have to agree to disagree on this matter. That's all. Peace.

[Anonymous]

I just think it would be a very useful addition and noone has yet presented a -good- reason yet why this shouldn't be added in.

Play on Harshlands someday and you will either see what some posts are getting at or you won't.  Different things appeal to different people, seeing the same flavor text over and over becomes repetitive to the point of grating for me, personally.  Maybe you'll like it.

Thing is, there doesn't really need to be coded support for this.  If you want something like this, then do it yourself with macros which even the most basic mud client will let you do and change on the fly.

[Yokunama]

Code Select Expand


stat
<Background>

Your encumbrance is no problem.
You are:
<Rank> of the <Employer>, jobs:
Relationship to the land is neutral.
You are currently speaking sirihish with a nothern accent.
You are standing.
You are not refusing saves (nosave off).
**You are taveling normally**
You are being merciful.

> travel singing benevolently
Your travel string has been set to: (singing benevolently)

> travel
Your current travel string: (singing benevolently)

> north
You begin walking northward, singing benevolently.


IMO, the traveling string is the only string that seems worthy enough to have its own variable you can set.

[Morfeus]

Code Select Expand

You begin walking northward, singing benevolently.

The Road.
Lot of things is here such as stones and sand and well, the road.
The Evil Person Obviously a Defiler stands here.

The Evil Person Obviously a Defiler begins to cast.

You speed up to a fast run.

You begin running northward, singing benevolently.


[Bestatte]

I think that if the code was modified to allow toggles for movement strings, they'd also need to provide an echo to the person moving. Until then, you'd have to constantly check "stat" or "score" or whatever it is, to see which string you have running at any given moment.

Since you can't see your own movement, it's just way too easy to forget that you're "walking with a cheerful lilt in his step" just after being threatened with torture by a templar - or "walking with a melancholy shuffle" immediately after your character got laid by the most perfect gorgeous sex partner in the game. Plus the toggle would have to automatically shut off if you're drunk, to accommodate the "staggering" thingie.

Anything can be abused. Anything can become something that was never intended by the game designers. And anything can become something that people just want to smash your face in over. But some things are much more likely to result in that than others. I believe this is one of them.

[jhunter]

I've said and put it in as an idea several times I think, that one should be able to see the echo from their own movement message.