Armageddon General Discussion Board

I have always thought that the ability to nest commands in emotes would be exceptionally nice. Since many commands already have the emotive ability attached, it is logical that an argument against this idea cannot stem from the wish to not confuse commands with emotes. Constructive critisism, therefore, is much more welcome than simple stupidity in answer. Now then, the idea.

We can currently look at someone with an emote. IE: l man with a wink. I elect, however, that we might be able to nest this command, in such a way...IE: (turning about on his barstool)l man (with a wink). Such an emote would show to the room as: Turning about on his barstool, the yellow-toothed man looks up at the brown man, with a wink.

Oy. The possibilities. Let's try another.

Here is one: stand stretching and rolling his shoulders. What if you could do this: (after a moment) stand (stretching and rolling his shoulders)? This would yield: After a moment, the yellow-toothed man stands up, stretching and rolling his shoulders.

You get the idea...here is another.

Walking: w (looking over his shoulder). How about: (tugging his hood up) w (looking over his shoulder). This would give us: Tugging up his hood, the yellow-toothed man walks west, looking over his shoulder.

A final one that I like is this. Currently, you must type kill target, simply. Then you may emote. What if I might: kill man (leaping forward with ~battle). This could give us: Leaping forward with his broad battleaxe, the yellow-toothed man misses you with his slash.

I think you get the idea. I think it would add so much more to the world...not that there is not enough now, but it would simply up the ability to depict the scene/yourself/etc even more.

Finally, don't ask me if it's worth coding. That has got to be the dumbest question in the history of the world. Of course it's worth coding, if it is deemed a good idea. After all, was the game worth coding?

Well...most of what you're suggesting could be taken care of with clever phrasing or use of commas.

For example...

QuoteThe yellow-toothed man looks up at the brown man with a wink as he turns about on his barstool.

The yellow-toothed man walks west, looking over his shoulder and tugging up his hood.

The kill one, however, I could definitely be behind, having no other solution.

I didn't bother reading what this about, but...sure :D

Some of this would be difficult and require too much recoding for its value. Such as movement from one room to the other.  Currently, moving from point A to point B will show one thing IN point A, and show it in reverse in point B. So that...

w (moving slowly) would return:

Moving slowly, the guy walks west. (in one room)
and the other room would show:
The guy comes in from the west, moving slowly.

So placing "the guy" in the middle with nested emotes would be awkward at best and take incredible finesse and thought to carry it off successfully.

I love the battle/stand/sit/look stuff though. Not necessary, but totally awesome idea. How many times do you start to:

emote nods to ~templar and stands up.
stand
emote walks away from the table.

and realize how ridiculously redundant that is? So much smoother to type:

(Nodding to templar) stand (and walks away from the table)

and so much smoother to watch as well.

I give it a thumbs up, with that one exception of movement from room to room.

I thought this was going to be a thread about animals nesting, or something.

Very disappointing. Would not click again.

Voted yes.

I actually think in general this is a good idea, but only if it was done EXACTLY right.  For instance, my big complaint is if you can nest commands in emots then what if somene found a way to MASK commands in emotes.  That would be very bad if people found a way to do stuff to your pc while emoting and doing it in such a manner that doesn't give any clue to what they would otherwise be blatantly doing.  It just makes me a touch nervous.

I voted no, just because it's really not adding much. I'd rather have some of the many other coding projects that are on hold go in first.

I would enjoy this. If I had to pick from one of them, it would be the KILL one. That is dope.

Would slow down my typing even more, cause I have to look that I not missed a bracket. Nothing hurts me more as typing something like that:

>tell stupid (laughing insanly9 Die Kankfecker!

But principle it sounds good. Would stop the double actions (first emoting and then the command *:shutters*)

I like it but I don't think it would be easy to incorporate only because all emotes are added -after- the commands for a reason.  Least I think so. The command itself is always first... right?
talk (doing whatever)
tell templar (cowering)
say (scratching ^me ass)
stand dusting off
rest/sit on ~couch

As cool as that would be, I think coding it would be a pain in the ass, no? To find a way to make the mud find the command in the middle of something?

Oh what the hell do I know? I'm not a geek, I voted Yes, I like. :)

Quote from: "ShaLeah"I like it but I don't think it would be easy to incorporate only because all emotes are added -after- the commands for a reason.  Least I think so. The command itself is always first... right?

As suggested, yes, it would be fairly tricky to work with. However, if we handle it as prefix notation, it would become quite doable. If you wished to allow prefixing or suffixing emote strings to a command, you'd probably want to differentiate whether the emote was meant to come before or go after the command echo, so the obvious prefix notation
stand (seemingly oblivious to the crowds surrounding him) (straightening out the folds of his cloak with one gnarled hand)
would be impractical as it would leave the parsing of
stand (scratching at his thigh)
ambiguous.

However, were two types of brackets* used, the parsing ambiguity could be resolved; suppose that the normal brackets were used as before to denote a suffix and square brackets were used to represent a prefix, we could have:
stand [as the sun sinks below the horizon] (delivering himself of a loud yawn and blinking sleepily round)
which would be easy to translate into
As the sun sinks below the horizon, the tall muscular man stands up, delivering himself of a loud yawn and blinking sleepily round.

Of course, it adds a little complexity and no doubt would interfere with a few people's mud clients, but it would probably be adopted astonishingly quickly by the playerbase.

Alternatively you could borrow the normal emote syntax, but instead of @ representing your sdesc, it would be replaced by the whole "the tall muscular man stands up" line. This might lead to some confusion, particularly among newer players. However, I don't think it's any worse than learning to use the drop command with emotes effectively, and it would be more consistent with everything else.

Quirk

* Yes, we Brits call them square brackets and brackets, and have no time for this 'parenthesis' nonsense - sue me.

I like this idea, but I see that it would be extreemly hard to code into the system. Plus we sort of have that already by doing the comand and placing ( ) around whatever you want to do.

I'm more worried about abuse, I'm sure someone will come up with some way to make their emote somehow even if it includes the command, mask completely what they would be otherwise obviosly doing.  I think some commands should have nesting.  Look for instance already does in a way.  Most commands don't need it.  Sit for instance.  And unfortunately, I can't think of anyway this could be done without going through every individual command and decidiing if it does or does not need it.  

However, one place it would be cool to nest would be magick.  
cast (waving his wand around in a wide arch then pointing it at that sniveling slitherin bastage) 'Crusio' slitherin

Except no one would use it in a dangerous situation like a fight.  But then people who rp out situations where their char's life is in danger or on the flip side, when they're tring to kill someone I think are pretty few and far between.

Given the basis of my proposal, you cannot mask a command. It is impossible. The command is flanked by an emote, IE: Bones creaking and leather wispering in squeaks, the golden-eyed man rises and stands, pushing back a dragon-bone chair.

You cannot hide the emote or the command. There is no abuse potential here.

As an aside, I'd also like to be able to do this:

> say (grinning a bit) No.

> Grinning a bit, the man says in ebonics, "No."

> say [grinning a bit] No.

> "No," the man says in ebonics, grinning a bit.