Wednesday's usually my slack night for the whole writing thing, so I decided to poke around the Hedgerow Hall .dme some more. First thing I did was zip up the files and label it with today's date, thereby putting a copy of the working code "back up" in the system, as it were, for use in event of a future mishap. I wonder if anybody else ever thought of that? This could be the start of something big.
:P
Anyways, this being "bonus time" according to my development schedule, I spent it going over the system so far, tightening the code where I could. I managed to make the action loop even less inefficient than it was... go me. I also replaced all the generic viewproc(whatever) << "output" lines I'd used with calls to a specially made output proc that, as of right now, doesn't do much that the other way does... but which will become monumentally more important later on.
Finally, I moved the say command to the newly created category of Social, along with the emote command and two pure fun commands... hop, and dance. Hop makes your character appear to jump up in place (once), Dance makes your character appear to dance back and forth. Both are purely visual, though doing them does interrupt whatever you were doing (if anything), and they can in turn be interrupted by anything other than communication commands.
When I first started Hedgerow Hall, my attitude towards those kinds of effects was something along the lines of "Screw you if you can't use your imagination!" :P I guess I've matured a bit... in the last half decade. Who knew?
I'm also making overlays for the following text outputs over your character's head:
!
?
...
?!?
@$#!
Anyway, my hope is that this kind of things will help players get into the moment and identify with their characters more... same deal with the accessories system.
ID:28394
 Mar 14 2007, 7:21 pm (Edited on Mar 14 2007, 8:02 pm)
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Uh, yeah... I'll take typos over people who think macroing animations is the height of roleplaying. :P My goal isn't to replace the standard emote command but to supplement it, and give players a way of drawing attention to the fact that their character is doing/saying something.
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List of Prerequisites for Awesomeness:
----------------------- * * * *Rocket launchers Three down, one to go! | |
i liek meat
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Me and my friend were driving down the road and we saw a dead badger.
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Dead badger = meat.
I like pre-built social commands. Emote is good for more complex/unusual stuff, but I like there to be quick support for more common socials like laugh, cry, laugh/chuckle, etc. I also tend to use think, snicker, cackle, nod, and wink alot. I wonder what that means..... | |
"I wonder if anybody else ever thought of that? This could be the start of something big."
I have all important files backed up on my laptop, my PC, a CD, a Gmail account, and my member's space. Just to be safe, you know. <_< | |
World of Warcraft and Guild Wars both have a whole long list of graphical effects brought on by emotes -- this means that you should stay as far away from this trend as possible.
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World of Warcraft and Guild Wars both have multiple character accounts and in-game mail systems. This means that you should stay as far away from this trend as possible.
Really, though - pretty much any multiplayer game with a largely social element has simple emote macros. They've been doing it since the early-mid nineties with text MU*s. | |
I would say she should stay away from in-game mail just because that's a perfect role for player-character spellspeakers and messengers to take care of themselves. But multiple characters is a good point.
Let's do nothing that any other MMORPG has done! Players will be gelatinous blobs who throw insults at one-- no, wait, insults are out too... hrm. | |
What that guy said.
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That and it would also somehow save us from typos in social commands and the common overly enthusiastic roleplayer.