Add a /desc chat command

[Gellule]

--- A story

Recently, Gellule (that\'s me) met Siroles (my friend) and Arg (Siroles\' pet lizard) somewhere on the path to Ojaveda.
Before fighting a bloody nasty bad consumer, Siroles had to give me Arg. I would take care of little Arg, while Silores is fighting the beast.


\"Siroles extends his arm toward Gellule, Arg runs and jumps on Gellule shoulder\"  (1)

When Silores comes back from his fight I give him back the lizard.

\"Gellule extends his arm toward Silores\"  (2)

Seeing that Silores is covered with blood and mud, the little lizard has a moment of hesitation, and finally decides to go back to Silores.

\"Arg runs on Gellule\'s shoulder and jumps back on Silores\"  (3)

--- The problem

(1) and (2) are easy to produce in chat:

/me do something
/tell someone /me do something
/guild /me do something

How about (3)?

--- The solution

We should have some sort of escape command that removes any leading statement like a \"Someone says: ...\".
We could use /desc for description.

/desc Arg runs on Gellule\'s arms

would give

Arg runs on Gellule\'s shoulder

--- Dislaimer

Any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental.

[Ralas]

I like this idea, as I\'ve been saying \"/me has a dark smile cross his face\" when I would rather say \"/desc a dark smile crosses Ralas\' face,\"
but I do see just one small problem.  If someone else said \"/desc a very large anvil appears in the sky and falls on Ralas, killing him instantly,\" I would not be too happy about that.  The solution, as usual, is to ignore anything this ridiculous as OOC, but I would still like to know who\'d typed it.  I think some way of identifying the person doing the describing without interupting the flow of their description would help a lot.  Aside from that I think this is a very good idea, and I would like to see it implemented.

[Gellule]

You\'re right with the \"knowing where the message comes from\" part.
Why not add a (someone) at the end? Like this:

a very large anvil appears in the sky and falls on Ralas, killing him instantly (the evil character)

Remember that you can already have something like this with a /me:

The evil chacater watches a very large envil apppear in the sky and fall on Ralas, killing him instantly



I\'m sorry Ralas, three envils in two posts...

[Ralas]

Ouch!  /me seeks bandages and tylenol.  well I guess I started it...

But back OT, yeah  that would take care of it.  I would very much like to see this implemented as it is a great idea.

[Seytra]

Hmm, so what bothers you is the \"says\" part... If something like this happens, I usually package it as OOC message. This would be:
Seytra says: (An anvil falls on Arg)

It\'s a description that is there to clarify things, thus OOC. Should a /desc command be added, I\'d prefer the syntax to be:
Seytra: An anvil falls on Arg.

This way, it would fit into the usual syntax and maintain tracking of who said it.

Anyway, IMO it\'s a minor change for a minor annoyance.

[Darkblade]

I\'d say that the name of the player in brackets is necessary, because an mean/evil player can go and do (Sorry Gellule ) /desc Gellule stabs himself in the chest.
Or impersonate your actions, etc.

So, all in all, I\'d say this is a good idea, after all I have a bird in the realm, and sometimes it is a pain to Rp what the bird does.

EDIT: Seytra beat me too it
Of course, with /me, you can also do /me : action, which is an equivalent of what you\'re saying.

[Gellule]

Seytra:

Somehow I find it disturbing to package [Sorry, phone is ringing, got to go] and [An envil falls on Gellule] exactly the same way. Even if I expect people to understand what I mean in each case. Maybe you will understand my problem if I tell you that OOC means Out Of Context to me and not Out Of Character.

It\'s anyway a very personal feeling that I can indeed easily resolve (for now) with Darkblade\'s \"/me : An envil falls on Gellule\" (Thank you Darkblade!)

And how about making \"/me:\" or \"/me,\" work? (Quite hard with the current framework, I know, I know...)

Anyway, IMO it\'s a minor change for a minor annoyance.

Hehe, I would never have guessed what your opinion was if it was not for the smiley...

[Miya]

In other games, muds, etc.. that I\'ve played the convention for that sort of thing was this:

/me : A bird poops on Miya\'s new shoulder pads.

This would show as:

Miya : A bird poops on Miya\'s new shoulder pads.

By convention people understand that the IC part is the part after the : and the name of the person doing the IC non-attached emote is on the left of the :

This is basically the same as DarkBlade\'s suggestion.

The main reason why multiplayer games don\'t allow non-attached emotes is that you can abuse them. For example, you could do this:

/desc Vengeance tells you, \"\"

or people could fake loot emotes and all sorts of other abuses.

-Miya

[Seytra]

Then the general MUD convention should be used. If this is not desired, then what I use on forum RP is to enclose descriptions of ambient happenings in #s:

Seytra says: #Night falls...#

This can obviously be adapted to the /me : as in
Seytra : #Night falls...# if desired.

As for the /me-ing: it should not be too hard to make the parser filter out non-characters and non-letters after /me (or for all other commands. Basically, treat all non alphanumeric characters except \"_\" and \"-\" as delimiters like whitespaces). My most often used one is /me \'s. The added space looks a bit odd, but compared to the common typos doesn\'t stick out too much.

It also should allow and parse multiple /mes. A typical sentence would otherwise be:

Seytra runs down the hill, shouting \"Hey, I killed a gobble!\" *stumbles and falls* Ouch!

[Miya]

Oh yeah I forgot about the \'s, but yeah. On MUDs I played we just ignored the space.

/me \'s horse makes a funny noise, and Miya holds his nose.

Or optionally:
/me : Miya\'s horse makes a funny noise, and Miya holds his nose.

-Miya