mimik/gesture shortcuts/emoticon for chat

[Sisilam]

I came up with that idea while reading in the bugtracker about Harnquists emoticon in one of his quest texts that upset someone.

I like emoticons and shortys because they are short and help to overcome the lack of mimik and gestures in conversations with others.

The Idea: maybe some emoticons should result in a NPC/User behavior/gesture/mimik like the "/greet" command even in fact that planeshift meshs not support detailed mimik yet.

So someone might type a lot of shortcuts (like for /sit /greet /bow) which will result in a couple of actions without manualy moving around. That way you even can imlpement dancing with shortcuts for /step_left, /step_for, /step_back, /turn_around
So each time you type in the chat box '/bows Hi my friend' your character will bow and say imideatly 'Hi my friend' and if someday there is a variable mimik texture for all characters you may even use 'that was a good joke ' when your character starts to say 'that was a good joke' and you see the mimik of smiling but the emoticon itself is cutted away in the text.

To prevent killing the server with that stuff you might change that in the client setup. That way even smiles and mimik actions of NPCs like Hanrquist might work on each player individualy. So if you speak with him and he say '..... ' you see him smiling where as others don't see that.

[Karyuu]

You... are aware that the emoticon was reported as a bug ;P As in, that shouldn't have happened.

When your character speaks, he or she doesn't say " :] ". You can go /me smiles or add a *smiles* after your text, but emoticons don't fit. You don't see writers using emotes in books, and there is a reason for that. Even if the emoticon won't show up, it encourages a lot of internet-slang, which is not ideal.

I also don't like NPCs reacting to players individually. "Hey, Harnquist smiled at me!" "What are you talking about, he's frowning this entire time." "What are you guys looking at? He was just greeting me over here." The world isn't made for you as an individual. It's made for everyone, and actions should be visible to everyone.

And it's a loooong way before we can implement facial changes for models! :}

[Siteri Kidachi]

I think I heard something about the possibility of being able to program your own special animations. So you could eventually do something like that.

[Hellios]

So each time you type in the chat box '/bows Hi my friend' your character will bow and say imideatly 'Hi my friend' and if someday there is a variable mimik texture for all characters you may even use 'that was a good joke ' when your character starts to say 'that was a good joke' and you see the mimik of smiling but the emoticon itself is cutted away in the text.

you do relise thar soemone could come up and say, hey im a ****head. And your character will mimick it. lol unless you want that happening why doesnt it stay the way it is. A NPC answers to certain things. like you say Hi the NPC will say hi, how are you today?. that works better.

And if you are talking to an RPing Mean person, and you say hey, hows it going?. and they reply the same way.....it kills the whole point of their char.

unless i missed the point to this.

[Thomas Egi]

from my point of view:
idea is nice.. but..
mimic is not very easy and needs quite some work  (1. modelling good enough  2.animation 3. somewhat many skins with low poly models)
if mimic is possible at all on the current models, anything more than talking or laughing would be barely visible(just think of the general level of detail and usual distance between camera<-> player's face.
i agree with further animations like bow,!jump!,dance,forge something,sleep,(drink, and smoke - very important for dwarfs;) ) etc ( some characters still need some work on basic animations.. humans just walk like thy have a broom in their butt... )
if some know where to get a blender-usable version of the modells., tell me and i'll try to add some stuff (no mimic).

if you want a character moving its mouth while "speaking" it should be fairly easy to do, all you need would be a talk animation ( or 2 where the char open its mouth) and a small pice of code on the client side to play the animation with a certain speed. animation is given by the letters. simmilar to the way HL handels it, works fine with audio's volume used to open the mouth .
a few nice extra animations to live up the place are nice (like dancing or laying around) but anything beyond this is a lot of work and after all thats what the /me command is for^^

just my 2cents