Doing away with speech bubbles

[Caraick]

I think I'd have to agree with Cairn, here. For simplicity and convenience's sake alone, I'd nix the speech bubbles entirely.  As for the /me or /my insertion in the middle of a line: Yes, that would be convenient. No it's not necessary.  We've managed pretty well with what we have right now, and while this would certainly make the combination of multiple lines into a single post easier, it's not necessary.

I do think that Dannae presents a valid (and funny) point in her example.  That's something that you see come up lots of times, especially when it comes to RP-fighting.  Aramara also makes a good point about this, here:

most people do break their dialogue and actions up into separate posts, which is how i used to play as well. But that creates a problem where you're never sure when that player is 'done'.

The uncertainty of whether to proceed with a RP or not can be hindering to the general flow of the storyline, itself.  Whether or not the ability to tag in /me and /my into a sentence will ultimately fix this problem is uncertain, but I do feel confident that it would certainly help address the issue.


Nice example, Dannae I'm not sure if that's taken verbatim from the logs or not, because it does seem like something that would happen to her. 

[Dannae]

I'm not understanding how adding the ability to use /me, /my in the middle of speech would be of any benefit.

As it is now, I could type something like:
"blah blah blah blah" then chuckles, "blah blah blah blah", then her face blushes deeply.
and it would come out the same word for word in chat.

If the ability was added to insert a command in the middle, I could now type something like:
"blah blah blah blah" /me chuckles, "blah blah blah blah", /my face blushes deeply.
and it would come out in chat as,
"blah blah blah blah" Dannae chuckles, "blah blah blah blah", Dannae's face blushes deeply.

What would be the big improvement? Am I missing something? It seems even worse to me the way it would insert the char. name in those two sample instances.
Maybe something like a "/bow to target" might save typing a few words but still doesn't seem like it would be that useful in my opinion.

[Cairn]

It wouldn't be any more convenient, per se, simply offer a few new options for beginning and continuation purposes.

[Aramara Meibi]

Dannae, it wouldn't be necessary to use /me every time you refer to your character. I'm not suggesting we do away with pronouns.

[Dannae]

@ Aramara and Cairn: Yes, I understand it would not be required if such a thing were implemented.... the example was more of a way for me to think about how it would work... and didn't turn out well in that case. When I first read your idea, I thought, yeah, that seems like a good idea... but then, when I tried to think about how it would work in practice, well, nothing very helpful has come to mind. I can think of lots of ways a /nar option would be very useful and welcome. Perhaps you could show me an example of what you had in mind. How would you use any of the existing commands mid post that are easier or give a different option than any current method?

I'm not trying to be a pain about the whole thing, but I see so many that have agreed about a mid post command being helpful and I'm really curious what you all have in mind and how you would use it.

[Cairn]

Starting with non-directives, and adding as seen necessary.

I.E.

The water beneath Dannae's feet ripple as she sloshes about happily. Using her right hand, she waves to Aramara happily and then continues on swimming.

Action based, and more opportunities for less restriction. Of course, this does skew some of the /me and /my property bases, seeing as it is only logical for one to be in control of oneself.

[Caraick]

seeing as it is only logical for one to be in control of oneself.

Bah. Totally a matter of opinion.

[tman]

I agree with Dannae.  A /narrate command would give you the ability to form whatever sentence structure you want.  But you can just type your name whenever you need it to appear within the line.  This way you don't run into the problem of searching for command code within dialogue.

As for speech bubbles, make them an option to turn on or off.  If you're cooking, smithing, etc. and a lot of system messages are popping up then speech bubbles may be much more convenient to read.

[Aramara Meibi]

As for speech bubbles, make them an option to turn on or off.  If you're cooking, smithing, etc. and a lot of system messages are popping up then speech bubbles may be much more convenient to read.

except that, when you're crafting and such, you typically have 3 or 4 inventory type windows open that clutter your screen, hindering your view of what's actually taking place in the world around you (where the speech bubbles are rendered).

It's starting to sound to me like the /nar command would be the best way to go about solving the issue addressed in the original post.

[tman]

As for speech bubbles, make them an option to turn on or off.  If you're cooking, smithing, etc. and a lot of system messages are popping up then speech bubbles may be much more convenient to read.

except that, when you're crafting and such, you typically have 3 or 4 inventory type windows open that clutter your screen, hindering your view of what's actually taking place in the world around you (where the speech bubbles are rendered).

Two, usually.  And I have a big monitor 

[Cirerey]

As far as adding an action to a line of narration I tend to put it in angle brackets. Inelegant but it works.

Like this:

No. You can't have it back <Sticks out his tongue> nyah, nyah, na-nyah-yah.

[Caraick]

That's one way of doing things.  I'd sooner just use the /me command to dictate "/me says" or something like that, just so that there's no action lines being placed in speech bubbles.

[Cairn]

what would the /narrate command detail?

[Aiwendil]

I'm a tad confused...how long do you all play this game by now?

Disable chat buddles: In game options (<o>-key) -> Interface - Advanced -> Chat bubbles -> Enable Chat bubbles (or if you like it better just disable the those chatbubble you want bellow there)

The idea of allowing arbitory player text not starting with /me or /my is around also already for a very long time. But it has a serve disadvantage that must be solved somehow to make it even possible. The coloring of the chat window as you see it is done on the client (If the client sees your name in one of the chat lines it colors it). The server only sends pure text lines. Now to the problem...if you allow /me anywhere inside a chat line no player around is able to tell who actually worte that line. Example

>The whole room is silent, almost everyones attention focused on the cute little cub except Dannae, /me and Aramara who watch Cairn pick his nose with pleasure.<

For everyone around only the own name will get highlighted...and it wil be impossible for anyone around to say who of those four mentioned in that line actually wrote it (Of course this is even worse if you allow lines completely without a /me at all). So Bonifarzia's /narrate suggestion is really the only way to go about it and prevent misuse at the same time. (And for GMs such a command already exists: /impersonate. It just doesn't put the players name in front yet. But changing it to always put the name of player in front if executed by a player is no big deal at all)

Copy and paste: Yes, there is some code for that already. No, it doesn't work as you except it. And no, you can't select text. And it's only available on linux so far I think. (Not that this is a real issue...the spellchecker isn't available for windows either). But to make it really work it would require a lot of changes to the basic text widgets. It's not really hard but simply a lot of work probably nobody is willing to do.

[Bonifarzia]

It is astounding how long this discussion has become.
I wonder if we could just do the /narrate functionality with a simple convention: /me - Description of whatever you want. Do you really need the brackets around your name to use this style?