Exit customisation

Bugs & Features
#1

As it always goes with ideas I post on this forum, I am not aware if it was suggested before. It’s just something I came up while mind storming one of my future projects.

I suggest adding an option to switch to more customizable exit messages when editing rooms. Let’s say, right now it works in following way:

Leave message: Yhapatch leaves the room.

Travel message: Yhapatch goes through the door.

Arrival message: Yhapatch enters the room.

You can already do a lot with it, but there are also severe limitations if you want to be extra creative.

Now let’s say you turn on this function and can do something like that:

Leave message: [A seemingly random car stops near where Yhapatch stands. After a short exchange with the driver he gets inside on back seat. The car drives away shortly after.]

Travel message: [The wait is not long. A car pulls over, the driver, male feline looking in his 30s looks at Yhapatch through his window.

“Are you the one I was told to pick up? They told me to look for a male wolf.”

After the confirmation the driver nods his head at the back seats, suggesting to get in. As the wolf does so, the car starts off somewhere.]

I didn’t take my time to finish the scene or write an arrival message, but I’m sure you get my point. By using commands like @name, @surname, @gender and @species midtext you can customise your exit messages with much more freedom.

Using @name, @Name and @NAME would result in yhapatch, Yhapatch and YHAPATCH respectively for more customisation options. This works for all four commands.

Lastly, I suggest giving access to this function to only supporters as they are more likely to use this function both responsibly and creatively.

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#2

I mean, having money doesn’t really translate into good English hmm.

But otherwise it’s a good idea, I like it. I’ve seen many variatons on this, which typically makes the initial ‘NAME does X’ sentence short and then communicates the rest of the action via they/them pronouns. It’s not too bad, really, but it could be better. At this point, having customiseable pronouns would be pretty helpful as well.

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#3

What I meant to say is that I feel like this function could be used in a bad way by someone smarter and more creative than me. Like crashing the server in some weird way.

Or making characters do something their players wouldn’t approve.

I’m sure if you have an old account or donate money to the game you are less likely to do something like that. Perhaps I’m wrong in my judgement.

Also it would give people more reasons to pay for the tag.

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#4

If someone does that, I’m sure boss wolf would be more than excited to fix it.

It’s already an existing concern, nothing really new there, no?

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#5

I guess you are right and I am wrong on this point.

Also your idea with pronouns is great, but it would require some customisation on exit users’ side. Perhaps if at some point there are changes to how character profiles look I suggest do that as well.

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#6

Other mucks have systems like odrop where you can add species/gender to the entrance message. E.G. ‘Fuzzlebutts the male woozle enters from the staircase’ conveys some interesting weight, (Particularly if you like woozles.)

I find teleport and exit messages to primarily express an ooc functionality of where someone entered and exits (So you may follow) if wished. Any narrative functionality of an exit message is kind of exhausted after reading just twice, isn’t it? I would prefer to announce my entrance and mannerisms in pose, rather then refer to the door that posed me.

The who and what is kind of oocly answered by looking at the always on screen in room list, but this can be cumbersome. And more advanced features like this might come into the territory of room locks which I think is intended to come with whenever scripting comes.

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#7

Some people treat locations in Wolfery not as just chat rooms with different flavours but as places to be explored and interacted with. There are instances where exit messages and hidden exits are utilised creatively for narrative reasons. People who make these would benefit greatly from this function.

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#8

I approve of the idea. If it could be abused, it might end up as a supporter feature, but I don’t think that will be an issue. And as @Shinyuu; if you somehow succeed in breaking the server, I will rather be intrigued! :grin:

But…

Name first

We had a discussion long ago about poses not starting with the name of the character.
It becomes less clear who arrived/left, but it may provide better story telling.
Is that an issue? I don’t know. Clarity vs story telling. Which weighs heaviest?

Placeholders

I think placeholders (e.g. @species) is a good idea, but we might want to expand it a bit.
About gender, by plan is to introduce a gender dropdown option for your character profile (in addition to the free text field) where you can select between symbols representing:

  • male
  • female
  • both (male+female)
  • neutral
  • plural

The purpose of these will not be gender identity (use the text field for that), but rather a quick visual aid when scanning character lists, as well as a variable to use in message construction.

And to allow us to create more complex and “correct” messages, I have rather been thinking about using some standard like the ICU Message Format, so that we can create travel messages like:

describe A seemingly random car stops near where {name} {gender, select, plural {stand} other{stands}}. After a short exchange with the driver, {gender, select, male {he gets} female {she gets} neutral {it gets} both {sie gets} other {they get}} inside on back seat. The car drives away shortly after.

For a our male character “John Doe”, this would spell:

A seemingly random car stops near where John stands. After a short exchange with the driver, he gets inside on back seat. The car drives away shortly after.

And for our pluralistic cojoined twin character “Anna and Bell”:

A seemingly random car stops near where Anna stand. After a short exchange with the driver, they get inside on back seat. The car drives away shortly after.

(You can see from the example that we get the “Anna stand.”, which isn’t perfect. Plural characters messes things up a bit, as their first name is seldom enough to express their pluralistic nature)

Maybe ICU message formatting is overkill…? I don’t know. But at least we can handle whatever we add in the future, and whatever strange traits other languages might bring.

Mmm, those are my thoughts at least.

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