Mumble - communicating unclearly

Bugs & Features
1

Continuing the discussion from Terrible Suggestions!:

I’d like to see mumble - it’s always fun to see the effect cause spontaneous responses, and the randomness of the obfuscation lends an additional spice. I guess it could potentially be implemented as a roomscript, but better if it was generally available.

The effect of the command is that the selected target(s) in the room sees all of the accompanying text, with similar effects as a to (it could just be implemented as this, followed by a say/action), and then everyone in the room sees the accompanying text, its source and intended targets, along with a with a 50% chance for each space-delimited word (with attached punctuation) to be randomly deleted and replaced with an ellipsis:

A tries on the mayor hat, whistling to himself. "Fear me, for I am the ma--- oh, hi."
GreenKai giggles, "I think you should be the one worried - it's a pretty heavy weight for an inflatable hat."
( Though, it would go well with the dress . . . )
...
B [a journalist of sorts] arrives from Sky
B lands heavily and [gives their usual greeting]
mumble A=Hey, you probably shouldn't let B's cameras see you with the mayor's hat. People might get the wrong idea . . .
You mumble "Hey, you probably shouldn't let B's cameras see you with the mayor's hat. People might get the wrong idea . . .", to a [species] (A).
GreenKai mumbles "... you ... shouldn't ... ... ... see you with ... ... hat. People ... ... ... ... idea ... ... ...", to a [species] (A).
In a page-pose to you, A put it discreetly away earlier. Yeah. :)
B cocks his head.

GreenKai waves, "Hi A-dragon! Hope you didn't get blown over, it was real windy earlier."
A says, "Nothing's been blowing me recently."
B fires a toy laser gun at A. It lights up going all PaPew! PaPew! Vrrrrrr-Ka!
A falls over ded
B gets 2000XP!
B hugs A!
A revives himself to smooch B's snoot.
You mumble "GreenKai rolls her eyes, "He was hopin' that you would *lay* the dragon, not slay the dragon."", to B.
GreenKai mumbles "… … her … … … … that you … … the dragon, … … the …", to B.
B snickergiggles at what Green said.

From the description elseMU:

A mumbled whisper to one or more people in a room. Those you whisper to see the clear message, everyone else sees bits. mum <player player …>= [‘player,player,…’ here]
Mumble remembers who you last mumbled to, so mum = mumbles to the last player or group. [probably not necessary]

3 Likes
2

I think it’d be best/cleanest to just nix a … for each word mumbled and make it one … or a - or something. Thus your second example would look more like:

GreenKai mumbles "... her ... that you ... the dragon, ... the ..."

or

GreenKai mumbles "-her - that you - the dragon, - the-"

mmh both kinda look clunky.. there should be some sort of compromise that would look a lot more natural, but i’m struggling to find it.

GreenKai mumbles: "-her-, that you-, the dragon-, the..."

The other trick is fine tuning the random word selection there to not just fully scrub context but to make it interesting enough.

3

Collapsing the ellipsis is reasonable, since they can after all cover any amount of space. I don’t really like the look of the ‘dash’ variant, as it’s not so clear that something has been removed - an en-dash is better, but still doesn’t quite convey the same as the ellipsis:

GreenKai mumbles "… her … that you … the dragon, … the …"

GreenKai mumbles "⋯ her ⋯ that you ⋯ the dragon, ⋯ the ⋯"

GreenKai mumbles "— her — that you — the dragon, — the —"

GreenKai mumbles "‿ her ‿ that you ‿ the dragon, ‿ the ‿"

GreenKai mumbles "⁐ her ⁐ that you ⁐ the dragon, ⁐ the ⁐"

Part of the fun is that not even you know how much or what information will be elided, although it’s arguably not so much fun to have almost all or none removed. Possibly it’d be better to target longer words by selecting random characters and leaving out the entire words containing those characters, but that might be complicating it a bit too much.

Another possibility, censorship block style:

GreenKai mumbles: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓ her ▓▓▓▓, ▓▓▓ ▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓▓▓' that you ▓▓▓▓▓ *▓▓▓* the dragon, ▓▓▓ ▓▓▓▓ the ▓▓▓▓▓.


GreenKai mumbles: ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒ her ▒▒▒▒, ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒' that you ▒▒▒▒▒ *▒▒▒* the dragon, ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒ the ▒▒▒▒▒.
4

It’s actually a pretty useful idea. I gonna steal it if that’s alright.

1 Like
5

Well, it’s not like I didn’t! Should be easy to implement locally if desired.

6

It works pretty well for a place that’s silenced already. I was trying to think about how to make some communications work and this one’s kinda very fitting. Luckily, we don’t need to do it locally.

1 Like
7

I guess I meant locally in the sense of a roomscript, unless there’s realm-level stuff I’m unaware of. :sweat_smile:

8

unless there’s realm-level stuff

Wolves work in mysterious ways!

9

Personally, I find this entire idea obnoxious and I would avoid any person or place who wanted to do this on a regular basis. I already struggle trying to understand what people mean sometimes. The last thing I need is for words to be omitted.

1 Like
10

It kinda works pretty well. We tried that with NPCs but it feels a bit odd to have them communicate sparsely (due to lore reasons) and having the regular characters being able to talk. With a custom talk command for the whole area this becomes very balanced.

I just wish we could override the normal say, ugh.

1 Like
11

I know it takes a few more characters, but you can just pose what you’re saying. Simply pose your mumble.

12 
Mmm, ▒▒▒▒▒▒ say - ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒ you ▒▒▒ a ▒▒▒ realm?
▒▒▒▒▒ of ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒, ▒▒▒ did - ▒▒▒, whatcha ▒▒▒▒
▒▒▒ that ▒▒▒▒ all ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒ rest? - Of ▒▒▒▒▒▒ it is
▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ say? - Acci ▒▒▒▒ what ▒▒ need
▒▒▒ ▒▒▒ elided kids? ▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ say? What ▒▒▒ he ▒▒▒▒

I think the meaning was e.g. GreenKai giggles,... as a default say? Like you can do an override for the default on some MUCKs.

If you’re a wolf, you might want to growf instead, etc.

1 Like
13

The point is that pose is controlled by you. You can’t make an area that mumbles your speech based on how chaotic it is. Being able to communicate clearly is a reward for stabilizing the area.

1 Like
14

At least until the next Rift-storm rolls through? :cat_with_wry_smile:
(Starting to feel more like a MUD.)

15

I mean, I am building a MUD after all!

1 Like