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[GoblinCookie]

When Aragorn talks to the hobbits, does he yell out to the whole pub about making for rivendell or does he quietly take them aside for a chat?

The rest of the pub can notice him taking them aside. 

[Scoops Novel]

Yes, but they won't hear him whispering about rivendell. C'mon mate.

[Dyret]

Batmen probably would. :3

[Starver]

Yeah, but they're all "We're Batmen!" and brooding and all about the black...

[GoblinCookie]

Yes, but they won't hear him whispering about rivendell. C'mon mate.

Sauron's agents will, random folks won't.

[Scoops Novel]

Sorry, i took that the wrong way first time round. Yeah, people need to notice when you act completely tone-deaf. If something is off-topic and uninteresting that's easy, and with a little more work you can add an emotional spectrum that rules out anything that isn't related to X or is too long or whatever. Not just happy/sad, stuff like Tranquility or Suspense could have their own place on the wheel.

[GoblinCookie]

Sorry, i took that the wrong way first time round. Yeah, people need to notice when you act completely tone-deaf. If something is off-topic and uninteresting that's easy, and with a little more work you can add an emotional spectrum that rules out anything that isn't related to X or is too long or whatever. Not just happy/sad, stuff like Tranquility or Suspense could have their own place on the wheel.

 

[Scoops Novel]

Npc's should have conversational preferences, and they should change depending on their emotions. If you talk to them about something they're not in the mood for, they should be unreceptive. If it's something interesting but your tone is wrong (waking someone in the night to excitedly tell them about a discovery, per se), same thing.

Emotions can be pretty varied. I'd like toady to go beyond happy and sad and include feeling nostalgic, or really immediate emotions like the suspense you get when your life savings ride on a horse race. It's easy enough to give each emotion a set of guidelines for discussions and randomize it a little according to personalities.

Lastly, basic etiquette has a place. If you suddenly ramble off-topic, you may annoy, and in general if you're doing something out of place it should attract attention. This can be achieved by just comparing to nearby NPC's, or associating events with particular tones. E.g, irish wake = tearful celebration = no gambling.

Make sense?

[GoblinCookie]

Npc's should have conversational preferences, and they should change depending on their emotions. If you talk to them about something they're not in the mood for, they should be unreceptive. If it's something interesting but your tone is wrong (waking someone in the night to excitedly tell them about a discovery, per se), same thing.

Emotions can be pretty varied. I'd like toady to go beyond happy and sad and include feeling nostalgic, or really immediate emotions like the suspense you get when your life savings ride on a horse race. It's easy enough to give each emotion a set of guidelines for discussions and randomize it a little according to personalities.

Lastly, basic etiquette has a place. If you suddenly ramble off-topic, you may annoy, and in general if you're doing something out of place it should attract attention. This can be achieved by just comparing to nearby NPC's, or associating events with particular tones. E.g, irish wake = tearful celebration = no gambling.

Make sense?

The problem is that the conversation interface and the clumsy iinterface in general is not really going to appreciate us having to assign emotions to everything we say.

[Starver]

The problem is that the conversation interface and the clumsy iinterface in general is not really going to appreciate us having to assign emotions to everything we say.

You remind me of a very old post of mine about deep-encoding of meanings within the text, to allow languages which exhibit the subtleties to do so...

Within the context of DF, of course, the grammatical parsing and rearranging is not so impossible, for a limited (and predefined) number of stock components are all that needs to be touched, and either the held-in-raws/executable-embedded phrases can be marked up like "We can sell you five tin cans of cat meat that we can ourselves." to form "{pluralpronoun}We {auxverb:nosubtext}can {verb}sell {singpronoun}you {numeric}five {materialmodifier:currentform}tin {object:pluralform}cans {preposition:composition}of {materialmodifier:sourcedfrom}cat {object:massform}meat {prepositionalobject}that {pluralpronoun}we {process}can {pluralpronoun:reflexive}ourselves"[1] so that the a grammatical conversion could be performed.

e.g. to "packaged!tribalresponsibility!meatblock!cat(originated) within!container(cylindrical)!tin(formedmaterial)!fivefold-plurality sell!toyou!byus!ispossible(neutraltone)" prior to dictionary conversion to something probably completely unlike "SchuNaKragdarPurrid ikTrenPraIgso MellochEeAyKell" (<= not intended to be anything 'real', except within the context of this explanation).

Compare with "We would sell you one tin... <rest unspoken, subtle gestures only>" would be the English version of the still full and formal "SchuNaKragdarPurrid ikTrenPra MellochEeAyKepin" ("packaged!personally!meatblock!cat(originated) within!container(cylindrical)!tin(formedmaterial)!fivefold-plurality sell!toyou!byus!ispossible(doubtfultone:cause_is_disagreement_at_tribal_leader_level) <gesture towards traditional bribe-pocket in clothing>" in the grammatical markup) if you allow for a little extra markup to contextualise the nature of doubtfulness and the possible resolution thereof, and acknowledge that there will be information lost in translation (but also lost in non-translation, since the tribal leader disagreement is something that could be specified as a background feature of a human's speech, but not be expressed except if spoken by a human who is speaking to our hypothetical 'otherrace' in the 'otherracian' tongue with a sufficient proficiency in said language to avoid an effective conversion to "(doubtfulone:nonspecific)" or even "(joyoustone:just_witnessed_a_rainbow)" for the particularly inarticulate.


Or is that a far too complicated treatment of the original problem? 

(Yes, yes it is.  Though I sliced off the unimportant bits.)

That was in a different context, though. In this one, how about taking emotions from the character status¹, so that your speech is conveyed with a grin or a grimace, a smile or a snarl. Assuming you don't want to override that (or attempt to, with suitable acting/deception/political skills) for deliberate effect. "Sure, you want me to kill another troglodyte.. ? I'd be...  happy... to do that for you."  Or "The d-d-d-d-dragon?   Kill it?   Erm...  What if I told you that I'd already met... I mean not just met... But, what I'm saying is that.  I don't need to kill it for you. I killed it for you already.  Yep, definitely. So, like, the ticker-tape parade... Totally mine. Can we have it now, because I have to be somewhere else tomorrow."  (Not literally on-screen, but in a "...(she/you) said, exasperatingly bored" or "...(he/you) squirmed, looking shifty" sort of additional flavour to the additional speech.  Add disdain, fanboishness, lust, disgust, desperation, distraction, etc to the mix, according to what flavourousness one can derive from the hidden variables and (optional, skill-limited) player-led intentions to hide or play up their 'true' feelings.


Long idea, still. Just being conceptual, at this stage...

¹ Not normally present in the Adventurer character, but "has recently seen a trusted companion die" might be possible, except for callous meat-shield gameplaying being a thing...  Having recently been injured/rested/had a good (or bad, or at least repetitious) meal, though, is definitely something trackable.

[Scoops Novel]

"Sure, you want me to kill another troglodyte.. ? I'd be...  happy... to do that for you."

Uhhh... so, that comes out as "i tersely agree to kill the Trog." This is old ground, why retread it?

1 Not normally present in the Adventurer character, but "has recently seen a trusted companion die" might be possible, except for callous meat-shield gameplaying being a thing...  Having recently been injured/rested/had a good (or bad, or at least repetitious) meal, though, is definitely something trackable.

It shouldn't be hard to track/generate the same kind of emotions as in fortress mode, should it? Especially if you narrow down the detailed version to just NPC's we talk to.

The problem is that the conversation interface and the clumsy iinterface in general is not really going to appreciate us having to assign emotions to everything we say.

Duh. Trying to do this with the current conversation interface would be raw hell (as is everything else). Toady should mimic URR's (Ultima Ratio Regum) design, and/or allow us to search for keywords. Better yet, allow us to save premade sentences under our own heading and search for those.

[Shonai_Dweller]

URR uses a new screen for conversation. Precisely what Toady doesn't want (right now).

[Scoops Novel]

Bare minimum if you keep the current interface is searching for keywords.

[GoblinCookie]

Duh. Trying to do this with the current conversation interface would be raw hell (as is everything else). Toady should mimic URR's (Ultima Ratio Regum) design, and/or allow us to search for keywords. Better yet, allow us to save premade sentences under our own heading and search for those.

I don't know.  Default emotions would go a long way, if we started with what the emotion that the person we *are* would imbue the phrase we are saying with.  Then we basically get to apply 'fake emotion' according to our skill with such things.  If we get it wrong we end up using our initial emotion or a similar emotion to the one we are trying to fake.

[Scoops Novel]

Toady agrees that, mostly, forcing a character on us is a bad idea. If we get to play as a storied hero from the off, uncontrolled emotions could be pretty immersive, alongside some vocal quirks. Faking emotions on top of that is pretty clever. Using that with standard adventurers is right out though.

You raise a good point though; how do Npc's know your faking? They've got to be able to draw up some kind of assumed psych profile of your character, based on your rumoured actions/dress/etc. It could be basically like the dwarf personality screen, with information gradually filling in as rumours spread and you do something character defining. Their should be some archetypal personality types NPC's may or may not shoe you into - so a renowned warrior is assumed to be a conan-y take no shit loudmouth, a necromancer is stereotypically a edgelord, etc etc.

Some of the more general personality archtypes could be premade by toady - scientist, lawyer, detective - while the ones that vary from world to world like wizards or nationality can be generated based off that world's history and stories.