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View Full Version : An idea for whispers in the chat window



Snikle
August 30th, 2005, 07:07
Coming from mainly IRC roleplaying, one thing that bugs me is the whisper. In IRC a private message (or PM) will open in a seperate window. As a DM I find this metod nice because it keeps conversations between myself a certain player easy to track, sometimes I can find myself in three different PMs and chatting in the main window as well. With the way FG does whisper now, I find the PMs inline with the rest of the conversation a bit hard to track. So I was wondering if a future feature could be embedded PMs windows built into the chat. As an example I did up a little picture to help explain how it could work. A seperate tab could pop up for each player that PMs, maybe flash or something if another message arrives. This would keep the main conversation seperate from the PM conversations.

https://www.sylnae.net/img/fgchat.jpg

cogollo
August 30th, 2005, 09:11
This is a fantastic idea!

I also feel that the way whispering to someone works is not useful at all. The conversations mix up and I have to keep writing the /whisper command thing.

Please, developers, implement this idea... it would be very helpful.

Dupre
August 30th, 2005, 16:05
The chat window is likely to get some improvements after 1.05. We'll see what we can do about the whispers while we're at it.

Cantstanzya
August 31st, 2005, 03:15
The conversations mix up and I have to keep writing the /whisper command thing.


The current version you can type just /w instead of /whisper . This will save a little typing for you.
I do like the idea of the tabbed chat, although I don't know what I like better that or my idea below that I posted awhile back.

Lets say you have 6 players in your campaign. Player 1 and 2 split off from the other group. Since the other 4 characters are not there, you should be able to mute them so they can't type, and they recieve no text. This could be done by right clicking on the characters portrait and choosing a mute icon. Maybe have a message come up that says private session, please wait. This way the DM would be able to control two or more groups at a time, because let's face it, not all parties stick together.

Both ways have their merits, ideally implementing both would great. I juggle a great deal of private chat in my campaign and it would be nice to see any improvements with private messages.

Snikle
August 31st, 2005, 03:26
Hmmm, I do like that idea too, I prefer the tab conversations for PMs, just because that is what I am used to, but I can see the ability to maybe drag a characters portrait into say a blank chat window (perhaps after making a new tab) and allowing only those dragged into it to view and chat, that would be great. I like the idea of a mute option as well. All good ideas!

cogollo
August 31st, 2005, 06:36
What I like from the idea of the tabs is that you can create several conversations, so that they don't mix up. I would start a session with one conversation for the whole group and one tab for whispers for each player.

I suppose you would need one log per tab, though, but this doesn't look too hard to implement.

Stormbow
September 14th, 2005, 00:19
This sounds like a really awesome improvement!

kepli
September 14th, 2005, 07:43
I like these ideas too :)

gurney9999
September 14th, 2005, 15:43
I throw my support to this type of improvement. Snikle, you're the man (even with your wussy tartan :) ).

Snikle
September 14th, 2005, 19:27
Are ye callin out me manhold? I will lift me ol' tartan and show ye the goods!

Ged
September 15th, 2005, 09:59
The current version you can type just /w instead of /whisper . This will save a little typing for you.


Just a quick side note, you can now from 1.05 onwards drag text on the portrait of the player you wish to whisper. The text can be from the chat line, a chat frame in the story pages, text fields in the character sheet... (we forgot to mention that in the patch notes; oh well, it's one of the miscellaneous fixes...)

cogollo
September 15th, 2005, 10:24
Just a quick side note, you can now from 1.05 onwards drag text on the portrait of the player you wish to whisper. The text can be from the chat line, a chat frame in the story pages, text fields in the character sheet... (we forgot to mention that in the patch notes; oh well, it's one of the miscellaneous fixes...)

This is a good thing and will make whispering much easier.
The problem of mixing up different conversations is still there, though. So at the end you have to mute the other players, and that can cause some mess.

The beauty of the tab idea is that you have different channels for different conversations. Clean and easy. One idea to improve the tab concept would be to make the tabs blink when someone writes something in that channel (as in Yahoo Messenger or MSN).