Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility

Goldfish

My client is Atlantis.

I have this problem in large scenes, especially when the poses are large and/or there is a lot of OOC chatter. I just miss stuff. I swear I'm reading but I'm clearly just scanning and glossing. Part of the problem, after some thought, is the way the text is on the screen. Just lines and lines of white on black and it's just turns into white noise on me. So, I'm looking for a way to make poses stick out more or highlight or something so I can keep up. I already highlight my character's name, so I don't miss that. I have thought about spawning OOC chatter in another window but that will lead to a lot of back and forth. I have upped the text size. It took me too long to realize there was some eye strain happening there.

Any other tips or tricks to help me keep up with what's happening?

Sunny

@goldfish

You're doing most of what I do, I think the only thing I'd add is putting people / keywords beyond your own character's name into highlights. Like I have my PC's family, her friends' names, the group she belongs to, and so on. I highlight basically everything I can think of that should catch my eyes, and then I acknowledge that I'm skimming everything else and let my guilt for said skimming go because you can really only pay attention as a person to so much. I forgive myself for missing poses sent my way that don't include my character's name.

I also scroll back a page or so when I'm trying to read wall-o-text so it isn't moving on me, and then advance the screen at my pace instead of the pace of 30 people posing at once. It overwhelms me less that way, to read a page at a time instead of seeing it go and go and go. I get it all read at the same general pace either way, but this way one tiny little something something is no longer providing stimulation that adds to the overwhelmed.

ThatOneDude

I started running into the same and found that highlighting my pc name and other pc names of importance helped a lot. Also I changed the color of text in between quotes.

Thenomain

@goldfish said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Any other tips or tricks to help me keep up with what's happening?

Posebreak.

Some posebreaks allow you to create your own header, but if your game doesn't have a posebreak, ask for it.

I have many infamous problems keeping track in large scenes and it's helped tremendously.

Roz

@thatonedude said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Also I changed the color of text in between quotes.

That's a huge one for me! This works for a regex highlight on Atlantis:

(["])(?:(?=(\\?))\2.)*?\1

And if it's a game that supports Unicode where people might accidentally smart quotes, I also add this one:

“(\s*?.*?)*?”

If it's a game with tabletalk/whisper, I have a highlight to try and catch the starts of those poses. For Arx, mine looks like this:

(^At the [\w\s']*,|^Discreetly,|^You posed to [\w]*:|^\(Also sent to [\w]*.\) Discreetly,)

Lemon Fox

@roz Is there a way to do that on MUSHClient?

Roz

@lemon-fox No idea! I don't use MUSHClient. You'd be looking for an option to highlight things based on a regex, which I'm very un-expert with. And I know there are different types of regexes? Or something? Like the Atlantis ones won't work in Potato? They have different engines or -- something. Someone told me the answer to this once.

Based on this page I found googling, you can indeed do regex highlights on MUSHClient, so you'd have to explore and figure it out.

Goldfish

@roz regex highlight? Can I have that in english with a full tutorial? Please?
cute cat

Meanwhile, I have posebreak and +poseorder's alert is highlighted as well. This are all great ideas guys. Thank you.

@Sunny I found myself apologizing and asking for recaps so many times that I got embarrassed and made this thread. I have a hard time following action anyway. I have a hard time picturing any scene. Like who is standing where, or where the enemy is in relation to me or how big the room is. That's just a Goldfish trait.

(Digression: I would have never made it through the Harry Potter books if I didn't start them at the same time the first film was released. JK's world is so vivid and wonderful but when I read, it's always very blank and bland. Having the films as reference made the books that much better for me. Still mad that my Sirius didn't look like Gary Oldman but WHATEVER)

Tinuviel

I find changing the background colour itself can help, though it also can mess with some games' colouring. When I use a terminal console (tf and the like) I prefer a Solarized theme to almost anything else.

So perhaps changing the black background to something a little less contrasting will help ease of reading?

Arkandel

@goldfish said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Still mad that my Sirius didn't look like Gary Oldman but WHATEVER)

If it helps, Gary Oldman doesn't always look like Gary Oldman either.

Lemon Fox

@roz Thank you!

Roz

@goldfish said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

@roz regex highlight? Can I have that in english with a full tutorial? Please?

So you've already added one-word highlights in the client, it sounds like! There's a dropdown when you click on the highlight down in "Highlight Details" and it has the options "Begins With," "Is," "Contains," and "Matches Regexp." All you have to do is flip it to "Matches Regexp" and just copy-paste the code into the box for the thing to highlight.

Thenomain

@goldfish

Another tip:

If you can, set your client to not auto-scroll. I personally can't stand this, but I accept that if I could learn it then it'd give me more time to respond.

What I have problems with is that other people tend to read, process, and type faster than I do, so I have to try a different kind of posing--responding either smaller poses or in more localized chunks.

Part of why I stopped RPing (especially in large groups) is because this pose style does not seem to be entertaining enough to most people to create that beautiful feedback loop that RP strives for. And there are short-pose snobs. And there are people who react to the entire room no matter how many people their character might be talking to. And...ughhhhhh.

Sorry, personal tangent.

Maybe killing the relentless scroll so you can read at your own speed would work for you. It depends on what's causing your troubles.

surreality

I color code the hell out of things. Don't have it set up as much as I usually do at the moment, but if I can manage, OOC comments are one color, each channel has a color, pages have a color...

Formatting helps. Just a few linebreaks in a longer pose can make a world of difference, but not everyone does it.

KDraygo

I've had that issue as well, which is why I try not to join large scenes. When I do and there is a lot of interaction, I try to start typing out my pose as others pose if I have to respond to it. Downside is sometimes my poses end up being much longer than I prefer but it's hard for me to find stuff to cut.

Seraphim73

@thatonedude said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Also I changed the color of text in between quotes.

I also love saycolor or quote-color or whatever you want to call it: colorizing the text between quotes. This helps me a lot in big scenes, especially when I get a wall of text. I also scroll up to read at my own pace, and start typing my pose while I'm reading.

Goldfish

@arkandel said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

@goldfish said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Still mad that my Sirius didn't look like Gary Oldman but WHATEVER)

If it helps, Gary Oldman doesn't always look like Gary Oldman either.

These are true facts. So versatile.

@Thenomain Recently someone pulled me aside in a scene and said something that contained the phrase "...since you are a slow poser..." I was shocked. Then I was like, yeah...word. So I'm adapting. This reading is part. The other is pretyping poses. Some characters are gonna do X or Y in this situation regardless, so I get started replying as soon as I can so I can spit out something with substance. Or I just throw up my hands and short pose and hate myself later.

@roz Thank you!

Arkandel

@goldfish I'm one of those people who do all that; I pretype responses, am a fast typist and I read quickly. However it doesn't matter that much when it comes to playing with others; being a slow poser isn't an issue - being a sloppy or inconsiderate one is.

In other words take your time. If I have to wait 10 minutes (or sometimes more) to get a pose I'm more than fine with it as long as it's worth reading in the end. Cranking out my poses faster than that isn't supposed to signal others that they need to do the same.

You don't have to change your posing style to accommodate others. Now if it's only for your own convenience, making sure you don't miss important things or name-drops in others' poses then sure, that's something... but there shouldn't ever be external or even perceived pressure to alter how you do things if you'd rather not.

Plus frankly any scene with 6+ people in it will be a scrolling, spammy nightmare for most people. It comes with the territory.

Ganymede

@goldfish said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

Recently someone pulled me aside in a scene and said something that contained the phrase "...since you are a slow poser..." I was shocked. Then I was like, yeah...word.

That someone is an asshole, unless you've stated a reason for posing slow, e.g., I'm at work and prone to idling for it.

This reading is part. The other is pretyping poses. Some characters are gonna do X or Y in this situation regardless, so I get started replying as soon as I can so I can spit out something with substance. Or I just throw up my hands and short pose and hate myself later.

I'm with Arkandel. Don't do something you hate; do something you like, or else you'll stop enjoying the entire activity.

Tinuviel

@ganymede said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

That someone is an asshole, unless you've stated a reason for posing slow, e.g., I'm at work and prone to idling for it.

I would argue that if you submit a reason for posing slowly, then they are an asshole for politely calling you on it. If you dont, and you are posing slowly, it means they're aware that you are slower than the rest and are taking an opportunity to talk about it. Which is gentlemanly, if nothing else.