Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits

[Cobalt]

Ambiance Emits?
An Ambiance emit is as a work of code that sends either to a room or a person sort of semi-random emit. For a room this might be something like 'you hear birds chirping outside' or 'thunder rolls outside, and rain beats on the windows' or 'you hear a car door slamming somewhere outside on the street blow'. For a person it might be emotions that come and go: 'You feel lonely for some reason?' or 'You shift from foot to foot feeling restless.' Or maybe even 'You crave cheese and fried foods.'

In the case of the game I'm working on, it might be something like: 'You feel a little shiver of magic in the air.' Or 'You crave the taste of the Clora.' Or 'You're feeling a little low on energy.' For personal emits. And room ones might be something like 'A Sky-seeded flies past your window.' Or 'A Spark-Seeded sends a spark of lightning from the sky outside your window.' Or 'A Fire-Seeded brushes past you, and you feel uncomfortable warm until they're gone.'

Would this add to your RP or would you find it annoying?

Would you like it if it was something you could easily turn on and off?

Or just 'no' don't waste your time on such code?

[Tehom]

My feeling on them is that they should only be done when they're to emphasize or reinforce theme, or convey information that's relatively important. I think it's kind of damaging if people receive messages that are wrong in some way - if it's about something that isn't reflected in the room or character's current state, it's kind of jarring and annoying.

But for something that's meaningful, or fairly personalized for a character, I think it can be a nice touch.

[Cobalt]

@tehom said in Code Discussion: Ambiance Emits:

My feeling on them is that they should only be done when they're to emphasize or reinforce theme, or convey information that's relatively important. I think it's kind of damaging if people receive messages that are wrong in some way - if it's about something that isn't reflected in the room or character's current state, it's kind of jarring and annoying.

But for something that's meaningful, or fairly personalized for a character, I think it can be a nice touch.

Yeah, I love the idea of them, but think they need to be balanced carefully. For example: The occasional emit/message describing feeling listless when lower on willpower, or the occasional emit craving blood if a vampire is low on vitae/blood/whatever. Or being hungry if a game tracks how often someone eats (noplz).

Or connected to a +weather code that has a dynamic weather, and emits various weather stuff. Like 'it starts to rain outside'.

Light things that are either tied to a character's expendable stats, health, or otherwise variable attributes. Or weather related. Or related to specific rooms. (Crowds cheering a fight in the training center for example, would be kind of cool on Arx.)

[Ifrit]

I align closely with Tehom's thoughts here. For me it would be a bit weird if I got a 'x brushes past you' say in the middle of a bar that the players have already set as being completely empty except for them or something.

That said I guess if you have the ability to turn them off, all is good!

I do like the 'something else is happening on grid' type emits though - like the emit that Obi-Wan got when Alderaan exploded.

[Lithium]

@Cobaltasaurus Here's the deal with Ambience Emits... you need a FUCK TON OF THEM.

Otherwise they will repeat ad nauseum and just be annoying as hell.

[Cobalt]

@lithium Yeah, that's a good point. You do need to have like a lot written. They need to be like specific to certain things, and easily opted out of, but also have a lot of the otherwise they get stale. Maybe updated every once and a while?

[Arkandel]

I know how to deal with ambiance emits.

#gag.

[Cobalt]

@arkandel >:|

[Sunny]

I love ambiance emits.

Even when it's the same six 'a frog makes a frog noise' 'the waterfall splashes' 'a fish jumps'.

Anything that takes some of the weight of imagining the world around me out of my brain and into the world itself. I love tools.

[faraday]

RP scene set: It's a terrible storm, people are scurrying indoors.
Ambiance emit: You hear a bird chirping outside.

RP scene set: It's just before closing time. The bar is empty save for the two PCs having a very tense conversation.
Ambiance emit: A drunk knocks over a table in the back.

RP scene set: Wow what a lovely dinner we just had.
Ambiance emit: You feel hungry.

In all cases my reaction is exactly the same: :eyeroll:

The emits lack context to what's actually going on, so they come across as disconnected and invasive. A better thing for RP hooks IMHO would be a sort of mini plot generator that could spit them out on-demand as ideas before a scene started.

But as long as you can turn them off and don't have to be bound by them, I guess I'm "whatever" about them.

[Auspice]

@faraday

I like personal emits that are very infrequent (we're talking 'you might go an entire day without seeing one') that relate to the state of your PC / their sheet / etc.

But I wholly agree that ambience ones can conflict with the scene at hand. Additionally, you're stuck cleaning Yet Another Thing from your logs and unless they have a tag on them (like '<AEmit>'), they're a PITA to locate in said log to scrub out.

[Roz]

I love coded weather and coded weather EMITS and was always sad I couldn't get them working to emit properly with Faraday's system on X-Factor.

[faraday]

@auspice Funny, I would actually find the personal ones even more invasive and annoying because they're butting into my sense of agency over how my character feels and thinks. Everyone's got their own pet peeves. But yeah, the log editing is definitely a major pain. I remember having to strip weather emits out of logs constantly on older games.

[Arkandel]

A long time ago on a WoT MUD I was on they had implemented 'insanity messages' which were basically voices in your head.

The joke became that it wasn't characters being driven mad by those, it was players. So much spam. Especially if you stepped away from the PC for a few minutes then came back to screens worth of it.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

I like coded weather as a thing I can optionally reference. Same with time of day. I'm an emit hater (the immersion they give to some they break for me) but if I could opt out or even just lessen frequency I wouldn't freak about them as a great evil or anything.

ETA: where they particularly ugh me is when they become 5+ lines of not quite right randomness I have to scrub out of a log, particularly a GM'd scene that a lot of people may want to refer back to.

[Roz]

I often forget to even think about the weather so I like the reminder because it then gives me more variety and color in my RP. I am fully supportive of putting a prefix on emits for people to gag, spawn, etc. as they like, tho.

[Auspice]

For weather, I like a succinct +weather option. Then I can check it before the scene and decide whether or not to integrate it. Random emits are often not in sync with the RP of the scene, either.

@faraday - as for personal emits, if they're tied to character 'status' (like injuries, for example), they can give me inspiration or help keep me on track.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

What about a system where if you say, "A scene is happening here," it turns them off, essentially making the room a local...temproom? Sceneset?

Turning on "I Am A Scene" is another hurdle, but it may work to have the game give RP cues when there's no direction, vs. telling the game I've Got This when the setting's direction is clear.

[Three-Eyed Crow]

Having to remember to turn off something that annoyed me every time I started a scene would send me from passive hostility to active hostility personally.

This is a matter of preference but ideally I'd find opt out to be a one-time thing that I had a way to toggle or check but that wouldn't neg me.

[faraday]

@thenomain If there's scene code that folks are already using to start a scene/log, then I wouldn't care, since I use that code automatically when I RP. But if it's an extra non-native step, then I agree with @Three-Eyed-Crow that I'd rather have a one-time "turn this stuff off" toggle.

More practically, though, I don't hang out on the grid unless I'm already RPing. And if I'm already RPing in a scene, then the emits would be disabled by the system you described. So there'd really be no difference between that and just turning them off completely.