So I’ve been working on what happens when you all would like to chat to each other in Boundless. Here’s a little leak of the latest work-in-progress done in my world of animation here in the studio that I showed this morning to the team. At the moment, this work is still test-bed stuff but hopefully it’ll work nicely with Ben’s new GUI you’ve been seeing when we get round to implementing it as a new feature.
Initiate a conversation
Animation 1:
‘I have something I would like to say!’
Visually in-game this may also have a bit of Visual FX like a simple ‘dot, dot, dot or even possibly a speech bubble’ to help the players see when another is currently in dialogue.
Opens the dialogue box so you can write what you would like to say - cue Ben’s lovely gui.
Animation 2.
I’m currently typing…
The animation is a looping holding animation that will carry on for as long as you type.
Ben was mentioning that the chatting functionality may have a limit of 100 words like twitter .
Animation 3.
And this is what I’ve said…
As soon as you press enter, your text will appear as a complete message to be viewed.
So the next step will be to see how this actually works when it comes down to actually implementing this.
I may need to create a very short version of this animation for one word (or extremely short) answers.
Also we’ll need to test different interrupts and blends for a more seamless user experience… but I can only check this as we prototype the functionality.
Anyway, this should be a great feature once it’s up and running. As always let me know your thoughts and suggestions. Have a great weekend,
Gerry
I agree that the last animation seems a bit awkward which I believe still leads to the fact that he lacks facial expression/animaition. XD
I think it might look better if one of the arms extends more than the other to eliminate ambiguity with expression/action such as dancing as mentioned by @KuroKuma.
Edit: Eeek. Same content as @Smoothy. Anyways, I don’t want to delete mine. haha. I blame it to my efforts of looking up an example picture but failed to find one ^^
Not too sure at the moment, Ben only mentioned the similarity to Twitter in terms of restricting length of dialogue. Basically it’ll be balanced a little like the guild glyphs - where the feeling is more of challenge and fun and not limitation. As long as you can write a certain amount without messages being too long. That will help the overall aesthetic of type and visibility with also hopefully creating a better user experience. The exactly length is not defined as yet - as I mentioned… very early days on this task.
And yes, this is very similar to the Roar emote animation which was also very tricky to express only in body/hand gestures. I may do a very simple ‘Out Anim’ when we get round to it working in-game with the proper functionality and compare the 2(or keep both as alternates). Perhaps less is more here?
Either that or it wouldn’t be too much of a change to turn it into one of Claudio’s classic Italian conversation with appropriate hand expressions!!!
The last animation is maybe a bit too long for people who type fast I know people who would already be done with the next message before the end animation is done.
That last anim triggers when you press enter, after you’re finished typing.
Also, in the case of it being too long … [quote=“gerryjacobs, post:1, topic:4021”]
I may need to create a very short version of this animation for one word (or extremely short) answers.
[/quote]
And yes, this is very similar to the Roar emote animation which was also very tricky to express only in body/hand gestures.
That’s why I really commend you for doing a great job with this hard task of expressing yourself without facial expression animation.
Perhaps less is more here?
Hmm. I think it can be. Normal daily conversation doesn’t require us to move our hands that extensively. Also, I think it looks tiring to look at your character do that last animation when having long conversation with others.
Yup I got that but with the length of a normal sentences in a conversation being maybe 10-20 words (that is my observation in minecraft anyway and this is with people who talk in full sentences and not short snubbed words) it is fully possible to read the last sentence and complete a new one before the other party is done with his animation. Depending of course on reading speed and writting speed.
Yeah that is true - I think that’s why Gerry mentioned about having a shorter animation for shorter sentences - maybe need to expand the 1-2 word expectation on that to 10-15 words.
Something like “where are you going now? Can I come too?” doesn’t actually take all the long to read, so yeah I get what you mean.
pls no limit, i dislike chat limits. in guild wars as example we had a chat limit every time if i wil explain a person somerthing the half sentence is cutted, so pls no limit.
and you mean 100 words or letters ? and is as example “hello my friend :)” 3 or 4 words than (what is defined as a word)?
the idea behind the animation is nice but i think the animations to long if some person is chatting fast.
and is the animation for all chats or still for the say chat ? (this question only make sense if we get a guild chat or a map chat, whisper chat or something like this)
It’s natural that there are limits. If you don’t like limits you should use voice-communication
Personaly i can accept limits because they help keeping chats “clean”. If a spammer starts writing novels in the chat others have no chance following other communications. It’s might be possible to raise the limit in guild or group chats which would be a grat idea in my optinion.
@gerryjacobs: Would it be possible to get an ingame voice-chat (only super close range or only in groups [raids]) like in CS:GO. This is a great feature if you need to talk ASAP (eg. in a fight).
perhaps I should say better limit yes, but not so small. in guild wars the limit is still 199 characters. that is not enough. to often i cant complete my sentence
According to this article (looks valid) the average number of letters in a word (english) is ~4.8. If the limit is approx 100 words this mean we have 480 letters / chars to write before any limit. this is more than double the value of guild wars. I’d be totally ok with this value
never the less i’m sure it won’t be a hard “word” limit. As @Saint_X mentioned it’s hard to count words depending of the interpretation (eg. are emoticons words ?). furthermore words can vary in length - german words are significantly longer than english words.
