User Experience Outline

[Xemiru]

enhancement

Implementation detail of bot performance and user experience in a functional roleplay channel.

Message Handling and Syntax

The main meat we'll be getting in roleplay is messages. Messages, messages, messages. Typing long strings that you don't wanna type can be annoying, so let's make sure that users will type the least amount of text possible in order to send their messages.

• Syntax: <character name[|avatar param]> message
  • character name The character to speak as. The user should be able to only use the characters they own, and should be able to type the least amount of the character name whenever it isn't ambiguous.
  • avatar param An optional parameter, separated from the name by the | character. Specifies which avatar to use for the dialogue box.
  • message The message said by the character. Custom formatting options could be added in order to add more flair and feeling in messages.

Visual Effects

It's very easy to make chatroom roleplay sound boring when all it is is just a bunch of messages. Visual effects will help bring more life to the RP chatroom.

All extra visual effects can only be submitted after the initial character has been approved.

• Dialog boxes and font templates will be used to generate visual messages.
  • A default box and font template should be provided by management for uncustomized dialogue.
  • Users may optionally submit dialogue boxes and font templates to be used for their characters.
    • To keep the syntax low for character messaging, the dialog box templates used should be set upon and stored in character data.
• Avatars may be set for characters, approved by review staff.
  • Multiple avatars may be given to a character to enable dynamic customization of dialog, helping show more character through emotion or movements.

On a technical standpoint, it may be wise to store such customization options off of the bot. Imgur is a reliable-enough image hosting service, it's possible to store submissions there and save the direct links. Limitations may also be in place for the size of the dialog boxes and fonts, as Discord's maximum embed size before it rescales the image isn't too roomy.

Error Reporting and/or Default Output

Should the bot cause any errors, it should not be spit out to the main RP channels. It's disruptive and clogs up the chat with error logs or messages with no relevance to the RP's topics. The bot will need an output channel in order to ensure that it can report to users and/or managers without disrupting the flow of chat. It is recommended that server owners designate a channel for character discussion, as in such a channel it is less important not to disrupt the chat.

[LikeLakers2]

Message handling and syntax - I am not sure what is meant by this. In roleplay on discord, it is impossible to edit another user's message, and I don't believe using a bot as a way of playing a character would really catch on.

I may include this as a side feature once the discordrb rubygem is updated, as the update includes support for embeds.

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Visual effects - I opt not to include this due to my current lack of knowledge on how to manipulate images -- however once the rubygem for discordrb includes embeds, I may work with that.

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Error reporting - The bot's output for a user command is always output in the channel the command is used in. I leave it up to the staff of a specific server to warn the user, if the user is spamming commands in an rp channel, as there are too many ways admins may want this handled. (The bot does not respond if it encounters an error while parsing data, though this is subject to change in the future)

[Xemiru]

Message handling is just capturing a user's message, deleting it and then replacing it with your own.

[LikeLakers2]

Hmm, then I don't see a point to that. From what I've seen, it's likely best to have that as a side feature and not as the main way to handle roleplay.