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Personal Messaging System
Soldat Forums - Soldat Talk - Game Improvements / Suggestions
Maluno
December 13, 2004, 10:20 pm
Ok, i dont know if it has been suggested before, because the search forums tool kept returning errors when i searched. After talking with several other soldat players, i have found that we all agree that implementing a personal messaging system would be an excellent idea.

Maybe activated by a command such as "/pm<playername> --Message--," the system could be used to even talk to friends on different servers than the one you are currently playing on. Maybe create a list of friends names that would tell if the player is online or not, so you would know to talk to them. Also have an ignore list that you could block players from communicating with you.

Might this necessitate a mediating server (such as lobby) to relay messages, or would the communication be from game server to game server?

Anyway, just a suggestion, please consider. Thanks for your time.

Messiah
December 14, 2004, 12:48 am
Well, its not a bad idea, it could be like another team chat kinda thing, Speak # like ex /cmd ban # not a bad idea, speaking of this, it would be nice to have a *Friends List* to see whos on and in which server, but thats gettin to complicated, keep it simple.

Vijchtidoodah
December 14, 2004, 1:20 am
I had an idea like this today too...the personal messaging really needs to stick out though.

Maluno
December 14, 2004, 3:06 am
What exactly do you mean by "stick out"-- that the messages are visible and easily discernable from the rest of the ingame chatter?

Blackdeath
December 14, 2004, 3:14 am
that would be nice but I would settle just for a lobby chat sorta thing

Marine
December 14, 2004, 4:04 am
I don't like the thing talking to people on other servers. But it would be nice to be able to send it to just one person on your server.

Vijchtidoodah
December 14, 2004, 5:14 am
It should be much more noticable than an ordinary message, maluno. For instance, if someone was about to kick you for your behavior you might miss the repeated complaints in the upper left and so you would just continue on doing what you were until you got kicked. But if they could send a huge message to you that said, "KNOCK IT OFF" you would probably get the idea a lot sooner.

Marine
December 14, 2004, 5:19 am
Nah. If you're doing something wrong, you deserve to be kicked. And you should pay attention to that chat screen anyway.

Vijchtidoodah
December 14, 2004, 5:25 am
But it's so hard to pay attention to it when you're in the middle of a firefight.

Marine
December 14, 2004, 5:55 am
Not sure what you would be doing wrong...

Vijchtidoodah
December 14, 2004, 6:01 am
Shooting the flag off it's spawn point, for instance.

The ignore idea is a wonderful suggestion, because suppose someone starts to abuse the private messanging system the way that people bring up dozens of votekicks. This way, you know who's sending it to you and you can easily block them from sending you any messages again.

FliesLikeABrick
December 14, 2004, 6:24 am
no this wouldnt work out too well between servers because no matter what, the lobby would have to know who is in what server at all times. this would require a significant amount of bandwidth between the servers and the lobby, as well as a signifigant amount of coding. I dont think it is worth the extra bandwidth. The servers would have to update the list on the lobby every time someone joins or leaves a game, which may not make a big difference on the server, but the lobby server will have to work its ass off to do it.

mar77a
December 14, 2004, 12:12 pm
To talk if you are in different servers its just impossible, listen to Flies. And to /pm friend , its quite uselles...If want to use "tactics", or just organize, your friend should be in your team, so you just have to use team chat...

Maluno
December 14, 2004, 8:22 pm
Ok, input is good :D. The inTRA-server messages can pretty much be eliminated as a possiblilty, as I suspected, due to the strain this would put on a central server.

However, that doesn't mean that the inTER-server pms should be so quickley dismissed. It would prove useful in communication during dm, etc. Maybe you just want to spare the rest of the players from enduring listening to your conversation with someone else, talk that they view as irritating "chatter."

A auto-refreshing friends list would be kindof pointless if there is no messaging occuring from server to server, but a simple list can be saved locally on the client machine as a text config file which could make certain nicknames appear as red or green in the list of players, depending on friend or ignore. This eliminates problems of abuse as well.

EDIT: sp.

y0da
December 15, 2004, 10:08 pm
ok, sugest it to Michal by mail. i also thought about coloring nick's in the color of clothes. if the taunt would send a spectator, his nick should be green. btw. Where did everybody go since last time i've visited? :o

Maluno
December 16, 2004, 2:14 am
I pm'ed michal informing him of the idea and included a link to this thread... What next?

Vijchtidoodah
December 16, 2004, 4:09 am
Wait for him to respond.

Michal Marcinkowski
December 16, 2004, 2:20 pm
Private messages for players in different servers and friends lists sound to me like Valve's Steam. I don't want to do anything like that, Soldat should be simple to use, you can use external tools for that such as ASE. Private in-game messages wouldn't be hard to do but is it really such a good idea. What would you use it for? Just alt+tab to an IRC program if you want to talk :).

Toumaz
December 16, 2004, 2:23 pm
OK... but:

quote:Originally taken from the Soldat Manual:
It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to CLOSE all programs running in the background while Soldat is on.

Messiah
December 16, 2004, 2:32 pm
Lmao, he got you there Michal lol, so how about that Shoe Color idea ;)

Michal Marcinkowski
December 17, 2004, 2:09 pm
Damn it...
I will make a list of safe programs to run. The first two are ASE and mIRC :).

Meandor
December 17, 2004, 4:18 pm
mIRC is safe, i've been using it while running soldat all the times since i got mirc (more than one year ago).
Actually, i've never bothered to close any program (psp mostly, for mods) while running soldat and it worked just fine.

Maluno
December 17, 2004, 9:03 pm
My original idea was meant more as a means to communicate with people in the same server as you, not just a general soldat public. Glad to hear irc works tho, now i will be alt-tabbing more often :P.