Talus Speech System

Lafferty · Post by **Lafferty** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 5:17 pm

http://nwvault.ign.com/Files/scripts/da ... 2000.shtml

This package was designed to capture every single thing said by your players and allow it to be parsed. This includes tells. The parser is very efficient, and the listener is external, and thus it ** does NOT rely upon npcs ** All speech is reflected in the Listener window, as well as being logged in the odbc logs of nwnx. Note that NWNX or nwn-mysql must be installed for this program to work. The system has been in use on my server for 5 months now. It has also been tested by FastFrench, who has reviewed the code, and is using the system on his server, which consistently runs with 60-80 players at nearly all times. He reported that the system was using less than 1% of his CPU time. The package consists of 13 scripts (2 of which are the load & cliententer calls which you could merge), and an external listener program which captures player speech packets, and sends them to the database. The scripts running in the module query for new speech entries at a regular interval.

Sounds interesting.

FunkOdyssey · Post by **FunkOdyssey** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 5:27 pm

Big Brother is watching... (your tells)

Cath · Post by **Cath** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 5:38 pm

Honestly, I would feel very uncomfortable if not even tells were private anymore...

Aloro · Post by **Aloro** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 5:57 pm

Cath wrote:Honestly, I would feel very uncomfortable if not even tells were private anymore...

Me too.

I like to be able to use the Tell channel to chat with friends about OOC stuff.

- Aloro

Tangleroot · Post by **Tangleroot** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 5:58 pm

"The Tell Police would get him just the same. He had committed?would have committed, even if he had never used the party channel ? the essential crime that contained all others in itself. OOCrime, they called it. OOCrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

Lafferty · Post by **Lafferty** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 7:29 pm

This system only offers the possibility to track the tells...i'd also not like that happening

What is much more interesting is the ability to implement location/creature independent listening patterns. You could add serverwide talk or even whisper commands like /sit or /cheer or /tradeskills or ...

I think it could add some nice features.

just my 0.02 [choose your favored currency]

Malathyre · Post by **Malathyre** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 7:32 pm

I'll hop on the bandwagon here and say that Avlis tracks enough of the stuff that I do, I don't need them tracking my one OOC means of communication in game. Big brother can log whatever they want, just leave me one method of private conversation, ok?

Tangle, your posts are really starting to make me laugh. Keep 'em comin'!!

Lafferty · Post by **Lafferty** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 7:42 pm

hmm ... im not at all interested in logging/tracking at all.... drop it if you want. Only because the system offers it there is no need for it. It is more in the possiblity to react to what players say serverwide. imagine you just say "/status" and the server tells you "Current Server Statusses:

Mikona: Online (13 players)
Eylsia: Online (24 players)
LeOr: Offline
Deglos: Online (2 players)
...
.....
........
"

If that system would make such things possible... why not? We could even replace the emote want comepletely with such a thing. "Save my location would get" "/save"...

... and to get a list of all available commands just type "/help"

Daerthe · Post by **Daerthe** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 7:53 pm

Lafferty wrote:imagine you just say "/status" and the server tells you "Current Server Statusses:

Mikona: Online (13 players)
Eylsia: Online (24 players)
LeOr: Offline
Deglos: Online (2 players)
...
.....
........
"

If that system would make such things possible... why not? We could even replace the emote want comepletely with such a thing. "Save my location would get" "/save"...

... and to get a list of all available commands just type "/help"

Now, that would be totally cool.

Comick · Post by **Comick** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 8:19 pm

I wonder if this package could be used as a language translator.

For example typing /elvish "my message in English" would try hard to translate and display it in avlisian elvish. That would be quite easy to implement for accents were certain letter(s) is(are) always replaced by the same letter(s). It would be a great tool to learn a language / accent or simply for people like me that would like his character to speak an IC language but are too lazy to learn it.

Titanium Dragon · Post by **Titanium Dragon** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 8:33 pm

'ey! Wod sord ob slagger needs sommad bancy like dad? I jud dype lige dis ad de sambe speed I do wid normal dype.

I can alssssso type like thissss. It issss jussst a matter of practicsssse.

Aloro · Post by **Aloro** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 8:33 pm

Comick wrote:I wonder if this package could be used as a language translator.

For example typing /elvish "my message in English" would try hard to translate and display it in avlisian elvish. That would be quite easy to implement for accents were certain letter(s) is(are) always replaced by the same letter(s). It would be a great tool to learn a language / accent or simply for people like me that would like his character to speak an IC language but are too lazy to learn it.

Good gods, no. As a linguist and programmer... sure, it's possible, BUT... Nanshilae has a really tiny vocabulary, and this would be incredibly frustrating. E.g.

PC: "/elven Hello, friend. I am Sir Boresalot, and I would like to commend you on your dedication to upholding the virtues of goodness, honor, and decency as you have. You are a credit to your country, and I salute you!"

Nanshilae Translation: "Pelail, hoovaire. Ta toova."

Translation back to English: "Hello, friend. You are good."

- Aloro

storminj · Post by **storminj** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 9:04 pm

Aloro, that is just too funny.....thanks......I needed that one. Or perhaps it has been too long in front of these damn computers. One way or the other it made me laugh.

anticybr · Post by **anticybr** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 9:36 pm

Tangleroot wrote:"The Tell Police would get him just the same. He had committed?would have committed, even if he had never used the party channel ? the essential crime that contained all others in itself. OOCrime, they called it. OOCrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you."

This is possibly one of the best posts I have ever read.

Tangleroot · Post by **Tangleroot** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 9:45 pm

*bows* Thank you, thank you. At last someone appreciates my 'humor'.

Lafferty · Post by **Lafferty** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 9:50 pm

hehe...

well i will check this tool out in detail the next days.

I also thougt of a language tool but in another way. You'd have to learn languages (in some way... dunno how) and the info about having learnt it would be stored in the db (like the tradeskills).

You then define your preferred language with a command or the emote wand. This makes the tool assume that everything you type is on the set language.

IF the tool is not only able to listen to chats but to also intercept them it would work the follong way:

1) Character with preferred language "elvish" says something the normal way as always.
2) tool intercepts it, blocks your chat, saves it temporarily and looks up for all other player near you what language skills they have.
3) tool modifies the outgoing packages to the clients based on their characters language skill in an easy manner: It just replaces a certain amount of words with gibberish. If your language level is high enough, nothing would be garbled.

The drawback is that i think it would add heavy cpu load and maybe cause more lag AND intercepting server packages AND modifying them is quite difficult. I read about someone trying this for ingame voice chat support that would take a characters location into account. I dont know how far he got. He made progress but and he stated that this IS possible but also that this also is quite tricky

Psyco · Post by **Psyco** » Thu Feb 12, 2004 10:10 pm

The way i read it, these scripts don't stop what you type going to screen, it only logs it and allows you to use it for text based commands (like sit or sleep etc).

That is the reason it also looks at the tell channel, it allows you to send a tell to yourself that no one else will see, but the server will still act on it if it is a command. If you had to send that command in teh talk or even whisper channel it would lose a lot of its affect as others would see the command before the action happened.

watching tells is nothing to do with big brother watching you, its simply a way for you to send a command that no one else will see.

however because it doesn't actually stop what you type going to screen you would not be able to use these scripts for language conversion.

HarveyH · Post by **HarveyH** » Fri Feb 13, 2004 11:50 pm

Why not? Shouldn't it be possible to send yourself a tell with a language flag and have the server pick it up and make your character speak the translated sentence?

Lafferty · Post by **Lafferty** » Sat Feb 14, 2004 12:07 am

hmm... i read the realease notes of this and there are still some important features missing:

- Does not support multiple servers on one computer

- does not support correct identification of client behind the same ip

Well.... he stated to have those in in the next version.

Post by **tindertwiggy** » Sat Feb 14, 2004 12:32 am

Tells are and will remain a form of private communication on Avlis.