Fast key combinations are very useful for communication. However currently the best method (set and vstr bind combo's) is a bit clunky, highly non-standard and limited to text only.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory has a system where you can quickly through the v key (IIRC) and a menu select texts which are displayed but also played as sounds. Such a system would rock for trem too.
Let me explain how I envision this to work in trem. The menu system works with a simple parser for a simple structured tree language. This parser could be reused for parsing a configuration file looking like this:
{
menuDef
{
name "Global All"
key "t"
itemDef
{
name "You are all NOOBS!"
key "n"
say_global "You are all NOOBS!"
}
}
menuDef
{
name "Global Team"
key "y"
itemDef
{
name "Base under attack!"
key "b"
say_team "Our base is being attacked!"
play_team "baseattacked"
}
}
menuDef
{
name "Local All"
key "g"
itemDef
{
name "Haha!"
key "h"
say_local "Haha!"
play_local "haha"
}
}
menuDef
{
name "Local Team"
itemDef
{
name "Retreat"
key "r"
say_local_team "Retreat!"
play_local "Retreat"
}
}
}
It's a bit verbose but I needed that to show the idea. The idea is not to simply make a private comms system, the idea is to integrate communication into the game world in a way that has both advantages and disadvantages for the user and that expresses the differences between the races.
What you see is a simple menu structure not unlike the visual menus. Inside the itemDefs there are some interesting things though. Let's first talk about the say messages, these work like expected with the local variants checking distance first before sending out a message to someone, creating a local atmosphere.
The play variants however act very differently. Different sounds are needed for aliens and humans to add to the atmosphere, alien sounds are very alien, meaning you really have to learn them to understand the common alien language (we could also go for different sounds for different classes, but I fear that might soon become a very large sound package). Aliens only make physical sound for local communication.
Humans on the other hand make local sound when chatting, but for global communication when they use a helmet the sound is reduced in strength by a good lot and with a bsuit it's totally muted. Local communication is done through the airwaves though, meaning those clever aliens can listen in on conversations if they're in range. As local comms are shouted aliens have a much easier time listening in on local comms than global comms (so if you use the often more strategical global comms it's wise to first look around for dretches).
Of course that means both aliens and humans have some problems with voice comms, but well, that's part of the game. People could of course use a teamspeak server to evade those problems, but I think most will simply stick to the more scenic built-in comms even though they have some problems.
Does anyone have an idea how hard this would be to implement with regard to the amount of code needing to be (re)written?
