Emotes and messages for Henchmen

[temnix]

Allow Henchmen to execute animations and display balloon messages. For this add a right-click option to Henchmen to display, e.g., Emotes and Messages - > This Henchmen - >, All Henchmen - >, Emote - >, Message - >. As far as I have seen, even robots have it in them perform many of the emotes, and if a particular creature form can't do one of the animations, it would probably require no special tuning to make nothing happen. The Message feature would cause the Henchmen to inflate a text in the Local channel regularly. Besides entertainment and happenings like dancing bands, choruses and sign-holding protests, a Mastermind could post his minions around an area to direct visitors to where a party is being held or advertise his exclusive salvage and other sales and invitations. 

[gabrilend]

1 hour ago, temnix said:

Allow Henchmen to execute animations and display balloon messages. For this add a right-click option to Henchmen to display, e.g., Emotes and Messages - > This Henchmen - >, All Henchmen - >, Emote - >, Message - >. As far as I have seen, even robots have it in them perform many of the emotes, and if a particular creature form can't do one of the animations, it would probably require no special tuning to make nothing happen. The Message feature would cause the Henchmen to inflate a text in the Local channel regularly. Besides entertainment and happenings like dancing bands, choruses and sign-holding protests, a Mastermind could post his minions around an area to direct visitors to where a party is being held or advertise his exclusive salvage and other sales and invitations. 

 

I do believe this is already possible. Is the capability you seek covered by the /petsay command?

 

reference: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Petsay_(Slash_Command)

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, temnix said:

Allow Henchmen to execute animations and display balloon messages.

They already can.

[megaericzero]

Boom. The feature was implemented before you even came up with the idea. Now that is customer service!

[biostem]

2 hours ago, temnix said:

Allow Henchmen to execute animations and display balloon messages

Check out the 'petsay' command - it can be used with text or emotes!

Edited April 20 by biostem

[temnix]

I did not know about the petsay command, but it is not the same thing. For one, it is very inconvenient and limited to have to type in line something, anything, to make an action happen. We are past MS-DOS. And numerous emotes exist. Does the player have to know the names and abbreviations for them all and in advance? "petsay <em flex>" to flex - how convenient is that compared to a menu? And that is a short emote name. And if I want one of the stances, let's say Villain 2, and don't know or remember which one it is or how it is to be shortened for the typing, what do I do then? My proposal would make it simple to make Henchmen execute any emote that they in principle can or let the player navigate to a window and type a message there, although the command function is superior in that it can combine spoken text and emotes. Still, even that combo would probably not be difficult to implement. petsay also only allows saying something once instead of repeatedly, as I suggested. In short, my idea is for making emotes for Henchmen a viable and popular, and possibly useful, option, instead of a specially devised technical trick to please oneself.

 

According to the wiki, the command is also not too reliable and capricious. And it all comes down to what is important, doesn't it? Yes, the engine contains this (practically hidden) function for pets, for no purpose and without relevance. On the way to killing another mob players can pull off this little number, barely worth mentioning. Well, that is not good enough in my book. I don't respect killing mobs as an activity to build online time around, and what I would like to see is new interactions between players and new tools to that purpose so that this game can become something less dumb.

[Rudra]

On 4/21/2024 at 4:50 PM, temnix said:

although the command function is superior in that it can combine spoken text and emotes.

So can the petsay command. That is even shown on the Petsay (Slash Command) page linked by both @gabrilend and @biostem.

 

Edit:

On 4/21/2024 at 4:50 PM, temnix said:

According to the wiki, the command is also not too reliable and capricious. And it all comes down to what is important, doesn't it? Yes, the engine contains this (practically hidden) function for pets, for no purpose and without relevance. On the way to killing another mob players can pull off this little number, barely worth mentioning. Well, that is not good enough in my book. I don't respect killing mobs as an activity to build online time around, and what I would like to see is new interactions between players and new tools to that purpose so that this game can become something less dumb.

This site is more relaible: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Petsay_(Slash_Command)

I don't know about binds since I don't use them, but I haven't had any problems with typing in petsay commands in the chat line or using them from my macros. (Until someone linked me to a file that shut my demons up, I would routinely type the sleep emote for them into my chat bar and they would go to sleep.) The Homecoming wiki does have incorrect data as evidenced by its difference for the Bodyguard Mode Mastermind's have.

And what are you talking about? Mastermind players can do this whenever they want. RP'ing in Pocket D, passing time waiting on teammates to arrive in a mission, during a fight (though the emote will fail immediately as the pet stops emoting to continue attacking, so text only for here), absolutely whenever the MM player feels like.

 

Edit again:

On 4/21/2024 at 4:50 PM, temnix said:

"petsay <em flex>" to flex - how convenient is that compared to a menu?

*hits Enter key, types in /petsay <em flex>, hits Enter key*

*clicks speech bubble icon on chat bar, moves cursor to highlight new Henchmen category, moves cursor to All Pets category, moves cursor to desired emote category, scrolls through emote list until sees desired emote, moves cursor to desired emote and clicks*

 

Pretty convenient in my book.

 

Edited April 25 by Rudra
See post 4 down for reason.

[megaericzero]

Oh. I think I get it now. You want a popmenu like players get for emotes, but for henchmen? Sure.

 

Someone could probably even whip-up a popmenu file so you can do exactly that with a macro as the game currently is.

 

Now that I (think I) understand your suggestion, this part is an issue:

On 4/19/2024 at 3:42 PM, temnix said:

The Message feature would cause the Henchmen to inflate a text in the Local channel regularly. Besides entertainment and happenings like dancing bands, choruses and sign-holding protests, a Mastermind could post his minions around an area to direct visitors to where a party is being held or advertise his exclusive salvage and other sales and invitations. 

 

Let's not allow people to automate chat spam anymore than they already can.

[lemming]

Yep, just put together a popmenu.   I think several people have made such, but they tend to be geared for them.  There are quite a few popmenus to look at though to see how to make your own.  (Or keybinds if you want to go that route instead)

[lemming]

On 4/21/2024 at 3:53 PM, Rudra said:

This site is more relaible: https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Petsay_(Slash_Command)

That site doesn't get any updates.    the homecoming wiki is getting moved, so that maybe why you think it's less reliable, but at least it's updated.  (with the new emotes too)

[Rudra]

30 minutes ago, lemming said:

That site doesn't get any updates.    the homecoming wiki is getting moved, so that maybe why you think it's less reliable, but at least it's updated.  (with the new emotes too)

No, the Homecoming wiki getting moved isn't why I thought it is less reliable. It was the presence of demonstrably false information on the wiki that makes me call it less reliable. For example, Bodyguard Mode on the Homecoming wiki states that Defensive/GoTo and Defensive/Stay also work for establishing Bodyguard Mode for the MM, but if you test it, only Defensive/Follow establishes Bodyguard Mode as evidenced by when or if the pets are taking damage when not the target of attacks but the MM character is.

 

Frustratingly, I went and checked both wikis just now specifically about Bodyguard Mode for my example, and they both state the same thing. So both wikis possess incorrect data. So you can consider my previous statement that the Paragon wiki is more correct (for the parts it has) as retracted. I'll go back and strike out that part now. (Edit: Though for this discussion, I do still find the Homecoming wiki questionable about this topic as I have never witnessed the bugs the wiki says exists for directly inputting petsay commands into the chat window and the Paragon wiki makes no mention of such bugs.)

 

Edited April 25 by Rudra
Edited to change "bar" to "window".

[lemming]

I know there is some bad info on the homecoming wiki, but it does get updated with what is thought to be correct info.  I've fixed a couple items and a few others have done much more there.  Sometimes, a fix in a patch note will take longer to make it's way to the wiki.

 

For instance, the new emotes are in homecoming wiki.

 

Paragon wiki is pretty much a historical reference for seeing what some stuff used to do.

 

I've never done much with petsay, so don't know if that's current, but playing around with it atm, does look what they say about keybinds is correct.