Dedicated new & improved (?) KI thread.

[teedyo]

There are client-side dictionary files for the language filter.
That filter is the first thing we have to get rid of.
Most ridiculous thing ever.

Give the ability for a parent to turn it off; fine. Removing it altogether; I disagree. Yes, I am a proponent of maintaining an 'E' rating for any URU-derived game.

[Grogyan]

Well we had last year Mayor Dick Hubbard in office, so the profanity filter needs adjusting, and also support for foreign characters and keyboards.
So you'd have to extend that filter to, French, German, Spanish, Italian . . .

[Tyion]

Ditto what teedyo said, I like that filter, I think we should just tweek it so that other languages dont get messed up.

[Chacal]

I'm OK with that, as long as it affects only your game and not mine.
So if it filters only incoming text, not outgoing, and it can be turned on and off by the player, why not?

[J'Kla]

I don't have a problem with that I would like to have it so it highlights words it has an issue with before I send.

And compliance with 'E' rating is a fair consideration although I would put that more to an absence of general sex and violence as opposed to transient word usage.

We deffo need to get rid of that leading Z problem it makes it hard to nominate anyone who's avatar name starts with a Z

[Chacal]

I can't begin any message with A,S,W or Z because I use those keys for avatar movement. I have to hit any other letter, backspace, and then my message. Are you using Z for avatar movement?

[Whilyam]

No the Z thing is an actual bug, not related to movement. I never map the wasd keys to movement because of the issues it causes. As a solution to your issue, Chacal, maybe map the "start chat" key to be something like Enter so you can move, but also type properly. If I remember right, once you start a chat the WASD keys will not move you (if not, that's something which needs to be corrected).

[Tsar Hoikas]

The Z bug was fixed in MOULdy bread IIRC.

[Nadnerb]

I am a proponent of maintaining an 'E' rating for any URU-derived game.

And filtering chat from other players does NOTHING to affect it's rating. Players can still talk M, and just avoid the filter and use alternate wordings because they know what it will block. Children have been doing that for centuries. Where do you think slang comes from?

An automated filter is a stupid idea because it won't work, and it's pointless censorship. The only way to make the filter truly effective is to make it sentient, and that would not only be technically impossible, but would raise issues with privacy.

[Nalates]

Of course there is the other problem to sort out, Inter and intra Age chat and group chat
Cause i've been spending some time in Second Life, I must say that the way they do the chat inter face is really quite robust, perhaps we can rip that interface off for use in a refurbished/new KI.
A main chat window, that has tabs below it for PM and group messaging and Local Age messaging.
From there, what about auto saving chat logs?

This is one improvement I’m all for. SL chat has some nice intuitive features. Basic chat is very simple and easy. SL group chat is in the same dialog window under a tab where members of a group can chat. The group chat is only seen by group members. Beyond that are the conference chats. One can go through their ‘buddy’ list highlighting names then click chat and an impromptu chat ‘conference’ is formed for just those people.

One can click on a name in any chat (IM, public, group…) dialog and open a direct IM chat window with that person.

All of this dialogs fit in a tabbed window. It is sizable so it can be small or large, handy for different things. It can be small while exploring and large for following discussion in a meeting.

There is also a MUTE feature that allows one to mute any other player. There is a Muted List dialog to allow management of ‘muted’ people. Makes it easy to do ‘temporary muting’ and then undo it. Handy thing.

It is also possible to copy and paste from the chat dialogs, which makes it easy to capture parts of the conversation. (How many times did I forget to turn on logging in Uru…) It is also possible to paste into the chat dialogs, which makes giving one a URL, a part of another chat, or may be the KI commands list copied from a file on one’s computer way easy. In SL that ability is often abused with what is known as chat spam. Many make text pictures and paste them into chat at parties. So, ‘paste’ might not be all that great for Uru. But it is very handy.

There are of course logging options. All the logs are TXT files in a folder on one’s computer. When logs are on, and you are IM’ing with a friend, the previous conversations can be scrolled back to in-game, no file opens or anything, just scroll while in chat/IM with that friend.

One thing that I did like about the PotS KI was that it had the coordinate panel open all the time.
In MOUL, it was a pain to check coordinates because you had to stop and open the full KI in order to see them.

If the GZ is extended to work in other ages as some have suggested elsewhere this will be a nice improvement. The GoC wanted the cords to simplify surveying.

We may even get to the point where we can give players a choice of KI in the same way you choose a skin for a PC MP3 player. IC options on this are not unusual a player could have taken his/her KI to the surface and paid big money to have it re-engineered and finished by a jeweller financing it by selling contraband D'ni artefacts.

Because we are likely to have the client side code fully OS, I expect we will see various user interfaces. People will select the ones they like. Experience in other games where this is the case shows that tends to happen. For SL there are specialty viewers (client side software) for some of the RPG’s in SL. Also several other virtual worlds have adopted the SL viewer, which gives me the idea that we will likely see several mods to the client side UI. Once the connection between the server and the client is understood in detail there may be many possibilities.

There are client-side dictionary files for the language filter.
That filter is the first thing we have to get rid of.
Most ridiculous thing ever.

I have mixed feelings on this issue. (Ai'ron – my question too) Allowing players to type whatever and have free speech is good. Using the filters to flag some chat for review in an effort to protect children may be a better solution than blocking. I think it is nuts to block the chat from appearing in real time. I think filters work so poorly it is a joke and in an international crowd it is just an irritant and a lot of work. But child protection is still an important item for me.

Chacal’s point on no filter in RL is valid. Filter short comings in game makes more of a problem than a help. But in real life parents can protect children and restrict where they are and who they associate with (it is not absolute). In game parents are at disadvantage.

Grogyan’s thing on pictures… YES YES YES. I understand limiting the number of images we can have in game, it uses up storage space somewhere. If stored locally on our computers then there is upload and download traffic as we send it to other players. But being able to take pictures and save to disk without having to do screen captures would be really nice. Since a local save needs no bandwidth or server storage that should be easy. Being able to save a pic a friend sends without having to dig through files to find them and in some cases convert them so I can see them… big improvement. However there may be bandwidth issues with being able to capture 1280x1024x32 bit images and send them to friends as they have to upload and download. I think that is why SL put a L$10 (US$0.04) charge on uploading images. We will likely have to control bandwidth consumption if pic upload/download is allowed, as there likely will be those that abuse it.