So there's going to be talking emotes.

[Merri]

You can get the full details here on this post. But, the important bit~

 

"We plan to add a setting to allow your characters mouth to move when talking in /say or in LS etc in β4.

 

If you talk while using the emote: "Smile", "Upset", etc. Your characters mouth will also move while you maintain that emotion. We hope this will answer your request."

 

Should be interesting.

[Desmond Aryll]

Great news. Hopefully it's the beginning of a a trend of adding emotes. You can never have too many emotes.

[Desphiria]

Wooows, that is gonna be interestings. I wonder how they're gonna do that, hmm.. I guess it makes sense maybe.

[Fiona]

I hope they add alternate sit positions someday too. My character looks cool sitting but it's awkward if I'm just relaxing and chatting. Oh, I'm speaking about female Highlander by the way.

[sanguineFenrir]

The fact that they implemented facial emotes at all has me excited, because there's really quite a variety of expressions. I'd like to see a /liedown emote or similar (not necessarily sleeping). It would be ideal for relaxing, and combat RP as well, assuming the animation fits.

 

I can imagine my character spending a lot of time in the amphitheatre just watching the sky if it does get implemented.

[synaesthetic]

Wooows, that is gonna be interestings. I wonder how they're gonna do that, hmm.. I guess it makes sense maybe.

 

In WoW, your character will use the "talk" animation whenever you speak in /say. They even have different animations depending on if you end your sentence with a question mark or a bang.

 

I wonder if ARR will have different animations for ending your sentence in か or よ?

[Vee]

Oo, neat!

[Myxie Tryxle]

Can anyone tell me the command for doing an emote animation without it posting in the chat log? I remember something like this existing previously but can't remember what it is you add to the emote to prevent the text.

[Eva]

/ motion

 

/joy motion

/smile motion

/grin motion

...etc.

 

Confirmed to work in Phase 3 Beta (also triggers events too for when you have to do it to targeted NPC's)

[Orlog]

I dunno if I'm too crazy about this. Not that it's a bad thing, but I've played a few MMOs with the talking emotes and they always tend to take me out of the moment when used, because how ridiculous they look. Here's hoping they swing for something more natural.

[Clover]

MY GOD, YES.

 

I'm a screenshot freak and this game is already offering many possibilities for creating scenes with them. I'm so glad they'll even add this feature!

[Amiabelle]

Wonderful news about the facial expressions/mouth moving emotes.  That will be fun to play with and watch!

 

Speaking of emotes, is it possible to do custom "apostrophe s" emotes?  Such that the text would read something like:

 

"Amiabelle's hand shakes uncontrollably as she reaches for the quill".

[Eva]

Speaking of emotes, is it possible to do custom "apostrophe s" emotes?  Such that the text would read something like:

 

"Amiabelle's hand shakes uncontrollably as she reaches for the quill".

 

This is not possible, at least not yet.  You may add a space after the /emote and then begin the emote with an apostrophe, though it looks a little awkward.

 

Example:

/em 's fingers drum unconsciously against her thighs.

Output:

Eva Ianeira 's fingers drum unconsciously against her thighs.

[Myxie Tryxle]

/ motion

 

/joy motion

/smile motion

/grin motion

...etc.

 

Confirmed to work in Phase 3 Beta (also triggers events too for when you have to do it to targeted NPC's)

 

Thanks

[Amiabelle]

 

This is not possible, at least not yet.  You may add a space after the /emote and then begin the emote with an apostrophe, though it looks a little awkward.

 

Example:

/em 's fingers drum unconsciously against her thighs.

Output:

Eva Ianeira 's fingers drum unconsciously against her thighs.

 

Thanks, Eva.  That's the way I've been accustomed to doing it in other MMOs (and I agree, it looks a bit awkward ).  Maybe, after they get everything else sorted out, the dev team can work on a way to do this.  Can't imagine it's high on the priority list.

[Elisea Renyven]

Hrmm. That'll be interesting. I really do like how much FF14 developers have put thought into emotes, the ability to interact with environments. It is really something that nearly no longer exists in the MMO world. Its a nice change. I missed it.

[Averis]

This sounds interesting, but can be jarring if it's just mouth flaps with no body motion that goes with it. Humans don't usually keep their head perfectly still while talking.

 

I wish a game would take the idea of multi-character emotes from games like the Matrix Online where you could hug and such (course, with the other player's approval). I've never seen that done again since then. I guess, though, with all the different race sizes and height slider, that would be impossible for this game.

[Nightsha]

Oooh, I really like this  it adds a bit of depth imo. Also, I agree with Fiona on alternate sitting positions even if it just means being able to use all race/gender sitting positions unrestricted. The more options the better.

[Vokcas]

I am still on the fence about this one, I was like alot of you when I heard Swtor was adding voice acting to emotes and look how bland that turned out. I would love to have a natural talk feature which moves the mouth depending on your character mood and when the characters /s or /y.

[FreelanceWizard]

They had talking emotes in Earth and Beyond, of all things, and they were really slick. The game actually scanned through your text and built up a phoneme list for what you were saying, then mapped those to an animation sequence -- so your character actually looked like they were actually saying the words. Then, it used punctuation to determine how animated you'd look while speaking. It was a surprisingly cool system that actually worked pretty well (and is similar to some work I did back in grad school on animated agents).

 

While I doubt we'll be getting that, just having characters move their mouths when speaking and look at their targets is pretty neat. The "look at your target" thing in particular makes the game feel more alive, I think.

[Ildur]

Details like this make me go "SQUEEEE!" with joy.

[Kyatai]

Very cool.

Wonder if they're taking a cue from the voice modulation etc that EQO is working on?

 

One concern though..

*faint grin*

Since this is a Japanese-created game... will the mouth movements 'fit' our words- or will this look like Godzilla? The mannerisms and emphasis placed on words is VERY different when you compare Japanese to English. Japanese are very expressive people.. hehe I giggle everytime I see the podcasts with Yoshi-P and his associate and watch their expressions and mannerisms.

(reminds me of when I lived in Okinawa... hehe)

 

One thing I've always been curious about: if a pre-existing game has a  certain tech that allows for certain things (aka multiple seating types, multiple emotes, the ability to do that 'speech pheromone' thing mentioned above...

Why can't later games access it too? And use it to make their game better?

Is it purely resource allocation?

Seems if its 'already been done' uploading the code would be... easier than recreating the wheel an plugging in your own emotes and so on...

 

That said, I'm not a computer program or game developer... so could be MUCH harder than it seems. Just something I wondered about....

[FreelanceWizard]

Welp, licensing is one, and patents are another. (*shakes fist angrily*) There's also the short turnaround usually required in game development -- most shops have too much to do and too few people to do it, so cool stuff like this usually ends up by the wayside. The code usually can't just be copy-pasted for a lot of reasons; it ends up having to be reimplemented. For instance, the stuff I did was in C# and used Microsoft Agent. It wouldn't easily fit into a game like XIV that's written in C and uses DirectX, even if the underlying ideas could be reused.

 

But, honestly, software patents are a lot of the problem.

[Averis]

One thing I've always been curious about: if a pre-existing game has a  certain tech that allows for certain things (aka multiple seating types, multiple emotes, the ability to do that 'speech pheromone' thing mentioned above...

Why can't later games access it too? And use it to make their game better?

Is it purely resource allocation?

Seems if its 'already been done' uploading the code would be... easier than recreating the wheel an plugging in your own emotes and so on...

 

That said, I'm not a computer program or game developer... so could be MUCH harder than it seems. Just something I wondered about....

 

In the case of animation, each game usually uses their own skeleton setup, which can't be simply transferred. Same goes with animated faces since there are many ways to animate something like that (bones or morphs or both). On top of that each game creates their own functions and sub-systems to control certain aspects of the game. Those are usually pretty unique between games and studios. When you add all those variables to the mix, taking code for controlling animations from one game to the next would likely not work at all.

[Lren]

One thing I've always been curious about: if a pre-existing game has a  certain tech that allows for certain things (aka multiple seating types, multiple emotes, the ability to do that 'speech pheromone' thing mentioned above...

Why can't later games access it too? And use it to make their game better?

Is it purely resource allocation?

Seems if its 'already been done' uploading the code would be... easier than recreating the wheel an plugging in your own emotes and so on...

 

That said, I'm not a computer program or game developer... so could be MUCH harder than it seems. Just something I wondered about....

 

Could be the difference in engines or perhaps even programming language that is used when creating the game. Thinking it is the different 'skeleton's' used to animate, which you'd have to do for all the skeleton's in the game. It's not so much a programming thing, as it is an animation one. 

 

Anyways, on topic! Love seeing that this is being done!

 

EDIT: DAMMIT, AVERIS! BEAT ME TO IT!