Town ESP attunement colors now require citizenship (also ESP HISTORY)

[Rias]

Per the changelog:
- Town-specific ESP channel attunements now require citizenship to purchase.
- The esp history (or esp recent or esp echoes) command can now be used to hear echoes of verbal ESP messages (not pulses/blips/etc) from the past five minutes on one's current ESP channel.

People who previously had attunements have had those attunements cleared, so we don't have people who got both before the requirements still able to listen in on both.

The second one should make the non-gray channels more viable, since now one can see an indication of activity on another channel, tune to it, then use ESP HISTORY to see what the activity was rather than asking everyone to repeat what they just said. It should still take distance into account, being based on the character's current position compared to where the message was originally sent from. So technically, one could have missed the original message due to being too far away, but move close enough within 5 minutes to be able to hear the echo now that one is closer to the point of origin. Languages are also still a factor - that is, checking the history won't bypass the language barrier.

The short time window of 5 minutes is meant to discourage people from running around trying to scoop up all ESP messages globally, as well as prevent any worries about all one's communications being logged for extended periods of time which isn't a great feeling.

There's a lot of potential for bugs here, so please report any you might experience (or even just suspect are unintended behavior).

[Serity]

Oh, I shoved all my suggestions into my (real) bug report, because I am a reasonable person who does reasonable things. I'll ask them here since bug reports are not really the place for suggestions.

Is there any way we can get the history command shifted to "aura history" or "tune history" or something like that? Putting non-text parameters on communications commands, in my experience, tends to end up with a lot of people accidentally transmitting typos and so on.

If not, could the "echos" (no 'e') parameter also be added, if it's not already, just to avoid the inevitable speech-typos that will happen?

[Rias]

Good idears. I've added "echos" to the aliases, and hmmm ... I originally had the same thought, but "aura echoes/history/recent" didn't seem quite right since the aura command has to do with auras specifically, not ESP. Regardless, it can be a thing anyway just for people who really want to make extra sure they don't accidentally broadcast something. So now it is! AURA HISTORY (or other aliases) to your heart's content.

[Lexx416]

Good idears. I've added "echos" to the aliases, and hmmm ... I originally had the same thought, but "aura echoes/history/recent" didn't seem quite right since the aura command has to do with auras specifically, not ESP. Regardless, it can be a thing anyway just for people who really want to make extra sure they don't accidentally broadcast something. So now it is! AURA HISTORY (or other aliases) to your heart's content.

You could make PENDANT be an in-game alias/command for AURA as well, and that might feel a bit better (especially with doing any future expansions/content, since you don't have to worry about it not feeling technically accurate.

[Serity]

Thanks for the swiftness on that, Rias. I have to say, I really like the flavor of it being echoes, especially given the time limit - it gives the feeling of ripples on a pond.

You could make PENDANT be an in-game alias/command for AURA as well, and that might feel a bit better (especially with doing any future expansions/content, since you don't have to worry about it not feeling technically accurate.

If we want to get technical, not all of the crystals are pendants. "Network", perhaps - network pulse, network who, network presence/notify/announce, network friends, network history... well, regardless, I do like a catch-all term for it aside from just aura, since aura has other implications (glow glyph and circles, for example) besides just the network.

[Rias]

I like the idea of a NETWORK command, I'll get started on that!

Also, I just updated the TUNE command so if you tune to a channel that has recent echoes, it informs you of such and prompts you to use the ESP HISTORY command (will update it to prompt NETWORK HISTORY when new command is working).

[silly]

Do the attunements run out after a certain amount of time, regardless of whether they are being used or not?

[Serity]

Could pulses get added to the backlog? It gives context to conversation, sometimes, and certain people pulse for otherwise communication aside from greeting.

edit: some further notes that could do with polish:

* Something is causing historyless blips on gray - I think pulses do this, but it's possible moving in/out of range might also do this? Either way, it doesn't get logged, and then you switch back to Gray to see what someone said -- and there's nothing there. It would be nice if the "brief flickering of the X channel" message indicated what sort of event it is (speech, pulse, movement in/out) so you don't have to waste your time switching over and expecting speech (a brief pulsing flicker on the X channel, for example).
* Pulses from off-channels still transmit to gray rather than the channel in question.

[Lexx416]

It'd be nice if the ECHOES command got added to the list of actions you see when you type AURA on it's own!

[Rias]

It'd be nice if the ECHOES command got added to the list of actions you see when you type AURA on it's own!

This is now so!