Chatting in public world

So I noticed others when they chat in public their hands arn't being animated like they are "typing" what they are saying? How can I do that - lol.

Maybe its animation lag or Animation overrider.
I got one that writes in a book somewhere in inventory but it kept un-
attaching itself.

Ctrl-Alt-D to make the Advanced menu appear.

Under Advanced, pick Debug Settings… from near the bottom of the menu.

In the drop down menu thing, type in playtypinganim, it should fill in by the time you type pl. change the value to FALSE in the menu below that. Wavy hands all gone!

I think it is Crazod that has the instructions on how to do it as part of his profile - it is in the Advanced Menu - but i dont recall the specifics. IM him in-world - I saw him in there a wee bit a go.

Ooh I didn't know about that one that is good. Thanks Viktoria.
This should be stickied..

Bear in mind that typing is one of the few visual clues we have that the other person is there. It's disconcerting when one says something to a non-typing av. Ten seconds might go by until chat appears out of the blue, by which time the first person, feeling ignored, might've wandered off.

If we had proper hand animation, we could make a little sock puppet motion with one hand when we talked, and then everyone would want to leave it turned on.

What she said.

I know it looks dorky, but please please please think twice before turning off your typing animation. Without it, conversation is much more difficult - you don't know whether someone has heard you and is responding; you tend to talk over one another more; &c. It's frustrating to chat with someone who doesn't have the chat animation active.

I'll add myself to the throng.

An ya, you don't have to use the basic typing animation if it bugs you. Get a typing AO if you wish. It's just having that visual cue is very helpful for telling that there is life there, and not an afk avatar.

Mari

well the person responding...you hear them right?
but yeah typing is good visual clue that they are responding but sometimes they do it and nothing is said too when sl is being whacked out or when you're building with others.

Also, if you turn that typing animation off in the Advanced menu, then AO's that replace it with something more desirable also fail to work for that action. For example, I spent a lot of effort recently helping a friend set up theuir furry avatar with "Muzzletalk", a scripted system that allows you to take a modifyable prim head for a furry and modify it to make its mouth open and close when you type in chat or talk in Voice Chat. It didn't work, even though we did everything just as I had successfully done with my own. Turns out they had turned off that typing animation somehow. Worked fine once they reactivated that choice.

*bump*

There are some people I know where the standing poses do override the typing anim, but their head will still nod slightly when they're typing.

But without a visual clue of any kind it's really quite annoying, especially when you're out with someone for whatever reason. If I know they're typing I know to stay in chat range or "sorry, didn't see that", but if I can't tell it's very easy to miss something.

(prefixing /0 in front of regular chat is an easy way to just selectively stop the typing anim)

(It can also work as a telltale sign that someone crashed when they look like they're typing out their biography )

... eventually. But if you had no idea they were typing you might have started up talking again and talked over them. Chat becomes more non-linear and more difficult to follow. In a real life conversation you wait for someone to finish before adding follow-up comments. Without a chat animation, it is more difficult to do that.

I once tried to have a conversation in my cafe with someone who had no typing animation and spoke in very long sentences. It was absolutely maddening. She would just be standing there stock-still, and I'd have said three things before she came out with a three-line-long comment responding to something I said minutes before. If I had known she was talking - i.e. if she had a typing animation - I'd have waited for her to finish before adding more comments, just like you do in a real life conversation.




*sigh* You are right, the typing animation is not a perfect indicator of what's going on on the other end. That's not a reason to throw it out altogether though.

All I am saying is that for new folks whose instinct is "GAH! That looks dorky, how do I turn it off??" - I hope they will stop and consider the advantages of having a typing animation. That's all.

LOL I hope that wasn't me.

You've all convinced me to turn it back on...

/me folds arms petulantly


I'm going to resist changing back. It drives me utterly barmy and makes me look like an arsepiece.

Anyway, my conversation is worth the wait, as any fule kno

I approve of this product and/or endoresement.

I am leaving mine on too. Of course I try to break up my sentences with a .... on the end when I have more to say. Beats having a hand sized reply going up the screen on someone.

I've actually become accustomed to *not* having the typing animation, and I prefer it...When I want to see if someone is responding I look for the little flashing ellipses (...) in the chat bubble above their head, and I tend to wait and make sure before I assume someone is ignoring me.

And there's always IM, if you're not sure someone is paying attention to open chat.

I never use the "Chat bubbles", because most of the people I talk to use complete sentances and long paragraphs, to express themselves more eloquently. Chat bubbles are fine if the longest reply expected is "I am fine, thanks. How are you?" They fail pretty badly when the person has something substantial to say.

When my furry avatar uses Muzzletalk, my arms gesture more like one does when speaking expressively, and my mouth moves. Voice Chat was supposed to introduce the ability to make a Human avatar's mouth open and close while they were talking in Voice Chat. Did they ever do that? I'm pretty sure they at least added the needed animations. Is there any way to script an AO to use those new animations that were intended for Voice Chat, and use them for the typing AO animations?

The RC before this one had the voice thing- I haven't noticed with the newest...

I second the sock puppet, too. At least it's not quite as odd, in what is supposed to be an immersive environment, to see someone playing piano in mid-air.

The key is to speak in SHORT sentences

While on sorta the subject:
When using IM, you can see something like "Bob is typing...." in blue when someone is busy preparing a message. Is anyone else getting this when the other person isn't actually typing anything?
I've waited for many a message from Someone only to finally realize that he's waiting for ME to say something.
Does this happen if your cursor is where it shouldn't be? Is it a bug?

B.

Yes Brann that has happened.

Aside from the more complex (though very useful and work completely) is the simple /0.

If you start all your chat lines with /0 you are telling the viewer you want to "say" in the zero or public channel, but the / removes the hand typing animation from being triggered. You do have to do this every line you type, but it's easy to remember and if, somehow, your settings are changed, you don't have to remember where in the menu you changed the thing you changed.

I *think* but I'm not sure, just a / in front of chat does the same thing, but again, I'm not sure. Torley did a whole vidtut on it a while back. You should check those out.

A

Brann I 've had that happened a lot of times. Usually when the other person is experiencing lag or is disconnected.

I've had newbies walk away from me when I was replying to them with my typing animation turned off. Very frustrating! I keep my typing turned on now and I don't have any stand or sit override animations.

Yes, that's the exact check the viewer does for typing, that the chat bar field is not empty (leading whitespace doesn't count) and the first character isn't '/'.