[PMC] Help us write some space related death messages!

[Sir_Didymus]

Hello all!

 

We're looking to include buzzie's wonderful custom death messages as part of the CTF. However, we need your help! We're looking to crowd-source some space / science-fiction related death messages from you guys - bonus points if you can fill in gaps for the harder ones!

 

Instructions are written at the top of the sheet (buzzie has written some examples to help):

 

[Redacted]

 

You can write as many messages as you like, although we can't guarantee that we will be able to use them all.

 

Thanks everyone!

 

~Didy

[Narissis]

I've contributed messages for a few that had none or only one. And peppered the sheet with System Shock references. :P

[WyndySascha]

And peppered the sheet with System Shock references

 

Good Work, meat-creature insect.

[buzzie71]

First off, thank you to every one of you who has written something in for the death messages spreadsheet, which now has both an extensive and diverse set of death messages as a whole (perhaps more so than, if not as much as, P's default death message set!).  I think players will be well entertained with these death messages, especially given how many of these are laden with references to either IRL space exploration or other sci-fi media.  Well done.

 

Some of you have seen this in Slack already, but what I wanted to bring up are the more nitpicky things that I think should be taken into account when revising the death messages.  I know I didn't highlight some of these very well before, sorry >< so bear with me.

 

The biggest bit is some mechanics that will lead to weird grammar or sentences.  For every death reason, the plugin picks a message from the config's list at random and displays it, subbing out all applicable flags (for example, &p is subbed with the victim player's name, &z is swapped out with the nametagged name or name of the killer, or the mob type if there is none, &i is replaced with the name of the item the killer was holding at time of death or "a "+<item name> if not, all color codes etc.).  If the kill message is coded such that it can report the item in the killer's hand (like for zombie kills), the plugin will also pick a with-item phrase at random and then append a space and the with-item phrase at the end of the base death message, or insert that where a &w flag exists if it is specified.

 

This means that for death messages that can report an item, ideally every death message must be able to work with every with-item phrase.  For example, going on what the spreadsheet has at time of writing, one of the possible death messages for arrow-by-skeleton kill might show up as "buzzie71 was bodyshotted by Jackal Sniper with a bow," and another one might be "buzzie71 was bodyshotted by Jackal Sniper by murdering them with a bow."  The second sentence (at least to me) doesn't seem to flow as smoothly as the first grammatically, and I think could be improved.  There are other instances in the spreadsheet that can be similarly revised.  

 

On normal P, there is only one with-item phrase for every such death message (iirc), and all base messages were written around that - that works too, but despite the challenges of using multiple with-item phrases, I think the possible variety for CTF is worth it.

 

(btw - the Jackal Sniper base message was mine; if the base death message is changed to "Jackal Sniper bodyshotted buzzie71," then I think the appended "by murdering them with a bow" will lead to a more grammatically correct sentence.  I'll rewrite that.)

 

Some other pointers:

• &i will contain an article "a"; you won't need to supply that in the with-item phrase.  The only time it won't show up is if the item has a custom name (eg. named on an anvil or with plugin magic) - the name is straight up reported (eg. for a named diamond sword, the death message will end with, say, "with Bane of Padmins V" instead of "with a diamond sword").  If you remember stuttery P death messages that ended in "with a a <item type>" from very early on (Halloween 2014?), this was the reason why.
• Make sure color codes are in the right place.  Current plan is to mirror P's death message color scheme - names (hardcoded or not) light yellow (&e), everything else blue (&3).  Default color (no codes) is white.
• For death messages with the possibility of item reporting, there is no guarantee that a terminal punctuation mark (eg. periods) will always appear at the end of the message for every message.  This is because the with-item phrase is not printed if the killer is not holding an item.  This is not true for death messages that do not have an item involved; as long as it's written in the message in the right place, it will always appear there.
• Remember that you can move the with-item phrase around with the &w flag - it does not need to always be at the end of the message.
• If you really want to mention the victim's or killer's name more than once, or omit it, that's totally possible too.  Same with item names, though the with-item message will still appear in the death message regardless of item name inclusion.  Anyone who has been around to witness the cave spider civil war on P knows this well (there was a &z flag where there was supposed to be a &p).

Any weird death message combinations should be noticeable during staff testing, in case they slip through the cracks now.

 

Again, very great job on the death messages so far - with a bit of revising I think we can improve the messages further and give the players an even better time.

Edited June 10, 2016 by buzzie71

[buzzie71]

For testing tomorrow I've straight-up copied all the messages in the spreadsheet and arranged them in a config file.  It's been sent to techs.