But do you understand?
Hey Unreal Devs,
Today’s Behind the Design is all about Communication.
There are many ways to communicate in Smelogs Playground.
You will be able to use a text chat and a ping system. Let’s go into the details of both! We will also explain why we won’t support voice chat.
Chat
The player can send messages to all players or just his allies.
A message displays the player name which is also colored in the player color, the timestamp at which it was sent, and the message text. The message text is done as Rich Text which means it supports font change, images/emojis, and even animated emojis.
We also added a profanity filter which can be turned off in the settings, and spam protection in addition to being able to mute players entirely.
Voice Commands
Similar to Age of Empires 2, you can trigger voice lines for everyone to hear via a numerical chat message.
Some Examples:
“1” = Yes
“2” = No
“11” = Laughing (Like in AoE2)
“14” = Start the game already.
The chat voice lines can also be muted in the settings.
Pings
The ping system is heavily inspired by the League of Legends ping system. No need to reinvent the ping wheel when there is already a good one in place. Pings are also shown on the Minimap as you would expect. We added spam protection here as well and the option to mute pings from players. Of course, if you play standard 1v1 you won’t need pings, but in our other team-based game modes it’s a fast and easy way to communicate without a language barrier.
Left = Missing
Right = Move
Top = Danger
Bottom = Help
Center = Neutral Ping
Voice
As mentioned at the start we will not support Voice Chat. At least not for the initial release. If it gets highly requested and we have the resources to add it, we will do so. As of right now, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages from a development view. Voice chat often gets misused for insults and toxic behavior. Right now we want to focus our limited resources on more important tasks and aspects of the game than Voice Chat.