Home Chat, Whisper Stones & Player Trade

Communication, whisper stones & player trade

Players talk and trade in-world over the same TCP session as gameplay intents. Designer notes: docs/player-chat-and-trade.md.

Channels

Channel How Range / privacy
Nearby t focuses CHAT input ≤15 m + LOS; clarity bands at 5 / 10 / 15 m; walls/rooms block
Whisper Near a player → f → Whisper Private (no eavesdrop); 1.5 m interact radius to send or stay in mode
Whisper stone g picks a pouch contact Region-wide; both must hold a matched pair and be online

There is no directed “Speak” verb on f. Loud speech is always Nearby (t). Tab while whispering returns to Nearby.

Whisper range cancel

Directed whisper uses the same interact radius as Trade. When the peer walks out of range (or leaves AOI), each client with Whisper mode open drops back to Nearby and logs Whisper … ended — out of range. Whisper-stone threads are unaffected.

Unified CHAT column (gfx)

Always visible beside Quests:

  • Inline Nearby / Whisper / Stone input (no composer popup)
  • Colored lines: you = mint; peers = stable pastel from entity id
  • Inbound trade requests: Y accept · N decline
  • Soft synthesized tones: trade offer, whisper, nearby speech, trade open/decline
  • Nearby / Direct speech shows a short comic … bubble above the speaker (same color as the chat line)

Player trade

  1. Requester: f → Trade → CHAT shows “request sent”
  2. Peer: CHAT “X wants to trade — [Y]/[N]”
  3. Accept opens the trade window (equal columns); mutual TradeRequest also opens it
  4. Present (p): stack of 1 presents immediately; stack of 2+ uses a quantity prompt ([ / ] / digits / a = all)
  5. Ready (r) when both agree; Esc cancels

Declining escalates a per-pair cooldown (15 → 30 → 60 → 120 → 240 → 300 s). Accept resets the streak. Tunable in server-settings.yaml → social.* / content-admin Social / trade. Walking out of interact range cancels an open trade (server-side, same as other pair sessions).

Whisper stones

  1. Harvest blank stones (whisper shrine / nodes)
  2. Both present blanks in a trade and ready → matched pair lands in each whisper pouch (zero carry mass)
  3. g → select contact → Enter opens stone chat
  4. Destroying your stone cuts the link

Protocol

Intent / message Role
Intent::Say { channel, text, to_entity, … } Nearby / Whisper / WhisperStone
ServerMessage::Chat Per-recipient delivery (text already garbled for Nearby)
TradeRequest / TradeRespond / TradePresent / TradeUnpresent / TradeSetReady / TradeCancel P2P escrow
StowWhisperStone / DestroyWhisperStone Pouch management

Acoustics: crates/sim/src/chat_acoustics.rs, region_chat.rs. Trade + stones: region_trade.rs, whisper_stones.rs. Client UI: crates/client-lib/src/social.rs, gfx hud/chat.rs.

Gfx keys

Key Action
t Focus Nearby chat in CHAT
g Whisper-stone contact picker in CHAT
f Use nearest — players → Whisper / Trade only
Y / N Accept / decline inbound trade
Tab While whispering or on stone: return to Nearby
Esc Unfocus chat / cancel trade
' Hide / show the bottom system LOG (more sidebar room; remembered in client config)

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