Add character overlays defined per-emote via char.ini [Overlays]

[in1tiate]

overlay images are defined much like emotes are. they do not support (a)/(b) style animations and are meant as static or looping overlay animations to allow for easier creation of characters that utilize such systems

here is an example char.ini using overlays

[Options]
name=Phoenix
blips=male
side=def

[Emotions]
1 = Normal#pre-normal#normal#0#1

[Overlays]
1 = pre-normal-overlay#normal-overlay

[in1tiate]

mind you this feature is heavily experimental, no server software supports this yet

[in1tiate]

There's still a nasty bug here causing the overlay widget to not be properly centered during screen shakes, not sure what causes it.

[in1tiate]

Alright, as far as I can tell this is now ready for review. It works, even with pairing. Tested this with AttorneyOnline/akashi#40.

[in1tiate]

Closing, as I no longer intend to support this

[Iamgoofball]

thats a shame, this woulda been useful imo, what led to the decision to scrap this feature?

[in1tiate]

Well, mostly it was because another server was using this and I couldn't be assed to support them on a branch I spent like 3 hours on. Given that they self-destructed in the last 30 minutes, I'm willing to give this another go

[in1tiate]

That being said, I would need someone to test this for me more extensively as I've only done the bare minimum (does this work on my test server? yes? ok done)

[Iamgoofball]

I'll chat w/ the aov content people, I think there's some use cases in this for reducing content size via sharing overlay effects since a lot of characters do have some pretty similar effects sometimes for some emotes.

[Crystalwarrior]

Is there a server that implements the networking needed for this feature? If not, can you provide a specification what the server needs to do to pass it over?

[in1tiate]

There is an old version of Akashi that implements this feature, but it's mostly clientside. There are three new IC parameters, PRE_OVERLAY, OVERLAY, and OTHER_OVERLAY. The first two are provided by the speaking client, and the third is the OVERLAY of the character that is paired with the speaking client.

[oldmud0]

What does this look like in practice? Seems that this enables an additional effect for the preanimation, plus an additional effect for the main animation. What benefit does this have over normal effects, other than being able to specify a default effect for characters plus a special effect for preanims and not polluting the global namespace of overlay effects that we currently have.
My concern would actually be that it wouldn't be flexible enough, e.g. you have an overlay that has slightly different timings than the main emote.

[oldmud0]

?

[stonedDiscord]

is this gonna make it into 2.10 ?

[Crystalwarrior]

is this gonna make it into 2.10 ?

I don't think so, the PR is stale so we'd need to test it more for 2.11 or a different implementation

[in1tiate]

This branch is no longer being actively developed by me, as I no longer believe it is in AO2's best interest to add this feature. Anyone who wishes to take over development of this feature is welcome to do so.