An emote is a short piece of body language - a cheer, sitting down on the grass, lying down for a rest - played as an animation on the entity the player controls, for everyone nearby to see. Like in Ragnarok Online it costs nothing, has no effect on the world and is only there so players can talk without typing.

Unlike Ragnarok Online’s emotes, which are icons popping up over the head, Bestia’s are animations of the body. The master’s model already carries a large set of clips that were not used yet, so the first set of emotes needs no new art.

Triggering an emote link

There are two ways, and both end in the same place on the server.

• A chat command. Typing /cheer (or any other emote’s command) in the chat box plays it. /help lists every emote with the other commands.
• A shortcut. An emote can be dragged from the emote window onto the emote bar (see below) or onto any slot of the ordinary shortcut bar, and fired by its key.

The server owns the commands. Each emote is one value of the animation kinds the server already sends, and its command is that value’s name in lower case, so a new emote is typed and listed in /help the moment it exists. The client recognises the same words for one reason only: when the body the player controls has no clip for an emote, it says so in the chat itself instead of asking the server for something nobody would see.

Who may emote link

Emoting needs Basic Skill rank 2, the same rank as chat: body language is talking too, and Ragnarok Online gates its emotions at exactly that Basic Skill level. Ranks 1 to 5 of Basic Skill are described on the master page.

Who sees it link

Every client that sees the entity, the same audience as its movement, and a player who walks up mid-emote sees it too. An emote is not written to the chat log.

The first set link

All of these are clips the master’s model (the Mage rig, which every body type shares) already has.

A once emote plays its clip a single time; another emote can follow when it has played out. An emote that lasts plays its way in, then loops until the entity walks, casts, is hit or dies, and then plays its way out.

An emote cannot be started while walking, casting or crafting; the player is told to stand still.

What is missing link

The most wanted emotes - wave, bow, laugh, clap, dance, cry - have no clip on the rig yet. New clips can be added to the Mage rig as an extra animation library. Every body type is a set of parts on that rig, so one clip serves every master.

Bestias link

Bestias are still a placeholder model with Idle, Sleep, appear and death clips. Only /lie (played as Sleep) works for them. When the player controls a bestia, an emote its body has no clip for is refused on the client with a line in the chat, and its shortcut is greyed out, the same way a skill the bestia does not know is. Each bestia model brings its own list as real models arrive.

The emote bar link

Why not the shared shortcut layer link

The shortcut bar has three layers of its own for the master and for every bestia, and one shared layer below them that shows wherever an entity’s own slot is empty. The shared layer already belongs to the master rather than to any one entity, so it looks like the natural home for emotes, but it does not work well:

• A shared slot only shows through on layers 1 to 3 while that slot is empty on the controlled entity’s layer. To keep an emote reachable on every layer, every bestia has to leave that slot free, and the bar only has twelve.
• On the shared layer itself (★) emotes are always there, but switching to it in the middle of a fight to cheer is not something anyone will do.

A bar of its own link

Emotes get a separate emote bar of ten slots, bound to Alt+1 to Alt+0, the keys Ragnarok Online uses for its own emotion and chat macros. Those keys are free: the layers use Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+4 and the windows Alt and a letter.

• It belongs to the master and is the same whichever entity is controlled. It has no layers and nothing shows through it.
• It is filled in the emote window (Alt+E, or the smiley in the profile’s menu), which lists every emote: clicking one plays it, dragging one onto a slot binds it, and dragging a slot off the bar clears it. The ten slots sit at the top of the window, like Ragnarok Online’s Alt+M macro window. There is no permanent strip on the screen; the keys work with the window closed.
• It is saved with the rest of the shortcuts in user://shortcuts_config.json, under the master, as a third list next to the entity layers and the shared one.

Because an emote is also an ordinary shortcut type, a player who wants /sit on a key of the main bar can still put it there.

Sitting as a mechanic link

The design gives Basic Skill rank 4 sitting recovery, which does not exist yet. /sit is cosmetic for now, but it is the same state: once sitting recovery is built, it reads whether the entity is sitting and adds its bonus when the master holds rank 4. Nothing about the emote has to change for it.

Implementation link

Wire link

• Emotes are values of AnimationKind, the enum of the existing Animation component, next to the AI’s SLEEP. The server shows an emote exactly the way it shows a sleeping creature: the component is synced to everyone who sees the entity, and IDLE ends it.
• The only new message is EmoteCMSG { AnimationKind kind }, from the client, for the entity the player controls. The server accepts only the emote kinds; nobody can ask for SLEEP or IDLE.
• Repeating an emote needs no sequence number: a once emote holds for about its clip’s length and then goes back to IDLE, and a new one is refused until it has, so every cheer is a real change of the component.

Server link

• Animation carries the emote and, for a once emote, how many seconds it still holds. Masters have the component now too; before, only creatures did.
• EmoteService is where both ways of asking end - the EmoteCMSG handler and the /cheer chat command. It checks Basic Skill rank 2, that the entity is alive, and that it is not walking, casting or crafting.
• EmoteChatCommand is one chat command for every emote kind, generated from the enum, so /help lists them all.
• EmoteSystem ends a once emote when its hold runs out, and any emote when the entity walks, casts, crafts or dies. Walking and a hit also end it inline where they happen, so the player sees it on the same tick. The AI leaves an emote alone instead of writing its own pose over it.

Client link

• Each emote is a resource in Game/Emote/DB/, edited in the inspector: its kind (a dropdown), name, icon (or a glyph until there is art), whether it lasts, and per body the clips to play - one clip for a once emote, and the way in, the loop and the way out for one that lasts. The loop clip is made to loop when it is played, whatever the model’s import settings say.
• Entity treats an emote like any other posture from the server: below death, above its own walk/idle heuristic. When the local player starts walking, the emote is dropped at once rather than waiting for the server to end it, and a body that comes into view mid-emote takes it up.
• ShortcutData has an EMOTE type that names the emote by its kind, and ShortcutLayout a third list of slots for the emote bar.