I could take a stab at fixing this if you post the relevant scripts. I'm no programmer, but I've made scripts in NWN before. Something like this will work in onPlayerChat just for my account name. The generalized solution for the toggle would be similar:

void main()
{
    object oPC = GetPCChatSpeaker();
    string sChat = GetPCChatMessage();

    // Hack for Aspirinsmurf's emotes
    if (GetPCPlayerName(oPC) == "Aspirinsmurf"
	&& GetStringLeft(sChat, 1) == "*")
    {
        return;
    }

    // Rest of the logic goes here
}

Bug reported. And I guess I'll be playing somewhere else in the meantime. I don't want to make a habit out of doing ;;emotes like this;; or anything like that. That's probably the best available option for me physically, but it's just an eyesore for everyone.

@toportime said in Please allow *star emotes* again:

@aspirinsmurf2 Also if your talking about using emotes as a freeform text box rather than having your PC try to physically do the emotes or skill checks you can use:
.toggle emotes - To turn on and off the use of emotes

No, you can't. I tried.

TL;DR: Due to an injury, I can’t use all my fingers for fine motor tasks, so I can pretty much only * emote like this * in the old-school style while typing quickly and not hurting myself. Not being able to do this prevents me from playing right now.

Long post:
I just returned after a very long absence, and I was very excited to see that player numbers were looking healthy and that the server had been improved in a lot of great ways. Then I noticed that having an asterisk (*) at the start of a chat message prevents the entire message from showing (!). It just goes blank, no feedback or error message. I tried disabling the emote toggles, but it still just goes blank.

I am gutted. I have built up muscle memory to do * emotes like this * quickly from nearly twenty years on and off playing NWN online, a lot of that time spent on CoA. This was the common convention back when I started playing, and I've found a technique to do it without pain. (I can only use my right index finger without pain if I manage not to bend the joint at all, so finding any comfortable speed typing habits without strain or pain is a bit of a struggle.)

Out of the alternatives, I like the look of [emotes], but square brackets are just too painful for me to access on my keyboard. I already use hyphens for -emphasis- in speech, and round brackets are also painful for me to access. I looked into changing keyboard layout, but they all present some other ergonomical issue for me instead. I guess more dextrous people might only miss the asterisk for correcting their typos or something, but this severely impacts my ability to enjoy playing at all. Or maybe I'm not alone?

Hopefully this can be fixed! Ideally, there would be a way I could access the animation and dice rolling systems with an alternative syntax too, since I'd very much like to be able to use those as well. They could just be dot commands or a different prefix ":like this" (old MUD standard), or even just ** animate **. But I’d be happy if I can just type emotes in the way I’m used to and that isn't painful, even if I have to disable those systems.

Thanks in advance!

Aspirinsmurf