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Whisper

A Whisper is a data structure used by Alter Ego. It represents a group of two or more Players speaking quietly to each other such that no one else in the Room can hear them.

A normal Whisper can only be created when a Player or moderator uses the whisper command. There is no upper limit to the number of Players that can be included in a Whisper, so long as they are all in the same Room. However, it is not possible for one Player to create a Whisper with Players in the Room who have the hidden, concealed, no hearing, or unconscious behavior attributes. If a Player in a Whisper becomes inflicted with a Status Effect with one of these behavior attributes or they leave the Room, they will be removed from the Whisper. If, when a Player is removed from the Whisper, the group of Players remaining is the same as a different Whisper that already exists, it will be deleted upon the Player’s removal. Otherwise, a Whisper will only be deleted once all Players have been removed from it.

A Whisper can also be created when a Player hides in a Fixture. This allows a Whisper to be created with only one Player. However, if more Players hide in the same Fixture, the Whisper will be deleted and a new one will be created with all Players. A Whisper created in this way behaves similarly to a Room, but with most of the same properties as a normal Whisper. When a Player comes out of hiding or is inflicted with a Status Effect with the no channel or no hearing behavior attributes, they will be removed from the Whisper. When all Players are removed from the Whisper, it will be deleted.

Whispers are fully transient. They are only intended to exist temporarily, so they are not saved to the spreadsheet. Consequently, if Alter Ego is rebooted, any data related to ongoing Whispers will be lost. If their channels still exist and Players still have access to them, they will still be able to speak in them, but they will not be registered as Whispers, and their speech in said channels will not be considered dialog. Those channels will have to be manually deleted.

Attributes

Whispers have few attributes.

ID

  • Class attribute: String this.id

This is a unique identifier for the Prefab. It is generated automatically upon creation of the Whisper, and updated any time a Player is removed from the Whisper.

It has the following format:

locationId(-hidingSpotName)?-playerList

  • locationId is the ID of the Room the Whisper is occurring in.
  • hidingSpotName is optional. If the Whisper is associated with a Hiding Spot, this is its name.
  • playerList is a list of display names of Players in the Whisper, sorted in alphabetical order, with each one separated by a dash (-).

Whisper IDs are generated to follow the same rules as Room IDs.

Players

This is a collection of Players in the Whisper. The key for each entry is the Player’s name.

Location ID

  • Class attribute: String this.locationId

This is the ID of the Room that the Whisper is occurring in.

Location

  • Class attribute: Room this.location

This is the actual Room that the Whisper is occurring in. All of the Players in the Whisper must be in this Room.

Hiding Spot Name

  • Class attribute: String this.hidingSpotName

The name of the Hiding Spot the whisper belongs to. If this Whisper is not associated with a Hiding Spot, this is undefined.

Channel Name

  • Class attribute: String this.channelName

This is the name that the channel will be set to. It is usually identical to the Whisper’s ID, but it is limited to 100 characters in length, as this is the maximum number of characters allowed in a Discord channel name. Whenever the Whisper’s ID is updated, so too is its channel name.

Channel

When the Whisper is initialized, a channel is created for it in the Whisper category. In this channel, Players can speak to each other freely without others in the Room hearing them.

If a Player is part of a Whisper but has the no channel behavior attribute, they will not be given permission to view the channel. This is helpful for Players with the concealed behavior attribute, for example, because having that permission would allow other Players in the Whisper to see their Discord account, thus revealing their identity. Similarly, Players in the Whisper with the no hearing behavior attribute are not given permission to view the channel. NPCs are also not given permission to view the channel, because they don’t have Discord accounts. When a Player is removed from the Whisper, their permission to view the channel is revoked.

When a Whisper is marked to be deleted, one of two things can happen. If the AUTO_DELETE_WHISPER_CHANNELS setting is true, then the channel will be deleted as well. If it is false, then the channel’s name will be set to archived-(Room ID). Discord only allows a single category to have up to 50 channels. Therefore, if Whisper channels are not automatically deleted, they must be moved to another category or manually deleted before this limit is reached. Otherwise, no new Whispers can be created.

Deleted

  • Class Attribute: Boolean this.deleted

Whether or not the Whisper has been deleted. This is needed so that messages are not sent to a Whisper channel that has since been deleted by the time Alter Ego sends the messages in its queue.