How to add emotes to a RedM server: a menu, custom emotes and props

Roleplay is mostly standing around talking, and a character that stands perfectly still while talking looks like a mannequin. Emotes fix that: leaning on a rail, sitting on the saloon steps, tipping a hat. The catch is that RedM has thousands of animations and players will use about twenty, so the whole job of an emote menu is to make the right twenty easy to find. This guide covers what a good menu needs and how to add your own emotes.

What players actually need

• Search. Nobody scrolls through 300 rows. They type "lean".
• Favourites and recent. Most players use the same handful. Put them one click away.
• Preview. Emote names are guesses. Seeing it before your character does it in front of everyone saves embarrassment.
• Context. Sitting only works if there is a chair. The best emotes use the world around the player.
• An easy cancel, including on horseback, because a player stuck in an animation will just relog.

A menu that does that

Poggy Emotes ($9.99) is an emote menu with over 330 emotes in eight categories: gestures, idle and leaning, conversation, sitting and laying, working, dance, injury, and eating, drinking and smoking. Players open it with /emotes or the End key.

• Search starts as soon as you type, across every category, matching both the name and the /e command.
• Favourites are a star on each row, saved per character. Recent keeps the last 12.
• Preview plays the emote on a stand-in character, props included. Only you see it.
• Filters for emotes with props, and a switch to keep the menu open while you try several.

Players who know the name skip the menu with /e <name>.

The Nearby tab

The first tab lists the things around the player that can be used: chairs, bar counters, railings and the like. Pick one and the character walks over and uses it, with no teleport. This is what makes a saloon feel inhabited: players sit at the bar instead of hovering beside it. Staff can block a Nearby spot for everyone at once if it misbehaves (admins, or the ACE poggy_emotes.nearby.block).

Adding your own emotes

Every server wants a few of its own: a salute for the army roleplay, a particular dance for the saloon girls. Add them in Config.CustomEmotes in config.lua, or on the Emotes tab in /poggy. Rules that save grief:

• Never edit shared/emotes.lua. Updates replace it. Your list in the config is never touched by an update.
• Same name replaces. A custom emote with the same name as a shipped one replaces it, which is how you fix one you do not like.
• Props need an animation. There are three kinds of emote: scenarios, the game's own built-in emotes, and animations. Only animations can hold a prop.

Finding the animation name is the hard part. RedM animations explains dictionaries, clips and scenarios, and how to find the one you want. For scenes with several props and keyframes, Poggy AnimTool ($29.99) is an in-game editor for building them.

Hiding what you do not want

Some emotes do not fit every server. Hide single ones with Config.HiddenEmotes, which removes them from the menu and from /e. Hide a whole category by taking it out of Config.Menu.CategoryOrder. There is no per-job or per-rank locking, so an emote is either there for everyone or hidden for everyone.

Cancelling, and when emotes are allowed

Players cancel with /ec, Backspace or the Stop button. By default moving or aiming cancels an emote, and emotes are off while mounted or swimming. Props are cleaned up when an emote is cancelled, when the player dies, mounts or swims, and when the script restarts, so nobody is left holding a ghost cigarette. There is also /ragdoll (Z by default) for falling down drunk. Keys are the same for everyone on the server, because RedM has no screen for players to rebind them.

Emotes and words together

An emote says what a character does; a /me says why. Poggy Scenes 2.0 ($29.99) adds overhead /me and /do, so "/me checks his watch nervously" and the animation arrive together. RedM /me and /do commands covers using them well.

Installing it

Poggy Emotes needs Poggy Core (Free) and oxmysql; its table is created on first start, and favourites move over from js_emotes on their own if you are switching. See how to install a RedM script for the start order.