Aetherlove - Match-making for the FFXIV community

astraea__ & nihal_shadescale

AetherLove
A dating and matchmaking plugin for FFXIV. Swipe, match, and chat - without ever leaving the game.

Why this exists
The game never gave us is a decent way to find people with similar interests. Your options are: hang around a venue and hope, post something awkward in Party Finder and watch it scroll into the void, or send people cat-calls on the street. None of these are good, and it is hard to meet new people if you're not already in a group of friends.

AetherLove is the thing that should've existed years ago - an actual matching app, built right into the game. Make a profile, say what you're after, swipe through people who want the same, and start talking when it's mutual. Simple isn't it?

How Aetherlove works
1. You build your profile - display name, photos, the languages you speak, your region, when you're usually online, and the content you actually enjoy (from fishing, to roleplaying to savage raiding).
2. Choose what you're looking for - content buddies, someone to chat with, an RP partner, in-game romance, something longer-term, or ERP if that's your thing. The matching algorithm will crunch your preferences so you can...
3. Swipe and match - go through people looking for the same thing you are. You match when it's mutual; nobody finds out you swiped otherwise. When both people have matched the other users you match and you get to ...
4. Chat privately - one-on-one messaging with your matches, with real-time notifications and optional notification sounds. Chats are end-to-end encrypted so Aetherlove staff will not be able to ever read your messages.

But what about safety and SFW and NSFW?
- This is an opt-in, adult-friendly space. Players looking for SFW matches will never be presented with NSFW profiles and vice versa. It's a safe space, even although we do require you to be an adult to use the app, just to be sure. The ToS will be leading in the rules for joining Aetherlove.
- Your identity stays yours. Your real character name, your home world, your account and Lodestone ID - none of it is ever shown to other players. They see what's on your profile, and that's it.
- We can't read your messages. Chats are encrypted on your device before they leave, stored on the server as unreadable gibberish, and only decrypted on your match's device. Staff can't read them - not "won't," can't. The exact crypto is documented publicly on our github if you want to learn more.
- NSFW is 100% opt-in. The default experience has none of it. You switch it on, or it simply isn't there.
- Real moderation. Profiles and photos are screened by automated tools and actual humans before they go live, and reports go to a person.

And the plugin - the part that runs on your machine and handles your photos and messages - is open-source. Felt like the least we could do. ( see links tab ).

How to get it
1. Add the custom repo to Dalamud: https://puni.sh/api/repository/aetherlove
2. Install AetherLove from the plugin installer, type /love, and set yourself up.

Swipe for joy.

Proudly brought to you by
nihal_shadescale & astraea__


Patch notes version 1.3.0
This release is all about quality of life: lots of little improvements to make AetherLove smoother and nicer to use. We've listened to your feedback and added additional accessibility options for to help people who suffer from colorblindness, and we're adding proper UI support to people with 4k monitors.

Features
- You can now customize your chat bubble colors, with a new "Language & Theme" menu to manage them in one place.
- Tap your avatar to see new profile statistics, including how many people have loved your profile!
- The "My Profile" and "Settings" screens have been redesigned into cleaner, easier-to-navigate hubs.
- You can now search your matches by name or message content, and the matches list is smoother and faster even with lots of matches.
- You can verify a chat's end-to-end encryption from a new in-app screen, so you can confirm no one is intercepting your messages.
- Added XL and XXL phone sizes for high-resolution and 4K displays, plus a configurable size for the minimized phone.
- The chat screen now has a back button in its header and a tidier layout.
- The swipe deck now warns you when your next batch of cards is less than 5 minutes away.
- Minimize the phone instantly by double-clicking any of its edges.

Bugfixes
- We fine-tuned a lot of rate limits that could previously cause odd behavior in the app, such as failing to save profile edits and/or pictures.
- When the AetherLove server can't be reached, you now always see an Offline screen. This wasn't previously the case.
- Uploaded photos with transparency no longer cause weird transparency issues in the deck, they're now placed on a solid background.

ToS changes:
- We've added a strict zero-tolerance policy on NSFL content (real or graphic gore, death, and similarly shocking imagery): uploading it results in an immediate and permanent ban, with no warning and no appeal. See the Terms of Service for details ingame, or during onboarding.

Patch notes version 1.4.0:
FEATURES
- Reswipe feature: Accidentily swiped your future wife to the no pile? You can now undo your last swipe once every 24 hours!
- Decide later: send the card you're on to the back of your deck to revisit it so you can decide later.
- It is now possible to quote messages, add emoji reactions, and pin messages.
- Chats load faster, and searching is now instantaneous!
- Two new emoji collections: 'Memes', and 'Pepe and Friends'
- Emoji reactions will adjust to your favorite and most used reactions, just like discord!
- New content interests added for matching: Ultimate, Field Operations, Deep Dungeon, and Variant/Criterion.
- Retired the "Prefer not to say" region option - this caused problems with matching.
- New matches you haven't opened yet are highlighted with a subtle shine in the matches screen until you click them.
- Chats on the matches screen would previously "rearrange" when you would step into a conversation, reply, and go back. This should now be a lot more fluid.

Other
You can now lock the position of the big and small phone so you cannot accidentily move it or drag it elsewhere. Doubleclicking the edges to minimize still works!

FIXES
- Fixed an issue where deleting an account would not always work.
- Server-side reliability fixes - who would have thought 1.3 million messages would be slow to wade through?
- Fixed a bug where japanese characters would not properly linewrap with longer input. AetherLove で素敵なご縁を！
- Improvements have been made to the notification system - let's hope this fixes some reported
errors.
- When your new deck of profiles appears, the current profile you're watching can still be swiped and won't be "lost".

ToS Changes
We've made a number of ToS changes related to player race and gender. We require users to select their main gender and race. Users first profile picture should always reflect their race and gender as selected on their profile. The screens are updated to emphasis this new rule. It's reason for warnings and in case of repeat offenders, a ban.

Other:
We have disabled testing builds for the plugin. If you can't update your plugin, make sure you are not receiving "testing" builds for the plugin (right click the plugin in /xlplugins

1.4.1 Addendum:
- Emoji reactions, pins and quotes would not be rendered if you reopened a chat, this has been fixed.

1.4.2 Addendum:
- Fixed the notification issue after help from all you helpful crash bunnies and kittens.

Patch notes 1.5.0
New features
- Roleplay character profiles (multiple OCs): create several RP characters, each with its own bio and image, shown on your profile. (Yes, we listened)
- Chat categories: organize your matches into custom named, colored folders. Drag chats in or right-click to move them, and reorder categories, all with smooth animations.
- In-game selfie capture: snap a profile or gallery photo straight from the game with a live viewfinder. Nameplates and hotbars hide automatically for a clean shot.
- YoRHa Æ theme: a new phone appearance option.
- Favorite emojis: right-click an emoji to favorite it, and a Favorites row appears at the top of every picker.
- Emoji autocomplete: start typing an emoji shortcode in chat and get suggestions to complete it.
- In-chat search: search within a single conversation, not just the matches list.
- Maintenance notice: whenever we are doing planned maintenance to the servers, the offline screen now shows and relays the end time for maintenance so players know what to expect.
- Auto-growing chat input: the message box now wraps and grows to multiple lines as you type.
- Keep open in gpose and cutscenes: new settings to keep AetherLove visible during group pose and cutscenes.
- Draft persistence: unsent chat text is remembered across navigation and reconnects.
- Plugin appearance: automatically restore the phone screen to the previous setting after a plugin update or restart.

Bugfixes
- Cloud image files: picking OneDrive-hosted files on your PC now shows a clear message if the file is not accessible, instead of a wall of error text.
- Emoji hover on light themes: the emoji hover tooltip is now legible on light-accent themes such as Yellow.
- Font size bleed: AetherLove no longer changes other Dalamud plugins' font sizes, hopefully, we think.
- Phone size changes: switching phone size now shows a brief loader instead of a flash of wrong-sized text.
- Escape key: Escape no longer unexpectedly closes the plugin windows.
- Notification settings: moved the novelty notification opt-out into notification settings, a more logical place for this setting.
- Russian translations: Have been updated and corrected by Tears.