Spring RTS Engine

Ok well some things like translators and spellcheckers could be done through the GroupAI interface given that it's modified to allow recieving messages aswell as sending them.

But, there are one or two other things.

Italics, bold, colours. Maybe not italics or bold are as important but I'd certainly like to be able to say somethign like "/red bugger off" rather than "bugger off". It would also do well to help distinguish between other people, unit references in engine messages or general warnings or errors appearin differently.

yeuch, colours and bolding just encourage misuse. Besides, I'd rather see my text coloured and altered according to what is being said, or importance, etc.

Chatting only has to be very, very simple. Look at the most popular message services, such as IRC. Only basic stuff is kept, and on the most popular channel (#gnug) colours, bold and so on is banned. It stops idiots abusing them.

Maybe not italics or bold are as important but I'd certainly like to be able to say somethign like "/red bugger off" rather than "bugger off".

I am not intending to personally insult you, but that is exactly why I would not want to see this implemented. If you want to say something with added impetus, which should never really happen, use caps.

I'd rather see critical information in red, or bold, etc, and less critical information in a less lucid colour, and so on.
Giving players the ability to format their text adds nothing to chatting ability other than the ability to abuse it.

So I disagree with such changes. K.I.S.S

then shalll we limit players to neutral colours and only having one colour for everything of their choice?

only show the player name in respective color, for instance:
player1: krogoth!
player2: bring em on...

i agree with delta, it should be left at that, and that only. adding different fonts, styles, colours will just cause confusion and crappiness.

I agree with that then, although engine messages should appear in bold and serious errors in both red and bold.

Or maybe engine message colours should be based on priority such as green at one end for something built to red for something under attack

I recall Old TA posts a little team-colored brick in front of the player name so everyone can see that it's the yellow player talking.

Italic, bold and colors in text is completely useless. No other non-MMORPG game in the world got those functions.

Maybe I should ahve chosen different optiosn reflecting where colours would be used and if bold and italic should ahve been added instead of a straight yes or no. Otherwise engine messages in green or red player names coloured in team colour imo as delta said.

Storm wrote:I recall Old TA posts a little team-colored brick in front of the player name so everyone can see that it's the yellow player talking.

Italic, bold and colors in text is completely useless. No other non-MMORPG game in the world got those functions.

Lol, I wouldn't like to see this kind of things in any rt-chatting program.
In forums and such places they are cool because internet sites are hypertext -documents, it's important we can stylize our text. To make it for another people more readable. In chatting program, you just read the text not caring about styles or anything. It's another person's secret message! Not one 100 pages long hypertext document.

Edit: not even there, we need those things with really low percentage. Seek how many person uses colors or other tags except Quote in their text...

well i think there needs to be someway to see whos chattin cause if its someone I dont care about I dont even read it like in a 4v4 U dont wanna be readin everyones stuff

Different modes, per player colour, and alliance state colour.

Delta wrote:only show the player name in respective color, for instance:
player1: krogoth!
player2: bring em on...

Yes i agree with that. I'm not very good at remembering names, and I end up seeing comments not knowing if they are on my team or not

Alantai Firestar wrote:Maybe I should ahve chosen different optiosn reflecting where colours would be used and if bold and italic should ahve been added instead of a straight yes or no. Otherwise engine messages in green or red player names coloured in team colour imo as delta said.

Yeah, totally. I vote that your name appears in your color, but that the text is either white or black, and defined in the .smd file.

press ..info at the beginning of the game then look @ your lower right screen. It shows the players in their colours and the network latency. .clock show you the time elapsed :)

Maybe we dont want to be lookin at who set it then matchin it up in the corner everytime we wanna know which player said what when we can know instantly.

No need to look at who wrote the color and the corner...
each message already has the name of the sender, like

MOnG: hello, still here?

The player color in the message is cool.
Nothing against bold italics and such in chat.. but i wont be using them, i dont have enough time to write the message in game.. i surely wont have time to colour it!... spellcheck... lol.

Also, and most importantly in chat.. FLOOD
Sometimes a unit gets stuck (or when you have a huge queue form a fact.) and floods the intire chat window.. any message written then just disappears inmediatly.
The repeated messages could have a longer ttl (as message keeps showing) and a counter instead.
A. K. cant reach dest. location (16)
Sometimes synch errors flood the chat.
A led-like light could replace such messages...
the light flases when someone has synch problems.. (you loose the "who" is lagguing).
There is some other flood generating messages...
and please... permanent allied chat!

Again, you dont have to flame the intire thread if you dont like the suggestions.

Delta wrote:only show the player name in respective color, for instance:
player1: krogoth!
player2: bring em on...

More specifically:

Storm wrote:... so everyone can see that it's the yellow player talking.
...

I follow that thought! (player's name highlighted with it's playing colour)

What about the white player on a snow map, or the green player on a grass map... etc?

Theres an urgency value in the message sender code, maybe we could just make this adjustable ingame?

Warlord Zsinj wrote:What about the white player on a snow map, or the green player on a grass map... etc?

The chatwindow has a blue background, so this shuldn't be a problem.