Jump to content
Eternal Lands Official Forums
vinoveritas

Chat System, Background Color, Text Color

Recommended Posts

I know it might be a bit more work and since some colors are set by the server with an unicode character we might would need a filter of those which might mess up messages set by server. But i do have sometimes a hard time to easy read the numbers of for example the #il or ii command just because of the contrast of the color to the background.

so i thought since we made already changes to the fonts to true type fonts and a few other changes, why not make it possible for people to select the color of the chat window background to something they would like.

Or if one would do a filter system for the special characters, set the color code of those colored chat to a color of the persons choosing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well, the game server uses 8-bit characters, not unicode (code from 2003...). Colors to use in text messages are indicated by a single byte in the range 128..155

(0x80..0x9B, see client_serv.h for the corresponding constants: c_***). Colors.c defines rgb triplets corresponding to those codes. Strangely, there are 4 triplets

defined for every constant, but only the first is ever used, as far as I can tell.

 

All this means that a simple text filter allows you to change one predefined color for another (only). This is possible, if you manage to figure out which printable

character corresponds to which color code. The filters will have to be set up from outside the game client, using a text editor, and you have to make sure you do

save the file in an 8-bits encoding like ISO-8859-1, not utf-8/unicode (single bytes starting with 10xxxxxx can't represent a valid character in utf-8, so loading a file

with ascii or ISO encoding and then saving it as utf-8 is going to do funny things in the client...)

 

As the range of colors used by the server messages is rather large, changing the background color of the chat window could  mean that other messages become harder

to read (cf. map change messages: white, and leonard's messages in @6: middle gray.

 

What might be a possibility is to create a remapping of color codes (json file?):  from e.g. c_blue4 to one of the other predefined colors, perhaps even allowing access

to the three currently unused rgb triplets. And that remapping would be applied in LOG_TO_CONSOLE (only?)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree it would be nice to have a simple way to change our chat colors.  Meanwhile, I've done this for years:

 

 

My global_filters.txt looks like this:  (makes my #gm a nice purple)

 

ctest1 = [0x8x]â¬0011â22Æ33â44â¦55â 66â¡77Ë88â°99Å aaâ¹bbÅccddŽeeff

ctest2 = [0x9x]00â11â22â33â44â¢55â66â77Ë88â¢99Å¡aaâºbbÅccddžeeŸff

GM from = ¢GM from

 

The complicated part is depending on which text editor you use, you might need to open it and clean it up with a hex editor if you are fussy about unwanted characters showing up.

 

 

 

So I would absolutely love to have an easier method.

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

hmm nice suggestion i will have to do some checks there but you gave me some ideas, still i rather would like a way to do this over an options menu, for my own settings (or for other people) as different people have different things that they have hard time to deal with eye wise and it would be good service to people to be customizing their own ui without to much trouble so they can see their stuff as well as they want.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ok i played around with aislins suggestion and the problem there is now simply i cannot filter away 1 color (in my case its c_blue3 that is used in several system messages and i do have absolute troubles with reading it on the background.) but for now this works for me

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, revi said:

Well, the game server uses 8-bit characters, not unicode (code from 2003...). Colors to use in text messages are indicated by a single byte in the range 128..155

(0x80..0x9B, see client_serv.h for the corresponding constants: c_***). Colors.c defines rgb triplets corresponding to those codes. Strangely, there are 4 triplets

defined for every constant, but only the first is ever used, as far as I can tell.

 

All this means that a simple text filter allows you to change one predefined color for another (only). This is possible, if you manage to figure out which printable

character corresponds to which color code. The filters will have to be set up from outside the game client, using a text editor, and you have to make sure you do

save the file in an 8-bits encoding like ISO-8859-1, not utf-8/unicode (single bytes starting with 10xxxxxx can't represent a valid character in utf-8, so loading a file

with ascii or ISO encoding and then saving it as utf-8 is going to do funny things in the client...)

 

As the range of colors used by the server messages is rather large, changing the background color of the chat window could  mean that other messages become harder

to read (cf. map change messages: white, and leonard's messages in @6: middle gray.

 

What might be a possibility is to create a remapping of color codes (json file?):  from e.g. c_blue4 to one of the other predefined colors, perhaps even allowing access

to the three currently unused rgb triplets. And that remapping would be applied in LOG_TO_CONSOLE (only?)

Actually i am using colored messages with gm user menues for some time in guild, to set out important chat messages from all day chat. and i am using utf-8 special characters to color the message in and that works a charm i tried on your approach with iso-8859-1 and the corresponding characters there and its not working as well. Anyway it would not matter if we do save the remapping of the colors into a config file or not, (well i would do it that way) but the thing is There are a lot of people out there with bad eyesight, who have one or the other problem with it, No one color scheming solution will catch all cases, so it would be just good to give people a way to set up their own color map for the chat window. but if its done it must be done in a way that is user friendly. While i am tech sappy enough to be able to do such things myself, most players are not. (i could change color codes in the source code if i want to. I even can write the code for the change i want, and if the feature is wanted and the ones who actually write the client code do not want to write it i am happy to write it. But i am not one of the official developers in the game and such things need to be approved hence the suggestion)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Does the existing channel colours window not help with this - i.e. right-click a tab in the tab-bar or chat window and select the colour you want.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
4 hours ago, bluap said:

Does the existing channel colours window not help with this - i.e. right-click a tab in the tab-bar or chat window and select the colour you want.

 

I never knew this existed as I don't use tabs or windows.  But when I tried, I couldn't get channel 6 to work or #gm.  Plus it would be nice to be able to manually select which trigger sets off the color. Like [PM from xxxx: or #Message from Wizzy:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

the channel color settings are nice to set the start color of chat channels apart but its useless if you have trouble reading the c_blue3 text that system messages like #il #ii and i do have trouble with that color:) i have changed it for me now with text filter as blue1 and it is far far far far far far more easy for me to read it. for that we would need an exchange filter, and making a global filter that search for the color byte and replaces it in global filter does not work.

But looking as how the channel color setting works i bet it would be possible to enhance that system for the rest too. 

what would work for me is if i could say if this color code comes up use this other one instead On the start of messages, (i do not care if bot messages have colors i cannot read well)

Edited by vinoveritas

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Playing with aislinn suggestion about global filter, i realized that all those filters i used in the past are just for my own decency not for others. so i wanted to add to the suggestion if we could make an option of a text replacement system for outgoing chat,  (i am used to write for example tit axe, instead Titanium axe, but it would be also a nice feature for accronyms people use like pl for Portland nara for Naralik etc. people still might write the short terms but in the text that is send it would be the right readable words.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, vinoveritas said:

Playing with aislinn suggestion about global filter, i realized that all those filters i used in the past are just for my own decency not for others. so i wanted to add to the suggestion if we could make an option of a text replacement system for outgoing chat,  (i am used to write for example tit axe, instead Titanium axe, but it would be also a nice feature for accronyms people use like pl for Portland nara for Naralik etc. people still might write the short terms but in the text that is send it would be the right readable words.

 

 

I don't know about that because I think too many things would be miswritten.  PL can mean Poland, Portland...tit can mean tit sometimes...people talk about many things, not just EL terms.  I think this would make a mess.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Well i thought as something like a text filter one sets up for himself but i do understand what you mean

One thing i would not want is that they would start creating shortcuts for colored chat so

Edited by vinoveritas

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.

×