vgsChat -- a Tribes-like quick chat mod

[Brybry 109]

VGSChat Version 0.9.1

> Download <

Installation

Extract vgsChat.zip to %username%\Zomboid\mods (or ~/Zomboid/mods for linux users)

Set the vgsChat Menu bind in the options to whatever you want, it defaults to 'X'.

Add/remove/modify lines as you like in %username%\Zomboid\mods\vgsChat\media\vgsChatLines.txt

That's it!

 

About

I remember reading a few threads where people wanted quick hot key chat messages and I remember how useful such a system was in Tribes.

So I wrote up a quick proof of concept that hopefully I'll put in the time to polish up for an actual release.

Here the player is inputting 'XXT' to say 'Thanks.'

  

 

You can see what I have here.

 

You can configure the chat lines (without breaking lua checksumming!) by editing Zomboid/mods/vgsChat/media/vgsChatLines.txt

The format is the key for the bind followed by a space followed by the message. Menu entries are prefixed with a + to start and - to end the entry. See the example.

G This is an example message. G is the bind.+X This is an example menu entry.G Another example message.+X You can nest menu entries.G The last example message.-X-X

 

At the moment it's hardcoded to 'X' for the base menu but I plan to make that configurable in the main option menu.

Also, it disables all input while the menu is open Disables non-movement game binds that collide with the current menu options (you can use escape to exit out of the menu at any time)

Eventually I think I plan to only disable conflicting keybinds if I can work that out.

Another thing I want to do is maybe make the chat lines loaded from a .txt file so that they can be changed by the player without breaking lua checksumming.

The menu screen position is also hardcoded, I need to make it relative to the player screen position or relative to window size.

 

One day I would like to see if I can also implement a Mumble plugin for location aware voip but until then this might be a nice stepping stone.

[cloudstrise 7]

Nice. Looks very promising.

[Rathlord 3148]

Awesome work! A location based VOIP system would be incredible, too. Good luck!

[Brybry 109]

Awesome work! A location based VOIP system would be incredible, too. Good luck!

It shouldn't be impossible. Worst case scenario I could dump player coordinates to a file and have the mumble plugin poll that.

The hardest thing I think would be translating isometric coordinates to mumble coordinates in a way that sounds natural.

[RobertJohnson 4408]

 

Awesome work! A location based VOIP system would be incredible, too. Good luck!

It shouldn't be impossible. Worst case scenario I could dump player coordinates to a file and have the mumble plugin poll that.

The hardest thing I think would be translating isometric coordinates to mumble coordinates in a way that sounds natural.

 

 

Not so hard.. Well, I need to see how Mumble coordinate works, but with isometric view you can have easily coords for 3D sounds

[Brybry 109]

I'm open to suggestions if anyone has ideas for good default messages (even though it's user configurable.)

[Rathlord 3148]

Watch out, help, come here, fuck off, thanks, hello, goodbye, run, be quiet.

[EnigmaGrey 6221]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Batsphinx 2601]

"FIRE!"

[Brybry 109]

Added a download link, feel free to give it a try. I think it's pretty much good to go.

 

If you add it to a server and a user doesn't have the mod then the game should direct the user to this thread so they can get the mod.

[Brybry 109]

Bumped to 0.9.1. Just a tiny fix to add an english translation file so it doesn't error/look ugly in options.

 

In more interesting news I have a work-in-progress 'working' (aka buggy) mumble positional/location based audio mod that uses a JNI shared library (I really need to move to JNA) and companion LUA mod to update the Mumble Link plugin but given the tricks that I use to make it work it might not be publicly releasable.

 

Once I polish it up enough I'll try shooting it to RJ get his thoughts on it.

 

Another thing to do after that would be a murmur (mumble server) plugin and see if it works with CrossTalk/teamspeak or maybe an actual teamspeak plugin. I dunno. I've obviously been watching too many Arma 3/other game roleplaying streams.

[Rathlord 3148]

Oooooh neat. Can't wait to see that!