Scrap Quick Chat

Quick chat, A feature used to quickly speak to someone...... And also gives them an opportunity to spam and is hardly ever used except by 9 year olds whos parents won't let them talk normally and then it just gets annoying after a short while. SERIOUSLY! GET RID OF IT! When is the last time you ever saw someone use it seriously? Of course, No one ever does. And why would they? GET OFF YOUR LAZY ARSE AND TYPE! ITS NOT LIKE YOU HAVE A 4 SECOND TIME TO SAY SOMETHING! Also, Even if you do it will take you a while to do so since you may have to go through several menus in it before you say something. Unless you know it very well, And NO one is going to spend time trying to memorize quick chat when they can just type like a normal person. Roblox has this, Stop it. MIcrovolts has this, Stop it.

GET RID OF THIS! It does not do anything for the game and all it does is take up keyboard space for a key that could be used for something better and something that someone would actually use!

[bobdaduck]

Dance!

[Quartz]

Shazbot!

[Little_Apple]

Dammit!

*** INCOMING SOUTH ***

[raptor]

Acknowledged.

[FoOtloOse]

Help!

How'd THAT feel?

Rawr

[Quartz]

Yoohoo!

[FoOtloOse]

Come get some!

Duh.

[Little_Apple]

Missed me!

You guys just made my point.

[bobdaduck]

Its not super useful and re configuring them is a bit confusing and tedious, but on the whole taking it out of the game is probably more difficulty than its worth. And maybe someone will use them well one day.

And its subtle and not really big enough to affect gameplay, like in Neon Tango.

[Quartz]

Its not super useful and re configuring them is a bit confusing and tedious, but on the whole taking it out of the game is probably more difficulty than its worth. And maybe someone will use them well one day.

And its subtle and not really big enough to affect gameplay, like in Neon Tango.

Well said.

And furthermore, having an in-game way to reconfigure the quick chats would be awesome.

[raptor]

One way to improve quick chat would be to transform it into 'quick commands'. Possibly use it to control bots in some manner (like in the original Unreal Tournament). Command them to go on offense, defense, protect you, etc. in addition to executing quick team/global chats.

[kaen]

Quick chat is awesome.

things I've bound my quickchat to:

• /random (useful on kaen test)
• /yes and /no

I use these nearly every time I play bitfighter. You might not appreciate its value, but that doesn't make it worthless.

Also, quick chat is very useful in competitive team games. I know these don't happen very much in bitfighter (since there aren't really clans, etc) but if we remove it and that fact ever changes we'll have the inverse of this thread later down the road.

[Little_Apple]

HOW TO DISABLE QUICKCHAT

[Santiago ZAP]

Defend our base.

you can aslo chage you quick chat to customize your messages by editing the ini.............

[watusimoto]

Personally, I hate quick chat. I've thrown this out before, and I'll try again...

If anyone wants to come up with a simpler, more useful quick chat menu, I'd love to replace what we've got, which has survived almost unmodified from the Zap days.

[kaen]

The Quick Chat bindings are also holdovers from a game called Starsiege Tribes (the bindings are identical as far as I can recall), which was one of Garage Games' early projects, and one of the most popular online shooters of the 1990s (as well as the game that popularized the term "shazbot"). It's a nod to the history of zap, and therefore bitfighter. Not to suggest that's a reason to preserve it, but that's my conjecture on how it came to be.

As far as coming up with a better quick chat, I think that's a short road. The current is about as flexible as any quick chat I've seen. Configuration is probably a good place to start looking, although I've yet to find anyone who needed to configure quick chat but couldn't. The wonkiness of the current configuration scheme is mostly a product of the INI structure not supporting nested structures (it's possible to do this implicitly, but nesting is against the specification of the format).

How about this: instead of having two layers of inception, why not have only one?

[watusimoto]

You can configure it that way now, I believe.

What I would find most useful would be a list of here are the 10 must useful quick chat messages, and here is a key-binding set that is intuitive. Bonus points for doing the INI coding yourself.

I believe none of this will require any programming, and that any reasonable requirement can be done with the current system simply my modifying the INI file.

@kaen - Thanks for the historical note. Makes perfect sense, but I never new the pre-Zap origins!

[Little_Apple]

heres an alternate configuration for quickchat.

  Code:

[QuickChatMessages]

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1]
Key=1
Button=Button 6
Caption=Global
MessageType=Global

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message1]
Key=1
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Global
Caption=No Problem
Message=No Problemo.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message2]
Key=2
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Global
Caption=Thanks
Message=Thanks.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message3]
Key=3
Button=
MessageType=Global
Caption=You idiot!
Message=You idiot!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message4]
Key=4
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Global
Caption=Duh
Message=Duh.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message5]
Key=5
Button=
MessageType=Global
Caption=Crap
Message=Ah Crap!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message6]
Key=6
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Global
Caption=Damnit
Message=Dammit!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message7]
Key=7
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Global
Caption=Shazbot
Message=Shazbot!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup1_Message8]
Key=8
Button=Button 6
MessageType=Global
Caption=Doh
Message=Doh!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2]
Key=2
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Team
Caption=Defense

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message1]
Key=1
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Defend Our Base
Message=Defend our base.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message2]
Key=2
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Team
Caption=Defending Base
Message=Defending our base.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message3]
Key=3
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Team
Caption=Is Base Clear?
Message=Is our base clear?

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message4]
Key=4
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Team
Caption=Base Clear
Message=Base is secured.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message5]
Key=5
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Team
Caption=Base Taken
Message=Base is taken.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message6]
Key=6
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Team
Caption=Need More Defense
Message=We need more defense.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message7]
Key=7
Button=Button 6
MessageType=Team
Caption=Enemy Attacking Base
Message=The enemy is attacking our base.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup2_Message8]
Key=8
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Attacked
Message=We are being attacked.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3]
Key=3
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Team
Caption=Flag

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3_Message1]
Key=1
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Team
Caption=Get enemy flag
Message=Get the enemy flag.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3_Message2]
Key=2
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Team
Caption=Return our flag
Message=Return our flag to base.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3_Message3]
Key=3
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Team
Caption=Flag secure
Message=Our flag is secure.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3_Message4]
Key=4
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Team
Caption=Have enemy flag
Message=I have the enemy flag.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3_Message5]
Key=5
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Team
Caption=Enemy has flag
Message=The enemy has our flag!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup3_Message6]
Key=6
Button=Button 6
MessageType=Team
Caption=Flag gone
Message=Our flag is not in the base!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup4]
Key=4
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Incoming Enemies - Direction

[QuickChatMessagesGroup4_Message1]
Key=1
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Incoming South
Message=*** INCOMING SOUTH ***

[QuickChatMessagesGroup4_Message2]
Key=2
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Incoming East
Message=*** INCOMING EAST  ***

[QuickChatMessagesGroup4_Message3]
Key=3
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Incoming West
Message=*** INCOMING WEST  ***

[QuickChatMessagesGroup4_Message4]
Key=4
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Incoming North
Message=*** INCOMING NORTH ***

[QuickChatMessagesGroup4_Message5]
Key=5
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Incoming Enemies
Message=Incoming enemies!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5]
Key=5
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Team
Caption=Quick

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message1]
Key=1
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Capture the objective
Message=Capture the objective.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message2]
Key=2
Button=
MessageType=Team
Caption=Go on the offensive
Message=Go on the offensive.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message3]
Key=3
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Team
Caption=Attack!
Message=Attack!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message4]
Key=4
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Team
Caption=Wait for signal
Message=Wait for my signal to attack.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message5]
Key=5
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Team
Caption=Help!
Message=Help!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message6]
Key=6
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Team
Caption=Regroup
Message=Regroup.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message7]
Key=7
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Team
Caption=Going offense
Message=Going offense.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup5_Message8]
Key=8
Button=Button 6
MessageType=Team
Caption=Move out
Message=Move out.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6]
Key=6
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Team
Caption=Reponses

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6_Message1]
Key=1
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Team
Caption=Acknowledge
Message=Acknowledged.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6_Message2]
Key=2
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Team
Caption=No
Message=No.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6_Message3]
Key=3
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Team
Caption=Yes
Message=Yes.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6_Message4]
Key=4
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Team
Caption=Sorry
Message=Sorry.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6_Message5]
Key=5
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Team
Caption=Thanks
Message=Thanks.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup6_Message6]
Key=6
Button=Button 6
MessageType=Team
Caption=Don't know
Message=I don't know.

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7]
Key=7
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Global
Caption=Taunts

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message1]
Key=1
Button=
MessageType=Global
Caption=Rawr
Message=RAWR!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message2]
Key=2
Button=Button 1
MessageType=Global
Caption=Come get some!
Message=Come get some!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message3]
Key=3
Button=Button 2
MessageType=Global
Caption=Dance!
Message=Dance!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message4]
Key=4
Button=Button 3
MessageType=Global
Caption=Missed me!
Message=Missed me!

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message5]
Key=5
Button=Button 4
MessageType=Global
Caption=I've had worse...
Message=I've had worse...

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message6]
Key=6
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Global
Caption=How'd THAT feel?
Message=How'd THAT feel?

[QuickChatMessagesGroup7_Message7]
Key=7
Button=Button 6
MessageType=Global
Caption=Yoohoo!
Message=Yoohoo!

1. Does the quick chat default binding still use letters for quick chat messages? I've remapped mine so I can't remember nor install new to check. If so, that could be part of the problem: (1) Letters for quick chat are not as intuitive as numbers are, since most other multiplayer games use numbers for selection options, and (2) letters conflict binding with movement keys, which means sending quick chat messages on the go is practically impossible.

2. I agree with Blackbird about folders. I have my quick chat options segmented into neat little child folders, but there are certain commands that I would want at the ready (ex. "Under attack!").

3. I also agree with kaen that configuration could be a bit easier. I can do it if I'm determined enough, but admittedly the process is a little confusing, and also probably not inherently clear to newbies.

4. Icons could also help. Have a little icon next to each child folders, like a flag for all of the flag-based messages. You'd still push a number to get to that folder, but it'd be easier to identify while in a hurry.

5. Perhaps a "smart" quick chat system? It would analyze my current situation, then provide three probable quick chat messages at the top of my quick chat list (or bottom, whatever).

- If I had the flag, my three message options might be: "Escaping with the flag." "Heading toward base." "I've been spotted!"
- If I had less than 20% health, my three message options might be: "Help!" "Taking fire, need repair!" "Where's the nearest first aid kit?"
- If I had cloak module, my three message options might be: "Going in quiet. Somebody distract!" "Enemies spotted NORTH/SOUTH/EAST/WEST." "Laying mines in their base. Tread carefully."
- If I was within close proximity to own flag/core etc, my three message options might be: "Incoming enemies!" "Defenses are down, need repair!" "The base is quiet. Too quiet."

The point is that while these options wouldn't cover your every scenario, they might prove to be relevant to your situation. All "smart" commands here ought to be customizable.

edit: added numbers

[raptor]

How about we have built-in default quick chat messages (like some basic orders, commands, and responses), then provide a sub-menu for customizations?

That way we can slim down the configuration in the INI greatly.

I'm thinking that the move to numbers is a must (at least as default)

Personally, I hate quick chat. I've thrown this out before, and I'll try again...

If anyone wants to come up with a simpler, more useful quick chat menu, I'd love to replace what we've got, which has survived almost unmodified from the Zap days.

I like the Idea of quick commands.
1.-/Yes
2.-/No
3.-/Random
4.-/addbot
5.-/addbot orbitbot
6.-More

And so on.

[Little_Apple]

can we please not have /addbot as a quick command. ever.

[watusimoto]

I agree with Little_Apple on this one. /addbots 10 is much more useful.

[Quartz]

I agree with Little_Apple on this one. /addbots 10 is much more useful.

rofl

personally i agree it seems to take screen space up when global chatting is easier as is voice chat (no global yet? maybe another topic for that.) and the menus are annoying to navigate unless memorized i suggest also going about the way of having nestings in the coding even in the old zap i didn't see the quick chat used hardly over the global chat (cant even remember if there was a global chat on it think there was it s been years.) maybe it could be simplified or removed.

1 - Help!
2 - Base under attack!
3 - Incoming enemies!
4 - Need repairs!
5 - I have the flag.
6 - You take the flag.
7 - Attacking the enemy base.
8 - LEEEROYYY
9 - /yes
0 - /no
press return - more commands.

1 - Help!
2 - Base under attack!
3 - Incoming enemies!
4 - Need repairs!
5 - I have the flag.
6 - You take the flag.
7 - Attacking the enemy base.
8 - LEEEROYYY
9 - /yes
0 - /no
press return - more commands.

Get rid of quick chats.
Quick commands will only be useful.

So instead of spamming the chat with quick chat, spamming the entire server with bots by using quick commands is more "useful"?

[Quartz]

So instead of spamming the chat with quick chat, spamming the entire server with bots by using quick commands is more "useful"?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you BlackBird's most constructive post!!

Seriously. A lot of you guys somehow get your hands on the server password and then you throw bots around left and right. I just don't see how someone who takes issue with textual spam can take zero issue with gamebreaking bot spawning spam. One is ignorable, the other completely messes with the game. Think about it.

So i had a idea what if you had a setting in the ini thats says add bots yes/no meaning only the server admin can add bots to prevent bot spammers.

also i dont see any use for quick chat ither thne taking up space.

So i had a idea what if you had a setting in the ini thats says add bots yes/no meaning only the server admin can add bots to prevent bot spammers.

also i dont see any use for quick chat ither thne taking up space.

If you dont see any use for it, dont use it.

Quick chats and quick commands are not inherently different. They're both text that you type in the chat. I think excluding one but keeping the other is silly.

Also, for everyone who's saying quick chats are worthless, etc... I am the thorn in your generalized statement. I love to use quick chats to communicate with my team while I have the flag. I can report incoming enemies, request assistance, or let my teammates know where I'm heading. I haven't used quick chats in a while, but that's not because they're bad, rather because I haven't settled on a customized system that I'm happy with.

[Lone Wolf]

One way to improve quick chat would be to transform it into 'quick commands'. Possibly use it to control bots in some manner (like in the original Unreal Tournament). Command them to go on offense, defense, protect you, etc. in addition to executing quick team/global chats.

YOU'VE PLAYED THE ORIGINAL UT? 'Tis an awesome game.

Either way, I use quick chat. *gasp*

When i use my controller, i have quick chat. I reconfigured them so that most of the things I'd say are there. But every once in a while, i might have to still use the keyboard. But the quick chat helps.

[sam686]

I like the Idea of quick commands.
1.-/Yes
2.-/No
3.-/Random
4.-/addbot
5.-/addbot orbitbot
6.-More
And so on.

  Code:

[QuickChatMessagesGroup8]
Key=C
Button=Button 5
MessageType=Global
Caption=Commands

[QuickChatMessagesGroup8_Message1]
Key=K
Button=Button 1
MessageType=command
Caption=kickbot
Message=kickbot

[QuickChatMessagesGroup8_Message2]
Key=A
Button=Button 2
MessageType=command
Caption=addbot
Message=addbot

[QuickChatMessagesGroup8_Message3]
Key=Y
Button=Button 3
MessageType=command
Caption=vote yes
Message=yes

[QuickChatMessagesGroup8_Message4]
Key=N
Button=Button 4
MessageType=command
Caption=vote no
Message=no

[QuickChatMessagesGroup8_Message5]
Key=R
Button=Button 5
MessageType=command
Caption=random level
Message=random

Try it, quick commands can be used in 018 and a few versions before 018, if you add this in "bitfighter.ini".

Problem is if you add to much text commands via the ini you get display problems........ could there be a more efficient way to tier them maybe?

[watusimoto]

You can create new tiers and tiers-within-tiers, and customize it almost any way you want.

Voice chat > Quick chat

That's my stance.

yeah global team and voicechat makes quickchat redundent.....

yeah global team and voicechat makes quickchat redundent.....

No way. Each has their own value:

Text chat:
+ Detailed or personalized messages
+ Legible, easy to decipher
+ Works in quiet environments
- Not quick/efficient to send

Voice chat:
+ Detailed or personalized messages
+ Quick/efficient to send
- Doesn't work in quiet environments
- Not always legible or easy to decipher

Quick chat:
+ Quick/efficient to send
+ Works in quiet environments
+ Legible, easy to decipher
- Cannot make detailed/personalized messages

I personally only use quick chat as a shortcut to Shazbot!

I haven't used quick chat seriously in a while, but I also haven't played seriously in a while. Whenever a competitive game gets going I usually find myself relying on quick chat to send help messages and directions of enemies.

bumping due to relavancy

but quick chat is useless when you can just use global/team/voicechat which is faster compared to the menus which are slow to navigate on top of that changing it by and editing the INI is difficult.

lets add a poll to get a better concences.