Separate chat from server messages

During large games, the "Player A killed Player B" messages flood up the message box. This makes it difficult - if not impossible - to get out a message that will remain visible long enough for others to read and understand.

The ability to communicate with your teammates is vital, and if it takes two or three repeats for them to see, understand and reply back, then we're doing something wrong.

Furthermore, there is no scrolling function, so you can't go back and read the messages. Once a message disappears, it's gone forever.

Here's what I think:

1. Separate the chat box from the server message box. One idea is to put the chat box directly below the server message box.



Another idea is to put the chat box lower, above the energy bar.



The images are not perfect, but they give a rough idea of where the chat box should go.

2. Allow PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN keys (or other keys?) to scroll up and down in the chat box. Chat box only needs to remember 10-15 lines.

Opinions?

[watusimoto]

Not bad ideas... but in the meantime, use Ctrl-M to see more messages.

[karamazovapy]

Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing the bottom or top two lines devoted to chat and the other three dedicated to system messages.

[Skybax]

I like the chat above the energy bar idea. It seems like most games have the chat there…

+1

+2

Not bad ideas... but in the meantime, use Ctrl-M to see more messages.

Cool, I will definitely be using this in the future.

[ZoombeR]

  Code:

ctrl + m  

seems to be broken for me now..

err, seems to work for me again now that i posted that..

[karamazovapy]

it doesn't always work for me. not sure why. might be window focus or something, since I'm using a controller.

[watusimoto]

I would appreciate it if someone added this to the Bitfighter issues list on Google (addr in the Forum rules section above).

[raptor]

http://code.google.com/p/bitfighter/issues/detail?id=93

Did it two days ago :]

[ZoombeR]

Another idea, what If we have chat messages appear on the top right of the screen?
we could word wrap as the chats and messages got closer towards the center (game updates justified left going towards the center, chats justified right going towards center)

By doing this, you avoid obstructions, in this case, the chat messages, lurking towards the center of the screen, where the highest amount of focus originates.

Basically, if you want to move the chats to another part of the screen, trust me on this one, it can get annoying when you have lots of things appearing in your screen taking away from your gameplay. Keep it out of the way. Same reason spots television keep their scoreboards small and out of the way, dont you want to see how high that football was thrown? Dont you want to actualy be able to see if the football made it ino to the field goal? Wouldn't you be annoyed if your watching a soccer game, and a player passes the ball to another player close to the boundary opposite the camera, but the scoreboard blocks your view of that player and the ball? That could get really irritating in my opinion, and surely in the way.

[karamazovapy]

Here's what the latest revision looks like, more or less:

Looks good, _k, I mean, raptor!

@Zoomber I'm not against putting the chat box on the top right, but I don't believe a few lines of chat will severely crowd the screen very much. And if it does, we could add control+m to the chat box so that it could be minimized.

[karamazovapy]

Looks good, _k!

Just to clarify, this has been raptor's baby. I just thought I'd repost so everyone could see the work that's been going on in the developers' skype channel. He's also managed to get multi-line messages working in the lobby! I know I'm excited for the next release.

Alright then, good job raptor!

[raptor]

thanks!