Change how chat looks and reaches you
In the menus: ESC → Setup → Chat
What the Chat tab shows
Every row is a client setting and survives a restart.
| Row | What it does | Ships as | Console cvar |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chat Distance Mode | Which of 4 ways a chat line fades with distance from the speaker. | Fade | sf_chatdistance |
| Chat Beep | Plays a sound for non-team messages. Ordinary speech follows the distance setting. OOC can beep at any range. | On | cg_chatBeep |
| Chat Bubble | The master switch for every overhead speech indicator, whichever style is set. | ticked | sf_chatbubble |
| Chat Bubble Style | Which indicator draws, the base game balloon or the StoryForce bubbles. | StoryForce | sf_chatbubblestyle |
| Separate Menu Bubble | Draws a different bubble for a player sat in a menu rather than typing. | unticked | sf_showmenububble |
| Tint Bubbles By Character | Colours each bubble with that speaker's own character POI colour. | ticked | sf_chartintbubbles |
| Animate Chat Bubble | Plays the bubble's stepped entry instead of showing it complete. | unticked | sf_sfbubbleanimate |
| Merge Team Chat | Routes team chat through ordinary say, so every StoryForce shortcode works from it. | unticked | sf_mergeteamsay |
| Disable Chat Animation | Stops your own body playing its talking gesture. | unticked | sf_disablechatemote |
| Disable Chat Face Movement | Stops your own face moving while you speak. | unticked | sf_disablechatfacemovement |
List Results Per Page is on Setup → Console. See everything you have placed covers it.
How far chat carries
| Mode | What a line does as the speaker gets further away |
|---|---|
| Off | nothing, every line arrives at full strength |
| Fade | dims steadily to 10% of full strength and stays there |
| Hard Cutoff | dims the same way, then vanishes past the far distance |
| Binary | full strength inside the near distance, absent outside it |
The 3 speaking channels carry different pairs, in game units, for a character with Normal hearing.
| Channel | Near distance | Far distance |
|---|---|---|
| Whisper | 60 | 110 |
| Say | 370 | 900 |
| Shout | 1,000 | 1,900 |
Hearing runs Bad, Poor, Normal, Good and Excellent, and it scales both ends of every band.
The bubble over a character's head
A bubble means a player has the chat line, the console or a menu open. Separate Menu Bubble tells the chat line from the other 2 with a different glyph.
Chat Bubble Style picks between 2 sprites. Base Game is the balloon Jedi Academy has always drawn. StoryForce is a line-art speech bubble that fades on a curve of its own, full strength to 400 units and down to a tenth by 1,500.
Tint Bubbles By Character colours each bubble with the speaker's character POI colour.
Animate Chat Bubble plays a stepped entry. Neither does anything on Base Game.
The chat box
The chat box is the block of recent lines in the lower left. Nothing about its size, place or timing has a row in the menus.
Mind Trick can show a disguise name here. The console keeps the real name. Active Sense 3 or higher reveals it.
All 7 are console settings and survive a restart.
| Cvar | What it changes | Ships as |
|---|---|---|
cg_chatBox | How long a line stays, in milliseconds. Set to 0 it turns the chat box off completely. | 10000 |
cg_chatBoxLines | How many messages are kept on screen. Each can wrap onto several lines. The oldest drop off. | 5 |
cg_chatBoxScale | The size of the text. | 0.65 |
cg_chatBoxWidth | The width a long line wraps at. A colour code is stepped over whole, so a break never lands inside one. | 550 |
cg_chatBoxX | How far in from the left edge of the screen the block starts. | 30 |
cg_chatBoxHeight | The baseline the block grows upward from. It moves on its own while the scoreboard is up. | 350 |
cg_chatBoxPersist | Set to 1 it keeps messages until newer ones push them out, ignoring their normal expiry time. | 0 |
Prefer the console?
Use the cvar named beside each row. sf_chatdistance takes 0 for Off, 1 for Fade, 2 for Hard Cutoff or 3 for Binary.
/colour puts a reference grid of every chat colour code on screen, and running it again takes the grid away. /color is an accepted alias.