Chat channels

"He shouted the secret and whispered the greeting. The evening went badly." — Comms Officer Ilun Rask
Verified

StoryForce splits chat into channels so speech, actions and player talk look different and carry different distances.

You can chat before you log in, by default. A server can require a login for every channel except /tell, and then refuses each attempt with "You must be logged in to chat". The switch is listed under Settings.

What it does

Each channel wraps your line in its own formatting and gives it its own hearing range. Ordinary speech is clear up to 370 units away and fades out by 900. A shout stays clear to 1,000 and carries to 1,900. A whisper starts fading at 60 and is faint past 110. Out-of-character text is bracketed so nobody mistakes it for something a character said.

Each player's own game applies the ranges, not the server. Read chat range and hearing before you trust a channel with anything sensitive.

Using it

Press your chat key and type. Whatever you type is spoken out loud by your character, in your character's active language.

All 7 commands below run from the console. In the chat box, only /ooc, /me, /whisper and /shout work, because the chat box reads them as say-line shortcodes. The chat box refuses a /say, /say_team or /tell with a hint to use the console.

Commands

Speaking out loud

Whispering

Whispered text prints in grey. Running /whisper with no message from the console prints ^8+++^7 Usage: /whisper ^3<message>.

Shouting

The game wraps the asterisks around your line for you.

Acting

The || markers come from the server setting sf_emotesyntax, so a server can swap them for something else. Your character's name is inserted for you, so write the action in the third person without repeating the name.

Acting inside a spoken line

You can put an action inside ordinary speech by wrapping it in the same || markers. Everything between them is treated as description rather than speech.

This does 2 useful things. The talking animation only counts real speech, so a long stage direction will not leave your character mouthing at the wall. Text inside the markers also survives language garbling, so people who cannot understand your words still see what you did.

Talking out of character

Out-of-character lines reach every player at full strength, whatever the distance.

Talking to your team

Team chat also ignores distance. On a gametype with no teams it becomes an ordinary say.

Sending a private line

<player id> is a client number from the scoreboard, or a player's exact name. A wrong one prints User 3 is not on the server. /tell is a base-game feature with no in-character framing. For a private line your character can actually be seen making, use a comlink.

Settings

Server-side. The delimiter wrapped around /me actions and inline actions. Defaults to ||, 2 vertical bars. Client-side. Set to 1 to make your team chat key behave exactly like ordinary say, shortcodes included. Defaults to 0. Server-side. Set to 0 to require a login before any channel except /tell works. Defaults to 1.

Things to note

Things that catch people out:

  • Whispers are not private. The server sends every channel to every player. The fade happens on each player's own machine, so the privacy is cosmetic.
  • The console shows everything in full. Every say, whisper and shout is also written to every player's console, undimmed.
  • Command-shaped lines never reach chat. The chat box swallows /login, /account and any unrecognised /command with a hint instead of broadcasting it. Say-line shortcodes lists exactly what is caught.
  • Clearing sf_emotesyntax switches inline actions off entirely. With no delimiter set, nothing in a line is treated as an action, so a stage direction is counted as speech and garbled with the rest of it.
  • Red and cyan text does not count as speech. A line coloured entirely ^1 or ^5 plays no talking animation.
  • Team chat becomes director notes while you hold a director pass. Only players holding the same pass see it. Your team does not.

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