Team chat feature request

[Stephen]

Currently team chat works by typing "/t" before your message.

At Saturday's game someone said that this is difficult to use if you are sending a lot of team messages. They suggested being able to type "/t+" and "/t-" to turn team chat on and off "permanently" (i.e., after typing /t+, all future messages are team messages, until you type /t- again).

What do people think of this, and are there any alternative suggestions? I thought that maybe, instead of typing /t codes, there could be a separate key for team chat: for example, press TAB to chat to everyone, press ` (the key above TAB) to chat to your team only. Thoughts?

[K9]

I love the separate operator key idea.

Tab, as it is now, chat everyone.
'  the key typically above tab, chat with team

Much easier for my common usage, I selectively alternate between both types on the fly.

Thank you for asking.

[Stephen]

OK that's what we'll do then :)

* Two separate keys for chat (TAB and ` by default; but make them configurable, as I am not sure if ` exists or is in the same place on all keyboards)
* Get rid of "/t" codes since these are replaced by the above system.

[K9]

Love it... ;D

[Stephen]

Update:

I have now implemented this feature but it does not work exactly as I described above. Instead:

• The /t code is still used.
• TAB functions as before
• The ` key now activates the chat box and inserts "/t ", so you can start typing a team message right away.

(The reason to do this was to save a bit of programming time: it was taking too long to get rid of the "/t" system from the code... so I looked for a way to keep the existing "/t" code but still have a separate operator key for "team chat".)

[ImpassIve]

Imho, that is a pretty elegant solution of problem
All ingenious is simple)

[ImpassIve]

Today we (me, Romanio, Moo and K9. later somebody hidden under " " nickname joined us) played weekly game and have checked a new version of knights. That was very, very cool!)

For example, when we played "Destroy the book" quest with 2:2 teams it took something like 10 minutes to complete it) While one man is guarding a book, second is trying to get the wand. As soon as he done that - they both running to the pentagram, while opponents are trying to stop them)

Invisibility also works fine. I haven't checked it on teammates, but I like transparency (for knight himself and for observers at least) more than previous system)

About "`" button typing "/t " in the chat - that works. The only nuisance of current chat system (imho) is that you cannot quickly delete already written text. Because during a match you have to type fast: sometimes you make errors in your message, sometimes information which you want to tell became outdated (for example, location of the wand) before you will be able to press "Enter" and send it to the chat, so, you will have to delete your previous message to write new. In a critical situation that takes too much time).

P.S. Huh, just noticed what there is already a "Clear" button near the text box. Well, is there any way to activate it by keyboard, not mouse?

[Stephen]

Thanks for the report. Sorry I didn't join you yesterday... I just felt a bit too tired after working on the new release for the last few days! I will try to stop by this Sunday.

About chat... no, there is no way to activate "Clear" by keyboard, but it could be added. Any suggestions for which key it should be?

Does anybody else have any opinions about the chat system? It is fairly important for team games, so I want to get it right...

[ImpassIve]

"Any suggestions for which key it should be?"

Well, I don't have any...

And one more question. Does the game saves setting in any way? Because I have tried "Keyboard only" control system instead of "Mouse + keyboad", but it is a bit annoying to set it up every time you run knights. Is it a bug or saving is not implemented?

[Stephen]

It does save settings, yes. Look in C:\Users\(your name)\AppData\Roaming\ and tell me if there is a file "knights_config.txt" there. (If you are not using Windows 7 then it might be in a different place...)

[ImpassIve]

Well...
1) I am using Win7.
2) Where is no such file.
3) Looks like now I understand, where is a problem. There is some сyrillic symbols (obviously, they appear in Unicode and some local ASCII tables, but not in a standart) in the path (%appdata% = "C:\Users\Никита\AppData\Roaming"). I will try to solve that problem. Thanks for the answer.

[Stephen]

Argh... OK, I probably need to support Unicode path names. I will look into that.

[Stephen]

OK, I believe I have fixed this now, please could you try the following replacement exe:

http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/Knights_Unicode.exe

(Rename it to Knights.exe and save it over your current Knights.exe.) Let me know if it works for you or not!

[ImpassIve]

Yes, that works!
=)

[K9]

Thanks for the report. Sorry I didn't join you yesterday... I just felt a bit too tired after working on the new release for the last few days! I will try to stop by this Sunday.

About chat... no, there is no way to activate "Clear" by keyboard, but it could be added. Any suggestions for which key it should be?

Does anybody else have any opinions about the chat system? It is fairly important for team games, so I want to get it right...

Yes, missed you on the games, we had some fantastic rounds of action with the new team structure. 

Thank you very much for all the hard work on the game - great results!!

Thanks ImpassIve_rus for summary.  Also want to mention the intense Deathmatch rounds.

Nice to see the new player " " <-- although interesting when we tried to reference someone with no name in chats.

I like all the new features encountered including the ` team chat.
Clearing partial (outdated) text has always been painful when typing and caught in midst of zombies.  As it is now, typically unable to clear in a hurry - so I agree, if possible this could be a fix:  Use the CTRL & same key ` or tab as the clear key (if any text is already in the box) - is that easy to code?  Just an idea.  Wouldn't want to affect the current action of pressing ` or Tab by itself which leaves existing text still prepared for editing.

Getting used to Transparent/Invisible knights, great concept - was freaky at first but I like it.

Trying to rally the family for some games to push up the team factor, at least while they're available during the next couple of 'summer months'.