<preamble> I searched the forums (poorly) to see if this suggestion has been made before. </preamble>

Not to add more work to the already overworked devs but it would be nice to have a little better funtionality with the comm systems for in game chat. Right now the comm system acts very similar to IRC in many regards. However, keeping track of what channels are open and navigatiing those channels is rather cumbersome. I would like to offer a couple (hopefully not overcomplicated) suggestions as to ways it may be made more "user friendly".

Right now the comm system uses 2 tabs in order to group messages logically, The "General" tab and the "Mission" tab. It would be nice to have a system to better navigate this interface. Currently a very simple means is used to access these tabs but it is not very logical. If the interface functioned more like a text based IRC client for navigating information it may be much more intuitive.

As a linux user I use the IRC client irssi (irssi.org) to access IRC networks. The functionality is quite easy to use and would function very well in game. You would have your 2 obvious channels opened by default (General and Mission) and this would be navigated via alt+1 and alt+2 for each channel respectively. For each new channel /join a new tab would be created with a header describing that channel (11 for instance) and this would become alt+3. As more channels were opened they would become alt+4, alt+5, etc. When a channel is /leave it would close its respective tab and each consecutive tab after it would become -1 from its original alt+#.

This could be expanded to include private messages initiated between players. For instance, you would already have your default 2 tabs and if a private message was sent to a specific player a new tab would be created with enough text to help the player identify with which player the conversation was initiated (space availible). Then when the conversation had ceased or it was necessary to close this tab for readability a /leave "player name" command could be used.

I hope that all this information makes sense. IRSSI is a great IRC client that is available for Linux and Mac OSX (although the Mac OSX install is not for the faint of heart). Once you get used to it seems more intuitive than it graphically based cousins.

Agreed. We actually had 'tabbed' chat, but with fixed tabs, and you could not select them by clicking, only by binding commands to do that.

So, I'm all for it.

Another thing I would like to see is a command that lists all available channels, as well as a basic /help command.

I did NOT come to this game from a background of chatting regularly. I have IM on my Mac (actually I use Fire), but I use it for professional purposes only and don't hang out in chat rooms. I had zero knowledge of IRC chat, so any similar commands are completely unfamiliar to me.

Additionally, I know there are channels out there that would help me in-game, such as the nation-specific convoy channels. Since I can't get an in-game list (or at least can't figure out HOW to get it) I'm not listening to these channels.

Just my two cents.

~D.
"Nigel the Indecently Dressed"
"Legin the Naked"

IRC is not the best thing since sliced bread and many of us have never used it, just making things more IRC-like is not necessarily better. Also, how many chat tabs do you want!? For example:

001 : New Player Help Channel
011 : Nation chat (you can only see the text from members of your nation)
100 : General Chat
111 : Help Channel (in case channel 1 is overloaded)
201 : Itani Convoy Transmissions (not for chat)
202 : Serco Convoy Transmissions (not for chat)
PMing 2 different people.
Group Chat
Guild Chat
Mission Chat
Sector Chat

Is ALREADY 12 tabs with this suggestion... That's ridiculous and far too overly-cumbersome to try and navigate through to keep up with messages. Then think of an event organizer getting on the event channel and getting PMed by all 10 people who want in and they have to deal with 23 tabs!!! ... Heck no.

Thanks Rogue. That helps, but what I'd really like is a way to call that up in game. Do you know of any commands for that?

~D.
"Nidel the Indecently Dressed"
"Legin the Naked"

Sadly, Klabbath, I do not think there are. Any ideas on where such information might be put?

Unfortunately, there isn't an in-game channel directory, mostly because you can have any valid integer number (up to 32 bits if I'm not mistaken? or was it 16 bits?) as a channel number. The well-known ones are listed, and others that are used occasionally are generally announced in 100 as needed (event channels and such)

You could code a chat help interface using the echo command; I think Miharu once made an entire game that way.

also, there isn't an in-game directory because most of those channels aren't hard-coded, but are simply precedents set by players..

I believe it was a1k0n that made the first echo game, and scubasteve that followed up with another.

I stand corrected.

Channels go from 1 to 2**32 - 1

I agree that currently: Knowing what channels you are in and switching between them isn't very elegant..

I don't agree that: Adding more tabs would make it better, I think that would make it worse, since you would have to be constantly switching between 6 or more channels to see everything..

The simple solution would be to add a command like "/chatlist" which tells you what channels you are currently on..

To type to a channel I think we should be able to set "default channel" which is where anything you type will usually go, unless the text is opened with "/#" where # is the channel number we want it to go to.. The default channel could also simply be what ever the last /# was to..

This would be similar to using public channels in WoW, except here the channel numbers would actually make sense, since they relate to the actual channel..

..another idea would be to reserve a bank of five or so shortcut keys that you can associate with different channels via some form of config interface...

under the "comm" PDA tab, have a bottom-of-the-screen button called "Configure Channel Shortcuts", that would allow you to associate certain channels to shortcuts: chat_1 to 100, chat_2 to 11, chat_3 to 444, etc.....

then you could either bind each of these to a different key that would send chat directly to that channel (working a lot like "t"), or could be used in conjuction with the "t" key:

"t" -- to enter chatmode
<key-that-chat_1-is-bound-to> -- to select the channel dynamically... this setting could persist until you selected another shortcut...

Thurisaz;

You just gave me an interesting idea.

Ever play Starcraft? Starcraft's hotlinks are really well thought out. By using [cntl] and a number from 1-0 you can hotlink anything to a single button: locations on the map, buildings, units, etc.

Now, X-Wing offered us the ability to hotlink ships in the radar using the same buttons, and TIE Fighter brought us the ability to hotlink specific PARTS of a ship, like the turrets or the shield generator (and by the way, was it a little stupid for the Star Destroyers to put their shield generators up on top of the bridge? Why not paint them bright orange and emblazon "Shoot HERE!" on it as well?).

Why not a user-customizable hotlink setup? [Ctl]-1-0 can be designated as WHATEVER THE PLAYER WANTS.

I, personally, would probably hotlink numbers 1-6 as comm frequencies: 1, 100, 201, 911, guild, and group. Numbers 7-0 would be left for me to hotlink ships during missions: 9-0 would be my wingmen, 7-8 would be reserved for targets I need to destroy.

But, having this user-custoomizable would mean that if this setup doesn't work in practice (201 gets very little traffic, so there's not a whole lot of point in monitoring it.) then I could adjust as needed.

Devs, is this a doable idea?

~D.
"Nigel the Indecently Dressed"
"Legin the Naked"

I appreciate everyones feedback and understand some of the concerns (ie way too many tabs). I think I like thurisaz's suggestion the best with having programmable hotkeys for channels.

What if it was a finite number of tabs? Say the first 2 would be the normal "general" and "mission" and then you had six (or eight or <insert # here>) more that you could set as custom tabs for certain channels? Everything not programmed in to these presets would fall under "general". Navigating them could still be done with an alt+N as in my original post.

I also forgot to mention in my orignal post that a non-selected tab would become highlighted when a new message has appeared.

The hot keys for specific channels is also a good idea as is the /channel# to send messages to a specific channel (think of them as shortcuts so you dont have to navigate to the tab.

This originally started when I was tired of typing "wc" and also having no idea what channel was the currently active channel until I sent the message. There also seemed to be some dead space there that could be utilized after the defaults.

Oh, and as for private messages, I understand LostCommander's point with clutter so maybe those just stay as they are now. It is easy enough as it is to hit "t" "<tab>" and then message to respond to a message.

Bleh, I know the "wc" effect from not knowing your active channel. usually I try to always reset the active channel if I forgot (since /join -ing a channel you already have does nothing). Having a way to identify your active channel(s), being able to have multiple active channels, and/or having some way to echo messages would be nice (i.e. the last message you sent, but to a new channel)...

The new interface's chat says what active channel you're on.

If you just type '/join' with no args you get a list of channels you are subscribed to.

Adding the ability to type /100 to automatically set 100 to active (for example) is a good idea. The same can be done with /s for sector and /g and /G for group and guild (or choose a different character for each).
The /g (for example) would then remove itself and you will then be chatting to group. It'd be like clicking on the group checkbox.

For the hotkeys, I could make a set of 10 (for example) chat hotkeys that you could define what channel they activate when you press them. They would only work inside the HUD, though.

Another good idea would be to be able to type /help join and get help about the command. Most commands already have that, like /group but /join shows current channels instead of help about that command.

ray: "inside the HUD"??