Knives' Chat v3.0

[kmwill23]

Summary:

Version 3.0 Beta 6
Supports RunUO 2.0***

***This version, due to command modifications between RunUO 1.0 and 2.0, will not work on previous RunUO versions!

Welcome to the third incarnation of my chat system! Amazing that a new major version seems to come along every summer, and I have to admit I don’t plan it that way. The original chat system began development in January of 2004. I released the second major version in May of 2005. Each new version is a near complete rewrite from the ground up, allowing improved performance and design, as well as the possibility for new features.

This update doesn’t disappoint! When I asked for ideas to include in the new release, many users suggested a way to create new chatting channels. I’ve done just that, and in the process streamlined the setup and options on those channels. Each channel is independent, meaning you can remove it and nothing else will suffer. Instead of an option to turn off Faction, Guild, Alliance, and other channels, you can simply remove or rename those files.

Many of the changes this update are improvements to existing portions of the system. Instead of just a private message received flag, players now get a friends list showing where those messages are coming from, kind of like popular instant messaging programs. On top of that, players have a Mail client from which they can browse and delete older mail. Staff can also go into player mail accounts to view offensive messages. To prevent overflowing mailboxes, players can require senders to be friends, and mailboxes have a maximum size just like the RunUO forums. Staff members can broadcast private messages to all players. Another minor feature is allowing players to break the normal text limit on composing messages.

Wow, that’s a lot of private messaging improvements! Thanks to some excellent advice from other RunUO users, I’ve also improved the connection to IRC servers. They should connect faster and connect to more IRC server types. Players can also now ignore IRC chatters almost the same way as in-game players.

For non-English shards, a localization file allows easy modification of all the text used for the system.

I streamlined the overall layout of the system, including the channel lists and selection, options, search, and setup. For example, if you want options related to private messaging, check the options in your mail or friends list. Related to searching, I finally re-added the phonebook style search from the original system!

Like always, I am soliciting all feedback, complaints and ideas you may have for the system. You should also report bugs, often!

It wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t include… this system requires no existing script modifications.

And of course… The IRC capability of this chat system does not handle nickname registration. You will have to do this for your shard using another client.

Features included in this system:

- Public or regional chatting
- Channel creation or removal
- Guild, Alliance, Faction and IRC chatting
- Channel listings with simple navigation
- Ignoring, banning, listening, global listening
- Filtering and spam prevention
- IM style Friends list
- Mailbox interface
- In-game integrated IRC client
- Localized text file for easy language changes

Commands included in this system:

- You control the commands for your public channels!
- Guild: G, Guild
- Alliance: A, Ally
- Faction: F, Faction
- IRC: I, IRC
- Channel List: L, List
- Private Message: Pm, Msg (Followed by a player’s name and text to include in message)
- Admin Chat Setup: CS, ChatSetup
- Mail: Ma, Mail
- Friends: F, Friends
- Staff: St, Staff

There are more commands available through the Utilities package, including the error reporting system (Errors) and the command changing system (Commands).

Interface details:

The major addition in 3.0 is the new Channel system. These channels are very similar to previous public chat, where players can turn them on and off and view the players who have public chat on. With channels, however, server admins can add more than one public chatroom! Players can join and leave these rooms by pressing the gold button next to the channel name on the channel list.

Let’s begin with the channel list. On your first login you will notice that no names display on this list, because you haven’t chosen to join any available channels. Through this setup you can join and leave those channels at will, including all public channels. Press the gold button near the top left of the menu to access the channel list. If you are in a guild, that option will be available to you. If IRC is enabled and connected, so will that. Once you join a channel, the gold button will spear next to it on that selection menu. When you press this, the list will reappear showing the names of players in that channel. If admins have allowed, staff names will also appear.

Next to the channel name at the top you will notice two small arrows. This allows you to change the number of names listed, for those players who want the smallest menu possible or be able to see as many names as possible. In the right corner is a minimize button, which does just that. At the bottom you’ll find Options, Search, Mail and Friends buttons, which open those different modules. Administrators will also see a button with a nice red ‘A’, which will open the Chat Setup menu.

The ‘O’ options will open to the list’s side, and have options specifically for channels and that specific channel. This same options button will appear on the Mail and Friend interface, and follow the same idea. They also all have the Search button, which allows searching players and mail based on text or a single letter “phonebook” search.

These options also provide staff members additional options. In particular, if they have Global Access, granted by administrators, they can listen to other players. When Global is selected, you will get additional options like Global Pms, Global Chat, Global World. When Global is not selected, you can select individual players to listen to, and all that player’s chats, messages, and world speech will be seen in your game window.

Each player will have a little gold button next to their name. Using this you can open up options specifically for that player, where you can friend, ignore or send them a message. Staff can also listen or globally ignore them, open their client information, go to them, and read their mail messages.

The friend’s list has many features I’ve just described. In addition, the minimized friend’s list will appear when you receive a private message, and you can check that message through the minimized interface. However, if you open that menu up you’ll be able to see exactly who sent you that message, and chose whichever you want to read first. Normally, only people you’ve identified as friends will appear on your list. When you receive a message from a non-friend, they will appear temporarily.

The options for friends allow you to limit who can send you messages, and who can add you as a friend. By selecting “Only friends can send messages”, only if you and the other are on each other’s friend list can you pass messages between. By selecting “Require friend requests”, players must request your approval before adding you to their friend’s list. Of course you can also have neat sounds for private messages from specific players.

Those private messages permanently appear in your Mail. Be careful, because there is a limit to the number of private messages your mailbox can hold! If it’s full, only staff can send you messages. Luckily Mail has an option to automatically delete messages that are more than 7 days old. You can also bug your Admin to change the max mailbox storage.

When sending a private message to another player, you can go beyond the normal message size limit by using the new recording feature. When you activate this feature, everything you say on the UO command line will appear in your private message window. When done, simple hit the send button!

Administrators have their own special options menu, opened through [chatsetup or the red ‘A’ button on the channel list. The first page you’ll see is the channel setup page, where you can add and modify new public channels. The second page contains a few misc options. The third shows all filter and spam options. Finally, the fourth page lets you setup the IRC connection.

It’s all so simple!

Installing:

- Remove all previous installations of Knives’ Chat
- Remove all previous installations of Knives’ Utilities
oNOTE: If you use RunUO 1.0, the current Utilities version is 1.02!
oNOTE: This system uses Utilities 1.03, which is not compatible with Non-2.0 Chat or TownHouses.
- Drop the new Knives’ Chat and Utilities into your custom folder.
- If you want to use the Localization file, move ChatLocal.txt to your ‘\RunUO\data\’ folder.
- Run the server! No existing script modifications required!

Contact Info: Send me an email day or night (Though I will likely be sleeping at night)! kmwill23@hotmail.com

[kmwill23]

Planned Features:

Number of players online display
Default menu background, text, and preventing player override of menus (As an option in-code)
"Kick" filter penalty
Accepting Pms with no subjects by using a generic subject

Bugs Reported:

IRC connection bug (Also auto reconnect bug)

[kmwill23]

Well, after rigerous closed beta testing, I feel confident enough to release this Beta for public use and testing!

Here's what I am looking for:

- Crashes and errors of course!
- Display problems
- Thoughts, Opinions, Nitpicks
- Feature requests
- Things you miss from v1.0 or v2.0

When you initially install 3.0, you will have to create your public chatroom! [c and [chat won't work until you create them in the Admin Setup menu!

When you add a command to a channel, do not include the command prefix, which is '[' in default RunUO

This version does not support RunUO 1.0, as there can be no cross-compatability between RunUO 1.0 and 2.0 due to Commands modifications.

[Lucid Nagual]

Sweet! Thank you.

[Total Failure]

great script, i will be testing it


kmwill23
AKA Knives Join Date: Feb 2003
Age: 28
Posts: 666 <---- Ebil!
Rep Power: 16

[yuri99]

niuce thnx for sharing

[Nam01]

great script thank you

[Nam01]

great job Knives i added it to my shard work great thank you again

[Asmir3]

omg dude nice job i got install it and look at bec i love ur scripts

[spikeSOK]

its been so long ago i intalled knives chat...not sure i rmember what all i need to remove toi uninstall the old one, anyone got a list of what i gotta remove to install this new one?

[kmwill23]

While I was hoping to stay at 666 post for a while, I needed to post up a patch!

This patch corrects a possible crash bug, so it's a good idea to download it =)

For Spike:

You didn't put all the files into one nice, easy place? That could make things difficult to uninstall. Best thing to do is find a zip with the older install and see what files are inside.

[valdis]

Maybe I'm missing something. Or I'm just not as smart as I would like to think.

After setting up that first channel (public chat) thats all great. people are auto join'd etc etc.. My next question is.. How do you chat? I can't seem to find a way to do that. We can send messages to each other. (just like PM's) but gone is the ability to just type [c Bill you suck! and everyone see's it.

But like I said.... maybe I'm missing something...

[Magpie]

I had the same problem...to fix it: when you add the command for the channel, do not add it like [c just add the command like c
Then when you want to chat you use [c and it should be fine.

[HomeDaddy]

I used your Chat a couple of years ago on my previous shard, now I'm starting another and It's the very first thing I looked for.

Your a LEGEND

Long Live KNIVES

[sordican]

Words are poor.... Simply amazing. You prove why you are such an asset to the RunUO community over and over again Knives. Great job!

[kmwill23]

I am eagerly awaiting the 2.0 official release. Looking through the changes so far, I can see a few things that will change, though I am not sure if they will cause the current beta to stop working. We shall know soon enough! Hope everyone else has fun migrating =)

[Celtic_Mistress]

I dont know maybe its just me, but id love to see a option to hide the Staff button all together from the public view without having to go into the script itself and remove it from there.

[kmwill23]

Originally Posted by Celtic_Mistress

I dont know maybe its just me, but id love to see a option to hide the Staff button all together from the public view without having to go into the script itself and remove it from there.

The staff channel isn't available to the public, only staff members, nor can normal players even see the staff channel as a selection. Just tested to be sure =P So removing that channel really wouldn't make sense anyway =)

[Rosey1]

it's awesome! thank you so much!

I do have a question on the guild one, if you aer in a guild, will it automatically configure that?

[Kalmah]

Great Script Knie Love it alot

[Erica]

Won't Work with RunUO 2.0 tho. actually lots of script won't work till they get edited with some commands editing as posted on this thread with some of theses editing lots of scripts can get fixed. http://www.runuo.com/forums/showthre...849#post528849

[kmwill23]

This will work with 2.0 soon =) Luckily the changes aren't difficult.

Originally Posted by Erica

Won't Work with RunUO 2.0 tho. actually lots of script won't work till they get edited with some commands editing as posted on this thread with some of theses editing lots of scripts can get fixed. http://www.runuo.com/forums/showthre...849#post528849

[kmwill23]

Beta 5 now available.

The first thing you'll notice is that this Beta test no longer supports RunUO 1.0. I know this will alienate many of you because of the extreme modifications between RunUO 1.0 and 2.0, and the difficulty in migrating between the two.

During beta testing I do not want to maintain two distributions of the system. This may change after the beta testing is complete.

Also note that the Utilities folder in this distro only works with RunUO 2.0, and thus is not compatable with TownHouses until TownHouses upgrade is complete. This shouldn;t affect anyone yet though, since TownHouses doesn't work with 2.0 yet!

Anyhow, here's a list of the changes, as detailed in the Beta 5.doc included in the distro:

-Now supports RunUO 2.0 RC1
-However, the changes do not support RunUO 1.0
-Channels that no longer exist will now be removed from player data (transparent)
-A crash bug related to auto joining new players to channels corrected
-Quickbar now an option under general channel options
-Read Receipt option now available in Friends and Mail options
-Three new ChatLocal.txt entries. Knowing this will make it easier for you to update previously translated ChatLocal files, all you will need to do is include the three additional lines.

[Icedddragon]

Sorry if im missing something really obvious (hides from the neg karma coming his way) but how do you actualyl talk in the public chat i createD?

[Rosey1]

you have to add the command in the options of the chat you created. Just put c, like someone pointed a few posts ago and then you can just use [c blahb lah blah as the earlier version.