Read by Schine Chat Improvements - Clickable Links & Emoticons & *new* Copy[ ] Links:

[Benevolent27]

Pre-word: I did a lot of searching for these ideas, and thought I'd find existing threads, but I couldn't any, so I'm going to go ahead and post.

Clickable links:
This is pretty self-explanatory. You paste a website link in and people can click on it. It asks you "Are you sure you want to open this link? The game will minimize." and has a "yes/no" button. Make sure to include in the EULA that Shine is not responsible for any potential content or consequence from clicking on a link, so y'all got your backs covered. This would be very useful because people love to show screenshots, send each other music videos, send links to server websites, send links to threads on the StarMade Forum, ect. while they chat. Right now people rely on other third-party software, like Skype and Teamspeak. I suggest try to keep them using the in game chat system instead, so they are only minimizing the game when looking at a link, rather than keeping the game minimized while text chatting on these other programs.


Emoticons:
Ok, so I've never really been a giant fan of emoticons.. but on the other hand, it really is standard nowadays. Every chat program out there has emoticons. People love emoticons. I am from the old school generation that saw ASCII art websites and IRC, but I think people would like this addition and would help make the chat portion of the game more full-fledged. I suggest having a way to turn it on and off though. It would automatically replace strings like ": )" and ": (" (without the spaces) with corresponding emoticons. You could also click a button to open a list of emoticons, select the one you'd like and place it. :p:D

Copy[ ] Links:
Ok, so this was an idea I had AFTER posting this original thread, but I think it would be quite useful, so I'm going to add it! This idea is to allow people to type, Copy[words words words], and then when they send it to chat, it shows as a highlighted "words words words." Other players could then click on the text and a pop-up window with "Copy" or "Cancel" opens up. Copying would copy the text to the clipboard. A few uses of this would be for teamspeak server ip addresses. Also coordinates. "Hey guys, go to copy[25,25,100]". Then other players, whom can see the text, could copy the coordinates and stick em in to their navigation. Or "Hey guys, meet me at the teamspeak server at copy[ts.myserver.com:3211]" and everyone gets to chat easily in teamspeak.

 

[kiraen]

Not sure if I would ever use links, but I can see it being useful to advertise a server's homepage or a factions recruiting page.
I definitely like the emoticon support.

+1

 

[kookster]

Yes please for the links, this is something that should be a given in all games chat.

 

[Sven_The_Slayer]

I have no real feelings on emoticons either way but I do see the usefulness of clickable links.

It really should also have some server side options as well:

1. Enable disable links and or emoticons
2. Set a white list or black list of acceptable websites to prevent abuses.
3. Perhaps limit it to specific players so say a new player can't send links but trusted players can

 

[kiddan]

Emotes are really just for expressing feelings, why not have Shift+1-through-0 be for pre-written chat messages? Stuff like "I'm gonna blow you to space-dust!" or "Mercy, there are noobs on-board!"

Clickable links would be nice for servers, they could advertise any sites, supporters, or Twitch streams easily.

 

[Valck]

Clickable links, why not. I can see how they are useful, and nobody is required to click them anyway.

Emoticons on the other hand - there's little I find as disruptive as having images intermingled with text; if you're used to them, ASCII symbols are sufficient, and if anything I'd like to see their use being reduced, not encouraged. If I use them, I try to make sure they do not render as images (the [plain] tag is your friend here).
Once the plugin API comes around, I could imagine a plugin that parses chat text and replaces ":)" with its image counterpart, and that people can install if they want this functionality.

 

[Benevolent27]

Not sure if I would ever use links, but I can see it being useful to advertise a server's homepage or a factions recruiting page.
I definitely like the emoticon support.

+1

This is probably the most important part of it, I think, because right now it's kind of a pain getting people to your website if it's hosted anywhere. For example, on my server we have a G+ page, and the link is really long, so people have to write down this big long link to go to it and it discourages people from going to the page.

This gives me another idea though.. Perhaps there could be "Copy://" links or something like this, where it basically highlights text in chat and allows people to click on it and then copy the text to their clipboard. This would be useful for teamspeak addresses, and other things too, whatever is useful to copy, like coordinates. I think I'll add this to the base idea here.
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Clickable links, why not. I can see how they are useful, and nobody is required to click them anyway.

Emoticons on the other hand - there's little I find as disruptive as having images intermingled with text; if you're used to them, ASCII symbols are sufficient, and if anything I'd like to see their use being reduced, not encouraged. If I use them, I try to make sure they do not render as images (the [plain] tag is your friend here).
Once the plugin API comes around, I could imagine a plugin that parses chat text and replaces ":)" with its image counterpart, and that people can install if they want this functionality.

I really do feel you on the emoticons, but I also recognize why they are so popular. People like to be able to express themselves with images. And.. Most people on the internet now, especially in gaming communities, are used to being able to express themselves in this way. Just look at all the emoticons in use on these forums. But, for people like you and I.. Allowing the client to turn them on or off is important.
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I have no real feelings on emoticons either way but I do see the usefulness of clickable links.

It really should also have some server side options as well:

1. Enable disable links and or emoticons
2. Set a white list or black list of acceptable websites to prevent abuses.
3. Perhaps limit it to specific players so say a new player can't send links but trusted players can

Yes! Having run a few servers myself in the past *cough* Minecraft *cough* I am all for server-side options!

For 1, most def.

For 2 and 3, I think these would be useful, but maybe not necessary right off the bat. Admins do have the option to ban someone who is posting improper content, right? I think though that a "whitelist" or "blacklist" for admins to utilize would help serve this functionality. So, if someone is abusing the ability, they get blacklisted from posting clickable links. If the devs want to get creative, they could also have an option to automatically whitelist someone once they've been on the server for a certain period of time, as configurable by the server.cfg.

But, I'd like to see clickable links sooner, rather than later, so I wouldn't be too disappointed if they implemented a simple version of this first, as there are already ways admins can punish people if they misuse this ability.

 

[Criss]

Clickable links sounds great.

Not sure about emoticons. We are not a chat program. I am sure people would find interest in emoticons in the game but it's not a priority in the slightest I am afraid. If emoticons are that important, well I'm not sure what to tell you :P.

Copyable text also sounds great.

Can't say if or when this would get into the game however.