You can use r and y by default to type messages that only your team will see and t for messages to everyone. Just press the mentioned key, enter your message and press return to send it, press escape to abort the message. Thats nice but during playing much to slow!!! You can also bind messages and team-only messages to single keys so you only have to press a key to tell people whats up.
In all those messages you can use say-escapes that will be replaced by useful values so you can form more interesting messages. You can find an explanation of all those say-escapes in Nexuiz/Docs/say-escapes.txt. For example %h will be replaced with your current health and %l with your current location.
In Nexuiz 2.3 and later you can use 'waypointsprites', simple icons that you and your team can see, even through walls. Those can be used indepentently but also help a lot with communication, like seeing were the guy is that issued a message, or making it easier to warn about incoming enemies as you can easily see that 'danger' icon and do not have to look at the location string in the message..
The most useful commands for the icons are: g_waypointsprite_team_helpme (displays a 'helpme' sign over your head), g_waypointsprite_team_here (shows a 'here' sign at your location), g_waypointsprite_team_here_p (shows a 'here' sign were you point your crosshair at), g_waypointsprite_team_here_d (shows a 'here' sign were you last died), g_waypointsprite_team_danger (shows a 'danger' sign at your location), g_waypointsprite_team_danger_p (shows a 'danger' sign were you point your crosshair at), g_waypointsprite_team_danger_d (shows a 'danger' were you last died)
In the current development version (could become 2.5 at some point) you can also use short voice samples. cmd voice XXX will play them. XXX can be replace with attack, defend, incoming and others to play those voices to your team. Just cmd voice on a svn server will tell you what other values you can use.
After all that info lets put it into use: Take a look at the Settings/Input menu. When you scroll down the list you will find the userbind. You can change the keys those are bound to and also edit them nicely.
In Nexuiz 2.4.2 that should be the defaults:
Here are some examples that use the numberpad. I find them too cumbersome to press but they are included in Nexuiz like this anyway because there are hardly free keys left and also to give people something to play with and adjust to personal usage:
- Code: Select all
kp_ins messagemode
kp_del messagemode2
kp_end "say_team quad soon"
kp_downarrow "say_team free item %x^7 (l:%y^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here_p"
kp_pgdn "say_team took item (l:%l^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
kp_leftarrow "say_team negative"
kp_5 "say_team need help (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_helpme"
kp_rightarrow "say_team enemy seen (l:%y^7); g_waypointsprite_team_danger_p"
kp_home "say_team defending (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
kp_uparrow "say_team roaming (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
kp_pgup "say_team attacking (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
kp_multiply "say_team killed flagcarrier (l:%y^7); g_waypointsprite_team_p"
kp_slash "say_team dropped flag (l:%d^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here_d"
kp_enter "say :-) / nice one"
kp_plus "say good game"
kp_minus "say hi / good luck and have fun"
kp_ins is just like pressing t, it starts a long message to everyone
kp_del is just like pressing r and y, it starts a long message to your team
kp_end is used to inform team mates that they should move to the quad spawn point because it will soon respawn. When you pick it up take a look at the time. Either take a look at the scoreboard it does display the map time or use showtime 1 that displays the current time. The quad will reappear 2 minutes after it was taken. The classical meaning of this 'soon' are 10 seconds. So add 2 minutes and subtract 10 seconds and inform your team mates at this calculated time with this message... The quad damage is very powerful and thus is very important so make sure people help to get it.
kp_downarrow is used to inform team mates about items that are free for pickup. When you have enough armor and you notice an other one tell your mates instead of getting it yourself. The name of the item you point your crosshair at it displayed in the message.
kp_pgdn is used to inform team mates that you took the item at your current position. Either to tell someone you had to take the item you reported free or that you took the 'native' item like a armor, 100healh or quad. In CTF it can also be used to tell you took the enemy flag. Using this message can help others to time items and in case of the quad also to let your team know that it is in quad possession and does not need to hide from it.
kp_leftarrow is a useful response to anything your team mates said because usually people expect some kind of answer or that your show up or similar. Meaning you will NOT join an attack or CAN't come to get a free item. I sometimes use this directly after a 'defending' message to indicate i'm NOT defending but stacking up.
kp_5 is used to let others know you need something. Your health/armor/weapon is displayed. So if people see you have a shotgun they should save a gun for you, or an armor if you are low or that you need more help attacking or defending. In CTF you can also use it to tell your attacker that your position is not very save for him as you will not be able to defend him.
kp_rightarrow will tell your team that there is an enemy near your position. Most of the time its used to warn your defenders that they soon will have some work to do. But its useful in other ways too. You can also use this message to indicate the number of enemies.. e.g. press the button twice of two enemies. In CTF you can also use it to tell your attacker that your position is not save for him. If he sees someone yelling 'enemy' and location is the own base the attacker should at least be on the watch when entering his base..
kp_home will let your mates know you are defending now (the base or flag or flag-carrier or some other important location/item) and can also be used to indicate that your current position is save (there are no enemies near by). If your attacker has taken the enemy flag this is a way to tell him its safe to come into the base. When the displayed position is NOT the own base it means you keep some other spot free of enemies, for example when waiting for the quad to appear or to clean the way for your flag carrier.
kp_uparrow will let your mates know you are doing the midfielders job now or maybe stackup but can't join an attack or help defenging.
kp_pgup is used to inform your team that you are attacking now (the enemy flag, flag carrier or quad or some other important spot depending on the game mode). Your team should be able to determine that. Also useful to sync an attack as you can wait with really attacking till someone responds to your message.
kp_multiply is used to inform team mates that you killed the enemy flagcarrier. You can also use it to just hint at were you saw the flag carrier as it will spawn a here icon at were you aim at.
kp_slash is used to inform team mates that you lost the flag and spawns a here sign were you were last killed.
kp_enter is used to congratulate some one (or your team) after a wonderful action / frag / capture or just to indicate there was something funny. Sometimes people also use n1 as a shortcut.
kp_minus is used to greet people and show your respect for the other gamers by wishing them luck. Sometimes people also use gl&hf as a shortcut.
kp_plus is used to thank people for the match by saying 'good game' afterwards. Sometimes people also use gg as a shortcut. Other texts for this include 'well played' (wp).
I'm just not too fond of those shortcuts. Newcomers might not get the meaning and i think it shows more respect to use long and readable messages. But thats personal preference. If people rather have more keys for team messages its a good idea to use the short form to avoid having to type so much
I also want to give people a impression of this stuff ingame:
A high quality version of the screenshot is here: http://esteel.planetnexuiz.de/nexuiz/sc ... 000977.jpg
Normaly you do not see so many lines of text, i just wanted to show all those messages on one screenshot..
In most of those team messages some same basic info is append. Either your current location / the location you point your crosshair at and/or your health, armor, weapon info. The location is the most important info thats why its right after the message itself. For most if not even all messages its more important to know WHERE then the rest.. if someone says 'attacking' its good to know where, if his health, armor are low or equipped with a bad weapon he should reconsider, but if you know where he is attacking you might be able to join and help him (or choose the other entrace into the enemy base to confuse the defenders). Same for 'defending' and 'need help', you need to know WHERE though if he has low health you should try to move faster to his position. Or if someone says 'defending' and has high health/armor you might take more time to stack up yourself. For 'enemy', 'flag' 'took item' and 'free item' you also just want to know WHERE (and what item is free to pickup). For 'quad', 'negative', 'positive' all that info is not important and could even confuse people.
Or one could suggest using color codes in the messages.. use ^NUMBER just like in the colored names.
Xeno The Blind has some nice suggestions here, please take a look at them: http://bddempire.com/xeno/team-messages.asp
Nexuiz also ships those aliases by default but they are not bound to keys:
alias asay_ctf_flagcarrier "say_team flag carrier at %y"
alias asay_ctf_haveflag "say_team (%l) have the flag"
alias asay_willgo "say_team will go to %y"
alias asay_support "say_team (%l) need help, %h%%"
alias asay_killed "say_team got killed at %d"
alias asay_noammo "say_team (%l) need %W for %w"
alias asay_drop "say_team (%l) dropped %w ; impulse 17"
You can use them with e.g.:
bind x asay_killed
As reference i use those binds:
- Code: Select all
bind 1 "say good game"
bind 2 "say hi / good luck and have fun"
bind 3 "say_team attacking (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
bind 4 "say_team defending (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
bind 5 "say_team quad soon"
bind 6 "say_team free item %x^7 (l:%y^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here_p"
bind 7 "say_team took item (l:%l^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
bind 8 "say_team need help (l:%l^7) (h:%h^7 a:%a^7 w:%w^7); g_waypointsprite_team_helpme; cmd voice needhelp"
bind 9 "say_team enemy seen (l:%y^7); g_waypointsprite_team_danger_p; cmd voice incoming"
bind 0 "say_team flag seen (l:%y^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here_p; cmd voice seenflag"
bind - "say_team clean (l:%l^7); g_waypointsprite_team_here"
bind = "say_team negative"
bind backspace messagemode2
bind enter messagemode
bind shift "say :-) / nice one"
enter is the same as the default t (message to everyone) and backspace is the same as the default r and y (message to team only)
1, 2, shift just print the text to everyone. Those are 'gamer manners'..
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0, -, = just print the text to your team and for some of them in brackets your current location or location-you-point-at and for a few messages also your health, armor and weapon. 6 also prints the name of the item you point your crosshair at so team mates know WHAT item is available.
I do not use the usual wasd key combination but have moved more to the right and use uhjk as that allows me to use more keys then wasd. This also might explain the 'strange' distribution of keys for the messages.
