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Custom Chat bubble coloration One of the features about City of Heroes many like is the ability to change their chat bubbles. Using colors consistent with the theme of the character is makes your "voice" stand out from the crowd. It is simple to do, though not simple to explain within game, and I frequently get asked it. It uses HTML coding (which is what is behind most web pages) to change font color and size. HTML commands are the ones in the <> brackets below. For example: You have a character that is all black and bright green. You want your bubble to match. Highlight the chat box and type the following. (There must be a space after /bind, enter, and beginchat) /bind enter beginchat <color lime><bgcolor black><border lime> For an American patriotic-themed character I used : /bind enter beginchat <color white><bgcolor blue><border red> This replaces the standard coding for pressing enter - It still opens the chatbox, but types the color commands and LEAVES them on the chat. You type your text after that point and it prints it USING the color commands. COLOR is the color of the text, BGCOLOR is the background color of the chat balloon. BORDER is the color of the outside border of the text box. You can find a list of the colors available here. A color can also be represented by #000000, which allows custom colors beyond the previous list. A good site for that is found at Visibone. You may want to adjust the standard buttons Like F7 (The Ready button). That is done like such. /bind f7 "say <color white><bgcolor blue><border red> Ready!! $$ emote thumbsup" The SAY command simply uses the currently selected chat window to issue the statement. If you are on local - it says it locally. We use quotes because this is being issued directly -- we don't have to hit enter -- F7 does it all. The $$ completes the original command and allows us to do one more. In this case the thumbs up. Again - if you are customizing this for certain characters, you might want to do something like an "emote roar" for a animalistic or demonic character. You can even make custom HOT keys. Many people say "gratz" when someone hits a level. Why not take this a step further? I use one where I highlight the character that just leveled and hit F12. /bind f12 "say <color white><bgcolor blue><border red> Congratulations $target on your new level!! $$ emote clap" The $target is replaced by the name of the person you had highlighted. If you use a hex code for bgcolor, you can make the color semi-transparrent. Make it an 8 digit hex code. <bgcolor #FF0000> is a red background.. <bgcolor #FF000080> is red with half-transparency. Try other values to adjust it all the way down to clear. PLEASE -- if you are using these commands, keep the color combos READABLE. Some color combos aren't! OTHER Commands Specific Chat windows /l
for
local <scale 1.5> Allows you to change the font size. The number is in a range from .75 up. It defaults at 1, and I've seen people use as high as 4. <delay 2> Allows you to set the delay before a chat bubble disappears, anywhere from 2 to 20 seconds. /bind_save This saves ALL your character's keybinds as currently set to a file C:\keybinds.txt (It is advisable to use this BEFORE you start replacing standard keys -- just in case you have to replace the originals. /cc # Used to change costumes (if you are level 20+) 0 is the first one, 1 is the second, etc. However there is an enforced 20 second rule between changes to avoid giving the servers fits. Default Variables $name
your character's name
For more COMPLETE information on using Keybinds check any of the following sites.
06/30/2005 PLEASE note that in Issue 4, they added something to the OPTIONS in the menu that allows you to set up the color of the balloon and balloon text there. Its a little more automatic, but doesn't do 3 color balloons that they above technique does...
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