Chatrooms and channels

[Cookieeater 10]

Chatrooms, a seen feature in games such as Warcraft III in Starcraft II would be a good feature to implement inside ArmA III

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/889/bigchatroom.png

In the large window at the bottom right in this picture, the players, displayed at the right, are inside the channel "teamliquid", with the chat being displayed at the left.

Players clicking the Chatroom button on the main menu will have a chatroom pop up and redirect them to a public channel such as "ArmA III - US channel 2". A player can then change their channel to one of their choosing. In an example, if our player was a member of Teamdeadly, they can go type in to chat "/channel Teamdeadly", and then the channel will be switched to the "Teamdeadly" channel, and the player can chat and arrange games with other people who are inside the "Teamdeadly" channel.

The channel system works on the fly meaning that anyone can create channels. A person can enter in a channel that they'd like to join, such as "/channel cooldudes18thsquadron", and if no one before has made a channel with the exact name, the person automatically creates the channel and becomes the moderator of it, with the power of kicking or banning other players that join the channel afterwards, and assigning other players as moderators if so needs to be. If the moderator exits out of the channel, he no longer is a moderator of the channel.

Why I think ArmA III would benefit a lot from chatrooms:

-Brings entire ArmA III userbase together

-Clans and squads can create their own channels and discuss while inside ArmA III

-People can arrange games of PvP or Coop or RP and ask people to join them

-Modders can create official channels for their mods and have people discussing about their mod and give feedback

-Public troubleshooting channel can remedy people of their problems

Edited June 23, 2011 by Cookieeater

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Meh why would I want to talk to a bunch of strangers?

:Oo:

Steamworks would be better (friends & whatnot).

[rye1 21]

Meh why would I want to talk to a bunch of strangers?

You are... right now.

[Big Dawg KS 6]

You are... right now.

:rolleyes: So ironic right?

[Phantom Six 25]

This is a brilliant idea. I loved the chatroom system back in Starcraft 1. Why if you're online gaming on a PC of course you'll meet a lot of strangers, of course I don't know anyone personally on PC because all of my other friends are all on their consoles.

Well anyways, here's the props I can find to this. If they implant this, it would be easier to organize a game or set up some more organized game and missions instead of having Domi 24/7 all day we can see some more organized missions. Users can then be linked together instead of pubs all on the 24/7 domi and those hardcore guys just all alone in their locked up servers, but then for now I'm just using steam and the group system for steam to setup for this kind of stuff for now although not everyone is active at all times.

[lsp 10]

Or you could just find and join a game.

[Freeborne 10]

Warcraft and Starcraft are RTS games. Is there any FPS games were such a feature is already implemented and works well?

I find many games have too much chat text as it is, with all the automated mission generated text that pops up, made worse if you have someone who likes to spam text chat often (they can't be 'muted' like VON). When you're playing a game where a split second can mean life/death, you don't want to spend much time trying to read text before it quickly scrolls/fades away.

So if you then have people who can add to the chat box from anywhere, outside the game, regardless of ping limits, required mods, etc.... it sounds like a recipe for total spammage.

[jblackrupert 14]

Warcraft and Starcraft are RTS games. Is there any FPS games were such a feature is already implemented and works well?

I find many games have too much chat text as it is, with all the automated mission generated text that pops up

This is chat outside of servers before you join one.

There are several more games that have this including many old games

it's nothing really new.

Battlefield 2142 has a friends list in the browser that allows you to

- Send online and offline messages

- See when friends are online

- See which server they are on and join it.

I *think* Crysis 2 has a community chatroom.

They work very well and you are not forced to use it if you don't want to

it's very handy for getting people together to join an empty server.

[Cookieeater 10]

First off, did you try looking at the picture of the chatrooms in SC2? It's not in game, it's in the menu, meaning it won't pop up in game. Also spammage can be kept to a minimum easily by having IRC-style chat channels, where the creator of the channel is the moderator and can kick and ban players in the channel. That means if you wanted to have a conversation with your group of friends after a game on what game they should play next, you could type in "/channel 1923chicken04" and depending if anyone already made a channel named "1923chicken04", if noone has made a channel with that name, you become moderator of the new channel, while if some other players are in the channel, the first one who made it is the current moderator.

[CarlGustaffa 4]

I'm open for the idea, even to have it accessible during a game, for those slow moments where you just wait, wait, wait. But thought have to go into how to prevent using it for "cheating", or infiltrating and sharing stuff with the enemy in PvP games. Maybe mission specifies if this item is accessible?

Big Dawg KS mentions SteamWorks - that wrecks havoc in my stomach. The downside (for many) is steam required. The upside being cross games. I would by far prefer a system that is native to the game, simply to avoid steam.

It could also be used for cross server notification services, like invites being sent out to attract players to a tactical mission that is just about to start (these are hard to JIP as they don't want to spend time explaining the plan to every new joiner - and we're probably too eager to play so we won't sit around waiting for a server with status "briefing" to show up, so we join a temporary server). It's up to mission maker how access to this menu is handled, I would probably only allow access in the base using addAction on a commanding vehicle or whatever.

Does this work as anti espionage? When you join a mission, you automatically also join the missions chat room. Anything you type in private chat rooms are automatically bounced to the mission chat room, and list of users that are present in both chat rooms are shown - allows admin to keep track.

[dmarkwick 261]

Whilst I have no particular objection to Steam, I think it would be preferable to have this feature ingame. After all, it's only one new text channel, visible only outside the mission right?

[R0adki11 3949]

Some kind of friends list and chat function would be useful, i try to stay clear of STEAM. Although i am a user of steam, id prefer if Arma3 was kept apart. :)

[jblackrupert 14]

visible only outside the mission right?

Thats it.

You enter a lobby and join channels created by users from there to find hook up with other players.

Games that I've seen with it have it on a tab so it's not in your face

once you launch the MP browser. It's there if you want to use it.

For me, the less third party crap running in the background that I have to juggle to do things the better.

Steam is bloated system hogging crap IMO.

Even TS3 has issues with resource hogging and introducing mouse lag on some peoplea systems regardless of the specs.

Edited June 23, 2011 by jblackrupert

[CarlGustaffa 4]

visible only outside the mission right?

I would prefer if mission maker could make cross server shouts receivable within a mission. 30 min delay between each shout (stop spamming), blocklist support (stop idiots from reaching), login admin required; which then reaches the server I play on, which becomes available in a set of parameters within missionNamespace or whatever.

As they tick in I can log them by time, and choose to display them via action from a selected object. Or just hint it if I allow disturbances while on mission.

This way, I can be on a temporary server until something more interesting shows up via the shout. Without having to exit the server every now and then just to check. JIP'ing into more serious missions isn't always fun, as you don't get told what to do. Being there from the beginning is much more awesome, but now I often miss those opportunities.