Thanks for the great post.
I've always wanted to make a transparent bubble with a white border/text.
Sigh, if only they'd let us use different styles (TNR, Comic Book) of text.
after reading this I have learned many things, one of which I feel is most important:
text bubble size can only make .5 past lightspeed.
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{ 2 } What you CAN NOT do. { 2 }
You can not do any of the following with chat bubbles:
--- Post a clickable URL within your bubble.
--- Change the text font within your bubble.
--- Change the text orientation (italic, bold, underline, etc.) within your bubble.
--- Make your text blink or animate within your text bubble.
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In a curious counterexample, of which I have yet to find out how it happened, I produce the following clip from a screenshot I made a while back. I have no idea how it happened -- whether it was a glitch in transmission, in my client software, or actually a capability of the game. I was on Peregrine Island, and one of the other heroes said something on the Request channel that came up as 'dlya' -- 'd', 'l', 'ya' -- in Cyrillic characters: Screenshot (full image available on request, so you can see it wasn't manipulated)
If anyone can duplicate the effect, I would be quite interested in how they did it; if it's something the game supports, even if it is complicated to do, it has the potential to enhance the chat functions significantly. Of course, if you can change the font of a chat message, you run into the same 'what happens if someone doesn't have that font on their system?' problem you do with web pages, which can ruin the effect.
"But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses."
-- Bruce Leverett, Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers
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If anyone can duplicate the effect, I would be quite interested in how they did it; if it's something the game supports, even if it is complicated to do, it has the potential to enhance the chat functions significantly. Of course, if you can change the font of a chat message, you run into the same 'what happens if someone doesn't have that font on their system?' problem you do with web pages, which can ruin the effect.
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You can use the Windows Character Map program to copy & paste some symbols into the chat window. It doesn't work with every character set or symbol, so you'll have to experiement to see what works. But I remember getting µ to work.
Ok, I'm pretty sure that I've got the coding down fine, but every time I actually test it in game, all I get is a solid black bubble. No visible text, no visible border, and no transparency. Even using just 6 character hex code for the colors doesn't help.
Here's a sample bind:
ENTER "beginchat <bgcolor ff0000><color 00006f><border 00af00>"
F6 "local <color 00006f><border 00af00><bgcolor ff0000>Run, Run, RUN!"
Now neither of these has black in it, so obviously there's a problem somewhere, but I'll be gajiggered if I can find it. Any and all help greatly appreciated.
I did that too.
Instead of this ---> <bgcolor ff0000>
Try this ---> <bgcolor #ff0000>
The "#" sign tells it to use hex.
also for you lazy people out there like me, who don't want to bother with hex code, you can just type out a color you want.
red,blue, etc. But if the color you typed in turns out to be black and not what you wanted, then that text form of the color is not recongized. I don't know if it works with say like blue green, as a color. i'm too lazy to test.
Now that Issue 3 is out, we can make changes to the text color and background color in the options section. But, you can't change the border color or transparency there.
Also, I noticed that it doesn't seem to work for keybinds.
] "local I can handle this; you should find other villains to vanquish!"
For example, the above still appears as black text on a white background, no matter how you change your options. Or, is it just me?
If you would like to use additional characters in your chat bubbles, there are a few ways to do this. Open up CharMap , under Start-> Programs -> Accessories. If you dont have it installed, you can use MS Word, under the Insert Menu, there is an option Symbol. In Character Map you will see a window that looks like this. You can use pretty much any of the symbols that are listed here. If you select one and copy it, switch over to the game and press CTRL+V to paste it in your window.
Now pasting all the time can be a problem, but you can use these in a bind. The first thing you will have to do is change the format of your text file. The default option in Notepad is ANSI text, you will have to change it to UTF-8. You do this by clicking on the File -> Save as. It will bring up a prompt that looks like this. Select UTF-8 and save the file. You can now paste the characters from the CharMap (or Word Insert Symbol) Into your binds.
I can't show the actual text here since the UBB formatting wont allow it, but if you did everything correctly, you will see chat bubbles that look like this.
Thanks to Adgramaine for coming up with the question. Thanks to Grotus for refining my half formed/half baked idea into something that actually worked. Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting.
nice post
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If you would like to use additional characters in your chat bubbles, there are a few ways to do this. Open up CharMap , under Start-> Programs -> Accessories. If you dont have it installed, you can use MS Word, under the Insert Menu, there is an option Symbol. In Character Map you will see a window that looks like this. You can use pretty much any of the symbols that are listed here. If you select one and copy it, switch over to the game and press CTRL+V to paste it in your window.
Now pasting all the time can be a problem, but you can use these in a bind. The first thing you will have to do is change the format of your text file. The default option in Notepad is ANSI text, you will have to change it to UTF-8. You do this by clicking on the File -> Save as. It will bring up a prompt that looks like this. Select UTF-8 and save the file. You can now paste the characters from the CharMap (or Word Insert Symbol) Into your binds.
I can't show the actual text here since the UBB formatting wont allow it, but if you did everything correctly, you will see chat bubbles that look like this.
Thanks to Adgramaine for coming up with the question. Thanks to Grotus for refining my half formed/half baked idea into something that actually worked. Thanks to ImageShack for Free Image Hosting.
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It should also be noted that the Font Set used by the game is Arial Unicode MS.
I just looked aroung the Arial Unicode MS set and was floored... Am I only getting all these characters (mainly the Chinese and Japanese ones) because of the language packs I've picked up or will everyone be able to see them?
If for everyone, then it's time to give my MA scrapper's attacks their proper names. ^_^
All that is planned fails. All that is born dies.
All that is built crumbles. This will always be true.
But memories remain, And that is beautiful.
COLOR NAMES
Near as I can tell, the named colors follow the HTML naming scheme. www.w3schools.com has a color chart with their names and HEX equivalents.
<bg khaki>
DURATION
Chat bubbles also support the <duration seconds> aspect.
PLAGIARISM
This is the most recent chat bubble color guide I can find on these boards. I'll be borrowing a lot of the wording from the OP in the article I'm making on www.paragonwiki.com.
PLAGIARISM
Here is the condensed version.
One question
After you do the bind say and you want to revert back to normal.
Is there anyway to reset it?
The chat bubble color is either your default (set in the options window). or the color specified at the time you type the message, or the default for the chat channel (arena and help are blue on white, everything else is black on white).
This was my first stop hopping to find a way to fix my chat binds after i12 effectively destroyed them all. I'm familiar with everything posted here but I have yet to figure out a solution to my problem. What's happened to all my old binds is that instead of just using the code to change the text and chat bubble, the code is now being displayed along with my chat. I've been forced to restore all default binds just to make my characters playable and tech support just gave me a forum link to here... Has anyone else gone through this and come up with a way to fix it?
Here's a few examples of old binds and macros that worked before i12 that I've had to rewrite or restore to default.
/bind Enter beginchat <border #ffcc33><color #ffffff><bgcolor #003366>
/bind F7 "say <border #ffcc33><color #ffffff><bgcolor #003366>Ready!$$emote thumbsup"
/macro TP "say <border #ffcc33><color #ffffff><bgcolor #003366>Recalling $target to my location.$$powexec_name Recall Friend"
Looks like "<border red>" has been changed to "<bordercolor red>".
Either leave out the border designation or change it to "bordercolor" and the binds/macros above should work fine.
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Looks like "<border red>" has been changed to "<bordercolor red>".
Either leave out the border designation or change it to "bordercolor" and the binds/macros above should work fine.
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THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! I have my clear chat bubbles back!!! THANK YOU!!! 
You don't hit smiling monsters - Sister Flame
This is easily one of the best posts I've ever read in any of the forums. Thanks for taking the time.
I'm having the exact same problem mentioned earlier with the color codes appearing next to my message string in a bind. (Works fine if I manually type it into the chat box as a slash command and hit Enter.) 
I don't even have the border color set on my binds. For example, my bind to the 'sysrq' key looks something like this:
sysrq "say <color #BFCFFE><bgcolor #0033CC>Gather for Recovery Aura!$$ bind_load_file C:\CoXBinds\NextBind.txt"
Everything works fine with the exception of the chat bubble colors as mentioned. Any other ideas?
It is my understanding that all in-chat commands that are set in < & > are broken. A revision to the chat an issue or so ago broke the < & >, and, while it will be fixed someday, it hasn't yet.
The only option seems to be to take them out completely.
Note that the post you replied to is almost a year old. The break was much more recent than that.
Thanks for the update!
I did notice the age of the post I replied to -- I've only returned to the game after a long period spent (wasted, hehe) in Azeroth, so I was hoping a change had occurred on a recent Issue for which I could adjust my binds to correct. Ah well. I'll take out colors entirely. (I could change the "say" command to "beginchat" and hit return a couple of times after each load, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a single key. It does allow the colors to work, but ppphhhttt to that. 
)
Again, many thanks for replying! Regards.
I used to have specific colors on several chat keybinds, also. It's quite frustrating.
I have one that sends a tell to myself with my level, origin and archetype. (Very useful for us altistic types.) I have the <duration 1> command on that, so the bubble will go away in 1 second. That doesn't work either, but I'm leaving that command in because no one else sees it, and it'll tell me if/when they get fixed.
Welcome Back!
bind the key with "nop"; i.e. "/bind q nop".
(Nop stands for No Operation; thus it stands for "unbinding" a key.)
You can also save your binds, reset all, and edit the bind listing file in Notepad or your favorite text editor, but I wouldn't bother unless you're cutting a lot of binds.