Chat Commands

On Introductions

Within the C4 software that powers this lovely little community, there are many commands and keyboard shortcuts available to help streamline using the chat. Ways to format your text, ensure that it reaches the right set (or sets!) of eyes, and otherwise behaves itself to your liking. Skillful application of these commands will ensure that you are swallowed whole and/or fed on a regular basis. (Results may vary, ingestion not guaranteed.)

On Syntax

A good thing to familiarize yourself with first is basic formatting. It's worth noting that all formatting takes place in a markup language style, similar to BBCode or HTML tags. In other words, you must open a tag before the text you wish to alter, then close it after you wish formatting to go back to normal. For instance, in order to make something bold, you'd type something akin to:

[b]God I wish that were me[/b]

...except hopefully a little more tactful than that. Experiment to find word combinations that will make people want your e-peen a whole lot more than that. It's also worth noting that when tagging, either < > or [ ] are equally valid bracket choices; go with whatever sings to your soul the most. Remember that the opening tag is just the brackets and whatever letter combination is used to designate what you're trying to do, and the closing tag is the same but with a right-slash immediately preceding the letters within the tag.

So what's available? Why here's a list!

• [b] [/b] - Bold Text
• [i] [/i] - Italic Text
• [u] [/u] - Underlined Text
• [tt] [/tt] - Subscript Text, AKA Itty-Bitty Text
• [d] [/d] - Strikethrough Text
• [s] [/s] - Spoiler Text

Please note that bold, italics, and underline have a keyboard shortcut! Same as a word processor, just use Ctrl + I/U/B to place an opening and a closing tag on each subsequent keypress. Also note that if you're going to use multiple tags on the same text, they need to be nested. In other words, [b][i][u]this will not work[/b][/i][/u], but [b][i][u]this will.[/u][/i][/b] Just close them in the reverse order of how you opened them.

On Dice

There are a number of dice commands available as well, useful for when you're playing games, want to add an element of chance to a scene, or fops is fighting someone. The syntax for them is consistently !xdy, where x is the number of dice you wish to roll, and y is the range of those dice. There are also a few special commands that can be used in place of the range value, for certain circumstances. For example, to throw three twenty-sided dice, you would type in "!3d20" and you'd get three random numbers spat back at you by the chat, with ranges between 1 and 20. You can throw up to ten dice at a time, with a maximum range of 256. If you need more than that, wow, okay. Calm it down.

Okay But How About A Dice List

• !xdy - Throw x number of dice with y value. I thought we just covered this.
• !xdP - Instead of throwing dice that result in a numerical value, you'll throw a number of dice that randomly select amongst all the people logged into the chat. Please note that the results of this throw will contain the names of the people selected, and they WILL be pinged, so this is rather akin to using @everyone on Discord - if you're going to do it, have a good reason, and don't be a spammer. These are good fluffs.
• !xdR - Essentially the same as the xdP command, except instead of choosing amongst everyone logged in, only those with a roleplay-friendly tag are chosen from. People with IC, Pred, or Prey tags are selected from.
• !xdF - Instead of numerical dice, fate dice are rolled. I'm not a good enough nerd to explain what fate dice are, sorry.
• !xdC - Also instead of dice, cards are drawn. You know, like cards from a playing card deck? You get the little suite symbols and everything.

On AutoComplete

This one's so handy that even though it's just a single tidbit of info, it gets its own section. If you type the first few letters of someone's name, then press the Tab key, the chat will autocomplete their name based on who's logged in that has a name that matches whatever you typed. For example, if Accipitrina_Shilova were logged in, you could just type in "Acc" and hit Tab, and the chat would finish typing out that name for you and you can be on your merry way. Please note that if multiple people match up to what you typed in, keep pressing Tab to cycle through all the names that match. Or just type like one more letter, your call.

On Hoverboxes - or - On Not Accidentally Posting Your Saucy RP in Public

So you can send a DM to someone by clicking on their name, either in the chat window or in the user list. You can accomplish the same by clicking on the name tags for any message you and another person have already sent to each other, and this is all very handy and good. At least until you're sending each other dozens or hundreds of messages, and you have to keep clicking that name every single time. It's annoying, and it winds up with a situation where maybe you forget and wind up putting something in public that you really didn't mean to. Luckily, hoverboxes will save your ass. Simply right-click any person's name in either the main chat or the userlist, select 'Open Hoverbox', and tabs will appear at the top of the chat window. The leftmost one will always be the main chat, but all subsequent tabs are private conversations with specific users. You can open as many as you like, and they persist between sessions, so feel free to just leave them there until you're done with them. Simple, yet powerful.

There's more to cover yet. This is just a first draft.