Dancer Archive

Okay just a question for you performers. I like to dance in the Coronet cantina on Corellia. The place is always jumpin' with performers and customers all chatting and having fun. So my spatial chat windwow is full of things I'd like to read, or at least keep an eye on to see if anyone is talking to me. But I'm also getting the usual system messages about 'You earned X points of experience in dancing' and so on. These make my spatial chat window scroll so fast I can barely read what everyone is saying.

So I'm wondering how all of you dancers and musicans that work in a busy cantina handle this. It's really hard to hold a chat with a customer with everything moving so fast. I've tried making the window bigger, but that only goes so far before it detracts from the graphics. Is there any way to take the system messages out of this box?

If any of you are on Naritus galaxy, drop by for a visit at the Coronet cantina.

Megcat Cour

Novice Entertainer/Amateur Dancer

Megcat, have you tried modifying your chat tab so that the "you perform a flourish, you receive xx points of dancing experience" spam appears at the top of your screen, but not the chat box?? I did this and it was an incredible help!

Micara
Chilastra

This is what I do:

You can take out the System Messages from your spatial chat box. To do this go to modify on the chat tab. You can choose which things you want where. I take out Instant Messages and System Messages. I then make a new chat tab for IM and SM. I then pull the tab out into the screen. This creates a new little box but one that you cannot type in. Since I don't have to use either of them to chat, I can use them as handy reference guides. I usually pull them to the side of the screen. You can also make the UI more transparent by going into the options and then to chat. This helps with getting it out of the way. Hope this can help!

Do this...

Near the tabs on your main chat window (just to the right of them). Right click and make a new chat window. This will make a new tab. Then right click the new tab and select modify. Set this new chat to show combat and system messages.

Then left click and drag this new tab. That makes you a new chat window!! Put the new window someplace handy. Now make another new tab. Make this one show everythign EXCEPT Combat and System messages. With these 2 chat windows active, you will find conversation goes to one, and dance spam goes to the other!

But wait, let's do even more!! Do a Ctrl-O. Choose colors. Now, you want to set up SENTENCE highlighting. FO me I did it as follows:

For the sequence "tips you" and "heals you" I set the colors to blue. Then I set my name highlighting to purple.

So, anytime someone says my name, the sentence appears in purple. Anytime I am tipped or healed the system message appears in blue. Now I rarely miss stuff that happens or is said to me.

Try it, you will like it!

-F

Yeah, separating out muliutple "chat" windows is key. The sentence coloring is also a big life saver! Here's a screenshot of my set up (this is a 1600x1200 image, so it could take a while to download):

http://www.skywarpgold.com/swg/sha/manage_chat.jpg

I have three main windows going. The Spatial window only has the spatial spam and things like "match" events or whatever. the System Message window has the System Message spam and IMs. The GroupChat window has group chat, IMs, and guild/chatroom messages. I especially like maximizing the horizontal space at the bottom of the screen by making the menu bar vertical.

I highly recommend Flechette's coloring suggestions. It takes about thirty seconds to set up, and helps immensely.

Something else that's helping me, which I did only yesterday, was expanding the range at which I can see chat bubbles. I don't particularly like the chat bubbles, and before I got the game Iimagined I'd shut them off entirely... but the truth is thatbeing able to see themhelps immensely, because the range for spatial chat is so large, people speaking a good distance away are still 'audible' in the chat box. So being able to see the bubble over someone's head isA Good Thing.

I noticed that I wasn't seeing chat bubbles over the heads of folks who were standing across the cantina from me, so I went into Configuration (probably under Chat but I'm not 100% sure) and pulled the 'chat bubble viewing distance' to the right to increase the range. Really glad I did this.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have the color options thing and the multiple chat windows already working. I was looking for an way to choose which chat channel got the system messages. I think y'all have figured it out for me. I'll be trying it the next time I'm in the cantina.

Megcat