3.4 KiB
Console
Default Killing Floor console output is ill-fit for printing long text messages due to it's automatic line breaking of long enough messages: it breaks formatting and can lead to an ugly text overlapping. To fix this ConsoleAPI breaks up user's output into lines by itself, before game does.
We are not 100% sure how Killing Floor decides when to break the line, but it seems to calculate how much text can actually fit in a certain area on screen. There are two issues:
- We do not know for sure what this limit value is. Even if we knew how to compute it, we cannot do that in server mode, since it depends on a screen resolution and font, which can vary for different players.
- Even invisible characters, such as color change sequences, that do not take any space on the screen, contribute towards that limit. So for a heavily colored text we will have to break line much sooner than for the plain text.
Both issues are solved by introducing two limits:
- Total character limit will be a hard limit on a character amount in a line (including hidden ones used for color change sequences) that will be used to prevent Killing Floor's native line breaks.
- Visible character limit will be a lower limit on amount of actually visible character. It introduction basically reserves some space that can be used only for color change sequences. Without this limit lines with colored lines will appear to be shorter that mono-colored ones. Visible limit will help to alleviate this problem.
These limits depend on resolution and even with access to clients it's hard to determine their optimal values precisely. Acedia provides default values for these limits that should work for most people, which can be configured through AcediaSystem.ini file (ConsoleAPI section).
Basic usage
Most of your interactions with ConsoleAPI will be through ConsoleWriter object that provides convenient facade to ConsoleBuffer (which does the actual work of breaking user messages into lines).
It provides several useful methods for outputting Text console messages, all properly using it's color information:
| Method | Short description |
|---|---|
WriteLine() |
Outputs all the contents of Text in the console, breaking a line. |
Write() |
Writes contents of provided Text into the output buffer, without actually outputting it. If you chain several Write() calls - all of their content will be put together. To actually display them you'll need to use Flush() method. If accumulated buffer can't fit into a single line - it will be output as several lines, each starting with a sequence designating a line wrapping: "| ". |
WriteBlock() |
Acts as WriteLine(), but appends additional indentation in front of all output. |
Say() |
Acts as WriteLine(), but appends player's name in front every message, like regular chat messages. |
Simplest way to access it is from APlayer instance: player.Console(). You can also get ConsoleWriter that outputs messages to all players at the same time with _.console.ForAll().
Configuration
Total and visible character limits can be configured with GetVisibleLineLength()/SetVisibleLineLength()/GetTotalLineLength()/SetTotalLineLength() defined in both ConsoleAPI and ConsoleWriter. ConsoleAPI's methods change default setting s for all future CnosoleWriters and ConsoleWriter's only change it's particular settings.
Additionally default text color can be managed with GetColor()/SetColor() methods.