Messaging and HUD

Four ways to put words in front of a player, from the chat log to the middle of the screen — and the label over their body that everyone else sees.

Chat

Function
SendClientMessage(pid, colour, text)	a line in one player’s chat
SendClientMessageToAll(colour, text)	in everyone’s

Colours are 0xRRGGBBAA. Predefined: COLOUR_SERVER (the server’s amber), COLOUR_WHITE, COLOUR_RED, COLOUR_GREEN, COLOUR_YELLOW.

What players type arrives as OnPlayerText (return false to swallow a line) and /commands as OnPlayerCommandText.

GameText

One line, big, in a serif, on the player’s screen for ms milliseconds (3000 by default, 100..60000), fading out over its last half second — “Round 3”, “You win”. A new one replaces it.

Function
GameText(pid, text [, ms, style])
GameTextForAll(text [, ms, style])

style: GAMETEXT_CENTRE (0, the default), GAMETEXT_TOP, GAMETEXT_LOWER (the lower third — a subtitle).

HUD texts

A HUD text is a line at a fraction of the screen from the top left (0.5, 0.02 = top centre; 0.99, 0.02 with HUD_ALIGN_RIGHT = top right), shown to the players you choose. A change re-sends it to them; it survives respawns and goes with the disconnect. Ids start at 1.

Function
CreateHudText(x, y, text [, colour, scale, align]) → id | nil	scale 1 = the HUD’s size (0.5..5); align HUD_ALIGN_LEFT (default), HUD_ALIGN_CENTRE, HUD_ALIGN_RIGHT
DestroyHudText(id)
SetHudText(id, text), GetHudText(id)
SetHudTextPos(id, x, y), SetHudTextColour(id, colour), SetHudTextScale(id, scale), SetHudTextAlign(id, align)
ShowHudText(id, pid), HideHudText(id, pid)	for one player
ShowHudTextForAll(id), HideHudTextForAll(id)
IsHudTextShown(id, pid)
GetHudTexts() → {id, ...}

Both GameText and HUD texts draw under the overlay’s own windows and vanish behind the loading screen and the game’s menu.

-- a world clock in the top right corner of every screen, refreshed every 2 s
local clock = CreateHudText(0.99, 0.02, FormatWorldTime(), COLOUR_YELLOW, 1.0, HUD_ALIGN_RIGHT)
SetTimer(function() SetHudText(clock, FormatWorldTime()) end, 2000, true)

function OnPlayerSpawn(pid)
  ShowHudText(clock, pid)
end

Nameplates and colours

The nameplate is the label over a player’s body that the other clients draw; a respawn keeps it. The colour also colours the name in the Tab roster.

Function
SetPlayerNameplate(pid, text), GetPlayerNameplate(pid)	"" = the name again; 48 characters at most
SetPlayerColour(pid, colour), GetPlayerColour(pid)	0xRRGGBBAA; 0 = the default (SetPlayerColor is the same)

Teams

Function
SetPlayerTeam(pid, team), GetPlayerTeam(pid)	NO_TEAM (-1) = none

A hit between two players of one team is refused before OnPlayerDamage (the log says “teammates”) and starts no fight. A team the clients should know too — for a marker, a colour on the client side — goes in the player’s state bag as well.