Zens Immersive Chat HUD

We all know the golden rule: no mic, no life.

There’s a good reason for this rule: you can’t trust someone you can’t communicate with, and no one has time to read text messages. Hell, most DayZ players can’t even read.

But, for the mutes among us who either don’t have a mic (or their mic has stopped working temporarily and they need to resort to text chat to beg for their lives) – they might buy themselves some time by having their text messages appear above their heads RuneScape style, and this mod might just save their lives.

Or at least prolong their execution.

When a player types text chat in-game the text will appear above their head with the same limitations of voice chat (hence the "immersive" in my mod’s title).

If they’re on "whisper" chat mode (1 ring on the voice chat setting for microphones) their text can only be seen by players ~7 meters away (like voice chat) and the text is italic and blue.

If they’re on "normal" chat mode (2 rings) their text can be seen by players within 30 meters and is white and normal case.

If they’re on "shout" chat mode (3 rings) their text can be seen ~45 meters away and is red and all capslock.

If they’re gagged or wearing a helmet which obscures their in-game voice, the text will be mumbled and ~75% of the letters will be replaced with . (check the video attached to the mod for some examples).

These text messages can be seen through walls, just as voice can be heard through walls, with the text appearing above the player’s head (so they can’t troll people inside buildings without players knowing their exact location – just as they would if they spoke with a mic).

I made this mod because quite a few times my mic has stopped working in-game due to changing my audio settings for work-related stuff and I’ve had to type text in a panic to explain the situation and about 50% of the time players don’t even see the text chat in the textbox, so this mod helps with that. Also it’s obviously a good mod for role-play servers.

As with all my mods, it’s open-source and you’re free to do what you want with it – just be gentle.

Install this mod like any other mod – copy it into your server folder and add it to your mods list. Make sure to copy the .bikey into your server keys if you’re not using a server management tool like OmegaManager which does that automatically.

This mod must be installed on both server and client.

Bonus setting: if you run Syberia or some other mod that changes the player’s character name to be different to their Steam profile name, check the Extras folder for an example of how to override the player name in text chat with this mod.

You can repack this mod if you like, and do anything else you want with it for that matter. The source code is on my GitHub at www.zenarchist.io

All my mods are free and open source, but it takes an enormous amount of time to put some of these mods together. If I’ve helped you out, please consider helping me buy my next coffee! I don’t expect it, but I very much appreciate it.

https://buymeacoffee.com/zenarchist

Enjoy!