Straylight Quick-Chat

There are many reasons players either can't or don't want to use a microphone in VoIP.

Some players simply might not have a working microphone. Using SQC they can now communicate using this channel, instead of only "passively" listening.

Reasons why players would not want to use a microphone are plenty: You might not want to disturb people around you (especially when playing late at night), you might be ashamed of your voice, you might not be fluent in the language your teammates communicate in, or you simply don't want your teammates to find out you are actually 12 years old and/or a Reptilian in disguise.

The short answer: No, sorry.

The long answer: Well, it theoretically is possible, but can be quite involved (and may require you to spend some money).

SQC relies on a third-party driver like (VB-CABLE) so the sound output by the app can be routed to an input used by the VoIP software of your choice. Because VoIP software usually doesn't allow more than one input device, the microphone input and the SQC sound clips must be mixed at some point before the signal is sent to the VoIP software. One way would be to have SQC itself listen to the mic input, constantly pass it on to VoIP, and mix in the voice clips ever ytime a macro is triggered - While this is a feature I might try to implement at a later time, right now it is not on the list of priorities, and likely won't be for quite some time. Signal mixing can however be achieved with commercial software like "Virtual Audio Cable" ($25-$50) which allows multiple virtual devices being mixed into one. There is also "Voicemeeter", a virtual audio mixer from the same guys that made VB-CABLE. With some fiddling around and tweaking you should be able to mix the VoIP output from SQC with your mic input, and use the new signal as input in your VoIP application. I have not yet tried this myself, so at this point you're alone.

That's not a question.

But from personal experience I can say that it usually doesn't take very long to memorize a couple of "core" patterns for your game. Once you get comfortable with it, I found this to be a very elegant, flexible, and fast system.

Note to people creating their own macros or packs: It usually helps to organize macros in a way where the letters correspond to certain category names that make sense to the player. "A" for "attack", "D" for defense, "G" for global, and "V" for quick, etc. - The list of the included "Fractured Space" macros should be a decent example.

The "classic" method to use team chat or global chat is to assign a separate key for each one (like "T" global chat, and "Y" for team chat). You press either of those keys, and the chat window will be set fixed to either global or team chat. If you set "Global Chat Switch" to OFF, you get this classic behavior; If a macro is marked as global, the app will simulate the press of the "Global Chat Key" before posting the chat message, if a macro is not marked as global, the app will simulate a press of the "Team Chat Key" before posting the chat message.

There are however a couple of games that only have a single key to open the chat window, and then require a second key press to switch between team and global chat. If you set the "Global Chat Switch" setting to ON, the app will always simulate a press of the "Team Chat Key" when a macro is triggered. If the macro is marked as global, the app will then simulate the press of the "Global Chat Key" before posting the chat message.

So let assume you have a game where you open the chat box by pressing RETURN. The chat defaults to team chat, but you can switch to global chat by pressing Left CTRL. To make this work correctly in SQC, you would set the "Team Chat Key" to "RETURN", the "Global Chat Key" to "LeftCTRL", and set the "Global Chat Switch" to ON.

No. SQC'S pattern-based type of macros are meant to be organized in rather extensive "macro trees". The shortest macro you can create is the "Base Key" ("v" by default) + 1 other letter or number.

The "spirit" of SQC is to trigger a chat+sound combination, even if with this external app it's likely the people you play with will only see your text or hear the sound. The app requires you to specify an mp3 file and input a chat message when creating a new macro, however if you want to you can disable "Send Chat" in the settings. To create a macro with an "empty" sound file, I have added a "blank.mp3" in the ./sounds/ folder, which is just 1 sec of silence (I use that mainly for creating the "category" macros, as they don't trigger any actual playback).

"Categories" are macros that will not trigger the sending of chat or playback of the associated mp3 file. They are used in the overlay to help users navigate the macro patterns. To create a "category" macro simply put a "#" as first character in the "chat message" field, the rest of the string will be shown as the text in the overlay. Currently the app still requires an mp3 file associated with the macro, even if it's not being played; You can use the ./sounds/blank.mp3 for that.

Currently you can't do this using the app itself. You can however save your macro list, and then edit the .sqc file (it's plain text). If the entry in the .sqc does not point to an absolute file location, the app will try relative to the sounds directory (so for example if the entry is "test/hello.mp3" the app will look for ./sounds/test/hello.mp3). This is mainly relevant if you want to create your own "macro/sound packs" and send them to other players.

Not at the moment, sorry.

Feel free to send me a link to your macro/sound pack, and I'll give it a go. If it's of decent quality, I can add it to the download section, or possibly even the packs bundled with the default app download.

The Overlay will not work if you run your game in fullscreen mode, it should however work in windowed, and windowed-fullscreen mode. That said, the overlay is an experimental feature and might not always work correctly.

A "proper" overlay (like the FRAPS fps counter, TeamSpeak overlay, etc.) hooks into DirectX/Direct3D and manipulates what is drawn on the screen. I haven't had time yet to dive into that topic. It's on my wishlist, but it doesn't have a high priority right now. On the plus side: the current simply overlay doesn't run a risk of being detected by VAC, etc. as a hack.

If you are by any chance a programmer proficient in messing around with Direct3D, and would like to help me implement a "proper" overlay that works in "classic" fullscreen mode, please feel free to send me an email, I'll gladly take some help in this regard.

Because that's the game I coded the app for in the first place.

Fractured Space is a competitive 5v5 MOBA-ish capital ship battle game - IN SPACE! (Also it's Free2Play, so feel free to give it a spin) I enjoy it quite a lot. Being able to effectively communicate with your teammates is important, and can mean the difference between winning and getting steamrolled. Most the time I play in solo-queue, so I won't be able to communicate with my teammates via VoIP. This usually is not much of a problem for me in other games like Tribes, or SMITE - because they have a proper chat macro system built into the game. Fractured Space, at the current point in development, lacks an extensive and flexible method to communicate. So I made my own.

But it's designed in a way that should allow anybody to create their own macros for the game of their choice. Maybe SQC can even be used as a proof-of-concept for developers, so they can get a feeling of how it would work and feel in their game (a proper build-in voice/chat macro system will always be my favorite option, SQC IS more or less a workaround).

Straylight Quick-Chat IS freeware. If you downloaded SQC from another website and they made you pay for it, you were scammed. Please send information about the website and proof of your purchase to hypergrip@gmx.de, and I'll have my attorney send an angry letter.