Real-Time Head Chat

Real-Time Head Chat is a mod-only accessibility chat for BONELAB Fusion. As a player types on their physical keyboard, the text updates above their avatar's head for other players running the mod. There is no chat window to open and no clipboard workflow.

Features

• Enabled automatically after installation.
• Updates overhead text while the player is typing.
• Shows a compact near-vision preview of the local player's head text.
• Backspace edits the current text.
• Ctrl+V pastes clipboard text into the current message.
• Preserves Unicode emoji sequences during typing, paste, Backspace, networking, and overhead wrapping when BONELAB has a compatible fallback glyph.
• Enter clears the text immediately.
• Five seconds without keyboard input clears the text automatically.
• Reliably relays messages from hosts and clients, limits them to 160 characters, and sends at most ten updates per second.
• Removes stale remote text if a clear update is lost.
• Wraps overhead text onto two lines after 80 characters and three lines after 120, with progressively smaller fonts. The local VR preview remains unchanged.
• Includes separate BoneMenu toggles for the chat feature and local typing HUD, plus a manual clear button.
• Includes saved, live VR HUD placement controls expressed in centimeters.

Requirements

• MelonLoader
• BoneLib 3.2.1 or later
• LabFusion 1.14.2 or later

Every player who needs to produce or see the overhead text must install this mod. Players without it do not participate in the head-chat system.

Installation

Install through Thunderstore Mod Manager/r2modman, or copy RealTimeHeadChat.dll into BONELAB/Mods/ for manual installation.

Usage

Join a Fusion session and begin typing on the physical keyboard. Use Backspace to edit, Ctrl+V to paste, or Enter to dismiss the current text. The chat feature or only its local VR HUD can be toggled under BoneMenu > Real-Time Head Chat. Head Chat Enabled controls typing and broadcasting; Show VR HUD controls only the local headset preview. Both are enabled by default.

Use VR HUD Placement to adjust horizontal position, vertical position, and distance from the headset in centimeters. Changes apply immediately and save automatically.

Changelog

1.5.0

• Stable release restoring the original 1.4.1 Fusion RigNameTag appearance and automatic stacking above usernames.
• Fixed gradual text-size growth and shrinkage by resetting the chat nametag object's local scale to 1,1,1 during normal updates and again after Unity's animation/layout pass.
• Uses one clean canonical font baseline, rather than treating an already-resized pooled text object as the new default.
• Explicitly reapplies the one-, two-, or three-line font size and disables TextMeshPro auto-sizing.
• Detects when Fusion replaces a pooled text object and initializes the replacement from the clean baseline.
• Restores the clean font and object scale before returning a chat nametag to Fusion's pool.
• Fusion's parent HeadUI remains responsible for the intended avatar-height scaling.
• Retains Fusion's native nametag rendering rather than using a separate world-space canvas.
• Retains multi-line wrapping, emoji, clipboard paste, VR HUD placement, input controls, and host relay fixes.

1.4.3

• Fixed overhead text still drifting larger or smaller in steps over a session. The 1.4.2 fix only guarded against recomputing size on the same text object; it did not account for Fusion's nametag text being pulled from a pooled GameObject that is not reset between uses.
• The base font size is now captured once, globally, from the first untouched nametag component this mod ever sees, instead of being re-derived from a live component after every bubble respawn (which could pick up a size this mod itself had already scaled down or up for a different bubble).

1.4.2

• Fixed overhead text unpredictably growing or repeatedly shrinking.
• Disabled TextMeshPro auto-sizing on custom head-chat bubbles.
• Sizes for one-, two-, and three-line bubbles now derive deterministically from Fusion's configured maximum nametag font size.
• Detects when avatar changes recreate the pooled text object and cleanly reinitializes its font state without compounding prior sizes.
• Preserves Fusion's intended whole-layout scaling based on avatar height.

1.4.1

• Replaced the positive Capture Keyboard Input label with the clearer Disable Text Input BoneMenu toggle.
• Kept F2 and Page Up synchronized with the same persistent setting.

1.4.0

• Added a persistent Capture Keyboard Input BoneMenu option.
• Added F2 and Page Up hotkeys for toggling input capture during flatscreen play.
• Disabling capture clears the player's current outgoing text while preserving incoming head chat and the rest of the mod.
• The local HUD now indicates when keyboard capture is disabled.

1.3.3

• Added Unicode emoji-safe typing, clipboard paste, networking, and display.
• Character limits and overhead wrapping now count complete Unicode text elements instead of UTF-16 code units.
• Backspace removes a complete emoji or joined sequence instead of corrupting it.
• Increased the validated UTF-8 payload allowance for complex joined emoji.

1.3.2

• Added a third overhead-text line for messages longer than 120 characters.
• Balanced two- and three-line splits around word boundaries.
• Three-line overhead text uses a slightly smaller font to reduce its width.
• Fixed Ctrl+V detection by supporting both Unity's legacy input and BONELAB's newer Input System.
• The local VR preview remains unchanged.

1.3.1

• Added Ctrl+V clipboard paste support.
• Pasted text is sanitized and appended to the current message without exceeding the 160-character limit.

1.3.0

• Added two-line display support for every player's head-chat text.
• Text longer than 80 characters now wraps onto a second line.
• Long overhead text uses a slightly smaller font to prevent excessive horizontal stretching; the local VR HUD preview is unchanged.

1.2.1

• Fixed hosts running the mod blocking every client-originated chat update.
• Worked around LabFusion 1.14.2 dropping the authenticated sender ID from custom module messages during pre-relay validation.
• Added targeted host-local delivery using the authenticated outer message sender while preserving normal relay to all other clients.

1.2.0

• Added a VR HUD Placement BoneMenu submenu.
• Added live horizontal, vertical, and headset-distance controls displayed in centimeters and converted to Unity meters internally.
• Placement persists through MelonPreferences.
• Added a reset button for restoring the default HUD position.

1.1.4

• Fixed hosts not seeing head-chat updates sent by remote clients.
• Added explicit local delivery for validated client messages at Fusion's server-side relay point while preserving normal relay to other clients.

1.1.3

• Fixed client-originated head-chat updates failing to reach other players in lobbies with multiple users.
• Changed typing synchronization to Fusion's reliable all-client relay route.
• Local-owner filtering still prevents a sender from creating a redundant remote bubble for themselves.

1.1.2

• Renamed the ambiguous Enabled option to Head Chat Enabled.
• Renamed the local preview option to Show VR HUD and clarified that it does not disable typing or broadcasting.
• Updated the in-game help text to explain both controls.

1.1.1

• Replaced the desktop-only IMGUI preview with a world-space HUD anchored to the local headset, allowing it to render inside VR.
• Refined the near-vision HUD size and placement for a less intrusive view.
• Added a default-on BoneMenu toggle that hides the local typing HUD without disabling chat transmission.

1.1.0

• Added an always-visible, client-only lower-left HUD preview.
• The preview displays the exact text currently being broadcast above the local player's head and shows a subtle prompt while empty.

1.0.0

• Initial release.
• Added enabled-by-default physical keyboard capture during Fusion sessions.
• Added real-time, avatar-attached overhead text for players running the mod.
• Added Backspace editing, Enter-to-clear, and automatic idle clearing.
• Added rate limiting, message length limits, input sanitization, and stale-text cleanup.
• Added persistent BoneMenu enable setting and manual clear control.