ChatRichText

Brings rich text formatting back to the multiplayer chat.

Chat used to render formatting and a game update switched it off. This turns it back on, using the same shorthand you'd type in Steam chat.

Colour names: red, orange, yellow, green, lime, teal, cyan, blue, navy, purple, magenta, pink, brown, white, grey, black.

Hex codes are #RRGGBB, like #FF00AA. Two extra characters on the end is transparency.

You can mix them: *[color=cyan]bold and cyan[/color]*.

Installing

Easiest way is a mod manager like r2modman or the Thunderstore app. Install it and hit play.

Doing it by hand: grab BepInExPack first, then drop this zip's contents into the folder where How to Fish.exe lives. The DLL should end up at BepInEx/plugins/ChatRichText/ChatRichText.dll.

Multiplayer

Only you need this mod. Formatting happens when a message is drawn on your screen, so everyone's messages format for you, whether they have the mod or not. Someone without it just sees the * and _ characters as text, and chat works normally for them.

Nothing extra gets sent over the network. The game already sends the plain text of what you typed, and this only changes how it's drawn.

Turning it off

Open BepInEx/config/com.flabagizza.howtofish.chatrichtext.cfg and set:

[General]
ChatRichTextEnabled = false

Chat keeps working, you just get the characters instead of formatting.

Notes

Typing < or > is safe. Anything that looks like a game tag, like <size=500> or <sprite index=0>, is shown back as plain text instead of being treated as a tag, so nobody can mess up your chat by typing one. Only the formatting in the table above ever does anything.

A colour that isn't in the list, or a hex code that's the wrong length, is left alone and shown as you typed it.

Some things deliberately don't format, so normal typing still looks normal:

• 2 * 3 * 4 stays as it is, no bold
• file_name_like_this stays as it is, no italics

Credits

Made by flabagizza.

Changelog

1.0.0

First release. Brings rich text formatting back to chat after a game update switched it off.

• *bold*, **bold**, _italic_ and ~~strikethrough~~.
• [color=NAME]text[/color] with 16 colour names, and [color=#RRGGBB]text[/color] for anything else. Transparency works with an 8-character hex code.
• These nest, so *[color=cyan]bold and cyan[/color]* does both.
• Works on everyone's messages, not just your own. Only you need the mod for it to work on your screen, and players without it are unaffected.
• ChatRichTextEnabled = false turns formatting off without touching anything else.

Typed < and > are shown as text, so a message containing something like <size=500> or <sprite index=0> renders as those characters instead of being treated as a game tag. A colour name that isn't on the list, or a malformed hex code, is shown as typed rather than being passed through.

Nothing is sent over the network. The game already replicates the plain text of each message, so this only changes how messages are drawn.