Chat, notices and the console

Players never type commands: the game client keeps every chat line that starts with / to itself, and single player has no chat. Anything a player or an administrator does is a player action, shown in the game’s interface. This chapter covers what a mod sends players, and the server’s console, which runs lines typed into a dedicated server’s console window or appended to its command file.

Chat lines, labels and rename filters work on the dedicated server and on a client while it hosts a game.

Chat lines

Unstable: needs the unstable feature and may change in any release (Stability).

world.broadcast(text) sends a line to every player and world.tell(&player, text) to one player. Call them from any thread: the line waits in a queue, and the server posts it after the next step. Each line of text becomes a message of its own, and a message keeps at most 16 lines. The queue holds at most 256 lines; more are dropped.

Notices on screen

Unstable: needs the unstable feature and may change in any release (Stability).

world.notify(&player, text) shows a line on the player’s screen, as the game shows its own “can’t do that” messages, and world.notify_all(text) on every player’s. It returns how the line went: Notice::OnScreen, or Notice::Chat when the player’s client lacks Enshwick and gets the line in chat instead. Call it on the game thread. The game shows up to 255 bytes; keep it to a short line.

use enshwick::actions::{Action, Outcome};
use enshwick::world::Notice;

fn init(load: &mut enshwick::Load<'_>) -> Result<(), enshwick::Off> {
    let world = load.world()?;
    let actions = load.actions(enshwick::i18n::Texts::default())?;
    actions.add(Action::new("ping-me", "Show me a notice"), move |request| {
        match world.notify(request.player, "Pong") {
            Notice::OnScreen => Outcome::done("On screen"),
            _ => Outcome::done("In chat"),
        }
    })
}

The game raises these messages on the client, in the client’s own world, so the server cannot raise one for a client. A notice travels as a message to the client’s loader, which shows the text through a text tag of its own and raises the game’s message event in the client’s world at its next step.

The console

Unstable: needs the unstable feature and may change in any release (Stability).

The console runs a line on the server as an administrator with no character. A line is one of:

• enshwick ..., the loader’s own tools, listed below;
• a mod’s id and the text form of one of its actions: you.trading-post help, you.my-mod give-to 3073 10 Ann.

console::run(line) runs a line and returns its answer. Call it on the server’s game thread, from a scheduled task or a game event; elsewhere it returns RunError::NotOnGameThread. A first word that neither the loader nor a running mod with actions answers returns RunError::Unknown.

fn init(load: &mut enshwick::Load<'_>) -> Result<(), enshwick::Off> {
    let scheduler = load.scheduler()?;
    scheduler.next_tick(|| match enshwick::console::run("enshwick status") {
        Ok(answer) => enshwick::info!("{answer}"),
        Err(why) => enshwick::warn!("not run: {why}"),
    });
    Ok(())
}

The answer goes back to the caller, not to any chat.

The command file

A dedicated server runs each line appended to mod-data/enshwick/commands.txt on its console, once, about a second after the file is saved. Only complete lines run, so a line waits for its line break; blank lines and lines starting with # are skipped, and so are the lines already in the file when the server starts. Each line and its answer go to logs/enshwick/loader.log.

The file is append-only. When lines that already ran are changed or removed, no line runs again: the loader counts the lines that ran, runs only the lines past that count, and writes a warning to the log. To start over, empty the file; its next lines run from the first. Administrators and their scripts reach the console this way without anyone joining. The loader took over the admin tools mod: it never loads, the log names its DLL to delete, and its command file in mod-data/enshwick.admin-tools/ is read too.

The server’s console window

A line typed into a dedicated server’s own console window, or its terminal, runs the same way, and its answer shows there and in the log. In Docker the container needs input: docker run -it, or stdin_open: true and tty: true in Compose, then docker attach to type. A server started without input, such as a Windows service, reads only its command file.

The loader’s tools

Line	Answer
enshwick	the loader version and every mod with its name and version, (off) for mods turned off
enshwick <mod id>	what the mod is: name, version, description, authors, licence, homepage, and notes such as a recommended mod that is missing
enshwick help	the tools, and the mods whose actions the console runs
enshwick mods	each mod with its side, whether players need it to join, and whether it runs
enshwick world	the players online with their account, slot, character entity and place
enshwick entity <number>	what the server knows of an entity: template, the item it was placed from, place, whose character it is
enshwick placed [n]	the pieces players placed last, newest first, at most 32
enshwick reload <mod id>	makes the mod read its settings file again, the running world’s own copy when it has one
enshwick kick <player>	asks the game to remove a player online
enshwick ban <player>	bans a player or an account, removing the player when online; the ban stays in bannedAccounts of enshrouded_server.json
enshwick unban <account>	asks the game to take an account off its ban list
enshwick allowlist	whether the allowlist is on, and how many accounts it lists
enshwick allowlist add <player>	lists a player or an account on the allowlist, with the player’s name as its note
enshwick allowlist remove <player>	takes a player or an account off the allowlist
enshwick give <item> <count>	gives every player online count new items, at most 10,000, each into the player’s own inventory, with the game’s pickup message; enshwick recipes find <text> shows item ids
enshwick give-to <item> <count> <player>	the same for one player online
enshwick spawn <template> <count> <x> <y> <z>	spawns count entities from a template GUID, as enshwick entity shows it, at a place in metres, 2 m apart, at most 32; with a player instead of the place, beside that player; the game drops them for an unknown template
enshwick teleport <x> <y> <z> <player>	moves a player online to a place in metres, the place enshwick world shows
enshwick status	a short status summary, and a fresh status.log
enshwick profile [reset]	the five costliest mods since start, or since enshwick profile reset
enshwick conflicts	the hooks, filters and resources several mods share
enshwick log [mod] [level] [n]	the latest log lines, of one mod or all, at a level or more severe
enshwick recipes [find <text>]	the disabled recipes, or recipes found by name; disable and enable change the rules
enshwick config [mod] [key] [value]	read and change a mod’s settings; see The schema and the console
enshwick ui-demo <player>	opens a window of every interface widget on that player’s client, when it runs Enshwick, for a visual check

A player is named by name, or by account: the 16 hex digits enshwick world shows, or hex with 0x in front. A name several players share is refused, with their accounts. The game never kicks or bans an administrator online, and kicks only players online; a ban of an account that is not online goes straight onto the ban list, and the loader removes that account if it joins before the server restarts.

Places for spawn and teleport lie within 100 km of the origin on each axis; a place farther out gets the usage line. In a game a client hosts, give works only while a mod has asked for inventories.

No mod may take the id enshwick.

Worked examples

• enshwick-personal-safes declares who may open a Safe as player actions and guards its labels with a rename filter.