Quake-Style Chat Console

Hit ` and a chat pane drops down over the top of the screen with every tell and channel message you’ve received; hit it again and it’s gone. Tells can’t scroll away under combat spam, and they’re all in one place when you come back to the keyboard.

rune.pane.create("chat")

rune.bind("`", function()
    rune.pane.toggle("chat")
end, { name = "chat-console" })

local style = rune.style
local function mirror(tag, color, name, msg)
    rune.pane.write("chat", color("[" .. tag .. "]") .. " " ..
        style.bold(name) .. ": " .. msg)
end

rune.trigger.regex("^(\\w+) tells you: (.+)$", function(m)
    mirror("Tell", style.cyan, m[1], m[2])
end, { group = "chat-console" })

rune.trigger.regex("^You tell (\\w+): (.+)$", function(m)
    mirror("Tell", style.cyan, "-> " .. m[1], m[2])
end, { group = "chat-console" })

rune.trigger.regex("^(\\w+) \\[(\\w+)\\]: (.+)$", function(m)
    mirror(m[2], style.yellow, m[1], m[3])
end, { group = "chat-console" })

rune.ui.layout({
    top = { { name = "chat", height = 10 } },
    bottom = { "input", "status" },
})

How it works

• The pane accumulates writes whether visible or not; ` only toggles visibility. A bound printable key fires only on an empty input line, so typing backtick mid-sentence still works, and a hidden pane takes no screen space.
• The triggers mirror matching lines into the pane, restyled compactly. They don’t gag, so chat still appears inline too. Add return false in the handlers to move messages instead of copying them.
• The layout docks the pane at the top, 10 lines tall.

Variations

• Match your game’s channel formats. The third trigger’s Name [Channel]: text pattern is the part most likely to differ.
• /group chat-console off silences the mirroring without touching the pane or the bind.
• For timestamps, prepend style.gray(os.date("[%H:%M] ")) in mirror.

Related: Panes · Triggers · Key Bindings · Layout & UI