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Friends, chat and clans
Friends, whispers and mail, the chat scopes, room invitations, and clans with their ranks, applications and emblems.
Friends, blocks, whispers and mail are Team Vanilla's, the same on every server, and go between your game and Team Vanilla directly: never through the server you are on, so no server owner can read them. Clans are Team Vanilla's too: one clan wherever you play.
Friends
- A friendship is mutual: one asks, by code name, and the other accepts. Two soldiers asking each other are friends at once.
- A friend's entry says whether they are on and where (a lobby, a room, a match), whether their room can be joined, and when they were last seen.
- Joining a friend on another server is allowed: the game asks first, then changes server.
- Blocking a soldier ends a friendship, stops their requests, whispers, mail, clan invitations and chat reaching you, hides you from their searches, and keeps the two of you out of each other's rooms (two members of the same clan in a Clan War channel's room excepted).
In the game: the header's Friends plate (with a count when a request or a message waits), the lobby's Friend tab, and the Friends window: Friends, Requests, Blocked, Inbox and System (mail from Team Vanilla). A right click on a name in a lobby or on a room's seat gives that soldier's menu: Whisper, Add friend, Ask into clan, Block, Report.
You choose who sees where you are, and who may whisper or write to you (anyone, to begin with), in the Friends window or in Options, Game.
Whispers and mail
A whisper reaches a soldier wherever they are; when they are away it waits in their inbox. Mail is kept 7 days unless you Save it. An inbox keeps at most 30 unsaved and 50 saved messages; mail from Team Vanilla is never refused. A message can be reported from the inbox.
Server owners cannot mail players. They write their server's message of the day instead, which everyone reads on joining.
Chat
| Scope | Reaches | How |
|---|---|---|
| Lobby, room | the channel's lobby, or the room | type in the chat box |
| All, team | everyone in the match, or your side | Enter or F3, Y or F4; /a, /t |
| Whisper | one soldier | /w name text; /r text answers the last |
| Clan | every member signed in | F5 in a match; /c text |
| Global | everyone signed in who has it on | F6 in a match; /g text |
Global chat takes a line every three seconds from each soldier. It can be turned off with the Global: On plate on every chat box or in Options, Game; off, you neither hear nor speak on it. Each scope has its own colour.
Room invitations
From a room, the Invite plate lists the soldiers free to come: your friends who are on and in no room, then the channel's lobby, or a code name you type. The soldier asked sees the room (its number, name, game type, map and how many are in it) and answers yes or no. A yes takes them there, through to the room's channel and past its password. An invitation stands for a minute. Nobody in a room or a match is asked, nor a soldier who blocks you; the lobby's Accept Invites plate turns them off altogether.
Clans
Ranks, lowest first: Recruit (everyone joins as one), Member, Lieutenant, Co-Owner and Owner.
| Lieutenant | Co-Owner | Owner | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ask a soldier in; answer applications | yes | yes | yes |
| Remove or demote a member of a lower rank | yes | yes | yes |
| Promote, up to the rank below their own | to Member | to Lieutenant | to Co-Owner |
| Write the notice, change the emblem, open or close the clan | yes | yes | |
| Hand the clan over, or disband it | yes |
- A clan is founded Closed: a soldier applies and an officer answers, or an officer asks a soldier in. An Open clan takes anyone who asks at once, while it has room (60). Opening a clan lets in everyone who was waiting.
- An Owner cannot leave a clan that has other members: they hand it over (and become a Co-Owner) or disband it.
- Everything that happens is written to the clan's Log (the newest 40 lines).
In the game, the Clan Lobby plate: with no clan, Join a clan (the clans, largest first, each Open or Closed) and Found a clan; in one, its emblem, facts and notice, then Members, Applications, Log and Other clans. Removing, handing over, leaving and disbanding ask twice.
Emblems
A clan's emblem is made in the game, and nothing is uploaded. Two ways:
- Soldier Front's own builder: a background (48), a frame (32) and a symbol (78).
- The emblem maker: up to 24 shapes laid over each other on a square canvas, from thirty shapes (circles, stars, shields, chevrons, crowns, gears and more) and thirty pictures (a skull, a flame, a rifle, a helmet, a medal, a flag and more). Drag a shape to move it, its corners to size it (Shift keeps its proportions), the ring above it to turn it (Shift: fifteen degrees at a time). Mirror it, fill it or keep its outline, colour it from a swatch, a colour picker or a colour code, and make it as faint as you like. Undo and redo with Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y; Surprise me starts from a random one. It is shown as it is worn, at 64, 32 and 16 pixels.
Every member signed in wears a new emblem at once. It is drawn as shapes, so it is sharp at any size.
