OpenArena, like the original Quake III Arena, allows you to change the color of the text you type.
So you can use different colors inside your nickname, or when you "say" something during the game, or even for the name of your server.
Usually, clan tags use colors.
How to use[]
To specify text colors, use "^" followed by a number before the text. For example, writing ^1Hello ^2world, you will get Hello world.
For text chat, you can simply push the key you binded for "chat" function (messagemode), and write the text after the colour codes: when you will confirm, you will see your colored text (no preview). Chat text is green by default.
When you are playing, probably you don't want to lose time changing text colour, but if you want, you can. Anyway, you can bind pre-prepared phrases to specific keys using \bind <key> say <text>.
For your name, you can change it from "Setup" --> "Player settings" menu: moving mouse over and away from the name, you will switch from its "source code" to its colored version. Names are white by default.
You can use text colors also from command console: in this case, you will see the colors preview while you are still writing the text. For example you could type \say ^6Goodnight ^5guys!, you will see \say ^3Goodnight ^5guys!, and your message will result Goodnight guys!: color codes (^1, ^2, etc.) will be hidden in the sent message.
Dedicated server mode specific executable (oa_ded) works as plain text, so it does not show colored text, it shows color codes instead.
Colors[]
- ^0 = black (black). Note: in OpenArena 0.8.5, it is not possible to use black color in players' names (where it is shown as white instead), to avoid a black name make a player more difficult to identify. In OA 0.8.8 black is shown as black in names again, but only if there is at least a letter using a different color.
- ^1 = red (red)
- ^2 = green (green)
- ^3 = yellow (yellow)
- ^4 = blue (blue)
- ^5 = cyan (cyan)
- ^6 = magenta (magenta)
- ^7 = white (white)
- ^8 = orange (orange). Note: not included in orignal Q3A. Actual color depends from OpenArena version and current mod. For example, in OA 0.8.1 it is black, and in OpenArena 0.8.5 it appears as orange, but still black in the console. In OpenArena 0.8.8, it appears correctly as orange. This text color may appear as black or as white when using old mods.