TextChatService message not sending

[LordMerc (Merc)]

Reproduction Steps

You can’t send a message after messing with it, I have the channels set manually and speaker is added on player added.
Player color is also not shown.

Expected Behavior

Message to send to channel and display.

Actual Behavior

User input message does not show nor is the service registering it.

Workaround

No

Issue Area: Engine
Issue Type: Other
Impact: High
Frequency: Very Rarely
Date First Experienced: 2022-06-27 18:06:00 (-04:00)
Date Last Experienced: 2022-06-27 00:06:00 (-04:00)

[be_nj (benjj)]

Hey thanks for moving this here. Could you send me the rbxl file you created in this demo? I’m having trouble reproducing this on my end.

Also I’m wondering what version of studio youre using. If its not the latest, does updating to the latest help?

[LordMerc (Merc)]

ChatMessageRepo.rbxl (37.3 KB)
I am up to date on studio version also.

[be_nj (benjj)]

Thanks! Looking into this now.

[LordMerc (Merc)]

I believe I found the issue, which was actually on my end.
I wasn’t too explorative I guess and forgot the ChatInputBarConfiguration class handled the inputting. I set the channel target and it worked. Would be nice if we could separate out the input bar manually to use for custom chat UI.
Edit: Although this didn’t fix the player chat color not appearing.

[be_nj (benjj)]

Ah yeah, I came to the same conclusion. I hadn’t realized you set TextChatService.CreateDefaultTextChannels to false.

The default channels and names are not magic. This means if you offer your own TextChannels only the engine-default behaviors of those offered TextChannels will occur.

For example, the name colors won’t appear because only when TextChatService.CreateDefaultTextChannels is true is when we create a TextChannel named RBXGeneral with an OnIncomingMessage hook to color the message.
Likewise, ChatInputBarConfiguration.TargetTextChannel is default to the RBXGeneral TextChannel only if TextChatService.CreateDefaultTextChannels is true.

In short, TextChatService.CreateDefaultTextChannels=false tells us to be more hands-off with default behaviors and implementations and to allow the developer to fully customize and handle what happens after startup.

[be_nj (benjj)]

This has given us some good food for thought of what we should include in our documentation for the CreateDefaultTextChannels page.

[LordMerc (Merc)]

Ah, gotcha! I do like the ability to set a target channel which gave me the thought of being able to set our own input bar. TextChatService Designate custom ChatInputBar
I am hoping this is already an idea in the works, but being able to have our own input bar that is handled and functioned the same as the native by the service would be awesome to have!