RLQC

Make your quick chat unique!

❌ What a save!
❌ Nice shot!
✔️ Here's the code for practicing saves: 2E68-0A19-F54F-D41F
✔️ Nice shot! If you were aiming for the bleachers!

Guess where is the real chat menu

RLQC replaces Rocket League's built-in quick chat with your own messages, sent the same familiar way (one key for the category, another for the phrase). It also draws a pixel-matched overlay so the menu looks like it was always part of the game.

Highlights

• Custom messages. Edit config.py, write whatever you want.
• Same input as the game. 4-button system + reset-on-delay, so muscle memory carries over.
• Multiple variants per shortcut. A given chord (e.g. 1-1) can hold any number of phrases; picking is shuffle-bag style ("non-repeating random") so you don't see the same phrase twice in a row even when a chord only has a handful of options.
• Randomised in-message tokens. Training-map codes etc. are substituted from a pool at send time, also via shuffle-bag, so the same template stays fresh and won't echo the same code back-to-back.
• Pixel-matched overlay. The on-screen quick-chat menu is rendered by us, calibrated against the in-game UI down to the edge fades and the selected-line highlight. Fully tunable — see tuner.py.
• CapsLock fuse. Won't accidentally SHOUT mid-message; LED state stays in sync.
• Safe shutdown. No keys left stuck pressed when you quit.
• Layout-safe typing. Detects keyboard layout, switches to English on chat open, restores on exit.
• Start / stop with a hotkey. F1 to arm, F2 to quit.

Gamepad support: not yet (see roadmap below).

Warning: modify text messages at your own risk. You may be banned for obscene language.

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Installation

You don't need to be a programmer to set this up — there are no terminal commands to remember. There's a one-time Python install, then a single double-click.

Step 1 — Install Python (once per PC)

Download Python 3.10 or newer from the official site and run the installer:

https://www.python.org/downloads/

Important. On the very first screen of the installer, tick the checkbox "Add python.exe to PATH" before clicking Install Now. If you forget this, the next step won't find Python.

If Python is already installed on your PC, you can skip this step.

Step 2 — Download RLQC

• Easiest: click the green Code button at the top of the GitHub page → Download ZIP, then unzip it anywhere you like (Desktop is fine).
• Or, if you use git:

  git clone https://github.com/KroSheChKa/RLQC.git
  

Step 3 — Install the required packages

Open the RLQC folder and double-click install.bat.

A black console window will open and start downloading the three packages RLQC needs (pynput, pywin32, PyQt5). When it's done you'll see:

   Done! All packages are installed.

   You can now launch RLQC by double-clicking  run.bat
   This window can be closed.

Press any key to close the window.

Windows may show a SmartScreen prompt the first time ("Windows protected your PC"). Click More info → Run anyway — the file is the small batch script you can see in this folder, not a binary. Nothing is being downloaded or executed besides the official Python packages listed in requirements.txt.

That's it for installation. You only do steps 1–3 once.

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Required Rocket League setup

Until the auto-setup feature in TODO.md #4 lands, the user is responsible for two RL-side prerequisites. Both are one-time clicks inside RL's settings:

1. Display mode: Borderless Windowed. Settings → Video → Display Mode → Borderless. We cannot draw the overlay on top of exclusive fullscreen. Borderless is identical visually, with no performance cost.

2. Built-in Quick Chat: Off (or rebound away from 1-4 keys). Settings → Chat → Quick Chat → Off. Otherwise pressing 1..4 triggers BOTH the real quick chat AND our script — you'll spam two different messages at once. Either turn it off entirely, or remap RL's quick-chat keys to something out of the way.

3. Text chat: enabled. Settings → Chat → Match Chat → Friends / Teammates / Everyone (anything except Off). The script types messages into the regular chat field, so it must be open-able.

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Configure the script

Open config.py. Most of it is comments — the few values you'll actually touch:

Match your in-game HUD scale

INTERFACE_SCALE = 100   # 50..100, same number as RL's HUD scale

This is the only scale knob you need to touch. The overlay window AND everything inside it (fonts, paddings, line offsets, glow) are scaled by INTERFACE_SCALE / 100. Set it to whatever your in-game HUD scale slider is and the overlay should line up.

Windows display scale (100% / 125% / 150% in OS settings) is deliberately ignored — see the comment block next to INTERFACE_SCALE and TODO.md #2 for the rationale.

Overlay position

OVERLAY_POSITION = {'left': 16, 'top': 470, 'width': 395, 'height': 260}

Hand-calibrated for a 1920×1080 / HUD 100 / WinScale 100 setup. For other configurations you'll currently want to recalibrate with the tuner (below) until TODO.md #2 ships.

Hotkeys / chat keys

key_bindings = {
    'RLAC_START': 0x70,   # F1
    'RLAC_END':   0x71,   # F2
    'TEXT_CHAT_ALL':   0x54,
    'TEXT_CHAT_PARTY': 0x59,
    'INFORMATION(TEAM)': 0x31,
    'COMPLIMENTS':       0x32,
    'REACTIONS':         0x33,
    'APOLOGIES':         0x34,
    ...
}

Values are Win32 virtual-key codes. Keep these in sync with whatever you set inside Rocket League.

The messages themselves

quick_chat_1_1 = [
    "Dear mate, let me take that kickoff!",
    ...
]
quick_chat_1_2 = [
    "Ooh, I have no hands to take that :(",
    ...
]

Each list is one chord (category × phrase). Add as many lines as you want — one is picked at random per send.

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Calibrate the overlay (tuner.py)

If the overlay doesn't sit pixel-perfect on your machine (different resolution, ultrawide, custom HUD scale...), use the bundled tuner. Double-click tune.bat in the RLQC folder (or run python tuner.py from a terminal if you prefer).

It opens the live overlay plus a control panel with sliders for every visual parameter — window geometry, paddings, fonts, background fade curve, the selected-phrase letter-spacing, you name it. Tweak until the overlay matches the in-game quick chat, then save the result as a preset.

Presets are stored in overlay_presets.json (your local working file, kept under version control so we can collect data points). Pixel-perfect ones that we want to keep around as references across resolutions live under presets/reference_presets.json.

Detected environment info (resolution, real Windows scale, DPR) is recorded with every preset so the future auto-adaptation formula in TODO.md #2 has data to work with.

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Run

1. Double-click run.bat in the RLQC folder. (Power users: python RLQuickChat.py from a terminal works too.)
2. Launch Rocket League (Borderless mode!).
3. Press F1 to arm the script. Press a category key (1..4), then a sub-category key (1..4) — the picked phrase types itself into chat.
4. F2 quits cleanly.

You are free to build friendly relationships with your mates and opponents ;)

What happens on startup

RLQC silently looks at your Rocket League configuration before arming itself:

• It locates your RL Config folder (Documents\My Games\Rocket League\TAGame\Config\), reads TAInput.ini, and auto-detects the keys you actually have bound to RL's chat actions (Chat, TeamChat, ChatPreset1..4). Those override the corresponding entries in config.py for this session — you don't have to keep the two in sync any more.
• It reads TASystemSettings.ini and warns you if you're in exclusive fullscreen (the only display mode our overlay can't draw over).
• It compares RL's bound chat keys against ours and warns you about collisions: if your in-game Quick Chat is still on and bound to the same 1..4 keys, pressing one will fire BOTH the game's default phrase and yours.

Detected bindings are always printed to the console. A popup appears only when there's a warning, with Continue and Quit RLQC buttons — RLQC never modifies your game files and never forces you to fix anything; it just tells you what to click in RL's settings.

Diagnostic mode: run python rl_config.py to dump what RLQC sees in your config without launching the overlay.

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Roadmap

Living plan — full detail in TODO.md.

• #1 Pixel-perfect background fade. The four-edge fade now uses a parametric quadratic Bezier; remaining work is mostly caching a pre-rendered pixmap for cheaper repaints.
• #2 Auto-adaptation to any (resolution × HUD scale). Once enough reference presets are saved, derive a formula and apply it automatically — no more INTERFACE_SCALE knob, no more per-resolution recalibration. Windows DPI is collected but currently NOT applied (see the status block on #2).
• #2b First-run wizard. Tiny GUI on first launch to collect the one input we can't auto-detect: the in-game HUD scale.
• #3 / #3b Style dict slimming. As presets accumulate, drop keys that don't actually vary out of DEFAULT_STYLE and into module-level constants.
• #4 Frictionless first-run setup — read-only path shipped. RLQC now auto-finds your RL Config folder, reads TAInput.ini to pull your real key bindings into memory, and shows a preflight popup if it spots a problem (exclusive fullscreen, in-game Quick Chat overlapping with our keys, etc.). It never modifies your game files. See "What happens on startup" above. Remaining: a first-run wizard for the HUD scale (the only input we still can't auto-detect).
• #6 Gamepad support. Currently RLQC is keyboard-only — controller users get no input handling and no preflight warning if RL's D-pad chat presets overlap with what we'd listen on. Plan covers XInput polling, gamepad-side preflight collision check, and a pragmatic "still emit keyboard T for text chat" approach to avoid needing a virtual-controller driver. Details in TODO.md #6.

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What's done in the current development cycle

The original "Need to add / fix" checklist is now folded into TODO.md. Headline changes since the last release:

• UI overlay — a frameless, click-through, always-on-top replica of the in-game quick chat menu, rendered with Qt.
• Selected-phrase highlight — bold white text + tunable letter-spacing, matching the game's selection behaviour.
• Background fade — Bezier-curve gradients on all four edges, calibratable.
• Tuner (tuner.py) — live calibration UI with preset save/load and per-machine environment capture.
• Qt HiDPI scaling disabled — overlay no longer grows on Windows display-scale 125% / 150%, matches the game.
• Interruptible high-precision sleep_key with winmm.timeBeginPeriod(1); busy-loops gone.
• Bug-fix sweep — masking on VkKeyScan_ return values, cleanly-scoped Controller, proper safe-exit, dead CapsLock branch removed, etc.
• Random-token substitution in messages ({shooting_code} / {defence_code}) so variants no longer require a brute-force list per code.
• Shuffle-bag phrase / code picking (pseudo_random.py) — replaces naive random.choice(); perceived as random, never repeats the same value back-to-back, even across reshuffles.
• Preflight + auto-detect Rocket League bindings (rl_config.py, preflight.py) — reads TAInput.ini and TASystemSettings.ini, auto-applies the detected keys, and warns you (without modifying anything) if your in-game setup conflicts with RLQC.

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