MinChat: A Minimal Chat UI for Warhammer Online

A recent goal of mine has been to learn Lua, an increasingly popular scripting language that is used most commonly as the extension interface for games like World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online. Having been quite the Warhammer addict myself these last few months, I decided now was the perfect time to put what I’d learn into action.

My first project is very simple: a chat interface modification. The chat system in Warhammer is nice, but a bit clunky. The chrome around it (that is, the huge social button, the scrollbars, etc.) take up a lot of screen real estate. Being the minimalist I am, it kind of bugged me. So I took it upon myself to fix it.

The fruit of my labor is MinChat. It does one simple thing: hide all the crap you rarely if ever use in the chat interface. No more social button (press O to open that window), no scrollbars, no input text button, nothing. Just text and, when you hover over it for a few seconds, chat channel tabs. The addon also automatically focuses your chat on the most recent line when new text comes in.

You can grab the addon from Curse Gaming’s Warhammer site. Please let me know you’re thoughts!