The Relay from Deep Space

A mod for the game The Message from Deep Space that allows players to communicate over the Deep Space Communication Relay in-game.

TRfDS is in beta currently. Expect things to break.

Before you install, it is highly, highly recommended you complete the game first!

Basic Usage

After installing the mod, you will see a new RELAY button on the main tabs view. This is how you access the Relay.

The RELAY MANAGER, RELAY INPUT, and RELAY screens are how you interact with the Relay. The RELAY MANAGER screen is daunting at first, but all of the features are explaiend in the Features section below.

For now, enter a callsign, in base 8, and then click SET to begin chatting.

After you enter a callsign, the RELAY screen will populate with messages. You can input your own Meteor0ese message into the RELAY INPUT screen, then click SEND to send it. When you're finished chatting, you can click LOGOUT to leave the Relay.

There is another button on the RELAY screen, RECOMPILE. Whenever you define a new signal, you'll need to RECOMPILE the output to update older uses of it.

Features

You'll want to be on the RELAY MANAGER screen for most of this. It's recommended to set a callsign, then return to this screen by clicking the MANAGER button. You can return to the RELAY INPUT screen by clicking INPUT.

Adding new signals to the dictionary

Under the ADD NEW SIGNALS text, there are 2 text entry fields and a MAKE button. The ID text entry expects a negative integer, corresponding to the ID of the new signal you want to create. The NAME text entry expects a plaintext name, no more than 18 characters, that the new signal will be called. After entering these, press MAKE to update your dictionary with the new signal. You can then press RECOMPILE to update the Relay messages with your new definition.

This signal persists with your dictionary like every signal from the game does. You can edit it, add formatting, add notes, etc, just as you can with any other signal. If you want to permanently remove a custom signal, hold control and click the delete button in the dictionary menu.

Message actions

When people send pretty visuals, you can use this to see them. Enter the ID of the message (the grey number to the right of the callsign in the RELAY window) into the text entry field and click VIEW.

Image created by astro (callsign 1574)

Channels

Channels allow people on the Relay to communicate in isolates spaces, usually so they don't clog up the main channel. Adding and removing channels requires defining 2 custom signals, if you wish to find these out on the Relay, skip this section.

How to join and leave channels

You will need to define two signals, -65534 and -65533 for joining and leaving respectively. Name them however you wish. Once you have them defined, you can join a channel by entering JOIN SIGNAL, where JOIN is what you named -65534 and SIGNAL is the signal corresponding to the channel you'd like to join. You can leave channels in a similar fashion with LEAVE SIGNAL, where LEAVE is what you named -65533 and SIGNAL is the signal corresponding to the channel you'd like to leave.

After you join channels, you can cycle through ones you're active in, and the RELAY output will update with the messages in that channel.

Channels you're in are saved and loaded from disk. You can find this file by navigating in-game to MENU -> HANDLE SAVE FILE -> SHOW WHERE MY FILES ARE STORED, then opening that path in your file manager of choice. All files this mod creates are stored in the TRFDS folder in this path. It's recommended you don't change the enabledChannels.save file, but you may view it in any text editor. If you modify it and break something by accident, it's safe to delete, the mod will save a new one when you join a channel again.

Configuration

Many aspects of this mod are configurable, you can find details on each config option in the config file that BepInEx generates. Note: It is only generated after launching with the mod enabled, so you will need to launch once to see the config file at all.