Customizing the Client

JBB offers a lot options on how to change its appearance and allow you to finetune the client to your needs. A lot of these cannot be accessed by the options page in the client itself, but require you to edit option.nfo or some of the .ini files (positions.ini, icons.ini and portraits.ini) with a text editor (e.g. Notepad on Windows). Here is a list of all the options available explaining what they do in detail. You will also find a list of keyboard shortcuts at the end of this page.

Feel free to check out BadMrMojos webpage on changing your JavaBBowl client's appearance as well.

Options.nfo

spectatorname=<name>

Anyone that has spectated a game knows that you can chat with other spectators, using the same method as you do in game. The client assigns numbers to each spectator to hold them appart. That is, your name will be displayed as <spec#>. You can customize this name by adding spectatorname=<name> to the end of options.nfo

Example: spectatorname=Mnemon

Since version 6.9c this spectatorname will also be used for ingame chat, i.e. <red> will be replaced with the name you defined that way in options.nfo.

spectatorcolor=<color number>

Adding spectatorcolor=<color number> to your options.nfo allows you to select a different color in which the chat betweent he spectators is displayed. Use this to make it stand out more if you want to. The easiest way to find the colour number, as javaBB doesnt use hex, is to start a stand alone game. After the coin flip move your cursor down over one of the player portrait areas. A good spot is over the word "Move". Click you right mouse button. That opens a right click menu. Move your mouse over "Left Team". That opens an expanded menu. In the expanded menu left click the "Icon Text Color" item. This will bring up a color dialog where you can use of the three tabs to find a color you like. Once you have a color you like select ok. Now close jbb.

Now open the options.nfo in a text editor. Find the line like this:

lforecolor=-13421569

That number (which will be different for you) will be the color you just selected in the game.

So now set:

spectatorcolor=<the color number from lforecolor>

numspectators=<number>

By default, JBB allows a maximum of 5 spectators for a match. You can simply adjust this number by opening options.nfo and look for numspectators=5. Replace the 5 with the maximum number of people you want to allow as spectators to your match. It's a good idea to reduce this number if you are using a slow connection in directly connected games.

numrecent=<number>

By standard JBB will save the last 5 teams you used, as well as the last 5 IP addresses you connected to. You can increase both by looking for numrecent=5 in the options.nfo and replacing the standard value 5 with the amount of rosters/IPs you want the client to save. For example numrecent=25 will save the last 25 unique rosters AND IP addresses you used.

Note that if you select a roster or an IP address from the dropdown it will be moved to the top of the list, but not saved twice.

turnlimit=<number of minutes>

You can turn on a turnlimit reminder in the JBB options dialogue. By default this is set to remind you if your or your opponents turntime reaches 4 minutes. You can change this default time of 4 minutes by editing the turnlimit=4 line in the options.nfo. Simply replace the 4 with the number of minutes after which JBB should remind you.

lfont=<font name>, lfontstyle=<font style>, rfont=<font name>, rfontstyle=<font style>

You can change the font and fontstyles the player positions are displayed in if you don't use gif icons, or don't have any gif icons for that team installed.

Adding lfont=<font name> and rfont=<font name> in the options.nfo let you define the font to be used for the left (lfont) or right (rfont) side icons. The font has to be installed on your system to work. So lfont=Arial would use "Arial" for the left hand icons.

Note that some true type fonts can drastically reduce performance.

lfontstyle=<font style> or rfontstyle=<font style> is how you specify plain, bold or italics. Replace <font style> with "0" for plain, "1" for bold, "2" for italic and "3" for bold italic. lfontstyle=2 would render the left hand icons in italics.

Positions.ini

The Positions.ini file tells JBB which letters to use for which position on a team that you either don't have gif icons for, or if you turned of the gif icons altogether.

Defining teams and their positions with letters

The letters to be used for the players of each team are set up in blocks as shown below:

 [Team race as it appears on HTML roster]

 <position 1 as it appears on roster>=<letters to appear>
 <position 2 as it appears on roster>=<letters to appear>
 ...

To illustrate this here are the settings for the Human Team:

 [HUMAN]

 THROWER=T
 CATCHER=C
 BLITZER=B
 LINEMAN=L

Changing any of the letters will change the way that position is displayed on the pitch, for example replacing the T behind THROWER with a P will display any Human Thrower with a P.

You can add your own custom non-LRB teams freely - here is an example entry for the Nurglings team used in the stunty division of FUMBBL:

 [NURGLINGS]

 NURGLING=N
 BEAST=BN

Defining specific text colors, background colors or background images, fonts and font styles for races (advanced)

The settings lbackcolor & rbackcolor, lhlcolor & rhlcolor, lforecolor & rforecolore, lfont & rfont, lfontstyle & rfontstyle can be used to define custom appearance of the letters with which each race will be displayed.

The commands starting with "l" control the left hand team, those beginning with "r" those displayed on the right. As with the similar settings in the positions.ini you can use any font installed on your system for lfont or rfont.

The fontstyles defined in lfontstyle and rfontstyle are: "0" for plain, "1" for bold, "2" for italic and "3" for bold italic.

Here is an example of how the tags could look for the Humans:

 [HUMAN]
 lbackcolor=-16724992
 lhlcolor=-16777216
 lforecolor=-4144960
 lfont=Arial
 lfontstyle=0
 rbackcolor=-4144960
 rhlcolor=-16724992
 rforecolor=-16777216
 rfont=Comic
 rfontstyle=0
 THROWER=T
 CATCHER=C
 BLITZER=B
 LINEMAN=L

How does one you figure out what number to use for what color? First, go through the normal process of changing the icon colors through the right click menu as explained below. After you have a set of colors you want to use, close the game and open the "options.nfo" file in the main game menu. In this file you will find the same tags as above with the numbers of the colors you just picked. Copy these number into the "positions.ini" file under the team where you want to use those numbers.

The same method can be applied to find a colornumber for the spectator chat text.

If you prefer to use background images instead of simple colors you can use lcirclegif and rcirclegif instead of lbackcolor and rbackcolor.

These images should be located right in your "pics" directory.

Here an example for the Humans:

 [HUMAN]
 lcirclegif=glare.gif
 rcirclegif=glare2.gif
 THROWER=T
 CATCHER=C
 BLITZER=B
 LINEMAN=L

If these tags are used then the supplied GIF will replace the background color of the circle icons.

Icons.ini

The Icons.ini file allows you to replace the standard letters (see Positions.ini) with small (sometimes animated) gif images. Per standard all LRB teams are included as gif images in the JBB Package. You can find icons for the experimental rosters, as well as some for the FUMBBL stunty division in the download section. Below is explained how to include your own images into the client.

Defining teams and their positions with gif icons

The images to be used for the players of each team are set up in blocks as shown below:

 [Team race as it appears on HTML roster]

 <position 1 as it appears on roster>=<gif image>
 <position 2 as it appears on roster>=<gif image>
 ...

To illustrate this here are the settings for the orc team:

 [ORC]

 THROWER=othrower1.gif
 BLITZER=oblitzer1.gif
 BLITZER=oblitzer2.gif
 BLITZER=oblitzer3.gif
 BLACK ORC=blackorc1.gif
 BLACK ORC=blackorc2.gif
 BLACK ORC BLOCKER=blackorc1.gif
 BLACK ORC BLOCKER=blackorc2.gif
 LINEMAN=olineman1.gif
 LINEMAN=olineman2.gif
 LINEMAN=olineman3.gif
 LINEORC=olineman1.gif
 LINEORC=olineman2.gif
 LINEORC=olineman3.gif

Note that you have to place all gif images in the \pics\icons subfolders of JBB. You cannot enter any additional path information or JBB won't find the images. Case does not matter.

Each position can have multiple icons specified, as you can see in the above example. The program will cycle these images for each position which makes for some variation. Thus, in the above example the, 1st black orc on a roster will use blackorc1.gif, the 2nd will use blackorc2.gif and the 3rd blackorc1.gif again.

JBB expects to find two versions of each gif you specify this way - an unselected version and an selected version. You only have to specify the unselected one, but the \pics\icons folder has to contain both. The selected versions of the gives are marked by the suffix "an". For example othrower1.gif needs a corresponding othrower1an.gif.

The filenames you specify in the icons.ini are those for the red team. JBB expects to find a file with the same name and the suffix "b" in the \pics\icons folder for the blue team. As with the red icons there has to be one for the selected state with the suffix "ban". Example: othrowerb.gif = blue unselected, othrower1ban.gif = blue selected

So each icon specified in the icons.ini file must have a matching "<file>an.gif", a matching "<file>b.gif", and a matching "<file>ban.gif" in the \pics\icons folder.

As with the positions.ini you can add your own custom non-LRB teams freely - here is an example entry for the Nurglings team used in the stunty division of FUMBBL:

 [NURGLINGS]

 NURGLING=nunurgling1.gif
 NURGLING=nunurgling2.gif
 NURGLING=nunurgling3.gif
 NURGLING=nunurgling4.gif
 NURGLING=nunurgling5.gif
 BEAST=nubeast1.gif

Note: You have to download these icons first before using above example. Check the FUMBBL download section for them.