How do I create chat links?

Question

I have noticed frequently in general chat people advertising for guilds but now also for groups using chat links, which as per the screenshot below open up into an additional window containing more information:

How is this achieved? How would I go about making a link of my own like this?

Answer 1

In short, this is done by creating a Scripts folder in your TSW installation, placing HTML formatted text in there and then invoking it from the chat command-line. It's a bit complicated. A detailed guide can be found here.

A basic example:

• Go to your TSW install directory e.g. C:\Program Files\The Secret World\
• Create a Scripts directory (or use the existing one if any)
• Create a text file (with Notepad) and name it MyInfo (just an example name)
• Create HTML formatted text, e.g. The morning light <font color=red>burns</font>
• Put this in the text file you've created: <a href="text://htmlhere">chatlinkhere</a>
• Replace htmlhere with the HTML formatted text you created
• Also replace chatlinkhere with the name of the link you want people to click on
• Now save the resulting file MyInfo
• You can now invoke this in game with /MyInfo on the chat command line

Here's the whole file if you've put it together correctly:

<a href="text://The morning light <font color=red>burns</font>">Test</a>

And this is what it looks like in game:

Told you it was a bit complicated, didn't I?

You can use various HTML tags for formatting and also issue any chat command, including sending tells and opening URLs with the chatcmd:// URL scheme. More details in this guide.

This is not to be confused with linking items to chat, which is as simple as Ctrl-rightlicking the item.