Area notifications

Available from update 0.1.6 (upcoming). These functions are not included in public 0.1.5. Use a matching client and server with area-notification support.

ShowAreaNotification displays a passive, native-style area banner in the upper-right HUD for one player. HideAreaNotification removes the current banner early when called by its owning resource. Both lines can be customized independently. Lower-camel aliases showAreaNotification and hideAreaNotification are supported.

Example: two custom lines

Call from a server script after the player's character is available:

local accepted = ShowAreaNotification(playerId, "Entering territory", "Bandit Camp", 5000)
-- Or use Unicode text:
ShowAreaNotification(playerId, "Wkraczasz na teren", "Stary Obóz — Старий табір", 7000)

-- Called later by the same resource, if an early hide is needed:
-- HideAreaNotification(playerId)

The first string is the smaller heading; the second is the main area name. An empty heading is allowed. Omit the duration argument to use 5000 ms; do not pass nil explicitly. Polish characters and Cyrillic were confirmed in the development in-game test. Glyph coverage still depends on the bundled fonts; this is not a promise that every Unicode symbol or emoji is supported.

Behavior and ownership

• Server-side API only, targeting one connected player. No new client-side Lua functions or result events.
• One custom area banner per player. The latest accepted show replaces the previous banner and its timer, even if another resource created it.
• Only the current owning resource may dismiss that banner. Cleanup or hide from an older owner cannot remove another resource's replacement.
• Resource stop requests cleanup. Disconnect and world/player-pawn replacement clear the presentation. There is no late-join replay or automatic database persistence.
• Duration includes fade-in/fade-out and starts when the native client processes the request, not when the server sends it. This is not a pre-spawn loading-screen API.
• true means the server accepted the request for delivery, not that the player saw it. Invalid arguments, unavailable players or transport/capacity rejection return false. Hide can return false when the resource has no tracked banner for that player.
• Passive display: no keyboard/mouse capture, teleport, chapter change, quest progression, collision or streaming changes. Text is literal, not HTML/RML.

Validation and limits

Parameter / resource	Limit
playerId	Connected numeric player ID, finite integer 1..4294967295.
heading	UTF-8 string, 0..256 bytes.
title	UTF-8 string, 1..512 bytes.
durationMs	Finite integer 1000..30000 ms; default 5000 ms.
Ownership tracking	At most 8192 distinct tracked player IDs per resource. Explicit hide/resource cleanup releases tracking; visual expiry is not a server acknowledgement.
Client pending commands	Bounded queue of 32; overflow may discard pending commands. Do not send a banner every frame.
Creation retries	At most three attempts, 500 ms apart.

String limits count UTF-8 bytes, not characters. Malformed UTF-8, NUL, control characters and line breaks (including Unicode line/paragraph separators) are rejected. Show requires exactly three or four arguments; hide requires exactly one.

Automatic discovery notices

From 0.1.6 the multiplayer client suppresses the visual presentation of the game's automatic area-discovery banner (for example, “New area discovered / Old Camp”). Custom banners remain available through this API.

This does not disable region triggers, erase discovery records or alter quest/save/streaming state. Native notification lifetime and queue processing remain intact; unrelated notifications are not globally disabled. For persistent first-visit messages, the gamemode should track discovered areas per player and call this API when appropriate.

See Chapter screens for the separate chapter-style title-card API, and Update 0.1.6 for other upcoming changes.