IRC chat integration to the site

[dmpdesign]

At this point the forum doesnt really have enough traffic or enough SOM concurrent projects to warrant the need for instant communication among its members.

Someday things might change.

In the future, if we get more and more folks actively working on SOM projects I may consider adding an MIRC chat server function to the site.

The downtime for ipower yesterday is sort of what made me think of it. ‎  I got 3 emails from members asking why the site was down, if it was coming back up etc. ‎  I let them all know it was just ipower downtime and to chill, it would be back :P

Anyways, the concept of the IRC (internet relay chat for those not familiar with it) is basically a private chatroom that is always up and running where folks can come and go as they please. ‎  I would envision having one directly integrated into the site somehow, but hosted on a seperate server so when som.com goes down, the chat room does not.

What this would allow for is for anyone who wishes to sit on here and chat away with people about crap could do so...and any other som member could join in and see whats going on at any time. ‎  This would be specifically helpful for any group of people working on a singular project. ‎  For example, say I was working on a new game after DD, and several members were working on custom graphics, or music, or map events etc. ‎  We could set this chat up so they could all communicate and possibly use a centralized file on the ftp server to all be working from so they could each stay up to date with the project files and have them checked in as they modify them. ‎  Its something thats not necessary today, but in the future perhaps such a project would exist.

Some chat programs I have seen allow people to not be actively in the chat room, but when they log on get all the chat that happened while they were away. ‎  This would help someone that may not have been logged in get up to speed on anything they have missed.

Anyways, give me some feedback on this please...and Holy, would this be possible to integrate?

[Holy_Diver]

Sponsored chat can be a real problem, because it's hard to keep people from using it when they really should be using the forums. I don't think people should worry about the site going away. They know if it's down people are doing everything to get it back up. I'm not against anything extra as long as it's not my problem, but just words of warning/reason.

Edited: about integration. You would want the chat off site if you want it to be a fallback to the site being down. I've setup some crap to let people access an IRC channel via jscript before, but I don't recommend it... that is it didn't work well. As for capturing the logs for safekeeping, that would be something new for me. There is probably some software to do that though.

[Holy_Diver]

Actually, I recommend maybe setting up an MSN Live "network". I know you can use the Live messenger without having any special email address, though I'm not positive if you can join a network or not. But there is also party chat I'm pretty sure, which is probably facilitated by the network. You can also broadcast messages that will be received as people login (or turn on their computer if auto logging)

[Holy_Diver]

^This was easy to to: https://cid-00091c81416aadca.groups.live.com/

The only downside is there seems to be a 20 member limit. It's a group, which is not same as a network maybe??

Edited: You'll need to download the Live Messenger software (there is an online version too) and register with any email address you want. Then you can either join, or maybe you gotta be invited (don't know)

[dmpdesign]

Interesting info, I am not surprised you had some experience with it :)

Thank you for the input, I wasnt certain if it was a good idea or even a valuable one. ‎  We dont have anywhere near the traffic at this point to really warrant such an addon anyways.

I figured if it held any value at all it would be for multi-person projects if we ever end up doing such a thing (though a way would have to be integrated to maintain a project file system that didnt get messed up by multiple people editing it at once). ‎  I suppose any group of folks going that route would likely find their own solution to the communication gaps.

[Holy_Diver]

Well my experience came from trying to get a small community of foreigners on the same page for playing a Japanese MMORPG. Chat is good for that sort of thing, but not so good for a technical forum like this, because we're all trying to learn stuff.

If people were going to collaborate on a SOM project, just because the way SOM works, I think a CVS would be a must. The host I'm going to lease has this (Subversion) and we can use it for that amongst other things. A CVS typically encourages people to leave log messages on top of the normal record of who is checking out what files. Typically only text files are safe to merge, so for SOM you'd probably want only one person working on a file at a time (or group of files as is often the case with SOM)

It would be good I suppose to divorce design discussions from the forums, and such discussions are typically not of long term value. I set my own IRC server up once to see what it was like. I think I'm really not a fan of IRC in general. But I can't think of a single alternative off the top of my head. The old service we were using for IRC is probably still on the computer I work with SOM with. I might turn you onto that website when I get a chance. The IRC protocol to me has always seemed very clumsy/impractical... like anything I guess that is that old. It's like mailing lists in my list of crap I avoid like the plague.

I really think bulletin boards are the best of all forms of communication. Email I think is inherently insecure. Just subscribe to a BBS's RSS feed if you want to make it more real-time. This board has an RSS. If you're using Firefox, it will be an orange icon in the address bar of the site you're on.

[Holy_Diver]

Oh yeah,

Is anyone going to join this (https://cid-00091c81416aadca.groups.live...=450985898) group?

Or should I delete it?

[Holy_Diver]

I still think BBS-cum-RSS would be the best way to collaborate on a game, but probably a special/private board would be desirable for each collaborative project. Well by private I mean a board that would somehow not interfere with the normal boards. Personally I'd like anyone who wanted to be able see what everyone was up to, but not for users to be otherwise inundated with irrelevant information when trying to read the forums.

[Hguols]

I'm definitely not a banana. ‎  I am sort of an elongated yellow fruit though, but not a banana.
^_^

There's a different forum I go to that has a chatroom in it. ‎  There's no special application or special whatever to get on it either.

Should I post some source code or something?

[Holy_Diver]

^That is probably a "shoutbox", not really the same thing as a chat room. Chatting isn't really practical over http afaik.