Zugg Software :: View topic

Wanderer Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 94

Hey CMUD/ZMUD Community, Zugg,

Today is the day that I am finally (really actually) making the move from zMUD to CMUD. Anyways, I'm sure none of you care about that. What I really wanted to do, was suggest to Zugg that he host, and build a support chat into CMUD. Something that anyone could come on using our ID's here, and help/be helped. Anyways, dont know if you had thought of this or not, but I figured I'd put it out here. I dont think the IRC chat room is very effective at filling this void.

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

I'm not sure if he's going to include multi-user chatroom type capability, but he's definitely going to be adding in person-to-person chat capability (AIM, Trillian, MSN Messenger, that sort of thing). Not exactly sure how that would work, but I imagine at the very minimum we'd have like a preferences page that has a Friends list or something P2Pish rather than having to proxy through the zuggsoft server (although it would be quite handy to be able to chat up any user--like that MattLofton fellow--even if I never in a million years run into them in whatever MUD they might play).

Wanderer Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 66 Location: USA

I would like to see an integration of Trillian into Cmud. Maybe this could eventually be done with a plugin.

It annoys me to no end to have to stop what I am doing, be it tweaking/breaking settings within Cmud or just playing my mud, because someone has a question, problem, or just want to talk. Not that I do not enjoy chatting with people. I just hate having to swap windows all the time.

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2007 4:32 pm

There are some threads in the CMUD Beta forum that talk about the chat stuff a bit more. What I'm planning is to have integrated chat within CMUD. It will use the same command line interface as zChat (same #CHAT commands, etc). The first version will work with zChat and MudMaster chat users. Then I'm going to add the ability to chat with other "Jabber"-client users. Jabber is the most popular *open* chat protocol and is the basis for stuff like GoogleTalk. There are ways to connect to Jabber gateways to communicate with people on proprietary systems such as AIM/ICQ and MSN. I am also considering adding support for the Skype chat/VOIP system, since their API is also open.

There is no way to integrate CMUD with Trillian, because Trillian doesn't have an open protocol and charges large licensing fees for their API. But I'm monitoring the chat community. I think we will see a lot of changes in the chat world this year. The open GoogleTalk project is going to force other vendors to start opening up their API (like Skype did) in order to compete.

It's really silly if you think about it. Chat/IM is like the really old days of email where you could only send messages to people who uses the same service. This has got to eventually end. People need to Chat/IM with *anyone* no matter what service they use. Trillian does this to some extent, but since they are using some closed/proprietary protocols I don't know if they reverse-engineered/hacked them, or if they licensed them. But the rules for a commercial product such as CMUD are a bit different. I can't legally hack or reverse-engineer any protocols. If the chat protocol isn't open and documented, then I can't use it in CMUD.

Anyway, the short answer is that: "Yes" there will eventually be a lot of nifty chat stuff built into CMUD. It's on my (long) to-do list. But no ETA yet.

Wanderer Joined: 30 Dec 2001 Posts: 66 Location: USA

That was pretty much what I was hoping for Zugg. I just threw out Trillian because I use it to talk to my friends/family that use AIM, Yahoo, and MSN chats. It was the first thing to pop into my head.

Wanderer Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 94

Ironically, above actually wasnt what I was talking about. (Though it seems very very cool) In the simplest terms, make a centralized help chat for cmud. I know there are a lot of advanced users who simply like helping people, and mid level users such as myself who both ask for help, and help people. But this basically would be a means for people to get 'live' help from those who wish to provide it.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:14 pm

I'm planning for the integrated chat to include group-chat capabilities. One of these groups will be a CMUD support group. So you'll be able to ask for help from within the CMUD chat itself. I would also like to interface to this chat group on the web site too. So I think this will eventually do what you want.

There is already an IRC chat room (see sticky topic in this forum) for CMUD. The problem is that fewer people use IRC these days. We experimented with live chat on this web site at one time and it didn't get very much use. I think one of the main problems is that everyone is in different time zones, so live chat doesn't tend to work as well as forum discussions like this.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 5:46 pm

Speaking of that, it'd be nice if zChat could be run as a separate program. I idle in chatrooms while doing other things, some of which aren't MUDing. It'd be nice to be able to leave the chat open even when CMUD isn't.

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2007 6:19 pm

zChat already runs as a separate program. Just run the zChat.exe file.

Wanderer Joined: 04 Aug 2001 Posts: 79 Location: USA

Might be an interesting idea to have something like Meebo's "Meebo Me" widget where you could embed ZChat into the forum site.