[Freeciv-Dev] Chat Functionality with Jabber

[Adam Theo <theo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Freeciv is a client/server system.  There is no connection between clients.
Correct, I just wasn't conveying what I understood evry well, sorry  :-)

> > Yes, games over Jabber are already starting up, and not just for the 
> > chat functionality. Take a look at the Vista Jabber client by i3connect 
> > [http://www.i3connect.com/vista.html]. It allows the users to play chess 
> > and other games over the Jabber platform, by routing the gama data 
> > instantly and reliably (and of course securely) between players.
> Vista turns out to be trivial to install and configure, and it looks
> great (fast!), but I don't have any "buddies" to try chess with.
I'll ask around on the Jabber lists to find someone who plays chess on 
Vista, to give you and others an opportunity to test the performance 
out. Unless, that is, people from here want to try out Vista as well? I 
would, but I run Linux, not Win32. Vista: 
http://www.i3connect.com/vista.html
> Freeciv is real-time.  In online games several moves are transferred
> per second.  The amount of info going the other way is bigger.
> A lag of over 300ms kills the game.
This is true with FreeCiv? I understand that real-time games like 
EverQuest and similar games transfer alot of data at an instant, but 
FreeCiv doesn't seem to have as heavy requirements as EQ. Sending a 
single Jabber message once a second (when there is activity, nothing 
when there isn't) with all the game data for that second seems quite 
adequate. From my playing with FreeCiv in the past, I don't see any 
problems with the amount of data needing to be transferred, as long as 
you don't expect Jabber to behave like a real-time binary protocol used 
by EverQuest and other 3D adventure games. Besides, we are talking about 
the human chatting right now, unless you want to jump into using Jabber 
as the data transport as well (hey, I'm all for it, I think Jabber can 
do it just as well as the current protocol, and bring in some side 
benefits to boot).
> Is chess in Vista playable with a timeout of half a second per turn?
I don't know if the Vista client has a short timeout like that, I don't 
think so, but short timeouts like that are easily done in the client code.
> > As long 
> > as the game data is text-based and not in binary format, Jabber can do 
> > it. Even the binary aspect will be soon solved in a matter of months, 
> The Freeciv protocol is binary to save on transmission volume
> and parsing overhead.  It's no big deal to convert it to XML
> or whatever else as long as performance isn't hurt.
Yes, Jabber is in XML, and performance isn't hurt any more than XML 
normally does. Jabber is designed to be very lightweight and fast, 
despite its XML foundations.
> > Understood. One of the great things with using Jabber as I said before 
> > is that there are already many libraries and developer tools to make 
> > using Jabber a snap. Is FreeCiv primarily written in C? If so, then I'm 
> > sure I can qiuckly find many good GPL'ed libraries and codebases to use.
> It's all C.  Be sure to use libraries that run on all Unix variants,
> Amiga, and Windows.
Should not be difficult since Jabber is an XML protocol with no UI or 
processing elements. Any platform that can do XML can do Jabber equally 
with every other platform.
> > Check out JECL [jecl.jabberstudio.org] and Jabberoo [jabberoo.sf.net] 
> > for starters.
> Both C++.  Freeciv would benefit from being in C++, but it isn't,
>
> JECL requires Java (for Ant) to build.  I don't know if Amiga users
> are quite prepared for that.  Jabberoo doesn't seem to exist yet.
Hmm... quite true, now that you point it out. Sorry about that. I must 
remember there is a major difference between C and C++ (I'm from a Perl 
background, never touched C before). I've just sent off an email about 
other code bases I've found that are In C, and GPL-compatible. 
Additionally, there is a C wrapper for C++ libraries written by Justin 
Kirby at Openaether <http://www.openaether.org> as part of his project 
there. I'll get directions to the wrapper itself on the site if you 
cannot find it.
> > Also browse through www.jabbercentral.com and 
> > www.jabberstudio.org (Note: browsing the CVS shows alot more projects 
> > than are on the index page) for some other good Jabber projects.
> Well, the search engine there is broken, and Google doesn't find
> anything either.  But Googling for Jabber,chess gives a wealth of
> hitrs.  The first is jtunnel.  That looks like a good starting point
> for experiments with Freeciv Jabberization.
You are talking about Rob Norris' jtunnel in Perl, correct? Yes, it is a 
nifty program used to tunnel standard input/output from consoles over 
Jabber to remote computers. He created it to play GNU Chess over Jabber.
And on the search engine, /me slaps his head. I should have mentioned 
that, since the thing has not worked for some time. Like many free 
software/open source project websites, Jabber.org lacks a real search 
engine.
> > * Ability for XHTML formatting, if you want it. And the good thing is, 
> > *not* having XHTML doesn't have any of the bloat of the XHTML protocols, 
> > if that makes any sense.
>
> Protocols?
>
> What would it format?  Chat messages?  Freeciv would like to have a
> good online help function with (optionally?) HTML output.
I just meant the XHTML spec, and yes, it would format the chat messages 
(bold, italics, red, yellow, etc...), as well as help messages and 
server output for easy/fast reading.
> > * Ability for IRC-style commands like /me and /topic, although you 
> > should note these are strictly client-side issues, the protocol itself 
> > doesn't get bogged down in extranneous things like this. But there are 
> > plenty of clients that can provide good examples of how to impliment 
> > these sorts of things.
> Freeciv's chatline functionality has been kept very limited because
> instead of adding chat fuinctionality feature by feature, it makes more
> sense to interface with existing chat technology, like Jabber.
Yes, good. One of the great things about Jabber is that it is a mature 
chat protocol now, and is well designed to be quite future-proof, so 
what is coded now will still be 100% Jabber 2+ years down the road.
> > * Soon, the ability for themeable, cross-client emoticons and "genicons" 
> > in Jabber clients. Meaning emoticon graphics can be shared and traded by 
> > users of different Jabber clients like WinAmp and XMMS skins 
> > [www.theoretic.com/?Emoticons_And_Genicons]. If you want this sort of 
> > thing....
> I don't, but prospective Freeciv users may like to see it.
> I don't think it is related to Freeciv though.
Nope, not really. Just one of those little things that could be 
implimented in FreeCiv to make the user experience a bit better.
> > * Non-chat commands can be easily added to FreeCiv by using Jabber's 
> > X-Tag and X-Namespace extensions. This helps make FreeCiv future-proof, 
> > so the developers don't have to seriously re-vamp part of the code base 
> > everytime a major feature is added to the protocol. More time can be 
> > dedicated to the code implimentation itself.
> There are practically no Freeciv developers, so the overhead imposed
> by Jabberization must be zero, except to the person doing it.
No permanent developers that work on the project regularly, you mean? 
Everyone is pretty much a freelance contributor handing over patches 
here and there? That is fine, once the change to Jabber is made, there 
will be no overhead. As said above, what is coded now will still work 
fine even in the greater Jabber world 2+ years from now. Jabber was made 
to be simple and future-proof.
> > If you can think of any other features or issues which FreeCiv might 
> > like, tell me and I'll reply with whether Jabber can help or not.
> A rating system like the one they use on ICS, that is, you'd get to
> select players by their current rating and have the rating of
> participants updated when a game finishes.  In the case of Freeciv,
> the ratings database and update algorithm would be on a special
> ratings server (that can speak Jabber).
That's a good idea. There will be a reputation system in Jabber in the 
coming months, and something could be hacked up easily until then using 
the JUD component and a Jabber X-Namespace with jabber:x:data. (If you 
don't understand, no worries, just for those people who know Jabber out 
there)
Also, another idea I had was presence. FreeCiv could let Jabber handle 
its status and presence as well. Specifying and keeping track of 
availability, away/busy status, etc... There are many opportunities for 
presence in a real-time strategy game like FreeCiv.
Now then, who is availble/willing to code Jabber into FreeCiv's client 
and server? If no-one here, then I might be able to pull some people 
from the Jabber project to help out here  :-)
--
    /\  Adam Theo, Age 22, Tallahassee FL USA
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