IRC DragonBallZ

So I've been wondering what to say. I've haven't added to this blog in a long time.

So...

I've decided to start something new.

I spend a lot of time on chat lines, most notably mIRC. I got chatting one day, with a good friend of mine, when we got the idea to code an IRC game. One hour later we had the story for the game. We decided to base it on the internationally acclaimed television series, Dragon Ball Z.

There were two things, very important to us, from the start.

1. Stay as true to the series as possible.
2. Make it fun.

So I spent about 3 months coding a PVT version. That is, the game is played via private chat. All you do is double click on the persons nick to PVT them. This gave us two problems. The first, the lag. The game was unbelievably slow. Why? Because, when the player typed in a command, that information had to travel to the server, which sits in cape town, then to my bot, which sits on my computer in Pietermaritzburg, then the bot gets a chance the reply. The bot sends its reply back to the server, which sends the reply back to the player. The other problem was security. It was too easy to cheat, and too difficult to monitor.

So we left the game alone for a while. About four months later we got another idea. What if, we were to convert it to a DCC game. We weighed up the pros and the cons. It would make the game so much faster, because you connect directly with the bot. Information bypasses the server. But, it would take months to recode 3000 lines of code to work in a DCC. Security would be much tighter, and I would be able to keep tabs on every single player, plus any admin I recruited. But, for the first 9 months, I would have to be online every single day.

It was a difficult decision. However, it was made much easier by a two chatters whose nicks were Razman and Gavin. Razman allowed the bot to be run on the actual server. Both of them also started helping me.

Well, six months later, and the bot is finally up and running. We started with 3000 lines, and we now have nearly 15000. There are over 18 modules. I have four admin who help me take care of things. Razman, likes to be called the janitor. Gavin, along with Razman, are scripting admin. Matuew, my friend from the beginning, and SaiYaN are the help admin. And I have the title of, Lead Scripting Admin.

Now for some details:
The bot is run on FireServ. The url's for this server are: irc.fireserv.za.net, inferno.fireserv.za.net and earthquake.fireserv.za.net.

The channel is called #DragonBallZ

And my nick is Red-Dwarf.

I'll continue to add in updates here, until the IRC DragonBallZ site is up and running.

Feel free join us, create a character and start playing.