Because of the nature of a forum, you're expected to put some time and thought into your posts. People don't want to have to read through a bunch of pointless posts like 'lol' and 'yeah' every time they come here. If you're going to post, post intelligently and give people something to reply to - failure to do so is against the
rules, and persistent and aggravating offences could result in a ban. If however you do want to just chat casually, we provide for this too, with an official
IRC chatroom.
Accessing the ChatroomTo access an IRC room or 'channel', you need a client. The simplest client to use is the DP web client. To access the room with this client:
1. Go to
http://www.dissoluteproductions.com/Chat.html2. Type your preferred username in the box next to 'Your nickname'. Ideally this should be the same as your forum username, so you can be easily identified by other forum members.
3. Click 'Connect'
4. Type messages into the input box at the bottom and press Enter to send.
There! It's as simple as that. Your messages will show up on in the conversation window, and will be visible to all others connected to the channel at the time, the list of which is in the right-hand panel. Likewise, their responses will come up in the conversation window, and will be visible by everyone currently in the channel.
PLEASE NOTE: The chatroom is often not very active. If there's nobody there, or people aren't responding, don't get angry at them for ignoring you, they're probably busy or away, or simply haven't noticed your messages yet. You could try waiting a bit, or come back later when there's more people online.
IRC CommandsAlthough the above is all you need to start chatting, IRC also supports several commands which can make things easier.
/nick <nickname>This changes your nickname, the name you show up as in the chat windows, to whatever you put in place of <nickname>.
/me <message>This is for emotes, and will show up as your name plus <message>, for instance if your nickname is Nick and you type '/me meows', it'll show up in the window as '*Nick meows'.
/msg <nickname> <message>This sends a message to a specific person or channel, without showing it to anyone else. '/msg Kesteven hi' would send a message to Kesteven saying 'hi'.
/query <nickname> <message>As above, but this also opens up a private chat window with the person you person you name. On the web client, this action can also be performed by double-clicking on someone's name in the right-hand panel.
/whois <nickname>This will give you some additional information about someone, including their hostname (where they're connecting from) and which if any channels they have 'ops' (moderator powers) on. If they're away, it'll also tell you their away information.
/away <message>This sets you as being away. <message> and the time you've been away will show up in your /whois information. type /away without any message to set your status back to normal.
Other ClientsIf the DP web client is too plain for you, there are plenty of other ways to access IRC. Several browsers have IRC clients built in, as do most multi-chat platforms like Trillian.
mIRC is an ever-popular free IRC client for windows. For most of these, the setup is fairly straightforward, but you'll need to connect to the right host and channel. Use the following info:
Hostname: irc.ircstorm.net
Port: 6667
Channel: #dissoluteproductions
Registering Your NicknameIt's possible to register a nickname to prevent others from using it, but this is a little complicated and unnecessary most of the time. For more information see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:IRC/Tutorial
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