Thread: Gossip plugin , first trial release. Distributed triggers and timers over IRC in a neat package.

The first plug-in I actually release , in the hopes people will try it out and give me feedback.


What it does : It connects to an IRC server , joins a specific channel using your server and avatar name to make a nickname then depending on what it encounters in your log , distributes that line , part of that line , or a specific word/keyword in a channel.

At that moment , your other raid members who should all have ACT running and be in the same channel as you . From there you can make triggers for what gets sent/said inside the IRC channel.

This is handy for fighting mobs that tell you and you alone you are getting some kind of effect , and for flavor text your spells generate in your log file that only you can see. A few examples where this can come in handy is Vaclaz Released , Anashti Sul , Thet-em-aua to name but a few..

You can use a public IRC server , and if you don't spam too many distributions this should work perfectly well. If you are worried about response time , and you have adequate hardware , by all means , install any IRC server at home , free or commercial , they should all work. I thought it was my best choice to use IRC since it's a proven technology , and doesn't require some proprietary protocols or specifically written clients to monitor. Free servers are also in abundance.

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Some screenshots with some explanations .

1: Pic1

Here you can see various options to be filled in to be able to make a connection. You can change these on the fly , and if you do , renames and channel switches should work automatically. Changing servers will require you to press the "Recycle Connection" button. These settings will be saved as soon as you exit ACT normally . I have made it so that , this plugin functions with no interactions or pop ups if anything goes wrong. It will try to fix itself when something happens without needing anything from the user. Fil in server , channel and the game servr you play on as a minimum so a unique nick can be created.

Edit : As of version 0.0.0.8 , you can use custom ports to connect to IRC servers.

2: Pic2

Here you can see the "Distribute" tab which I made look almost the exact same as the regular ACT triggers tab. Here you select what should be sent over IRC . In this example the Vaclaz Released curse warning everyone gets individually. It finds it in your log file , when it does , sends - in this case- the whole log line over IRC as you can see in the window on the right.A formated text is also an option here ie "Is getting cursed by vaclaz" in the 'this' field .I didn't really pull Vaclaz to make this screenshot , but just typed it as a "say" which is much less dangerous =D. So now my vaclaz warning line has been sent over IRC. The 24 people in my raid force , can now trigger on it , if they want / need to. (btw that window on the right is just any old IRC client I used to connect to the same channel so I can see what's going on)

Edit:
What I hadn't mentioned before , is when you choose to use the "This" option in the distribution , you can use variables you defined in the regex . For example , if you use ".*?how much (\w+) would a woodchuck chuck.*" as the regex , you can set "The material is $1" in the text box next to "this" . Resulting in "The material is wood" being sent over IRC , if someone sent you a tell saying "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck" . Named variables can be used as well. This can be handy for example if you want to distribute guild chat over IRC without the formatting , which is very easy to do.

3: Pic3

The last screenshot , the triggers part , this one looks exactly like the triggers tab in ACT , and basically does exactly the same thing , except it doesnt trigger on your log , it triggers on the IRC channel. So in our Vaclaz example we had a player distribute his curse warning , and 24 people were able to see it , this is where they make their ACT sing . You can see there is a regular TTS option with variables , wav , etc. The trigger in this case sticks the player that is going to get cursed's name into variable $1 so we can easily hear as a tts who it is. You can even start timers based on what happens in other people's log files if they set up to distribute the event.

As I understand , this feature is the main selling point for a tool called "guildconnect" , you can just catalog this as a free alternative in early beta stage of development , without extras like being able to do dkp management(?) (I have never seen guildconnect running). But is completely integrated into ACT.Since imo any decent raider runs ACT anyway (computer permitting) it's one less program to run tbh.

As I said , this is a very early version, I started woking on it not even a week ago , as a disclamer I should put "use at your own risk" though the chance it will actually fry anything is very slim .

Since I didn't want to invent the wheel allover again I have used a freely distributable IRC connection api called "smartirc4net" . I hereby would like to thank the authors of this library for making it publicly available , information about it if needed can be found here: SmartIrc4net - C# IRC library

Where to get it and where to install it. I would say , copy both DLL files included in the ZIP to your ACT install directory (the smartirc DLL MUST be copied in there), add the gossip_plugin.dll as a plugin to act. The irc one is called from within the gossip plugin so you should not try to add that one as a plugin.

The file in question:

Download

I would like to state again that any feedback on this is very appreciated. Do try it out and tell me what you think.


Kind regards

Dibbler-Guk

Very nice, the thought of Guild Connect charging money never sat well with me.

Nicely done! Guilds that doesn't run GC already should love this. It could very likely become a common tool for a lot of guilds out there.

But the shared parse and dkp options are still such awesome tools that i doubt guilds already using gc will make a switch.

Put screenshots back .. aparently tinypic crapped out on me ...

gj. thank you for this great tool.

hmm can't get mine to connect to IRC.. I don't have password set.. have servernameort and channel but will not connect at all.any suggestions

Originally Posted by Drof

hmm can't get mine to connect to IRC.. I don't have password set.. have servernameort and channel but will not connect at all.any suggestions

You have to fill in the server you play on as well. IRC server , channel and game server are the minimum fields that need to be filled in.

what server are you trying ? i'll give it a go from here.

On the misc/options tab , between recycle connection and the server password box (not the channel one) there should be a timer running if you are unable to connect.
What step does it keep retrying?

Have you tried logging in to the server with an actual irc client to see if you are there ?

Your name in the channel should be the first 2 letters of your server in capitals then an underscore , then your name.

Edit:
Humm yes , I see now , I have port fixed at 6667 . Specifying serverort is no use .

I'll see what I can do.

Edit2:

There was no support for custom ports , I have added it now .

Do tell me if everything else about it still works , it's been a while since i worked on this , and it would be maddening if I added to a wrong branch.

The file on the ACT website has been updated to v0.0.0.8 . You can check which version you have by examining the properties of the dll.

The only change is the ability to use custom ports to connect to IRC servers.

The format is:

irc.someserver.com:1234

It works now.. thanks...