Paragon Chat 0.99i Beta!

[davpa]

Yes, I understand all that, even if my wording for "our server" was more poor choice then understanding of the nature of what Paragon Chat is.  I am looking more at a psychological perspective.  A person, logging on Paragon Chat, is presented with a "question" of where do they want to go (aka what server)?  It is a more positive and uplifting choice to pick a name on a list, like Independence, rather then http://127.0.0.2.  A name makes you feel like you are going someplace.  A home.  A place we have been denied for quite a long time.  The other choice, the current choice, feels like it is temporary and at any moment it will be taken away from us.  Again.

Again, I'm taking what I feel sometimes when I am logging in: the nagging doubt that this will not be here tomorrow.  People want to feel they have a home.  I want to feel that this is here to stay.  Naming "the server" is a minuscule way of letting people feel that this is not Lucy with the football.  It has a sense of permanence, that is all.

This is just food for thought.  I thought I would just share my perspective on a very small topic.  You do what you feel you have to do and I'll keep logging in, whether it is 127.0.0.2 or Independence or whatever.

[Arcana]

Yes, I understand all that, even if my wording for "our server" was more poor choice then understanding of the nature of what Paragon Chat is.  I am looking more at a psychological perspective.

That was a psychological perspective.

[Arcana]

Incidentally, it also goes without saying that nothing is likely to happen to the server name nor should it for at least a while, because the software is still beta.  During this period, its important to expose the technical details of what's happening to make it easier to educate people and help troubleshoot problems.  The more details are hidden behind abstractions, the harder it will be to help people having trouble making the software work.

[Aggelakis]

If you look at your global friends list while in game, our server already has a name: Paragon. I quite like it.

[Leandro]

Yes, I understand all that, even if my wording for "our server" was more poor choice then understanding of the nature of what Paragon Chat is.  I am looking more at a psychological perspective.  A person, logging on Paragon Chat, is presented with a "question" of where do they want to go (aka what server)?

Edit %APPDATA%\Paragon Chat\Config\string.cfg and add the line

String "127.0.0.1" "My Server Name"

And that's what will show up in the server selection screen. You can even have different names for when you connect using 127.0.0.2 and 127.0.0.1.

[Felderburg]

And as an explicit part of the system design Codewalker stated that Paragon Chat was intended to support "private" servers people could set up to do things.  Eventually, cross-server and possibly federated server features are on the roadmap which would allow players to set up their own servers, and then link the servers together into a large server cluster, and even connect the clusters into giant global server networks.  At any particular moment in time, a Paragon Chat player might be connected to the Titan server, then decide to join a friend on a federated server, then jump to a private server where a PnP game was being run, while still chatting with people on global channels linked to servers connected globally back to Titan.

I am so confused by this, probably because I don't have a traditional XMPP client to base experience off of. Could you log in to, say, pidgin, and do this? I guess I'm not understanding the relationship between the log in name "Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com" and how you connect to other private servers, or a JID (whatever that is). If I log in to the Paragon Chat window with "Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com," can't I only log in to the Titan XMPP server? And then if I want to log in to another server, I have to change it to "Felderburg@another.server.com"? And then don't I lose my global friends that were tied to "Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com"?

Codewalker already responded to basically this question (here: http://www.cohtitan.com/forum/index.php/topic,11126.msg188597.html#msg188597) and his reply does give me some understanding, but I feel like I'm just not getting something. Maybe I should log in to pidgin or Trillian or something.



...Yes.

[Arcana]

I am so confused by this, probably because I don't have a traditional XMPP client to base experience off of. Could you log in to, say, pidgin, and do this? I guess I'm not understanding the relationship between the log in name "Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com" and how you connect to other private servers, or a JID (whatever that is).

"Connect to other private servers" is probably where you're being tripped up.  The idea is that, by way of example, you'd be connected to Titan using your Felderburg@chat.cohtitan.com account, and be connected to chat.cohtitan.com.  However, your friend Godzilla could connect to Godzilla@chat.monsterisland.com and be running on that private server.  Hypothetically speaking, if Godzilla was in your friends list or vice versa and you wanted to zone into the Atlas Park running on MonsterIsland to see him, you could instruct Paragon Chat to join atlaspark@chat.monsterisland.com (plus the meta channel) and you'd appear there.  You wouldn't need an account on Monster Island nor would you need to "log into" Monster Island.  Paragon Chat would send those commands to chat.cohtitan.com and chat.cohtitan.com would route them to chat.monsterisland.com.  If Titan and Monster Island are configured correctly, they will route those messages between each other seamlessly and you'd be in the atlaspark XMPP room, and your character would appear within that version of Atlas Park.

To make this work, Titan and Monster Island have to be internet reachable, and be configured to accept those connections.  In so-called open federations, XMPP servers are basically configured to allow anyone to connect to them, so if Titan was configured that way, any private server could also be configured that way and allow anyone from them to reach Titan and vice versa simply by setting the right addresses in their messages - the XMPP servers would do the rest for you.  In more tightly controlled conventional federations, servers have access lists and sometimes authentication that is set up so that approved servers can connect.

You could always ask for an account on Monster Island and use that in your Paragon Chat program: Paragon Chat will then connect you *directly* to Monster Island and you'd by default see everything there and only there.  But with server to server connections, everyone could connect to their own "home" server and still enter any City of Heroes zone on any other server so long as they are configured to allow that.

This requires extra code in Paragon Chat to happen, but mostly housekeeping code to actually attempt to do it at all: XMPP itself (more specifically the XMPP servers) does the work.  But think about it this way: when you mapmove to Atlas Park, what's really happening is that Paragon Chat is converting that into a set of XMPP directives to join atlaspark@chat.cohtitan.com.  I presume that Paragon Chat basically assumes that the Atlas Park you want to join is on chat.cohtitan.com because that's the server you're connected to.  If you were connected to something else, it would automatically assume you meant atlaspark@whatever.  But it doesn't *have* to assume that.  Paragon Chat could allow you to mapmove to Atlas Park @ Anywhere On Earth.  If that server was reachable from chat.cohtitan.com, acknowledging things like latency, it would just work.  So if you had a friend Godzilla@chat.monsterisland.com and there was a Paragon Chat command called "join_friend Godzilla" Paragon Chat could query** to find out which room/zone Godzilla was in (which doesn't even have to be on Monster Island, keep in mind) and then execute the commands to join that room.  Then you'd be where he was, period.


** Masking some technical details here, like subscriptions

[Codewalker]

I presume that Paragon Chat basically assumes that the Atlas Park you want to join is on chat.cohtitan.com because that's the server you're connected to.  If you were connected to something else, it would automatically assume you meant atlaspark@whatever.  But it doesn't *have* to assume that.

Yes, it assumes that the conference service found during service discovery from your login server is the one you want to use. But that's not the only one that is possible to use, and is part of why the conference service name is shown above the zone name (and instance number) that is displayed when changing zones.

This requires extra code in Paragon Chat to happen, but mostly housekeeping code to actually attempt to do it at all: XMPP itself (more specifically the XMPP servers) does the work.

It's actually possible to do that already, at least in theory. You would log in normally, use "/xmpp_set_muc_service conference.chat.monsterisland.com" to override the MUC service found during discovery, then issue a /mapmove command to switch maps so that it takes effect. You would in effect be mapmoving to a zone hosted on a different server, assuming of course that federation (s2s) is enabled.

The code that's missing isn't the functionality, but rather a user-friendly way to access it.

[Fireheart]

I would call 127.0.0.1 "Home" and leave it at that.

Be Well!
Fireheart

[Codewalker]

Patch Notes
Version 0.98b Beta

• Fix a bug that could cause a crash if a malformed JID was added to your roster by a third party client.
  
  
• Optimization and performance improvements.
  
  
• Change auto-update mechanism to install new Paragon Chat binaries inside its AppData directory, avoiding UAC issues as well as conflicts with third-party updaters.
  
  
• Truncate overly long broadcast/local chat messages instead of exiting on an assertion failure.
  
  
• Fix issue where adding someone to your ignore list while also logged in via a third-party XMPP client could cause the list to not be loaded in future sessions.
  
  
• Improvements to positioning code to prevent other players from sometimes appearing to slide halfway across the map when first zoning in.
  
  
• New slash command /whoall shows a list of all players in the same zone. It also displays diagnostic information indicating if someone is invisible to you, and why.

[Azrael]

Refinements and performance improvements are always good to hear.

Notes that / who all command is from the checklist of 1.0?  So nice to hear one of the features from patch 1.0 is done already.

Good stuff.  I look forward to each piece of work completed while obviously anticipating door animations, travel powers and the GM zone and npc generation powers.

Meanwhile I've been playing with Sql database to try my hand at custom npc creation...

Azrael.

[Blackshear]

For some reason I am getting a "Paragon Chat was unable to start" error with 98b.  It tells me it needs to be in a folder containing a complete installation of CoH, except it is...the same folder where 98a was, my i24 folder.  What gives?

I've tried launching from Tequila and launching the EXE directly, but no dice.

[Codewalker]

Hmm, where is your COH folder located?

Possible workaround: Try running Paragon Chat with "-relaunch" and see if it is able to find the directory then.

[JadeFalcon]

Hi, I'm getting the same error as Blackshear. Tried -relaunch command line switch, but it didn't help.

This is with Windows XP and the client is installed in G:\Games\CohBeta.

[Blackshear]

Perhaps it's an XP thing, or a G drive thing.  All my stuff is in G:/COH/CohBeta.  -relaunch also made no difference.

Of course, while 98a did boot correctly I still got the 'cannot connect to mapserver' error, but hope springs eternal.

[Codewalker]

Oh, it's XP? I think I may know the cause, let me test a few things.

[Neutron-Star]

FYI - I am also getting this error message on a Mac using Island Rum.  Things were working fine until today.

Thanks!

[MaidMercury]

yep...XP user here, first time in weeks Paragon Chat won't launch even after revalidating pigg files. CoH is indeed installed in Folder, not sure why says complete installation required.

[Codewalker]

If you are running Windows XP, try updating to 0.98c. You may have to manually download it again, as the error is happening so early in the startup process that the auto-update mechanism won't function.

[MaidMercury]

Um, I think it is running now.
Appears Windows starting RE-blocking the program although I had un-blocked it weeks ago.
not sure why, but RE-unblocked it.