"Bug" when using Comic Chat (boy, am I going to ge

[MrBugSir]

Hello ---

I am trying to set up an UnrealIRCd server to support the dwindling few Comic Chatters still in existence.

--- Don't flame me! ---

It's not all bad, really. Sure, it's dumbed down to a point that you can't even really can it IRC, but it was/is very innovative and clever.

Anyway, I wrote a bot in mIRC that completely replicates a user in Comic Chat, when viewed from the Comic Chat IRC client. It can do everything Comic Chat cannot do as far as scripting, and still looks like a Comic Chat character.

Ok, so I don't know if you'd call this a bug or what, but here's the deal.

In the Comic Chat client, there is a list of users with icons of their avatar. My bot doesn't seem to get its icon, but a random icon. When a user speaks to the bot, the user in shown in the same Comic Chat frame as the speaker, but then the bot responds, and the bot's character (a tiki) suddenly appears in the existing frame, between the random character and the speaker, and he says his little snide remark or two. All other interactions between Comic Chat characters works normally.

Now, I was interested in UnReal for all the obvious reasons, large user community, lots of modules, very flexible, etc, and because it was an IRCd which supports Comic Chat, and because IRCx was an IRC hackers sitting duck shooting gallery type of fantasy. Yes, utterly insecure.

This problem is not apparent in other IRCd's, such as Conference Room and BewareIRCd (the only ones I know of). I am not sure how to explain what is going on really, or what should be happening.

Except for this small detail.

To fool Comic Chat clients into thinking that the non-CChat client is a CChat client, whenever a new user enters the channel, the fake CChatter sends a message into the room that looks like this:

#Appears as TIKIGAWD,http://avatars.tikiopolis.com/Tikigawd.avb

Where TIKIGAWD is the name of the avatar that the chatter is suppose to appear as in the channel to the CChatters.

This message in not seem by the CChat clients, the client obviously suppresses that (I wrote a mIRC script that suppresses that for mIRC, and other annoying messages CChat sends, which I had hoped to incorporate into a module one day).

Anyway, that's all I know. I guess seeing is believing, I can set up a demonstration is any one is interested in looking into this very specific very obscure (I don't even want to call it a bug) problem.

Regards,
MrBugSir <---That name is a coincidence, really

[aquanight]

If the real clients work fine but the bot does not then my first guess is it's a problem in the bot.

[MrBugSir]

I thought that too, then I ran the same client on BewareIRCd, and it worked exactly the same way as it did under Webmaster Conference Room, the only other IRCd's. I'll poke around and find some other IRCd's to try it on. I wonder how many z-lines I'll get for an unauthorized bot, ha ha.

[codemastr]

It has to be a client side problem. Unreal knows nothing about comic chat, so how could it be screwing it up? Check your debug logs and be sure that the client is sending/receiving the correct messages. Other than that, not much I can suggest.

[MrBugSir]

I poked around on other servers to see if I could replicate the problem on othe servers. Gotta love that server list in mIRC. I hit about 10, and none had problems. So I was starting to suspect that the problem may have been isolated to my IRCd, which was confirmed when I found a server of the same version. So I checked back on my server, and lo' and behold, the problem has *disappeared*.

Sorry to waste your time...