QuakeNet IRC channel to enhance community presence (#daedalus)

[Avalanche]

What is IRC?

Many of us who have played some of the more popular arena shooters have been using IRC as some sort of global chatting hub and as means to organize matches via pickup bots in game-specific channels, where you can perform commands like "!add 2v2tdm" or something for instance. When a game would be ready, everybody who added would be notified and head off to a server to play. This bot thing isn't even very important right now though.

The easy thing about IRC is that you can have a client that starts up with your system and automatically joins any channel you frequent so you'll be available all day long to chat with, people could simply highlight you or a group of people then if they want to play a game with you, which is very convenient.

This can be a very neat way to keep at least some kind of presence on the servers, so people won't be facing a whole serverlist with 0 players in it all the time, this is partially how the smaller open sourced arena FPSes tend to stay alive as well. A small group of players that is actually online on the servers is enough to motivate others who don't use IRC to join servers and stick around as well.

Daedalus QuakeNet channel

You can connect right away with (NOT recommended for the long run, just for checking it out!): http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=daedalus&uio=MTY9dHJ1ZSY5PXRydWUmMTE9MjM2JjE1PXRydWU87

Just don't forget to fill in a nick.


OR... You can check below on getting a real IRC client that starts up on system boot and makes you appear online all day long (RECOMMENDED!!). That way you'll stay in touch with the game even if you forget about it, you'd just need a highlight to be reminded :)

Small guide on setting up an IRC client

This is a nice little general guide for people not familiar with IRC (focused on Hexchat): http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/irc-is-back-heres-your-starter-guide--net-31369

Good, free and lightweight clients:
- Windows: https://hexchat.github.io/
- Linux: http://xchat.org/
- Windows, Linux and Mac: http://www.leafdigital.com/software/leafchat/
- Windows and Mac: http://quassel-irc.org/
- Windows: http://www.hydrairc.com/ (easy to understand client incase hexchat annoys you)




On these clients, make sure you connect to:
Server: irc.quakenet.org (port = 6667 in case necessary)
Channel: #daedalus (just type /join #daedalus or read below)

Hexchat and X-chat already have a lot of these servers inbuilt, you just need to find QuakeNet in the list, edit it and then tick the "automatically connect" box and add #daedalus as channel to join in the field below. Leafchat and the others have similar functionality, but you may need to add the server manually, check their tutorials (some of them only have help within the application itself).

Image for clarfication:
(Click here)[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]



If you want Hexchat to automatically start with Windows, you need to put its shortcut in the Startup folder from your start menu (for Win 7): C:\Users\(your username)\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs

Image for clarfication:
(Click here)[dl.dropboxusercontent.com]



If you do all the above, Hexchat will automatically start with Windows and immediately join the QuakeNet server and daedalus channel.

Note that Hexchat doesn't automatically make a sound when your name gets highlighted, if you want to figure out how to set that up just comment below and I'll explain, or just check this out: http://hexchat.readthedocs.org/en/latest/faq.html (somewhere below) :P


Hope to see you guys there =)

[deathpat]

thanks for this ! I will post this in the next update I will publish ;) cheers