If you are interested in chatting in real time with other gamers around Australia, #ausgamers is the place to be. Located on the ETG (enterthegame) IRC network, #ausgamers is maintained by several Brisbane gamers, as well as folks from several other states and is a great place to go if you have any questions about the QGL, or if you just simply wish to chat to other gamers.

Get on IRC now!

You can get on IRC now via our web-based IRC interface at www.qgl.org/irc.

What is IRC?

For the uninitiated: IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. It is a text-based communications system that allows people to log into various networks and communicate with each other in real time.

For more information about IRC, check out http://www.irchelp.org.

Where do I get IRC?

Hah.. newbies. Well, you don't actually get IRC. You need to get an IRC client, which allows you to connect to one of the many IRC servers that are out there.

The most popular IRC client for Windows-based systems is called mIRC, andis available as a shareware download from http://www.mirc.com. If you have a Linux sysyem, or access to a Unix computer (perhaps through a university), you will find that many of these systems have IRC installed already. Common irc clients on UNIX systems include ircii (just type 'irc [nickname] irc.enterthegame.com' to connect) or BitchX ('BitchX [nickname] irc.enterthegame.com').

Other Windows clients include Xircon and Visual IRC.

What servers can I use to get onto #ausgamers?

The best place to start is irc.enterthegame.com.

• irc.enterthegame.com

Other servers that you might want to try:

• oh.enterthegame.com
• ca.enterthegame.com
• ca2.enterthegame.com
• ky.enterthegame.com
• canada.enterthegame.com
• tx.enterthegame.com
• in.enterthegame.com

I'm connected - now what?

Once your connected to the server, there are many standard commands you can issue to your client. Most of these commands are common accross clients, and many clients have their own specific shortcuts for commonly used commands. The command that you'd probably be most interested in initially is the JOIN command, which allows you to join channels. To join ausgamers, simply type '/join #ausgamers' into your client. This should let your client join the #ausgamers channel, in which you should see several people chatting about all sorts of things (games, goats, you name it).

Once you're in the channel, you can just type anything, and it will appear as publicly readable text. If you want to message someone privately, you can type '/msg [nickname] your message' - this will cause a private message to be sent to them - ie, one that noone else can see. For example, if you wanted to message Jim with a question, you would enter the following into your client: '/msg jim hey jim, how do I set up a firewall with MacOS?' (Please refrain from using Jim to test your /msg commands on, unless they are equally amusing/annoying as that example).

Other common commands include '/server [servername]', to change servers, '/kick [nickname]' if you want to kick an unruly user of a channel (must be a channel operator to do this!), '/names [#channelname]', which lists all the people currently on the channel.

Another commonly used command is the action command - most clients support this as /me - you can type '/me [action]' and it is displayed differently. This is best seen in an example: '/me slaps jim with a rusty trout' will appear in most clients as "* trog slaps jim with a rusty trout".

There are literally hundreds of commands, most of which are outside of the scope of this document. Most common IRC clients come with fairly comprehensive help systems which you can use - with a bit of work, you will soon become an IRC warrior.

What's a bot?

On the channel, we have several bots running. You might seem them listed there, almost always (hopefully) with a @ next to their name, indicating that they have channel operator status. The bots are used on the channel for authentication (ie, to provide operator status on the channel to other trusted users) and provides other basic services, like flood control and an interface to banning disruptive and troublesome users.

Bots are simply programs that run off a single computer. They establish a connection to the IRC servers in exactly the same was as your IRC client does. For all intents and purposes, the IRC network views them as just normal IRC users.

Obviously, this method of connection makes it difficult to ensure that the bots are available all the time - which is what we want to make sure the channel remains a "safe" place, free from disruptive users. The computer that the bot is running from needs to be connected to the Internet for as long a period as possible. For this reason, they are usually run off dedicated shell accounts set up explicitly for this purpose (a shell account is an account on a Unix-style system which allows running bot programs in the background).

Anyone can run their own bots (although they will probably not get operator status in #ausgamers) if they wish to use them to maintain a channel of their own. There are even bots available for windows - one of the more common ones is the EggDrop bot. In general, the bots in #ausgamers are RevBots running on Linux systems with permanent connections to the Internet.

Questions/Comments?

If you have any questions or comments about the #ausgamers channel, or problems getting on IRC, please feel free to mail qgl@qgl.org.