iPhone running AORC?

Medicaid

Ok so I have a new iPhone and was wondering if it's possible to get aorc or something similar working on it. They make irc apps but I'm not sure they would work the same. I basically want to Logon and chat with guildies on any of my toons via my phone. Any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Doctorhyde

Unfortunately all of the AO Chat mobile apps that I've seen were J2ME (Java) applications, which the iPhone won't run.

A skilled coder could probably use an IRC app as a basis, but you would have to put in the AO chat stuff. AO chat was based on IRC originally, but is definitely not compatible.

The most cross-platform way would be to create a browser-based chat application (without flash, without Java, but Javascript would be usable), since most modern mobile devices would be able to use that. And using AJAX would allow for a pretty decent experience. But then someone would have to host it.

Or ... getting fugly here ... but you might be able to get one of the AO bots to run on OSX. If you can do that then you could jailbreak your phone and run the bot directly on the phone. To be honest, that's probably the coolest overall solution. All of the building blocks are already there.

"Hey, Beastchat just went down!" "yeah, he walked out of range".

**Malaxia**

You can try porting AORC from the delphi sources to ObjectiveC. I've already tried for Windows Mobile but I lack the experience in mobile development.

TBH I don't bother with AORC client on Windows Mobile, instead I just run full AO client using remote desktop.

Medicaid

Wow Doctorhyde, thanks for the info. What you and Malaxia mentioned above is way beyond my expertise. I may just have an easier time getting the AO client to run on it. Worse case I just VNC or RDP into my home computer

wtb someone making an AORC iPhone app and selling it in the app store.

Waahash

I know this is a 5 month old thread, but still a great idea. IRC apps exist for phones, and if my memory serves correct, the AO chat servers are IRC. I can't get the phone IRC to login irc.funcom.com:6667 or chat.d1.funcom.com:7101. The IRC app doesn't want to connect, I've tried a few. Had I the knowledge, I would do it myself. How hard would this be? Or maybe a webpage devoted only to logging in the chat, though as mentioned earlier, move your friends list to a free account and login on that.

Vhab

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waahash

if my memory serves correct, the AO chat servers are IRC.

Unfortunately your memory served you wrong.
Funcom does have an IRC server, but it's in no way related to the ingame chat servers, nor do the ingame chat servers use the IRC protocol.

Waahash

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vhab

Unfortunately your memory served you wrong.
Funcom does have an IRC server, but it's in no way related to the ingame chat servers, nor do the ingame chat servers use the IRC protocol.

Any idea on what the ingame chat servers utilize?

Vhab

Quote:

Originally Posted by Waahash

Any idea on what the ingame chat servers utilize?

It's a custom protocol used by AO and in a somewhat modified way by AoC.
There's no real written documentation so implementations are done based on previous implementations (from the source of existing chat clients and bots).
(the original implementation was reverse engineered from a java applet FC used to provide to access ingame chat from outside the game)

Waahash

So, Java then? And I will admit, I am the last person to know anything about programming. If I remember correctly (which will probably put my memory 0, and fact 2), Java is only Java specific. You would create your Java app to run on a Java environment. And each environment is to run on different platforms. If that is true, than anything Java based could be used on other machines, provided you have a way of maybe rearranging any GUI and setting the control schemes up. Again, that's my memory and that's my interpretation.

Now, admittedly, this is not impossible. It's the matter of getting the right heads together.

Vhab

There are libraries for aochat (as we call) it in many languages; c, php, java, c#, perl and a few more iirc.
Ofcourse, the protocol is just that, a protocol. It can be implemented in almost any programming language.
And yes, aorc for the iPhone is certainly possibly.

Though, so far none of the remaining active programmers in AO that I know of seem to be interested enough to create a client specifically for the iPhone.

Waahash

What about a J2ME?

Vhab

There is a chat client written in Java, but I highly doubt it's suitable for the iPhone in it's current form. Even when just looking at the UI and ignoring the technical stuff.
I'm not too familiar with iPhone development but I recall they have a policy against frameworks that run other code (like Java), so I believe there's no direct way to even try the existing chat client on an iPhone.
I'm not too certain java is supported or encouraged on the iPhone either. Iirc it's mainly objective-c (causes sad pandas) and c++.

The current situation is pretty much: it's technically possible but requires a programmer to put in a significant amount of effort.
Until a programmer steps up for this task, no ao chat client on your iPhone.

However, you could get access to your org's chat if they setup IRC relay on their orgbot and you use an irc client on your iPhone.
But you'll be limited to just chatting with your org mates and requires some setup from whoever manages your org's bot.

alfora

Just for the record:

Some AO bots are able to connect to IRC. You use that mainly to connect more than one bot together.

So your guild would have to setup their bot to connect to an IRC channel and then you could use some IRC client on your iPhone to talk to your friends, draw your battery, build-up a huge phone bill, and spam your guild with "xxx joined the channel" and "xxx left the channel" messages.

Edit: Didn't see Vhab already pointed out that fact about bots and IRC.