[Athas]

Comic Chat is a piece of Internet history, but I remember that it was somewhat reviled when I first started being active on IRC. This was around 2002, so it was probably due to some cultural memory rather than anyone having actually used it in years.

The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rather than relying entirely on contextual cues. This was essentially done by adding some nonsense string to every message, which presumably could be decoded by other Comic Chat users, but read like spammy noise to everyone else. I know it did that, because I remember downloading Comic Chat to check it out, but I forget whether it was the default or not.

[art0rz]

On the IRC servers I managed I always set up an automatic kick when one of these messages was sent anywhere on the servers. It would ban after 3 kicks, which was a necessary change from the immediate ban as legitimate users got curious sometimes and installed Comic Chat.

It was fun messing with these folks, though, since they were often oblivious to IRC and internet culture in general. Or they were just completely tech illiterate, but somehow ended up starting Comic Chat, and somehow ended up on our obscure servers.

[z500]

I was one of these hapless Comic Chat users. Luckily someone gently nudged me toward a real IRC client lol. I was an absolute IRC fiend for years after that.

[superkuh]

Like,

># Appears as TIKI (#G010E010M1)

[moron4hire]

Comic Chat inspired me to make multiplayer games with IRC as the lobby server. But I specifically did not do what Microsoft did and send the metadata through the public channel, because I too had gone through the public ridicule of using Comic Chat. Instead, I used DMs between users to perform the signaling (which would then open a socket to create a direct TCP connection between the players).

It was pretty easy to do. Had to have been, because I was a pretty terrible programmer at the time.

[Athas]

One of the charming parts of IRC is just how simple it is to do things with it. Much is lost in more featureful protocols.

[afavour]

How far we’ve sunk! Back then we got irritated by attempts to use open systems, nowadays a system like this would use a closed proprietary system from day one.

[DonHopkins]

How dare they pay an artist like Jim Woodring to draw cartoons for them! All art should be free!

[stavros]

It was the default, yes. I remember being hated when I joined chat rooms with it, even though I never changed any setting.

[Sharlin]

Microsoft SOP, especially back then.

[Athas]

Yes, I really wonder how they expected people would react to that.

[efdee]

Comic Chat had its own IRC servers ran by Microsoft. You weren't supposed to use it on "regular" servers.

[krige]

Nah it was just the default server in the dropdown list. Out of the box it also supported UnderNet, IRCNet, and more.

[rincebrain]

I have to imagine the answer was either "dedicated MSCC servers and EEE" depending on your level of cynicism or "it was just a tech demo that escaped".

[PunchyHamster]

MS encroaching on existing protocol and behaviors then making a mess is well established patterns, Outlook defaulting to answering to e-mail on top is one of these atrocities