ACDG turnchat operation for directors, aspiring directors and everyone else

[Hercules]

As a new director (DPO) I was a bit concerned about attending the turnchat.

There are two issues:
(1)How to actually get there
(2)and participate.

The first hurdle is getting there. I downloaded a version ( which is updated regularly) 6.03 of M irc and tried to install. No joy. I tried earlier versions, still no joy as far as I could make out. I eventually did enough (it seemed) to get me into the turnchat channel, but there was no response.

I then moved from my ancient netscape 4.76 browser to IE and relogged and by a miracle or God knows how, I entered the turnchat (rather late). I recognised the furniture!!

The second question how does the commissioner play the game and participate in the chat? 2 Pcs or multiple windows open, or screenshots. How do the other directors recollect the next name for new bases (Xanadu, who could forget)?

I can guess some of the answers but i think it would be a service if the experienced ACDG magicians explained their methods.

[Drogue]

It is possible to play the game, and then open up IRC and talk, without closing the game. Mine does it sporadically, haven't realised how yet, but it does it As for how to get there, on mIRC, connect to EFnet, and then click on commands, join channel, and type in #smacdg. As for recollecting names. Just look at the latest base name poll.

I'm not exactly an experienced ACDGer, but that's how I seem to do it. If there's a better way, can someone tell me too?

[MrWhereItsAt]

I may not have been Comissioner here, but I have been almost everything else, and more importantly for this thread, I have been President of the C3DG twice.

The Commish/Prez has to have multiple windows open at once, so it is usually best if you can use a computer with a fair amount of RAM (256 works well, you may be able to get away with 128). What I always had was at least one mIRC window (often two in case one died or lagged), a .txt file to note down developments in the game, and of course the game itself. In the case that you are working from posted orders, you need the thread (or threads) where the orders are posted open as well. Otherwise you just need to prompt the Directors to give you their orders on mIRC, but be ready to refer to posts in the case of the Directors getting lagged.

What I did in the C3DG (there are variations that would work as well) was to choose a set order for orders, and when finished, I would post a message to the tune of "1 minute till turn end" or somesuch, to allow everyone to catch up and any issues that had been missed to be addressed. If there were decisions that required some thought, we left them until doing all other orders (where possible) so we could make a decision and then end the turn. Immediately after carrying out an order I would note it down in the .txt file if it was of sufficient merit (eg dealing with other factions, founding bases etc).

Once the turn was ended, I would report the events of that end of turn as they happened, or if there were a few at once, I would wait until a pause in the events before reporting them. These events would then also go in the .txt file. Once that is done all repeats again.

Ending play can come about because orders run out or there is something RL that occupies the attention of either the one playing the game or enough of those attending to make it less worth continuing.

Hope some of this is roughly similar to a turnchat here (it's been ages since I could participate in one), and it helps any new Directors/budding candidates.

MWIA.

[Darkness' Edge]

MWIA is much more organised than me.

I always played the game by having mIRC open, any relevant forum threads in another, and AC open as well, and alt-tabbing between the three.

And with the other directors recalling the name, well, I can only assume they do what the Commish does...go hunt down some threads.

[Joeno]

To add my voice as an AT who's played instead of a Commissioner, I played while having both the game and mIRC open - the taskbar could still be accessed while I was playing, and the colour glitches I got occasionally because of the switching were minimal (and that with only 64 MB of RAM )

Further, I at least wrote down all the required orders on a sheet of paper, and just crossed off the ones that didn't apply anymore. I believe I was planning to look up base names somewhere, but it didn't come up during the chat.

About the joining. If you've filled in the necessary details in the first dialog (nicknames, 'real name', email addy) , you could basically just close it with either the OK or cancel button, and then enter /server $Servername , and when you're actually connected, /join $channel , where you should replace $Servername and $channel with the appropriate server and channel - irc.efnet.org and #smacdg , if I'm not mistaken (and I easily am...)

[Hercules]

All your advice was very helpful and especially the alt tab bit. Interesting to see Drogue jump in and out of apoly threads to find answers to where units should go or what next.

However what do you guys do about the chat log. Save it bit by bit? and how come I lost the person speaking information eg not when when I copied it, but when it was submitted ?

Maybe it is best posted as a zip file?

[DeathByTheSword]

you have to log it by right click on the channel tab and then choose buffer and log then you get a *.txt file with everything in it

[Cedayon]

*digs into the bowels of the smacdg forum to extract this from page 4*

The .txt file you get from logging the turnchat isn't quite ready for posting, because all the things that show who is saying what are enclosed in <>'s. 'Poly interprets the screennames as tags when they are formatted like this, which mean they won't show up.

To avoid this, it's best to change the <>'s to ()'s or some other format that actually shows up on the forums. This can be accomplished fairly painlessly by:

1. Open the log file up in wordpad (comes with every windows since 95, I think)
2. Go to the Edit menu, then to "Replace" (or just use the hotkey Ctrl-H)
3. Put '<' in the "Find What" field and '(' in the "Replace With" field.
4. Click "Replace All". (this may take some time)
5. Repeat 3 with '>' and ')', and click "Replace All".
6. Save the file, perhaps with a different name.

If, for some reason, you don't have wordpad or it just won't work for you, there's a fairly good text editor with a similar feature at www.textpad.com .

Another consideration when posting large log files is the 20000 character length limit per post, and the limit on the number of images per post (it is large, but it can be reached). This requires breaking up the log into multiple posts (not too many, though, I've been able to post a 5-hour turnchat in 5 posts, possibly could have fit it into 4). My procedure for this is:

1. Open the log file (the one with the <>'s fixed, please), just about editor will do.
2. Click in the text area, press Ctrl-A to select all text, then Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard. (note: This is for a windows environment, the effects of Ctrl-C in a *nix environment can be quite different )
3. Go to the thread you want to post the log in and start a post.
4. Click in the text area of the post, and press Ctrl-V to paste the text in.
5. Click the "check message length" thing just below the window to see how long the log is,
6. If it's under 20000 you can try posting it as is, though you may still hit the image limit. If it's over 20000 you'll have to split it.
7. If you have to split it, find a spot from the top that you think will fit inside the limit and click it, then scroll to the bottom and shift-click the bottom to highlight all the text below the first point and press Ctrl-X to cut it to the clipboard.
8. Try posting the shortened log, if it gets spit back at you click on the end and press Ctrl-V to put the cut part back, then repeat 7 with a further-up point. If it posts correctly, make another post and Ctrl-V in the part you haven't posted yet and go back to step 5. If you're done... well, you're done

[Cedayon]

K, now I have a question: mIRC and the Java Client work fine on the two computers I have access to at home, but neither work on my computer in my dorm room. I try to connect, wait for a while with "Connect to..." on the screen, then get "Unable to connect (Connection timed out), then I watch the process repeat indefinately with the retries. This has happened on two seperate occaisions, one of which I know was when the Apolyton server was doing just fine (they were holding the turnchat that got to '35).

This, as you might imagine, is annoying.

What's going on? Is it something with the campus network or firewall or something? Can I do anything about it?

Thanks in advance

[GeneralTacticus]

About your post about how to replace all the '<'s with 's - interesting. I didn't know you could do that; I just spent ten mintues or so going down the file and deleting them

As to the second one - I have no idea.

[Lemmy]

What's going on? Is it something with the campus network or firewall or something? Can I do anything about it?

It's most likely a 'firewall or something', the network admin may have disabled the specific port IRC uses....but i'm no expert on networks, so i'm not sure about that.

[Cedayon]

Ah, I'll track down and kill phone up and bug the admins then.