SilverChat: SS Continuum Chat Client (and source code)

[silverbullet]

News

March 12, 2013 - Version 1.2

This may be the next to last update. I am starting to run out of ideas that would be practical for it.

 

Source Code Release:  I am going to release the code as is. You will probably need to understand java at least at an intermediate level if you want to tinker with the source a bit. I talk a little more about the source down below in the "Source Code" section.

 

Updates: Added and polished some features, added a couple set of preferences.

 

February 1, 2013 - Version 1.13

I should probably have waited to release the next version, but I had totally forgotten about a (small) couple of features available in the original chat client, they have been added.

 

January 30,2013 - Version 1.1

Version 1.1 is out and it comes with a couple of new features: HTML logs, and clickable links!

The HTML logs, are a wonderful thing, I highly encourage you to try them out. Also, I made it so that you do not have to restart client after you enable logs.

Oh yeah and I also fixed a few reported bugs and optimized a good chunk of the code. (My thanks to those who reported those bugs).

Look down in the version history section to view all new changes.

 

December 31, 2012 - Released chat client. Will call it BETA i guess!

I wanted to release the client before the new year so I polished what I had so I could release it and get feedback on it sooner rather than later. I still have a couple things that I need to work on asap, but at least the cat is out of the bag this way.

 

Please Leave Comments, suggestions, feedback, and report bugs in this thread! I cannot make this a better client without you.

 

 

Important Notice: This only works for asss servers for the time being. I am currently attempting to make this client compatible with Subgame servers(I will need some time, and a little bit of luck!).

 

 

Intro

Hi my name is SilverBul!et, I have been a player in the subspace community for around 10 years now and I am here to present SilverChat: A Subspace Continuum Chat Client.

 

My goal when making this client was to make a more advanced and easy to use SubSpace Chat client that is more lightweight than the actual SS client, and has all - if not more - of the features that the current client provides.

 

 

The Chat Client

Features:

• Almost all standard features available in original chat client are available in SilverChat.

These include:

--Chat Type recognition and appropriate text coloring (Eg. Team Chat is yellow)

--Player List  sorting, by name, or by team

--Same Private message system. Colon rapidfire(pressing colon to find recently pm'ed players) as well as double-clicking players in the player list.

--AutoScrolling(if scrollbar is at the bottom), and non-AutoScrolling

--Macros

--Copy, Cut, Paste etc

--Chat persistence - remembers what chats you set

--Font Customization Preferences

--Ignore List

--Clickable Links

 

• CHAT FILTERS - you can toggle on/off chat types. Public messages overwhelming your screen? No problem toggle them off! You could toggle them back on anytime anyways.
• Chat color customization - tired of those purple public messages? give another color a shot!
• Time Stamp Messages(optional) - you can toggle on and off timestamps on all messages. You can go afk from your computer, come back later, and know exactly how long ago your friend private messaged you.
• HTML Chat Logs -  Now you can view chat logs almost as if they were the chat screen itself! You can now sift through messages much more rapidly because they are in color! Through the preferences, you can select what chat type you want logged and which ones to ignore. You may want to ignore perhaps arena messages from being logged, or perhaps even public messages.
• Send PMs show receiver - whenever you pm someone it will show not just your name but also the person who that pm was sent to. Now you can hold multiple pm conversations and clearly see who you are sending each pm to.
• Player List Ship Display - the client will have an icon next to each player showing you what ship they currently have, or if they are in spec.
• Skin Customization (to some extent) - you can change the color of the skin to fit your likes.
• Input Area Grows With Your Text - If you exceed the line length in the input area, the area will grow rather than scroll(as in the default chat client) so you can easily see the whole message you have typed.
• Improved Ignore List - When a player is ignored, it removes all previous messages made by that players. Likewise, when a player is un-ignored, it adds all the ignore messages back, as if the player was never ignored.

 

• Byproduct Feature - Multiple Windows - While the client was not built for multiple window usage(has not been tested thoroughly) You can open several SilverChat clients if you have more than one username and you would like to be present in more than 1 zone at a time. (Notice: Changing preferences while having mutiple windows will not break the client, but It may not update all clients correctly until either the options panel is open and closed, or the client is restarted).

 

Minimum Requirements:

• In order for the Client to run, you will need to have Java 7 support or higher.
• For now, client can only log in to asss servers.

 

To Do:

• "Find/Find Next" feature

 

Version History:

Version 1.2

• Client now remembers size and position of where you left the window when you open the window again.
• "Edit Chat List" option on the menu, and preferences box to edit chat list as well.
• Chats now have option to display the chat name instead of the chat number.

Example instead of <2:SilverBul!et> hi! 

You have  hi!

• Fixed some mild cross-OS inconsistencies.
• Internal performance modifications, and increased stability.
• A few other things I cannot remember right now.

 

Version 1.13

• PM Beeps: private messages make a beeping noise when the window is out of focus
• Red arrow-triangle indicating that new messages were received --happens when you scroll up looking at older messages, and then new ones come out--
• Right click menus - copy, cut, paste
• Right click menu: "Search Selection". Very handy, it makes an online search of whatever you have selected in the chat box.

Version 1.1

• HTML Logs: Includes Metadata on header, highligtable rows, colored text, working links
• Clickable links: Client detects links on chat and opens them in your browser window.
• Mute now behaves more like a filter: Muted players will be completely filtered out of chat text starting from the top. If a player is un-muted, all their messages will be visible again including past ones. (Good call Noldec)
• Mute box was detached from general preferences and expanded. It was done for two reasons, the first being that it was really scrunched up in there, and the second was to make room for future general preferences.
• BUG - Fixed the shaky log off, it was a bug that I thought I had fixed, but I finally restructured some code so that log-off is responsive. Turned out to be a pretty serious bug, but that is all in the past, it has been fixed!
• BUG - Fixed the options panel scrolling painfully slow if scrolled using mouse wheel.
• Cleaned up a lot of code, its getting there, but not quite yet. (For those of you that are wondering when the source will be out).
• Fixed a few bugs.
• Made a lot of optimizations.

Version 1.0

• All features in Continuum chat client(except find, and clickable links)
• Chat filters, Player Ship Display, Skin Customization, Selective Chat Logs, sent PMs with name of recipient, growing input area

 

Confirmed Bug Reports:

• none at the moment

 

Screenshots:

 

http://i1241.photobucket.com/albums/gg509/ericstern1/Untitled-2_zps3e1c86d3.png

http://i1241.photobucket.com/albums/gg509/ericstern1/3_zpsadb859d1.png

http://i1241.photobucket.com/albums/gg509/ericstern1/4_zpsd9dc98c1.png

 

 

Source Code

If you want to use the SilverChat source code to hack up some new stuff you are welcome to. I provided some documentation on a tutorial class called "TutorialPlugin.java" that walks you through how you would go about adding additional functionality using the resources SilverChat provides.

 

If you are trying to create a ChatNet bot and are not interested in using the user interface chatnet provides, you would probably be better off using a more flexible library like Cieu's jcnlib.

 

DISCLAIMER: I will not be supporting this source code. The tutorial class I provided in the project is as far as it goes in regard to receiving assistance with this piece of software. I will not answer questions regarding how to code something using my source code.

 

Well there you go = )

 

Download

SilverChat_1.2.jar

SilverChat_Source.zip

Edited March 13, 2013 by SilverBul!et

[noldec]

Looks good so far, ill keep you posted on any bugs/problems i have with it.

[Dr Brain]

Screen shots look great.

[Cheese]

screenshots do look very good

 

did u use lwjgl or something?

 

 

also i highly advise you look into making this into an applet

[silverbullet]

screenshots do look very good

 

did u use lwjgl or something?

 

Thanks! I used Java Swing. It was the first thing I found documentation on.

 

 

also i highly advise you look into making this into an applet

 

I have considered doing that, I would have to tweak a few things, but I will definitely look into it.

[Cheese]

completely forgot about jswing

[Lone Outlaw]

Yep silver this chat is better than anything made so far, at least Aesthetically and from what you describe in the features list. i haven't tried it, no reason to try it really, but it's pretty cool. If you get it on the biller you will have to work out some type of advanced ban system that coincides with continuums netban capabilities. This way people can't bypass netbans.

[Dr Brain]

If you get it on the biller you will have to work out some type of advanced ban system that coincides with continuums netban capabilities. This way people can't bypass netbans.

There you go assuming things again. You have no idea what you're talking about. Rest easy knowing that this chat client in no way jeopardizes your netban.

[»Lynx]

Wow, looks great.

[Guest petalbreeze]

Hi,

Do you have the source for this?

I want to play around with it some for personal enjoyment

 

[Dr Brain]

Split off irrelevancies to http://www.subspace.co/topic/26828-lets-assume-i-know-what-im-talking-about/

 

Didn't want to drag down the discussion of this client.

[silverbullet]

Hi,

Do you have the source for this?

I want to play around with it some for personal enjoyment

 

Sure, I will put up the source soon. It is pretty messy so give me a couple weeks to fix some things up and do some minor clean up. (Although it might still be messy then!)

[Guest TheOne]

Can you double check? This chat client didn't seem to log into extreme games properly and show me a player list.... is there something "special" going on over at eg??? or is it just me?

Edited January 23, 2013 by TheOne

[Cheese]

• For now, client can only log in to asss servers.

 

[noldec]

Will this ever change?

[silverbullet]

Will this ever change?

Noldec, if you are referring to the client only logging into asss servers only, then it may, depending on whether I can

1. Manage to break ss encryption

2. Find a secure way to implement packet handling (to prevent abuse)

3. Workout some sort of special authentication process (so that players cannot circumvent serious netbans etc)

 

I am semi familiar with packet processing and udp sockets, but not a whole lot familiar with encryption in general, so I will have to take a deeper look into that in my free time.

I am really sparse lately, and sometimes coming back from work, I don't want to look at another line of code haha.

[silverbullet]

Can you double check? This chat client didn't seem to log into extreme games properly and show me a player list.... is there something "special" going on over at eg??? or is it just me?

Like cheese pointed out, it only works on asss zones only.

 

Also there is an extreme games and tw options on the pulldown menu. Do not confuse those for the original zones, they are the asss dev zone couterparts.

[silverbullet]

Hey guys, version 1.1 is out. HTML Chat logs are out, links are now clickable, a few bugs fixed, and a whole lot of optimizations were made. If you reported a bug, I fixed it, and I also implemented a couple of suggestions that people gave me.

Edited January 31, 2013 by SilverBul!et

[Mighty Sven]

Nice program, why hasn't it been uploaded to the download section!

And a minimize to tray feature would be nice:)

Edited October 15, 2013 by Mighty Sven

[Black Daemon]

Lovely, thanks