Connect

Our game is played out on IRC. Since all of our RP occurs there, we require all applicants to connect to our IRC chat room. And of course even if you haven't applied yet, feel welcome to drop by anyways. This can be a great way to get to know us beforehand and ask any questions you might have, and to spectate some IC action if there's any going on at the moment.

Below you will find the information you need to connect to the IRC server our channels are on, and if you're new to IRC, we have a few walkthroughs to guide you through the connection process. If you are new, please, don't be intimidated by this strange program. It's a lot more simple than it seems, and we've put some time into explaining that here.

If you have any trouble at all with getting connected, please contact us and we'll help you out!

Click the links to display more information.

Server Information

Introduction to IRC

Connecting:

ChatZilla

mIRC

Mac/Linux

Important Notes

The Cut-Script

Server Information:

To hook up with us, connect your client to irc.lunarnet.org — This is the 'core' server which connects you to a random server. Default port is 6667, though if you have trouble connecting, try connecting to the Eldrasia or RPGcafe servers through port 4444.

If you have trouble using that, try directly connecting with any of these:

Main address	Local address	IP address
eldrasia.lunarnet.org	eldrasia.cv.uk.lunarnet.org	85.189.72.13
obsidian.lunarnet.org	obsidian.ab.ca.lunarnet.org	70.72.131.243
rpgcafe.lunarnet.org	rpgcafe.nj.us.lunarnet.org	69.90.127.232
castleheck.lunarnet.org	castleheck.tx.us.lunarnet.org	209.223.7.197

Once you're connected, join #City-Of-Unity, which is our OOC room. We have several IC rooms as well, which can be found at our IRC Channel List page.

Introduction to IRC:

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat. If you've used any kind of real-time chatroom, IRC is basically like that, except that it is usually used with standalone clients, and it allows for a lot of customization to make it more suited for your needs. On the other hand, if you've used an MU* client before for online roleplaying, you'll notice that IRC is a lot more bare-bones than what you're used to. Since MU*'s are more complex than what we need for a free-form roleplay without stats, items, or levels, and since basic chatrooms such as AIM or java windows are far too limiting, we've chosen IRC as our main method of RP due to it being a comfortable middle ground between the two.

So now you're problably wondering how DO you get connected to IRC? There's several clients available out there, far too many to list, in fact. However we've narrowed it down to two clients that we recommend the most for people new to IRC — ChatZilla and mIRC, and have included walkthroughs for using both of those, as well as some helpful scripts to make things much easier for you.

ChatZilla — By the makers of Firefox, available on all operating systems. This is probably the easiest client of all to use for people new to IRC, while still having plenty of options for customization to make the client fit your style. The only downside is that you have to have the your Mozilla browser running in order to use it. Luckily, there is a 3rd party plugin available which allows you to run ChatZilla independantly, which is handy if you need to close your browser without disrupting your IRC usage.

mIRC — The most commonly used Windows client. Note that when you start up mIRC, you'll get a window saying you have a certain amount of days left before you have to register. Don't worry about that; once the trial period expires it still lets you use the program uninterrupted even if you don't register, it will merely give you a message when you start up the program asking you to pay, but will still let you procede after a few seconds to use the program like normal. However, it would be good to financially support the creator of such a fine product. mIRC allows for extensive customization and scripting and is slightly more complex than Chatzilla, so if you're more concerned with getting straight to the RP and not bothering much with customizing and tricking out your IRC client, you're better off with ChatZilla.

Connecting with ChatZilla:

After you install Chatzilla, go to "Tools" in your browser to open it. Once it's running, click the "Chatzilla" menu tab in the program and go to "Preferences". In there you can designate what nickname you want to have as your default when you connect to the server. Don't worry about the other fields, since those aren't important right now.

Now, to join the server. Enter "/server irc.lunarnet.org" and enter it into the message window, or any of the other server addresses we have in the Server Information section. After that brief process is done, you should be connected to the server. Go to "IRC" tab in the menu, go down to the bottom option that says "Open this Network At Startup". That way whenever you start up ChatZilla, it'll automatically connect you to LunarNet without you needing to type anything. Pretty convenient. Now enter "/join #city-of-unity" to join our channel. At that point you should be connected to our room and see a channel topic, and there you go! However, if the channel is completely empty and you don't see a channel topic, you may be having connection issues or connected to a dead server, in which case you should contact us for assistance.

But wait, there's much more to ChatZilla than that. We highly recommend that you take the time to follow these steps below after you get connected, as they'll make it MUCH easier for you to RP here with less hassle:

It can be tedious to have to manually type in "/join #city-of-unity" every time you connect, along with whatever other channels you like to hang in. Thankfully there's a feature that automatically performs these actions for you upon connecting to a designated server. Go to the "irc.lunarnet.org" tab once again in the Preferences. Click on the "Lists" tab. Where you see Auto-perform, click "Add...", and put "join #city-of-unity". Note that for this you don't need to include the "/" slash like you would if you were manually joining the channel like you did in the walkthrough above. You can add other channels to automatically connect to as well, which is especially handy, since this way you can already be logged in to all of our RP rooms without having to go through the trouble of typing up the join command for every single one.
If you're getting annoying looking emoticon graphics, you can disable them by going to the "Formatting" tab in Preferences and un-checking "Faces (emoticons)".
To change the color scheme of Chatzilla, go to the "View" tab in the menu bar and "Color Scheme" to select either a Dark or Light color scheme. Other color options might be available as well, but those are the two main ones as of this update.
You should register your frequently used nicknames to ensure nobody steals your nick. To do this, all you need to do is enter "/msg nickserv register [yourpassword] [youremailaddress]". That'll make it so whatever nick you're using right at that moment is yours alone. Just BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR PASSWORD.
Now that it's registered, you'll need to Identify whenever you switch to it, or whenever you log on to Lunarnet. "Identify" in IRC means that, in layman's terms, NickServ, a function of the IRC server, is automatically demanding your password so it can be sure that it's you using your nick. To Identify you have to type "/msg nickserv identify [yourpassword]". But that's a pain in the ass to type each time you sign on or switch to another nickname, isn't it? This is where a very handy ChatZilla function called Command Aliases comes in.
Command Aliases are a feature that let you execute a specific IRC command by entering a specific shortcut command. It's a HUGE timesaver. Go to Preferences, then Global Settings, and then "Lists". Where it says "Command Aliases", you can define shortcuts for otherwise tedious or complex commands.

Instead of having to type the whole Identify command all the time, you can make it so all you have to do is just enter "/ident" into the chat. To do this, go to the Command Alises options, click "Add...", and put in "ident = msg nickserv identify [yourpassword]" (again, without the / mark here). That way whenever you log on or switch to another nickname you need to identify with, you can just quickly enter /ident, and you're all set.
You can also make it so you're automatically identified the second you sign on to the server, by going back to where we set it so ChatZilla automatically joins #city-of-unity when you sign on. To do that just go back to the Auto-perform options we touched on earlier, and add in "msg nickserv identify [yourpassword]".

Connecting with mIRC:

Open up mIRC, then click the "Tools" tab in the menu. Go to "Options", then select "Connect". Fill in the Nickname field (you don't need to put your real name of email address in, just put in whatever you want there). Now click "Servers". You might see a big long list of IRC servers already included with your client, but we're not on any of those. So what you need to do is click "Add" or "Add Server". You'll get a window that pops up. For the Description field, just input "Lunarnet", and for the IRC Server, input "irc.lunarnet.org" (or any of the other servers listed above, since sometimes irc.lunarnet.org doesn't work properly). Where it says "Ports", normally you can just leave it at 6667, but if you have connection trouble try using port 7000. Click "Add", then "OK".

Now go to the "File" tab in the menu, select "Recent Servers", and you should see Lunarnet listed there. Select it, and you should soon see a bunch of server info fly by, and a mIRC Channels Folder window might pop up too. This means you're connected! Close the mIRC Channels Folder window, since you don't need to use that. Now all you do is type in "/join #City-Of-Unity", and you're there.

However, if the channel is completely empty and you don't see a channel topic, you may be having connection issues or connected to a dead server, in which case you should contact us for assistance.

Doing it this way lets you save the server's address in mIRC for quick connection later on. But if that's too complex to follow or you're using a different client which doesn't let you connect that way, just simply enter "/server irc.lunarnet.org" (or any of the alternate servers) into the chat message field, and it'll connect you that way. Same results, though you'll have to type that in each time you want to connect.

For Mac and Linux Users:

Since the founders of City Of Unity primarily use Windows PCs, we don't have enough experience yet with other platforms to give detailed help on using non-Windows clients aside from Chatzilla, which so far is the most versatile and newbie-friendly IRC client out there, as we described in the previous sections above. However if you are a Mac or Linux user who has some good recommendations for IRC clients on your operating system, please let us know!

Important Notes:

If you haven't done so already, it's a really good idea to register your nickname on the Lunarnet server, so that somebody else doesn't claim it. To do this, all you have to do is enter "/msg nickserv register [yourpasswordgoeshere]". SAVE YOUR PASSWORD!! And whenever you sign on, you'll want to identify the nick by entering "/msg nickserv identify [yourpasswordgoeshere]".

To send a private message (or "query" as it's called in IRC terms) in most clients, simply double-click on the nickname of the person you wish to message. Or you can do it by entering "/msg Usernickhere [message text goes here]".

To make an action text, all you have to do is enter "/me" before your action-describing text. So if your nick is GALACTUS and you enter "/me eats the world", it'll show up in the chat as " * GALACTUS eats the world."

When RPing, make sure that you always encase your character's speech with "" marks. This is to help separate descriptive text from speech text.

The Very Handy mIRC Cut-Script:

As a safeguard against flooding, most IRC servers (Lunarnet included) have a limit of how many text characters can be posted in each message. Usually what happens is if you make a message with a ton of text in it, not all of it will get posted in the chat window when you enter it. This can be a bit annoying if you're a rather verbose RPer, but thankfully there are ways to get around it. ChatZilla, for example, automatically bypasses this by taking the text which goes over the character limit, and then automatically posts it for you, sort of like if you just made two separate message instead of one big one.

mIRC on the other hand does not have this feature, and requires a special script in order to bypass the text character limit. Just follow the simple instructions below on how to install it, and you'll be good to go.

First, find your Remotes folder. Usually this should be found in the Scripts or Scripts Editor in your IRC client. You might need to look around a bit, but usually anything in the menu bar that says "Tools" is a good place to start.

Once you find the Remotes folder, simply paste all of this gibberish text into it, and you should be set:

              on *:input:*: {
                var %textlen = $len($1-)
                if (%textlen > 400) {
                  var %pos = 1
                  var %text = $mid($1-, %pos, 400)
                  var %firsttime = 1
                  while ( %text != $null ) {
                    if ( $len($deltok(%text, -1, 32)) < 370 ) {
                      %text = $left(%text, 370)
                      inc %pos 370
                      }
                    else {
                      %text = $deltok(%text,-1,32)
                      inc %pos $len(%text)
                      inc %pos
                      }
                    var %outtext = %text
                    %text = $mid($1-, %pos, 400)
                    if (%firsttime == 1) {
                      if ($gettok(%outtext, 1, 32) == /me) {
                        %outtext %next
                        }
                      else {
                        say %outtext %next
                        }
                      %firsttime = 0;
                      }
                    else {
                      if (%text != $null) {
                        say %continue %outtext %next
                        }
                      else {
                        if (%textlen <= 945) {
                          say %continue %outtext %done
                          }
                        else {
                          say %continue %outtext %more
                          }
                        }
                      }
                    }
                  halt
                  }
                }