Our game is played out on IRC. It's possible that we may open up other mediums of RPing in the future, but for now all of the gaming for City of Unity will take place on IRC due to its simplicity.
Even if you haven't yet submitted a character form or been approved, you're always more than welcome to drop by our OOC channel. 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.
So 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:
eldrasia.lunarnet.org or eldrasia.cv.uk.lunarnet.org or 85.189.72.13
obsidian.lunarnet.org or obsidian.ab.ca.lunarnet.org or 70.72.131.243
rpgcafe.lunarnet.org or rpgcafe.nj.us.lunarnet.org or 69.90.127.232
castleheck.lunarnet.org or castleheck.tx.us.lunarnet.org or 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.
NOTE: If you get online and the channel is completely empty, the server you're using might be having technical issues. Usually this is only temporary. Simply try connecting to any of the others in the list and that should fix the problem in most cases.
If you have any trouble at all with getting connected, please contact us and we'll help you out!
This program may seem confusing at first with all its weird commands and complex options, but don't worry, since this is a free-form RPG you only need to know a few very basic commands in order to RP with us.
First, here's a list of some of the more popular IRC clients you can download:
ChatZilla - By the makers of Firefox. A very clean and very simple to use cross-platform IRC client which works in conjunction with Mozilla browsers. This is probably the easiest client of all to use.
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. Though it can't hurt to financially support the programmer of such a nice program.
Xchat - Another good cross-platform client. The Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and BSD/Unix versions are free, but the Windows version is shareware, so you're probably better off with ChatZilla or mIRC if you're on a PC.
HydraIRC - Another free Windows client. Some people who have trouble with mIRC say this is a good one to try out.
This is only a few of the clients out there. For more, check out the list of IRC clients on Wikipedia.
Once you've got a client, you'll need to use it to connect to the servers and IRC channel mentioned above. IRC clients come in several different layouts, but generally most of the more popular ones work fairly similar to each other. For this quick example of how to get connected to us, we'll use mIRC, since it's the most commonly used client. If you're using another client it shouldn't be too much different from this, so this page should still help.
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 in Basic Connection Info, 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.
If the room is completely empty when you join in, then the server you connected to might be having a netsplit, which is a minor problem that comes up now and then. Usually these only last for a few minutes. Try connecting to one of the other servers listed in the Basic Connection Info and see if that works. If you still have trouble, then Contact us and we'll help you out.
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.
- 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!! OR YOU'LL DIE!!! >:V 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.
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. Not all are programmed do this automatically, so if you're using another client, you'll want to use a special cut-script which does that for you.
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
}
}