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Games Come to Pidgin

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jun 02, 2008 04:27 PM
from the c-is-dead-long-live-c dept.
Communications Puzzle Games (Games)
Tovok7 writes "Free software instant messengers have long been lacking the support to play games with your friends. The waiting is finally over, because today Pidgin Games was released. It comes as plugins for the popular Instant Messenger Pidgin and is running under Linux and Windows. The special thing about Pidgin Games is that it is written in the new programming language Vala which has a C# like syntax, but compiles to pure C."
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[+] Pidgin Controversy Triggers Fork 1104 comments
paleshadows writes "Pidgin, the premier multi-protocol instant messaging client, has been forked. This is the result of a heated, emotional, and very interesting debate over a controversial new feature: As of version 2.4, the ability to manually resize the text input area has been removed; instead, it automatically resizes depending on how much is typed. It turns out that this feature, along with the uncompromising unwillingness of the developers to provide an option to turn it off, annoys the bejesus of very many users. One comment made by a Professor that teaches "Collaboration in an Open Source World" argued that 'It's easy to see why open source developers could develop dogmas. [...] The most dangerous dogma is the one exhibited here: the God feature. "One technological solution can meet every possible user-desired variation of a feature." [...] You [the developers] are ignoring the fan base with a dedication to your convictions that is alarmingly evident to even the most unobservant of followers, and as such, you are demonstrating that you no longer deserve to be in the position of servicing the needs of your user base.'" Does anyone besides me find this utterly ridiculous?
Submission: Games Coming to Pidgin by Tovok7 (948510)
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  • The real news is Vala (Score:5, Informative)

    by outZider (165286) <outziderNO@SPAMfsckedhost.com> on Monday June 02 2008, @04:31PM (#23631789) Homepage
    Why have I never seen Vala featured on Slashdot before? If anything, the language intrigues me, and seems to be a nice way to get OO GTK going on without silly C hacks or writing it in Perl/Python.

    When on earth did this happen?

  • New feature? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Enderandrew (866215) <enderandrew@@@gmail...com> on Monday June 02 2008, @04:34PM (#23631815) Homepage Journal
    I thought they just spent all their time removing features for new releases these days.

    I don't understand how years and years back, Gaim had rudimentary support for voice and video (the most requested feature) and tons of other features. In the past 3-4 years of development, voice and video was never finished and is no longer an option to even compile in I do believe. And instead of new features, I keep seeing more and more features removed to streamline the app.

    I'm not sure it has moved forward in years.

    I'm waiting for kopete on Windows.

    • Re:New feature? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kcbanner (929309) * on Monday June 02 2008, @04:44PM (#23631907) Homepage Journal
      Yea, as well as the send message box resize issue. I mean they literally got into an argument over whether or not the resizing of that box was allowed. Now someone tell me where I can get a copy of the code where resizing the box is possible, I liked that feature (its too small so that if I type a long message, it expands and scrolls the text up a little bit, very annoying).

      • Try Carrier (Score:4, Informative)

        by zjbs14 (549864) on Monday June 02 2008, @04:49PM (#23631955) Homepage
        (Formerly FunPidgin) Forked after the resize box debacle. http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
        • Carrier also adds some other nice features besides that. The one that was most critical to me was the ability to turn off the "inline typing notifications". Basically pidgin displays text in your IM box telling you your buddy is typing (appended after the last IM in the box)... I can't figure out why anyone would want that - not only is it distracting, but we already have a nice little icon in the corner that shows a typing keys picture when they're typing.

          Why would anyone think it was a good idea to add
          • It may be too late for you now (though you can downgrade by manually getting the packages, uninstalling the new ones, and then dpkg -i each in turn), but if you go back to Gutsy Gibbon, put something like this in your apt preferences file:

            Explanation: Part of GAIM, newer versions unusable
            Package: pidgin libpurple0 libpurple-bin pidgin-data
            Pin: version 2.3.1*
            Pin-Priority: 1001
            Watch out when you do dist upgrades, I might have missed a few packages, because when I try to do a dist-upgrade on my Debia
      • Funpidgin has already been mentioned, but that feature has also been released as a plugin.
      • I know it's not the same as how it used to be, but now (as of at least 2.4.2) you can set a minimum number of lines for the text box. If you go over that number of lines, the box grows.
        • That's a poor solution. The biggest problem with expanding text boxes is that it's visually distracting. The text box growing causes everything else in the window to move. It's hard for me to believe anyone can stand this feature. Good thing I don't use IM regularly.
    • Wait a second. Pidgin is an all-one client for proprietary networks. How can they reliably make voice and video extensions without the help of AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc who would rather then not have it?

      I can see it working for only pidgin or perhaps an open standard along with jabber, but the app isnt a drop in replacement for those clients. Its always been an unsupported and unloved hack by those who run the chat networks. Like Trillian.

      • Pidgin is an all-one client for proprietary networks. How can they reliably make voice and video extensions without the help of AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc who would rather then not have it?

        The same way they make text chat work for AOL, Yahoo, MSN, etc. A closed video protocol is no different than a closed text protocol, just much harder to reverse engineer :)

        I for one am disappointed at the MSN support in libpurple. It's been *how long* since MSNP14 came out, and we still don't have support for it? "Experimental" MSNP14 support has been in for ages, but has never moved up to mainline. C'mon guys, I want offline chat support dammit :(

        • So do it yourself. Yeah it's unusual that someone hasn't gotten up off their butt but you can't exactly complain-- it's free.
        • You dont even need MSNP14 to be properly supported to handle off-line chat support, sure kopete just has some 'hack' to do it but at least it works (a la beryl vs compiz). I'm a KDE user but i always favour cross platform apps so that I'm not tied to Linux, but since my brother showed me that kopete can handle fake off-line MSN users I've finally stuck with kopete, which actually seams to improve instead of regress.
      • Other clients like AMSN manage to do it just fine, and there was a voice and video fork of Gaim way back in the day that did it as well. Gaim asked to fold the fork into mainline, but basically just killed it.

        And since AOL is using Jabber these days, MSN and Yahoo are the only two that you really have to worry about.

    • Re:New feature? (Score:5, Funny)

      by squisher (212661) on Monday June 02 2008, @04:59PM (#23632071)

      I thought they just spent all their time removing features for new releases these days.

      I don't understand how years and years back, Gaim had rudimentary support for voice and video (the most requested feature) and tons of other features. In the past 3-4 years of development, voice and video was never finished and is no longer an option to even compile in I do believe.
      AFAIK they just didn't have the manpower to improve upon the rudimentary audio and video support. Pidgin's goal has always been to work on many IM networks, and if you had followed at all what goes on on the mailing list, then you would know that they are not against integrating audio and video support at all, they only want the code to be of good quality. So all they need is for some people to step up to the task :-).

      • So all they need is for some people to step up to the task :-).
        Like anyone would want to work with those assholes.
    • Personally, I use pidgin because it's completely devoid of excess crap. Actually, the first things I do upon installing it are to disable sounds, graphical smileys and incoming fonts and colors.

    • Re:New feature? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 02 2008, @06:32PM (#23632911)

      And instead of new features, I keep seeing more and more features removed to streamline the app.

      Its the recession, we all gotta cut back a bit.
  • I use Pidgin. No one I chat with does.
    • That is why one of the first games available are Solitaire and minesweeper.
    • Sounds pretty lonely. Stay with the real-life chat. It tends to work better in random encounters like the +8 Hot Babe in the coffee shop!

  • Compiled to pure C? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by QUILz (1043102) <quilzhunter931@gmail.com> on Monday June 02 2008, @04:44PM (#23631911) Homepage
    For simple instant messenger games, wouldn't a virtual machine suffice? I'd just find it easier to trust a game someone's happened to write for this if it presented far less risk to my system.
      • They'd probably make a VM where you can only move the ingame cursor by using the keyboard. Then the users start complaining about why they can't use the mouse, and they reply by saying that to add the code would invite a maintenance nightmare. Then someone produces a patch, but they say they won't implement it, and in any case, they like keyboard-only ingame cursors, so what's the fuss? We're doing this for ourselves, man! Love it or leave it!

  • Wasted Effort (Score:5, Interesting)

    by phantomcircuit (938963) on Monday June 02 2008, @04:48PM (#23631951) Homepage
    Where is the Audio and Video?!
  • Most if not all internet based games have a layer of chat behind it, is almost a plugin. That a chat program have could games as plugin is something potentially good. Connecting people is the 1st step, maximizing what they can do together is the 2nd one, and games fits perfectly there.

    The next steps is to have an standard for implementing those games in more chat clients/platforms, and of course, adding good multiuser games.

    • Re:are you kidding me (Score:5, Informative)

      by winphreak (915766) on Monday June 02 2008, @04:30PM (#23631775)
      It's a plugin, not a core component.
      • ... and even better, it's unaffiliated with the Pidgin project, so the Pidgin devs didn't lose their minds.

        • Re:are you kidding me (Score:5, Informative)

          by DigDuality (918867) on Monday June 02 2008, @05:24PM (#23632295)
          oh, their minds have been lost for some time now. Just not on this issue. I love how they can spend time pissing off users over the insert text size mod, and how they waste Google Summer of Code on projects like Myspace integration and finch, but still can't implement jingle properly.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Myspace integration may be a waste, but there's nothing wasted about Finch. I've used it, and needed to use it, a few times and it was a life saver. It uses a console and you don't. Leave it at that.

          • Re:are you kidding me (Score:5, Funny)

            by Missing_dc (1074809) on Monday June 02 2008, @05:43PM (#23632505)
            Implementing a jingle is easy, just play it over and over until it is stuck in the subjects' heads.
          • The MSN plugin is notoriously broken too, and not only because they haven't implemented MSNP14 yet; i'm not talking about camera support nor similar bullshit, but to be able to have a chat without messages bouncing with error or being disconnected altogether [pidgin.im] - i submited that bug myself, but a quick search will reveal a lot of people with similar issues. I hear the MSN developers were frustrated with the project in the sense that some requirements or patches were met with indiference or ignored altogheter.

            I
            • I've got a very wierd slightly pidgin-related problem.

              It all stems from the fact that I have the EXACT same email address for my msn account (not hotmail, a bt email address registered with microsoft's passport) as for my yahoo account (yahoo im accounts aren't normally email addresses, but bt did a deal with yahoo for them to handle their email, and everyone got their @bt email address as a yahoo account).
              This would be fine, except that all messages that get sent via yahoo end up going to my msn account, e
              • You were downloading stuff and blame Pidgin for your issues? Stop whining or stop downloading porn. Your choice.

                Which is funny, since both the official MSN client and aMSN work flawlessly under the same conditions. It was implied, but i'm pointing it out right now.
          • Yep, add to that jabber thread support and a few others. IMO, they probably use dice to decide if they allocate resources to a specific bug or feature.
          • To hell with jingle, I'd just like to see Pidgin handle XMPP properly... It seems to be one of the most-lacking clients that claims to support XMPP, and, at least for coworkers, consistently crashed every single time they tried to join a MUC on our internal server. I could never figure out service discovery with it either (I actually didn' KNOW about service discovery, despite years of using gaim/pidgin with XMPP).

            Since then, I've switch to one of: psi, kopete, gajim (I've used them all, each has particu

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by oddfox (685475)

              Yes, the Pidgin devs make some decisions that the users don't like, but if they are really as bad as people claim then anybody who thinks he/she can do better should fork it.

              Yeah, maybe someone should look into forking [sourceforge.net]...

    • "It comes as plugins for the popular Instant Messenger Pidgin and is running under Linux and Windows."

      Generally things that have to be added on separately cant be counted as "bloat". It's just not the nature.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Spy der Mann (805235)
      And meanwhile, Custom Emoticons support is still stalled :(

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This project is in no way affiliated with the official Pidgin Project.
      Learn to read, people!
    • The nice thing about open source is that many people can work in that program. That some like to add games dont stop other people to add the webcam/mic/whatever functionality they think is missing.

      And if you are so hurried for some particular functionality, add it yourself or hire someone to do that, worked for a lot of big companies that rely on open source. Freedom means also that a pidgin programmer can add the feature that he wants, but that don't means that is the one you want.

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