Games Come to Pidgin

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."

Re:are you kidding me

[abaddononion]

"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:New feature?

[squisher]

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 :-).

Re:are you kidding me

[gangien]

oh yeah? well anytime i feel bloated, it's always thanks to something i've added.

Chatting on consoles?

[tepples]

There are console-based chat programs you may like.

Do you mean the Windows Live (i.e. "MSN") chat in Xbox Live on Xbox 360 [microsoft.com]? Or running generic chat clients in Linux for PLAYSTATION 3? I know Nintendo doesn't want to get involved in the chat scene because Nintendo doesn't want to make the nightly news as the company that helps pedos find victims.

Re:Who will use it?

[xtracto]

That is why one of the first games available are Solitaire and minesweeper.

Re:are you kidding me

[Missing_dc]

Implementing a jingle is easy, just play it over and over until it is stuck in the subjects' heads.

Re:New feature?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:are you kidding me

[arivanov]

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.