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."

New feature?

[Enderandrew]

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.

Remember gaim-vv?

[Anonymous Coward]

Games. There's a rather useless feature, if you ask me. I feel like the effort would have been better allocated toward something like, say, voice/video chat. I've been waiting on this one for years. But no, games.

Who will use it?

[Gigiya]

I use Pidgin. No one I chat with does.

Re:New feature?

[kcbanner]

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).

Compiled to pure C?

[QUILz]

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.

No webcam, no mic, but GAMES?!

[Hitto]

Look, I know it's open-source and they're doing it for free and yadda yadda yadda.
But try making a functional prog before adding more plugins we don't care about!

Re:New feature?

[Enderandrew]

There are console-based chat programs you may like.

Re:Remember gaim-vv?

[Anonymous Coward]

This project is in no way affiliated with the official Pidgin Project.

Learn to read, people!

Re:No webcam, no mic, but GAMES?!

[gmuslera]

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.