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."

The real news is Vala

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?

Re:The real news is Vala

I suppose a Wikipedia link is in order:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala_(programming_language) [wikipedia.org]

New feature?

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?

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

(Formerly FunPidgin) Forked after the resize box debacle. http://funpidgin.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

Re:

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 st

Re:New feature?

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:New feature?

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:

There are console-based chat programs you may like.

Chatting on consoles?

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.

Who will use it?

I use Pidgin. No one I chat with does.

Re:

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

Compiled to pure C?

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.

Wasted Effort

Where is the Audio and Video?!

Re:are you kidding me

It's a plugin, not a core component.

Re:

... and even better, it's unaffiliated with the Pidgin project, so the Pidgin devs didn't lose their minds.

Re:are you kidding me

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:are you kidding me

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

Re:

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.

Re:

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]...

Re:

"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:

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

Re:

And meanwhile, Custom Emoticons support is still stalled :(

Re:

This is already done. Set your emoticon image set to 'None'.

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

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.