TrueChat

Lovemedo's cool avatar site

2007-08-24T00:37:00.000-07:00

Lovemedo has a cool avatar site for TrueChat. It has teeda's avatars as well.

http://www.freewebs.com/lovemedo7/

Windows ME

2006-11-19T07:34:00.000-08:00

Windows ME users were experiencing a problem where room backgrounds from web servers were not updating correctly. This has been fixed in the latest version Varenna2 (TrueChat 061119) and should be downloaded by all users of Windows ME. The bug was caused by threads having -ve identifiers because of the hybrid 16/32 bit operating system. Many thanks to Teeda for reporting this bug.

Release names

2006-11-01T23:59:00.000-08:00

Some of you have been wondering how the names for the client application were chosen. Well the names stem from a European trip that I took in 2003. I travelled from Frankfurt to Bad Rappenau, Baden-Baden (Germany), Geneva, Lausanne (Switzerland) and Varenna (Italy). The next release will be Cinque Terre, Italy.

Two exceptions for release names were swibel-kuchen (onion cake) and neuer-wein (new wine), which are fall delicacies found in southern Germany. The young onion cake is made with cream and on a tart base and not oniony at all! It is washed down with a glass of sweet neuer-wein and oh so yummy.

New Release! TrueChat Varenna

2006-10-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

The new release (Varenna) is out.

It supports:

Unicode
Disconnect bug fixes
Animated gif avatars and room backgrounds
Slideshow rooms (using any URL that contains multiple images)
Webcam rooms
VCR type control for slideshow or webcam rooms

It still has a few bugs, namely:

Optimized animated GIF images may not render correctly (a PIL bug)
Links cannot be drawn in a room with an animated gif background
Some users have reported not seeing the room backgrounds show up (looking into this)

It has two new commands that can be typed in the chat box:
"/anim" turns animation on
"/noanim" turns animation off, this is good if you think the animated avatars are slowing your machine down

How do I make an animated background for my room?

2006-10-23T03:57:00.000-07:00

1. Log into TrueChat. Click on Rooms to open the Room Browser.

2. In the Room Browser, click on My Rooms and Bookmarks under the Server pane, your Username under the Users pane, and * Create Room under the Links pane. Click Yes to make a room.

3. In the Room Maker, you'll have the option of entering a URL as your room background. Examples of URLs can be found on:

Flickr - By entering this URL as a room background, we get rotating pictures of Shibori.
Yahoo Images - By entering this URL as a room background, we get rotating pictures of penguins.
Webcams - Try a room full of live roaches or chat in Shanghai!
MySpace - Enter a MySpace account URL.
LifeLogger - Enter a LifeLogger account URL, such as this one.
New York Times

In this example, we searched for "penguins" with Yahoo Images, and entered the URL (i.e. http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=penguin) of the returned images as our Room Background. Note that the rotating room background can only be viewed when you start chatting.

Type in a Room Name for your new room.

4. You have the option to select how long each image will be displayed in your room. Click on Options. Select a different Refresh rate.

5. Click on Make Room to finish!

Registration disabled

2006-10-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

Hi users. Registration has been temporarily disabled. If you need an account please contact me at truechat [at] gmail.com

How do I add a room?

2006-10-20T07:10:00.000-07:00

There are two ways to add your own rooms to your account.

1. Manual method of making rooms

Upload your room image to a web server. There are several free ones, including http://geocities.yahoo.com.
The room images have to be at most 640 X 480 (preferably 540 X 385) (width X height) and smaller than 35Kb in size. The images must be in gif or jpeg format.
Make a note of the url of the image file, for example, http://geocities.yahoo.com/me/myroom.jpg
Click on the "Create Room" in the Room Browser Window.
A window called the Room Maker will pop up.
Enter the room image url and click "View". Alternatively, you can use one of the default images provided under the "url" button of the Room Maker window.
Give the room a name and description and click "Make Room". You're done !

2. Using a premium account at OnChat™

Open a premium account at OnChat™
Use the wizard in TrueChat's Room Browser Window to add your rooms from OnChat™ to the TrueChat world. That's it!

Notes:
Important: There might be a slight delay when you import your rooms to TrueChat (up to 2 minutes). Please be patient as there is quite a bit of data to be moved. If the TrueChat application jams up, don't worry, just restart TrueChat and go the the Room Browser to see if your rooms have been imported. Look under the "My Rooms and Bookmarks" heading in the first pane.
Don't worry about overwriting your existing rooms in TrueChat. The client makes sure that existing rooms in your TrueChat account are not overwritten with the imported OnChat™ rooms.
If you delete the rooms in your OnChat™ account, they will no longer be available in TrueChat as well.
All premium OnChat™ members (booster) will automatically become members of www.avatarexchange.com. AvatarExchange.com is being constructed and its service will be available soon.

How do I add avatars?

2006-10-20T06:52:00.000-07:00

There are three ways to add avatars.

Use your account on OnChat™
Adding a URL that contains avatar images
Manually adding an index.txt file (Not recommended)

1. Adding avatars using OnChat™'s booster membership
Open a premium account at OnChat™ to store your avatars.

Use the wizard in TrueChat's Avatar Browser Window to add the avatars from OnChat™.

OR

2. Adding a URL that contains avatar images
If you have web pages or URL's with your avatars on them, you can add them into TrueChat very easily.

There are several free websites where you can upload your avatars, including http://geocities.yahoo.com. Some sites like flickr.com will convert your gif's to jpg's and image transparency will be lost. Please comment on this post if you locate a place where gif's can be uploaded for free.

Make a note of the url of the web page, for example: http://geocities.yahoo.com/me/male_avatars.html
You should be able to see this URL with avatars on it, in your favourite web browser (IE, firefox, mozilla etc). If you don't then check the URL.

Open the Avatar Browser, and click on the Add button. A window will open asking you to enter a URL of an avatar webpage.

Give the list a name and enter the url of the web page. In this case, we're using the URL copied from the browser shown above.

Click on the Add button, and the window will tell you the number of avatars found, while TrueChat loads up your avatars.

TrueChat is finished loading up your avatars when you see the Done window.

Note: The avatar images have to be at most 150X150 (width X height) and less than 10Kb in size. The images must be in gif, jpg or png format and can have transparency. Animated gifs are also ok, though images that are optimized too much may not display correctly (turn off optimization when you are making animated gifs in photoshop etc).

OR

3. Manually adding an index.txt file (Not recommended)
First upload your avatars to a web server. There are several free ones, including http://geocities.yahoo.com.

The avatar images have to be at most 120X120 (width X height) and less than 5Kb in size. The images must be in gif or jpeg format and can have transparency.

Create a file called index.txt in the same directory as the avatar images. The index.txt file should contain a list of all the avatar images in the directory with one avatar image listed per line.

Make a note of the url of the index.txt file, for example, http://geocities.yahoo.com/me/index.txt

Click on the "Add" Button of the Avatar Browser Window. Give the list a name and enter the url of the index file . That's it !
Example of contents of index.txt :

foo.gif
myavatar.gif
another_avatar.gif
....

Make sure that the images listed are in the same directory as the index.txt file.

FAQ

2006-10-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

What is TrueChat?
Why was it developed?
Who developed TrueChat?
How can I participate and contribute to the free community?
I downloaded the TrueChat client, now how do I use it?
What kind of subscription services are there?
What happened to AvatarExchange.com?
How can I make my own OnChat™ rooms and avatars available on the TrueChat client?
Do I need to upload my own avatars and rooms to use TrueChat?
Can I license TrueChat for commercial applications?
Can I run my own server?
Do I need to run my own server to make my rooms available?
Where do I get updates to the client or new content for the TrueChat client?
What kind of content will TrueChat allow users to run?
How will the browsing and trusted users system work? Will there be ratings?
How is the TrueChat client different from OnChat's ™ Java Graphical Chat Client?
What platforms will the TrueChat client support?

1. What is TrueChat?
TrueChat is a new downloadable visual chat client from the creators of OnChat™. With the TrueChat client, you can participate in visual chat, create rooms and upload avatars to distributed web servers. Eventually, we will be bringing games to the TrueChat client.

2. Why was it developed?
To bring back OnChat™ as a vibrant, growing free community with additional services provided through OnChat™ subscriptions.

3. Who developed TrueChat?
TrueChat client by Shahril Ibrahim and OnChat.com maintained by Steve Fong. Systems Integration by Suresh Rajagopalan and support by Anatoly Pronichenko.

4. How can I participate and contribute to the free community?
To grow the TrueChat community, we will need people to run and host free servers and to make avatar and room image collections available on web sites. We need people to make content and support the development of the TrueChat client. Check out the how-to participate page for more details.

5. I downloaded the TrueChat client, now how do I use it?
Just connect the TrueChat client to onchat.net and register a user account - that's it! Don't forget to remember your username and password, you will need it each time you connect to the server. You will also be prompted for your name and email address. Please supply your correct name and email address since we will use this to verify your identity if you should forget your password. OnChat™ and TrueChat will not resell your name or email address, please see our privacy policy.

6. What kind of subscription services are there?
Currently members of OnChat.com™'s premium accounts (aka booster accounts) will be able to easily upload avatars, create rooms and use them within TrueChat.

Non-premium members can still make rooms and avatars but will have to host them on their own websites. The difference is that OnChat.com(tm) users will be able to create and share rooms and avatars through one-click wizards and buttons; whereas users of other web sites might have to contend with ftp'ing or other methods of upload.

In addition, booster members of OnChat.com will be hosted on fast servers with fat bandwith pipes for an enhanced TrueChat experience.

7. What happened to AvatarExchange.com ?
We tried to implement AvatarExchange.com using Zope (an open source Content Management System) but have had significant problems getting it running smoothly including a disastorous database crash. Does anyone want to help do a new AvatarExchange ? Perhaps on Ning ?

8. How can I make my own OnChat™ rooms and avatars available on the TrueChat client?
There are wizards in the client that will enable you to use and publish your own rooms and avatars.

9. Do I need to upload my own avatars and rooms to use TrueChat?
No. The TrueChat client is already preconfigured with a set of rooms and avatars for you to use.
In fact, you can also use any webpage with avatar or room images in the client. These can be any webpage on the net.

10. Can I license TrueChat for commercial applications?
Yes. The TrueChat client is currenly free for personal use, but companies wanting to use or personalize the TrueChat client for their own purposes should contact simsc [at] cine.net

11. Can I run my own server?
Yes. You need to be running a jabberd server on linux/windows. The server requires a FQDN (fully qualified domain name) and a static IP is preferable. If you have a dsl or cable modem with a dynamic IP, it may be possible using virtual DNS. Please contact simsc [at] cine.net for more info.

12. Do I need to run my own server to make my rooms available?
No, you can run your rooms from any server on which you are a member. Each server can have multiple user accounts and each account can host their own rooms.

13. Where do I get updates to the client or new content for the TrueChat client?
Stay tuned to both TrueChat.com and truechat.blogspot.com

14. What kind of content will TrueChat allow users to run?
Just like the original OnChat™, we intend to create a platform for users to create and build content. Our belief is that we do not have a lock on creativity and instead wish to empower our users to create content and share it with others. Some of the content may be racy while other content might be suited for general use. Our mechanism for bookmarking and sharing content will allow users to link to rooms and other users that share their sense of aesthetic and values. In this way, users can browse other trusted users for rooms that they might enjoy.

15. How will the browsing and trusted users system work? Will there be ratings?
Just like in real life, a user will have a trusted group of friends in TrueChat and will be able to browse their bookmarks for rooms they might enjoy. Basically, when a user finds another user or room that they like, they can bookmark it and their friends can view their bookmarks. This way a group of users can share a set of rooms that they enjoy. If a room is found that a user does not like, (s)he can either remove it from their bookmarks or remove the user who originally bookmarked the offending room. In a sense, ratings will no longer be necessary since the discoverey of new rooms is based on a user's trusted circle of friends.

16. How is the TrueChat client different from OnChat's ™ Java Graphical Chat Client?
They both allow you to chat as avatars in graphical rooms. The TrueChat client is a full application and once you download it you can connect to the TrueChat universe without a browser. TrueChat is faster but is missing some of the polish of the OnChat™ client but has some new features like slideshows and animated avatars.

17. What platforms will the TrueChat client support?
Currently, the Windows platform is the only one supported, but we will shortly make the TrueChat client available forMac OS X.

TrueChat Commands & Shortcuts

2006-10-20T04:48:00.000-07:00

Try typing these shortcuts in the chat box:

Changing your avatar character:
________________________

/nickname nickname
Change your nickname.

/fg color
Changes the color the balloon text. Example Colors: blue, red, lightblue, lightgreen etc.

/bg color
Changes the background color of the balloons.

/nickcolor color
Changes the color of your nickname.

/flip
Flips your avatar from left to right. Lets you face the person you're talking to -)

/noanim
Turns off avatar and room background animation.
To stop a slideshow, use the VCR type controls in the "More box"

/anim
Turns avatar and background animation back on (this is the default behavior)

/shout or /s
ex: /shout hello
will make a shout balloon with "hello"

/think or /t
ex: /think am thinking
will make a thinking ballon with "am thinking"

In whisper mode:
______________

/ignore
Whisper to the user you want to ignore. Then type /ignore. The user will be ignored.

/a sentence
If you are in whisper mode, typing ex: /a sentence, will make you speak to all for just that sentence. This is great for switching between whisper and talking to the whole room.

Sharing Links
___________

/throw
Allows you to throw a temporary link to the room. Useful for showing people a website or a room. For example:

/throw

or to throw a website:
/throw http://www.truechat.com

or to throw a truechat community:
/throw username

/private
Type /private to make the room invisible to the popular rooms list. Everyone in the room must do so in order to make this work. Useful if a few people want to share a private room without showing up in popular rooms. Remember everyone must type /private shortly after they enter the room.

Bug Report

2006-10-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

To be Added

Features List

2006-10-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

To be added

Avatar List

2006-10-19T04:19:00.000-07:00

Here's a list of avatars URL's you can add to your TrueChat client.
Copy the URL and add it to the "Add" popup window in the Avatar Browser.

Please comment if you find more free avatar sites.

Lovemedo's avatar site

Mixed

Gals

Teeda
[de_A_th]
kenny_k
ghettoloser 1 2

Guys

New functionality

2006-08-24T03:29:00.000-07:00

Tips
Wiki?
Xing?
Tutorials?
Embed Delicious?