Chat During Games?

[AquaAnalogue]

Just an idea... Is there a way to make a program where you could press a button on the Pandora (perhaps the pandora key) whilst in an emulator and have
it pop up from the bottom a minimal chat client interface? Say for example I'm playing Mario whilst IMing with a friend. Would it be within the technological
reach of the Pandora to program something running resident in memory like that?

Sorry if it's a stupid idea, just a thought

 

[lulzfish]

Since the Pandora is running a full X11 on a pre-emptive multi-processing Linux kernel...

You could just have an IM window and an emu open at the same time and Alt-Tab between them.

 

[Sphinxter]

Word up, aint no ipad.

 

[AquaAnalogue]

Since the Pandora is running a full X11 on a pre-emptive multi-processing Linux kernel...

You could just have an IM window and an emu open at the same time and Alt-Tab between them.

Yes, of course. It would be easy enough to do that. What I'm thinking of is something that's a bit
more smooth-looking. Like, sliding up from the bottom. Not asking anyone to do it for me.

I guess I'll ask a bit of a different question then... is the Pandora capable of running some sort
of compositing window manager or something that could do the same thing, rather simply, that would
work with anything running in fullscreen mode (there are games that, afaik, won't let me alt-tab out
of them in my fully-featured ubuntu PC)?

I don't want a hackish look. I want something that's easy on the eyes and won't succumb to the "I
am FULL SCREEN I own your input" problem.

Word up, aint no ipad.

What? Just... what?

 

[lulzfish]

People have said that Compiz will eventually run on the Pandora, but not by default, and I think fullscreen games override even the compositing window managers. They ARE fullscreen, after all.

Most games have a windowed mode, maybe if you can turn off window decoration it would work decently.

 

[Vorporeal]

I think he wants something like the feature in Steam that allows you to access parts of the Steam interface while in-game. They're drawn as an overlay on top of the game (more or less). It would probably work if we had some intermediate program that launched the games. (And yes, that feature does work if you launch non-Steam games from within Steam.)

 

[gruso]

Atomicthumbs is coding a Pandora chat client from scratch. Make him make it do this. Make him make it do it.

 

[AquaAnalogue]

Atomicthumbs is coding a Pandora chat client from scratch. Make him make it do this. Make him make it do it.

haha.... I'll try?

I think he wants something like the feature in Steam that allows you to access parts of the Steam interface while in-game. They're drawn as an overlay on top of the game (more or less). It would probably work if we had some intermediate program that launched the games. (And yes, that feature does work if you launch non-Steam games from within Steam.)

Yes, that sounds like almost exactly what I'm looking for. Or XFire, another example, but not so great as it only works in games it supports. I've never used Steam except to play Borderlands at this gaming place I went to with my roomies once, i'm mostly a Linux gamer and I certainly am not going to pay to download games-- if I'm going to have a legit copy of something it's going to have a box and a case and a manual, haha. But I digress.

I'm thinking it could be just a program that emulates a full-screen display, where games run -inside- of it... invisibly, of course, until you decide to pop-up a tray with a chat client inside of it. It shouldn't be any slower, I hope. I know almost nothing about X11, but I'm pretty sure I know that on an X server there are several "displays." Perhaps this could emulate one of those? As I said i know almost nothing about X11 so if I'm wrong educate me ^_^

If I am correct however and you could somehow emulate an X display in a window on another X display, then we have problem solved. Simply write a nifty display emulator which runs fullscreen, but that has a capability to overlay something on top of itself, no matter what is running on its display. It could probably be written extensibly as well without too much extra effort.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Atomicthumbs is coding a Pandora chat client from scratch. Make him make it do this. Make him make it do it.

I will attempt to add a pop-down Quake-console-style mode when I've actually got the damn thing working. Twisted is precisely what it says it is: twisted.

Edit:

Case in point:

def quirkyMessage(self, s): 
This is called when I receive a message which is peculiar, but not wholly indecipherable.

 

[vertice]

i had an idea for a xmpp based xbox live analog, which would partially work towards solving this - http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?/topic/52076-pandora-live-pandora-network/


the big issue is never being able to rely on X11 or specific things to be available, so not being able to do an overlay reliably for all the different apps.

 

[wardred]

Maybe the best way, rather than a full on "chat client" would be an easy API that any game could call for either voice or text chat. Heck, get inventive and tie it into something like Kopete's back end - minus as much of the KDE specific stuff as possible. That way, you wouldn't have to worry that Game X is written in QT, game y is in SDL, game Z is in OpenGL and doesn't want to give up control of the screen or controls. :-b

You could still have the chat client for those games that didn't support the api, but having the api would allow game developers to make the interface slick and fit in with their games.

Also, I think whatever is in use should implement jabber. Both google talk and now facebook support it, and I've always felt that it was silly that every company under the sun had to have their sandboxed chat areas.

Just my unsolicited 2 cents.

Good luck, whatever you come up with.