Just a friendly reminder to everyone, the chat, forums, wiki, and names need to be kept 100% PG :) Kids want to have fun too!! ^.^ As a reminder, I have posted the rules below. (Special thanks to Titan for linking me to the wiki page that contained them.)
What is acceptable chat behavior?
Language:
First and foremost keep your language PG. If you are unsure about what is PG, check here [2]
Censoring Un-PG language from your own chat with **** or &%#*& is not acceptable.
Under no circumstances may you traffic in warez, cracking, or anything else that is illegal in the CB chat/forums. This includes private chat.
Don't spam the chat window. Try to keep your thoughts to as few lines as possible. Writing gibberish just because you are bored is also considered spam.
English is the gold standard of chat, if you are asked to speak English by an OP you should do so.
L33T speak is frowned upon in chat.
Kindly remember CB includes both young people and people who speak English as a second language. Keep your communication as clear and concise as possible for the benefit of everyone.
Do not intentionally provoke others, as this is seen as trolling. Trolling can be basically defined as inciteful or inflammatory chat with the intent to provoke another user.
Buying/selling/forging:
Keep it to a minimum, take it to PM quickly, don't disrupt ongoing conversation, don't spam, and don't be annoying. Use your head.
Looking for forge work or looking for a forger belongs in the Services forum, not in chat.
Other advertisements are OK as long as you follow normal guidelines: keep it on as few lines as possible, and don't repeat yourself when you don't get a response immediately. After the initial message, you should take bargaining to PM; I suggest starting with "PM me if ..."
Enforcement:
ChatOPs are trusted with maintaining community standards. If you are asked to end an offensive or endlessly annoying conversation, do so. The latter may include topics including politics and religion. Excessive rudeness or namecalling, even within the bounds of the PG rule, will not be tolerated.
If an OP chooses to /kick you out of chat remember that a kick is a warning. It's best not to argue a kick, just learn from it and move on. Arguing may get you /kill.
"Well, chat was dead anyhow," is not an excuse for breaking any chat rules.
Repeat offenders will be referred to Admins for discipline beyond /kick & /kill.
Kicks last 30 seconds, Kills last an hour, and having a ! in your name bans you from chat.
What special commands are available?
Type "/help", without the quotes, to get the most up-to-date list.
Can I turn off chat to make the game faster?
Turning off chat does not make the game faster. The chat applet is a one-time download of 11kB (3 seconds to download with a 33kbps modem). It may appear slowly due to the overhead of starting the java runtime environment, particularly on older computers, but again, this only occurs once per session. A better question would be, "Is there a way to speed up the first page load after I login?" And the answer is definitely, by loading www.carnageblender.com/main.tcl instead of simply /. This avoids loading and rendering the main page twice. Finally, yes, you can turn off Chat if you've read all this and you still want it off. (Perhaps you are firewalled so Chat does nothing for you besides waste your time dragging the chat frame out of your way.) Have at it in Settings.
Is the chat server an ircd?
No. It is an NFC Chat daemon [3] (on port 7777, for the curious). This lets us make chat much more secure than it could be with IRC, as well as features like persistent ignore and chatmail that would be impossible with a service like IRC whose protocol hasn't changed substantially since the early 90's.
Chat crashes my browser. Can you fix it?
No. This is a bug in your browser and/or JVM. This is not due to a bug in the Chat Blender applet. It seems that IE with the MS VM is particularly crash-prone; see the first question for how to get the latest VM.
The chat doesn't work, at all.
If you see an error message like SocketException, you are probably firewalled, in which case you need to talk to your admin. Other errors like ConnectException, UnknownHostException, NoRouteToHostException, etc. indicate a similar problem on your end. (I am told that "parental controls" offered by some ISPs can also cause this behavior.) If you see nothing at all, your browser doesn't know how to run java applets. Install Java [4]. If that doesn't work, use a modern browser.
Can you add this new feature?
Probably not. But hey, the source is linked right above this. You can make your own client that does anything you want. Hey, if it really is a rockin' idea, it might find its way back into the official client. :)
Enjoy Carnage Blender, and remember!! Everybody deserves to have the same experience you do! :) Be kind, remind people of the rules in a friendly way if they break them, help the admins out. They have other issues to deal with, least we can do is help keep the game clean and safe.
Sincerely,
-Kyle
