Now you may be thinking; “That chat program is still around?” or “What the heck is a eye-arr-see?”
Well let me tell you my friend. It stands for Internet Relay Chat and it’s been around for 34 years. It’s pretty much perfected at this point and quite easy to use if you have even the slightest technical knowledge.
So IRC servers are separate from one another with each server having it’s own admins. Each server you connect to has it’s own bots ran by individuals to messages and ask for things.
IRC servers work by sending slash commands much like discord does. To message another user you might type /msg coolboot2000 hello world! Piracy on IRC works by sending a bot a pm with the pack number you want.
“Where do I find servers and bots and pack numbers?” It’s as easy as using a xdcc search engine. http://sunxdcc.com/ has both a search and a list of networks. (DCC is Direct Client to Client meaning no files pass thru the server and XDCC is a version of DCC that allows large files to be transferred.)
“How do I connect?” You use an IRC client with SSL support. ~mIRC~ AdiIRC for windows and Hexchat with a patch for Linux. Once installed you can use the slash command /connect or use the clients GUI buttons to make a connection to the server.
“How do I make my own IRC client?” Follow the specifications here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_Relay_Chat_commands There are a ton of pre-made IRC libraries for pretty much every programming language.
Best luck friends!
edit: updated 11-6-23
I love IRC. Love its simplicity and instantaneous nature messages. Nothing feels as realtime chat like IRC does. It’s also dead simple to implement and self-host. Only downside is iffy file transfers which don’t work unless you have public IP. Inline images would be useful. Perhaps time is ripe for IRC+ protocol. Add few extensions and you are good.
That’s called a MUD server. :P
A MUD is basically text based gaming. Nothing to do with the topic here
person I replied to got the joke.
MUD is more like IRC-
MUD is basically a talker with a game.
There’s nothing like IRC+… Maybe, but just maybe, XMPP?
Sorry, i didn’t get the joke.
No problem friend. Basically the joke was that instead of using matrix to send picture to each other you can use the ASCII art or simple image loaders in a mud client to share media.
http://www.medievia.com/connecting.html - the medievia client for instance has image and sound support.
IRC+ is called matrix, and it’s great. Has images and offline messages
Ahh yes matrix, IRC with the extra bullshit layer.
Matrix is anything but great. Tried using it for months, forced my employees to use it for business communication. Worst decision I’ve made of late. Messages would get delayed or never arrive. Frequent issues with clients. Server drops. Etc. Gave up on it long time ago.