Chat framework

[markus.borbely]

Hello!

I'm writing a mp strategy game. The server is a webapp inside tomcat. It serves mostly webservice calls. The game is not at all realtime, so there is no push from the server. It's sufficient for the client to poll the server once in a while, depending on the game pace, once every minut might do.

Now, I need an ingame chat. Chat needs to update faster than the game itself. I'm thinking I need to create a parallell (havent decided if it will be in the same jvm as the webapp) server that reads the same database as the server. The chatserver only needs to read the player table for authentication (and then some maybe). The client will connect to this chatserver and authenticate when you log in. After that, from the users perspective, it will work like basic irc, some channels and so on.

Now, how to do this?

* Write it with webservice requests. Make the client poll the server every five seconds or so.
* Write a standalone server that is started in or outside tomcat. Make a irc-like simple protocol.
* Use an existing chat framework. I only know jabber, and jabber is more IM than irc, so it's no good.

Anyone have any helpful comments?

[noblemaster]

* Write it with webservice requests. Make the client poll the server every five seconds or so.
yes, maybe do a client polling via HTTP every 1-2 seconds. on the server, create a global variable and store all the messages within the global variable. keep only the last 100 messages in store to save memory. no need to use the database. just write a simple servlet/jsp page.

* Write a standalone server that is started in or outside tomcat. Make a irc-like simple protocol.
no

* Use an existing chat framework. I only know jabber, and jabber is more IM than irc, so it's no good.
no

[markus.borbely]

yeah... I did a very simple chat today. No separate channels, only one large window with the history. 1 minute chat history is kept in the server memory. Took only 4 hours to code and it works fairly well. But it is awfully empty!