PicoChat requires not to be run in the browser to function
Huge thanks to PixelDud for rebuilding the server in Go to support linux
Introducting PicoChat!
PicoChat is Picotron's first chat room. Its fully capable of sending and receiving messages, changing server and username.
Use /nick <name>
to change your Username.
Use /server <server address>
to change your server.
Want to setup your own chatroom?
Here's how to setup your own chatroom server:
- Download the server from here.
- Port forward port 80.
- Run the server.
If you want to add your server to the public server list, please send me a message on discord hessery
Looking for a server?
Here's a list of the current public servers:
- Official PicoChat Server
nenjine.com



Hello! How you setup network in your picotron game? Can you tell?



Hey cmpdchtr, as Picotron only has access to http GET requests you cant run a server on Picotron. The server is built with Gamemaker Studio 2 and reads the url it recieves to get messages from the client in base32. Whenever the server gets a packet from a client it simply responds with the chat log.



Thanks Hessery! I did not expect that they would give me an answer so quickly. Please tell me if this works on pico8?



I am running picotron on my steam deck but it does not seem to connect to the server at all. I have tried both the static and dyn version of pictotron.
Will try on Windows later! Looks great :)



Hey Kozm0naut, its designed to be like an old school irc chat room, but doesn't use any code from any existing irc.



Hey Maeve, this is a known issue due to fetch
only allowing urls of 256 or less characters. I'm planning on splitting up messages to fix this crash, but the flickering seems more important at the moment



Im have been thinking for a way to send 32x32 black/white images using those 256 characters. I will make a post explaining it better. But the idea is that you have 16 1x4 fields, each with a uniqe possible combination so 1000 0100 0010... 1010 etc. then you check the first 4 pixels and see which of the above combination it has, so it assigns it a hex number. That means you've got 16 hexnumbers for a 8x8 space. But can I send this string with the numbers, and then decode it on the other side? Thanks for making this post, it got me thinking how many things are possible. :)



Hey lexal, the flickering issue is due to cpu limitations. Picotron can’t do much more than run the os and render a full screen of text at the same time.
The latest build I pushed today tries to fix this by checking how much more time is left till the frame needs to be displayed before writing each line to the screen.
I’ll continue to work on optimising it, but there’s not much more I can do without Picotron getting a stronger cpu.



I love it, can I expand upon this project? Like making a better ui or add more features. Or make it so that you can send tiny images?



Hey Kingrats, feel free to use whatever you want from it. Just keep in mind that anything you add is unlikely to be supported on regular PicoChat servers and may even crash them or clients connected to them.



Had an error rn... @FallBreak8203 idk what really happened, but it occurred right after I’ve tried to post a reply on there.




Are you updating the servers or something because it gives an error when ever you launch it



@FallBreak8203 no, I wasn’t updating the servers… it so happened that I’ve tried to put a screencapture in this position. The program just freezes like this when it starts, and I can’t use the menu options also.



I think the server's dead, since I can't open the app without getting any GUI showing on my Steam Deck.



I fixed a bug that caused picochat to freeze if it could not find a server.
I also made it compatible with themes. You can change the color of the text and background by adding these two keys to your theme:
- picochat_text
- picochat_background
EDIT: It doesn't work on web, the current version of picoctron freezes your app if you use fetch on web. But it should work if you run the cart locally.



I can't seem to connect still when running it locally, is the nenjine.com
server down now?



I've setup a server instance at pixeldud-picochat.fly.dev
that y'all can use if you'd like. @tomyatemo's PicoChat Breeze works with it, no issues. It does seem that the nenjine.com
server is down, and I've messaged @Hessery about it.
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