I've named the "chat rooms" realms, and they work like a channel in IRC. The realm owner will have moderator rights on their realm, much like in IRC, too. A while I actually pondered to link it to the IRC network, but I guess it would be sort of abuse to spam a channel with the messages that only this sort of client can interpret, like "move user XYZ from position a,b to e,f" ... so I decided to make it separate, but with IRC in mind.
So this is how it starts, after choosing a name and selecting a server:
While it comes with some artwork to use readily, I also want to allow users to create their own maps for chatting and import their own artwork for designing maps and avatars. But that's future ...
This is the example map that I've made.
Code-wise MapChat is a spinoff from my Jewelhunt project - while Jewelhunt was meant to be a single palyer RPG, I wanted to see if I can make a multi-player version, too. Currently it's proof of concept code. It consists of a server and a client, where players can log in, join one premade map, walk around, and of course, send chat messages to everyone nearby. The architecture should scale up to a point, I assume it can bear a few hundred users and some dozens of maps on a server, but currently it's definitely aimed at smaller installations - e.g. someone running a chat server with a realm to meet with their friends. At some point I'd like to work on a server network like IRC, where servers can forward messages and actions to other servers which are running the same realms. Let's say, make a graphical re-interpretation of IRC and it's channels.
Code is here, part of the Jewelhunt project (see the 'mapchat' subtree):
http://sourceforge.net/p/jewelhunt/code ... trunk/src/
There is a map editor, which I've used to make the demo map, but it lacks a lot in usability. That is, in the current state I don't think anyone else wants to use it as it is now, and making a better map editor will be needed.
