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Unofficial AIM Bot Gives Infocom Classics IM Twist

Posted by simoniker on from the lol-ruok-asl-etc? dept.

Fluidic Binary writes "Now instant messenging can waste our time in exciting 'new' ways, according to Wired News, who reveal that an improved unofficial AIM bot has been created to play Infocom games via AOL's messenging client. According to the article: 'The bot, designed by 26-year-old Web programmer Andy Baio, is a Perl script that acts as an intermediary between the games, which are hosted on his server, and AOL's network.'"

6 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. I like it by Professor+Cool+Linux · · Score: 1, Informative

    i play it all the time (cept now cause /. thx guys)
    its fun especially "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe". Love it, much fun.

  2. Re:Slashdotted? by Psychor · · Score: 3, Informative

    Oh, for the curious who can't be bothered to read the link, you want to be connecting to AIM usernames infocombot, infocombot2 or infocombot3. Don't expect a quick response though (ICQ works for this as well as AIM, or your favourite multiple network messaging client).

  3. Re:Not original, not fair by freakmn · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is an AOL Instant Messanger bot, not a program that helps you to aim in first person shooters, I agree that the title might be confusing.

    --
    warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
  4. Too bad rate-limitting kills it by kriston · · Score: 4, Informative

    Too bad the built-in rate-limitting in the AIM service kills this. The Smarterchild people had the same problem so they had to get special accounts that weren't rate-limitted.

    For those who use these services, rate-limitting is that which prevents you from sending too many instant messages too quickly, and too many instant messages to too many recipients too quickly. The servers penalize you for the more messages you send until you can't carry on a conversation, and then they time out and the rate-limitting wears off. This happens in both the oscar protocols and in the TOC protocols used by things like the Minitik project. The rate limits do not wear off when you sign-off, either.

    --

    Kriston

  5. Re:Why is this news? by oskillator · · Score: 2, Informative
    The original has been ported from MDL to C, so it's actually all over the place.

    Lemme see if iFiction has a playable version... yep! Here it is.

    The trilogy is better, though. Less coherent because they had to split it up, but there's more content, the puzzles are friendlier, and the connections between rooms are more sensible.

  6. GrokItBot by duncangough · · Score: 1, Informative

    I'm biased, but everytime I see IM bots like this I cringe at the interface.

    I plugged a bayesian guesser into a trimmed down ALICE bot and the interface is much more tolerant of speeling mistokes and the way different people phrase questions and answers.

    GrokItBot is a bare bones version of this. If you're interested I'd strongly encourage you to download the code :)

    --
    Suttree, a weblog about casual games development