Titan Network
Paragon Chat => General => Topic started by: Tahquitz on April 17, 2016, 11:06:50 PM
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There are two ways to use Paragon Chat without downloading Issue 24 and using City of Heroes.
- Visit chat.cohtitan.com.
- Use a XMPP App.
A few downsides to these methods:
- The Local channels used to talk to folks in that neighborhood are not accessible here.
- You will not have an avatar presence in-game, of course, only your chat text will be visible.
Finally, XMPP is known as Jabber in the early 2000's. They're one and the same: it's a chat protocol that Google helped develop as a open-source standards-based XML-centric chat system. That's why usernames are referred to as JIDs (Jabber ID). Of course, once Google developed Hangouts circa Ice Cream Sandwich Android, they dropped Jabber and Google Talk development, so it's mostly in the hands of the community at this point.
Visit chat.cohtitan.com
Visit the http://chat.cohtitan.com (http://chat.cohtitan.com) website, and you'll see a splash page for Paragon Chat, pointing you to the Wiki or Forums for more information. But in the lower right corner, you'll see a tab with "Toggle Chat". Click it. Then enter your username ("TitanUsername@chat.cohtitan.com", using "TitanUsername" alone will not work.) and Titan Network Password. You'll see two tabs: Contacts and Rooms.
- Contacts: You can set a status message here, and enter in names of friends (also requires "TitanUsername@chat.cohtitan.com") so you can see if they're online or not. Talking to a contact in this tab initiates a Private Chat Window, which appears in Paragon Chat as tells to someone in-game.
- Rooms: Rooms are equal to channels in the Paragon Chat client. This is the basic drilldown of how Paragon Chat works: each channel in Paragon Chat represents a room in XMPP, so you can create a new room by entering a room name in the blank box (leave nickname and server alone), and click Create Room. The one you're probably going to want to click is "Show Rooms" where a list of rooms available will be shown. Every zone chat in Paragon Chat is shown as a room in this list, EXCEPT for Broadcast channels in each zone. By opening a room you can see who is present and talk on the channel just like you were in-game. Players in-game will need to use the "/chan_join" command to join your room that you make manually (as well as spell it correctly, else they'll make a room with your misspelled channel name in addition to yours). At the moment there's no mechanism to send a channel invite to people (live, offline, or otherwise).
The window spacing is a little awkward if you have multiple rooms open, as they cannot be resized. (They can be minimized if you run out of horizontal real estate on your monitor.)
When you're ready to log out, you can close the web browser window or tab with chat.cohtitan.com. That's it.
Use an XMPP App.
This isn't recommended, as most chat apps suck for the most part. But you can use a chat application to dial into Paragon Chat.
The part of disclaimers.
This thread is a primer on what apps are out there. This doesn't mean that we will troubleshoot problems you have using these apps. We can help with basic use or issues, but if you don't like an app's features or find it hard to use, you're mostly on your own with two choices: 1) peruse the app's help or online support to figure out how it works, or 2) uninstall it and try something else.
Bear in mind that Titan Network staff didn't make any of these apps except ParagonChat and the web-based ParagonChat client at chat.cohtitan.com, and are not responsible for tech support for any of the following.
Basic Connection Details:
I can't give specific instructions for each app, as they will use different methods for users to add accounts to their app. But I can list the basic information you need.
Username (Jabber ID or "JID"): "TitanUsername@chat.cohtitan.com" (drop the quotes, replace TitanUsername with your forum name.)
Password: Same as used on cohtitan.com to access forums or other areas.
Server: chat.cohtitan.com (shouldn't be needed... it's in the JID name above.)
Apps to Use Based on Platform:
That should be it. Now, what app should you use? You have a lot of choices in this area....
Multi-platform: Trillian (https://www.trillian.im/) (Windows/Mac), Psi (http://psi-im.org/) (Windows/Mac/Linux), AstraChat (http://astrachat.com/) (Everything), OneTeam (http://oneteam.im/)* (Windows/Mac/Linux), and Mozilla Thunderbird (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/) (Windows, Mac, Linux), and Pidgin (https://pidgin.im/) (Windows/Mac/Linux).
Platform Specific--
Windows Only: Miranda IM (http://www.miranda-im.org/), or Miranda NG (http://www.miranda-ng.org/en/)
Mac Only: Apple Messages (built-in to OS X/iOS), Monal (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monal-free-xmpp-chat/id1060957067?mt=12)
Linux Only (Easier to search for these apps in your package manager for your distro): Empathy (https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Empathy) for Gnome, Kopete (https://userbase.kde.org/Kopete) for KDE
Android: Xabber (https://www.xabber.com/), Conversations (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.siacs.conversations&referrer=utm_source%3Dgithub)
iOS: Messages (built-in to OS X/iOS), Monal (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/monal-free-xmpp-chat/id317711500?mt=8)
Managing expectations...
These are apps that I've verified to work at a basic level throughout the years working as a support employee at my job. But the thing about XMPP that I've learned is that there is no one single "great" experience that makes all users happy. You find the app that fits your needs best and live with its shortcomings. If you're expecting Yahoo Messenger/AOL Instant Messenger ease of use or features, you're probably going to be disappointed with most of these. The multiplatform apps come closer than most, but even Trillian has some hangups that irritates people (especially because in Trillian, they use multiple protocols as well, which means compromise in some areas to make a consistent interface across the board.)
Not an exhaustive list.
There are many, many more apps on the official XMPP Website (http://xmpp.org/software/clients.html), but many of them are in different languages (Russian, Polish, Japanese, etc.), are not well-made, or the project has gone defunct (a number of links are "file not found").
* The developers who made OneTeam also made "TextOne", a smartphone app for iOS and Android that uses XMPP, but DOES NOT allow outside server connections. If you install that, you can only see other TextOne users, so avoid this app if you want to use ParagonChat.
BONUS POINTS: BitlBee (https://www.bitlbee.org/main.php/news.r.html) is a IRC to chat service that rolls another account from a protocol like XMPP into your existing IRC channel session if you use IRC. A writeup demonstrating its use (https://mauroandres.wordpress.com/2007/08/23/turn-chatzilla-into-an-universal-instant-messaging-client/) is available here. Not recommended for normal users.
Thanks to Felderburg for corrections.
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There are two ways to use Paragon Chat without downloading Issue 24 and using City of Heroes.
- Visit chat.cohtitan.com.
- Use a XMPP App.
Two downsides to these methods:
- Certain channels will not be available to you. The Broadcast channels used to talk across the zones, as well as the Local channels used to talk to folks in that neighborhood are not accessible here.
- You will not have an avatar presence in-game, of course, only your chat text will be visible.
I logged in via chat.cohtitan.com. I could chat in the broadcast of zones. I apparently could not get or send tells. I also couldn't resize the chat windows.
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I'll have to try that out. Thanks for the follow up, I'll correct the above.
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FWIW, Pidgin works well enough for everything I need it to do.