MUSHClient and Background IRC

First and foremost, I am wondering if anything like what I am about to describe already exists. If not, I am mostly asking (as I have some coding experience in the necessary languages, but none in MUSHClient itself) how difficult it would be. Here goes:

I was wondering if it's a feasible idea to run IRC in the background of one MUSHClient world-window. That might be a confusing sentence, so here is an awesome example that better illustrates what I am talking about:

emote smiles.
You smile.

Bob smiles back.

say How's it goign?
You say, 'How's it goign?'

/irc Oops. Sorry, Bob; I meant 'going.'
<IRC Chatroom1> Joe: Oops. Sorry, Bob; I meant 'going.'


Maybe that illustrates what I mean better? It's perfectly feasible to run MUSHClient in one window and mIRC in another and alt+tab between them, but the fluidity and combined nature of this idea really appeal to me.

Thanks in advance for any help, guys. :D

Why not just use the inbuilt chat system? That lets you do chats to selected other players without going through the ingame tells. You can do things like group chat, or chat-to-all.

There is that. To be honest, while waiting to read this reply, I discovered and tested out the #chat plugin and think it's really, really awesome. The only problem with it is that pretty much everyone now-a-days is behind some kind of NAT device. We've had to use a virtual-LAN program like Hamachi in order to connect. While that's pretty okay and totally workable, IRC would be nice.

At this point, I'm not sure whether or not putting the work into development for something like this would even be worth it, though!

Thanks for your prompt reply; Nick Gammon, you're pretty much my hero.

*shifty* An IRC plugin is my current project. In fact, if/when Nick has LuaSocket added to MUSHclient (which he said he was considering at the very least), it'll probably be a snap to install and use.

Well! Let me know when that happens, Twisol. :3

True, but to use the chat system you only need to enable port-forwarding to a single copy of the client (effectively, this is the chat server). So if one of your group can leave a PC on 24/7, just run a copy of MUSHclient continually set up as the chat server. It doesn't even have to be the same copy you use for playing MUDs. The chat server world could use the IP address of 0.0.0.0 for its MUD (so it doesn't connect). It would simply be there to relay messages.

Everyone else is calling out, and the NAT problem doesn't exist for them.

Incidentally, is it possible for chat-related commands other than mere chat (or possible to add this functionality), such as snooping or command sending or file transfers, to be sent to other people who are connected to that 'server' without having to set up a separate direct connection with them?

If I recall, my very limited and quick tests showed that the 'everyone connects to one person' approach only allows normal chat to occur to the entire group, without the ability to funnel other modes of interaction (primarily tested with snooping) through the intermediary. When you try, the commands only bring up the central server as a possible target due to lack of direct connections with others. It'd be very helpful for those who, for one reason or another, don't have authority over their routers. Perhaps an 'act as server' checkbox could toggle this functionality, if there's fear of multiple people abusing an unwilling intermediary's bandwidth.