CC-Bot

CC-Bot is our "bot" (computer program) that automates certain tasks in channels and on the CC Web site. A bot is simply a computer program that connects to the chat server and responds to certain events, like a user saying a certain word.

CC-Bot has gone thorugh many incarnations over the years. Originally it was created in 2000 by one of our early administrators, Laurence, using the mIRC scripting language. It was hosted on the computers of chatters and CentralChat staff, moving several times over the years. It's original functions were to provide Harry Potter trivia to #harrypotter and #hptrivia, to provide basic flood protection in channels and to provide limited support to users who asked simple questions like "how do I whisper?".

The current version of CC-Bot was coded by Greg in Java using the PircBot API. Rather than running on someone's home computer CC-Bot is now hosted on one of the CentralChat servers in the USA.

The current CC-Bot is still under development and doesn't offer a lot of features at the moment. CC-Bot has the ability to be invited into other channels, so its features will be available to any chat room owner who wants them.

You can make CC-Bot join a channel by using the command !join <#channel> - this command must be send by private message. The bot will then automatically join the channel. If the !join command was issued by a user who is not an operator on that channel, CC-Bot will leave the channel immediately. CC-Bot will also leave the channel if there is only one other chatter on it (as having CC-Bot in a near-empty channel is a waste of resources).

You can make CC-Bot part a channel by simply kicking it - obviously only channel ops are able to do this.

Once CC-Bot is in a channel, other commands become available:

• !hilo <max> = starts a game of HiLo with <max> as the limit, eg. !hilo 100
• !autovoice <secs> = enables autovoicing after seconds - you must op CC-Bot in the channel in order to enable this.
• !autovoice off = disables autovoicing (disabled by default)
• !greet auto = enables random, automatic greetings when someone joins a channel
• !greet custom <message> = enables automatic greetings with the message you specify. $nick will be replaced with the nickname of the user who joined.
• !greet off = disables automatic greetings