
Microsoft Comic Chat - vector_spaces
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat
======
statico
I reimplemented the comic-drawing algorithm in Ruby almost 15 years ago
because I wanted to make my own daily comic based on our IRC chats. It turned
out that I wasn’t as funny as I thought.

Source and artwork is available here:
[https://github.com/statico/spittoon](https://github.com/statico/spittoon)

~~~
self_awareness
I really like the aesthetics, nicely done!

Also the example comic IS funny ;)

------
HeckFeck
There are so many wild and wonderful things that came out of 90s Microsoft.

One favourite of mine is Microsoft Music Producer, I think it was called. You
could select genres, styles, tempo and a band then it would 'compose' mid
files. I used them to generate royalty-free music for silly animations.

Sadly even any mention of this is very hard to find online now. I recall there
being an old website where one could download it along with extra music
styles; that can be found here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicm...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicmachines.net/faqmp.htm)

Edit: Changed the name to 'Microsoft Music Producer', as has been kindly
identified below.

~~~
thunderwow
Microsoft Music Producer:

[http://ents-bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=2346](http://ents-
bbs.org/viewtopic.php?f=167&t=2346)

~~~
HeckFeck
That's the one.

I searched the web archive and found the website I had in mind above. It has
plenty of info on MMP, as well as downloads of extra music styles.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicm...](https://web.archive.org/web/20070222062521/http://www.musicmachines.net/faqmp.htm)

------
mike_d
If you'd like to play around with it you can still find downloads by Goolging
"mschat25.exe"

Here is a proxy script that will allow you to connect to a modern IRC server:
[https://gist.github.com/richardg867/bb19ca2b03545f71ae15](https://gist.github.com/richardg867/bb19ca2b03545f71ae15)

Edit: another fun read was the methods for getting third party IRC clients to
connect to MSN's IRC servers directly:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Chat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Chat)

~~~
StavrosK
Here you are, straight from Microsoft's website, as I downloaded it back in 96
or whatever:

[https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmPhBJ9Dg91wH9NUiF4dKVewazL6g6c...](https://ipfs.eternum.io/ipfs/QmPhBJ9Dg91wH9NUiF4dKVewazL6g6cJD2Sxv2PveU2HeL)

------
notadev
We were still using this for classified chat in the Navy like 5 years ago. We
didn't use the comic feature, just the normal IRC client. Eventually we
followed other services and went to mIRC before the .gov paid some software
company a ridiculous amount of money to make a very simple Java-based IRC
client called Mako. It was like a software project you would do in an
intermediate Java class, no bells and whistles. Ridiculous the amount of money
available to SWEs who can navigate the contracting process.

~~~
TecoAndJix
Not all ships moved to Mako! I learned the very hard way what “slap” in mIRC
means in a large strike group chat!

~~~
jasonjayr
Appropriate in a Navy setting of course. Who doesn't keep a large trout around
for slapping?

------
fimdomeio
At some point Microsoft chat allowed sending executable files. This was also
around the same time backorifice was very popular. This was also around the
same time most people were connecting via dialup that was bought in packs of
30 hours. Some people had unlimited time, and aparently more than one person
could be using the same account at the same time.

Somehow all this events combined made all the internet kids in my
neighbourhood get the same court letter with a huge internet bill one year
later.

~~~
Loughla
Looking back, the early days of our internet use were so weird.

We had a dial-up connection and a computer well before anyone else in our
county/tri-county area in the mid-west. We also had a home line that was a
party line.

All the old ladies in our small (<50) town were pissed that anytime they
picked the phone up, they heard that robotic screeching noise. We were pissed
that we kept getting booted every fifteen seconds.

Weird times. Why did the company even offer internet connections to a party
line? What an odd thing to do.

------
volkadav
mention of ms comic chat seems somehow incomplete without reference to
JerkCity aka BoneQuest, a decades-long webcomic composed using it
[https://www.bonequest.com/search/?q=%23linux](https://www.bonequest.com/search/?q=%23linux)

~~~
jszymborski
What am I missing... these all seem like non-sequiters.

~~~
enneff
You need to be versed in the deep lore to understand it, basically.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It looks like it's just a bunch of dick jokes, but if you look deeper, you
realize that it's seriously _so many_ dick jokes.

------
wrs
Jim Woodring was such an odd, but wonderful, choice of artist for this
project. I thought his surreal style worked so well as a visualization of what
at the time was newly called “cyberspace”. This could have been a totally
flavorless corporate thing instead.

~~~
DonHopkins
You put it perfectly! I strongly agree and came here to say what you and
ncmncm said first. He's one of my favorite and most surrealistic comic
artists!

His web site is currently broken but it usually works, and has lots of awesome
stuff on it. I've let him know, so I hope it will be back soon.

[http://jimwoodring.com/](http://jimwoodring.com/) (EDIT:
[http://www.jimwoodring.com/](http://www.jimwoodring.com/) )

But in the meantime:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Woodring)

...Oh wait, on second try: SOME variations of the url work and some don't:

[http://jimwoodring.com/](http://jimwoodring.com/) and
[https://jimwoodring.com/](https://jimwoodring.com/) : broken with wordpress
error messages

[http://www.jimwoodring.com/](http://www.jimwoodring.com/) \- works perfectly
but just shows "jimwoodring.com" in the URL, but copying and pasting it gets
[http://www.jimwoodring.com/](http://www.jimwoodring.com/) \-- is this a
Chrome thing??!

[https://www.jimwoodring.com/](https://www.jimwoodring.com/) \- works halfway,
you get the text without the pictures, which is no fun.

~~~
Sharlin
Chrome has hidden "www" in the address bar for a long time, I believe.

------
tech-historian
Here's a list of 20+ discontinued Microsoft products in the realm of
communications. Comic chat is on the list.

[https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-
micros...](https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/discontinued-microsoft-
communications-software)

~~~
Crinus
Interesting list, just learned about OE Classic (Outlook Express remake). Too
bad it seems that it is the only alternative to the discontinued software in
that list.

------
fortran77
The longest running web comic on the Internet called "Jerk City / Bonequest"
uses Microsoft Comic Chat to render

It is 20 years old this year, and has never missed a day.

[https://www.bonequest.com/7541](https://www.bonequest.com/7541)

(May not be SFW, depending on where you work)

~~~
flomo
I wish I had forgotten about this. Hopefully this webcomic's persistence is
actually due to it being a PERL script riffing on dadjokes.txt and whatever
reddit lol monkee cheese stuff from 2012.

------
angrydev
For anyone interested in the CarTalk collab, I found a video here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GywCgivT_no](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GywCgivT_no)

------
laumars
I remember Comic Chat well. It was almost universally hated because many users
would connect to normal IRC servers and Comic Chat sent it's own code (to
describe the character expressions etc) which would flood the channel.

Comic Chat was even less popular online than mIRC users who posted coloured
messages.

Even at the time I felt it was a great idea if only it played nicer with
regular IRC networks+. Ironically it's one of the few occasions when Microsoft
supported an open protocol by default when actually a propitiatory network
might have made more sense.

\+ actually that's possibly a lie because at that time I was writing my own
IRC clients and bots and was well into the "l33t g33k" culture. So I might
have hated Comic Chat just because of MS prejudices

~~~
rubbingalcohol
I loved Comic Chat because I was 12 years old. I couldn't figure out what
"lol" meant and it was really funny seeing the characters saying it with just
a blank facial expression lol

------
joecot
This really takes me back. Microsoft Comic Chat, for better or worse, was
essentially my intro into the internet. I must've been maybe 10 when I started
talking on it, and after they wound it down I switched to MSN Chat, and then
quickly onto IRC itself. It was a certainly innovative, but maybe its ability
to get kids involved in the internet (at a time it was sort of the wild west)
contributed to it going away.

------
webwielder2
Shades of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_(computer_program)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_\(computer_program\))

~~~
tardo99
Reminds me a little of Bob too.

------
jaimex2
Used to love MS comic chat back in the day. A lot of fun times on there.

MMOs kind of took over from it, Ragnarok Online being the main one.

------
pugworthy
I loved this - it was a wonderful hybrid of direct chat with simplistic
graphical representation of how people would express themselves in chat before
the existence of graphical emoticons.

It would be interesting to create something like this for the MUD experience.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but words sometimes can be worth a
thousand mental pictures.

------
thom
I sometimes feel sad because I think of Comic Chat as that dreadful thing that
vomited nonsense into IRC channels. But my kids would absolutely love this,
and tech should always have space for playfulness.

------
ncmncm
Jim Woodring deserves way, way more attention from geeks than he gets.

~~~
daniel_warner
Agreed. The fact that they chose his style to incorporate into the UI is
incredible... I wonder what artist would be his analog if this was created
today.

------
DonHopkins
Nobody puts Comic Sans in a corner!

It looks so beautiful in rounded speech bubbles. ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28A9Jgo92GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28A9Jgo92GQ)

[https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/nobody-puts-
ba...](https://writingexplained.org/idiom-dictionary/nobody-puts-baby-in-the-
corner)

------
vyrotek
Someone should make a /comic command for Slack which turns the last N messages
into a comic.

~~~
pssflops
There are some rather clever Discord bots with this capability and I relish in
it.

------
fold_left
There's an interesting video here with David (DJ) Kurlander, the creator of
Microsoft comic chat
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19078993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19078993)

------
krige
Even if you don't connect to the IRC network, even under Windows 10 MCC can
still serve with minimal issues as a comic strip generator. That means that
yes, you too can have your "own" Jerkcity if you want to.

------
antris
That article desperately needs better screenshots!

------
unhammer
maybe the inspiration for
[https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/rage/](https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/rage/)
=P

------
aliswe
Comic Chat, Dogz, the 3.1 games .... Those were the days.

------
Kye
This is how I found out about IRC.

------
efdee
# Appears as XENO.

------
codesushi42
And now we have been blessed with VR chat more than 20 years later.

~~~
bbrazil
They had that too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_V-
Chat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_V-Chat)

~~~
jandrese
I remember those late 90s VR chat apps. None of them figured out the controls,
usually opting for some sort of awkward three knob style navigation widgets.
Interface was via browser widget so it barely worked on every platform.
Everybody wanted to make Neuromancer's Other Plane, but the tech wasn't even
close to ready.

