I propose that there be an option to significantly reduce the amount of online players shown when connected to osu!bancho via IRC, preferably by only showing friends who are joining/quitting and in the userlist.
My primary motivation in making this request is to make third party IRC clients significantly easier, faster, and more functional for the majority of users. Currently, when setting up an IRC client to connect to bancho, it is almost imperative that you disable joins and parts in your client so that you are able to see the chat. This can cause not only an inconvenience, but an additional performance hit to the majority of IRC clients available. On a modern PC, even with joins/parts disabled, the client still has to handle some 5,000-10,000+ users coming and going, requiring the client to re-alphabetize the userlist with every logon and logoff, causing CPU usage of anywhere between 0.5% to 10%. This is somewhat tolerable for a good amount of people who would be using IRC, but it also causes bugs in certain clients, though that is no fault of osu!. On the other hand, the amount of power that this repeated action takes up is usually plenty enough to crash a mobile IRC client on the spot, preventing people from accessing osu!bancho while on a mobile device. Allowing this as an option would also provide a practical way for people to see which of their friends are online and communicate with them easily when they are not able to have the game itself open. From my own perspective, having a list of every single person who is logged into the game is relatively useless to a majority of people, and having just a friends list would be a practical replacement.
Possible variations to my suggestion might include:
- also including moderators so that people know where to seek help
- adding an IRC usermode specifically for friends, so that friends would have, for example, halfop mode
- showing only active chatters in the userlist so that only people who are currently speaking are shown (a la inspircd chanmode +D)
I can't think of a good place that this option would fit into IRC itself, other than a channel or server mode, which would be confusing to some people, so the next best place for such an option would seem to be https://osu.ppy.sh/p/irc.
The only notable protocol concern that I can think of would be that people who aren't shown as being online would be talking, which is something IRC is designed to handle pretty well, considering the existance of chanmode +n, which is designed to prevent people who aren't in a channel from sending messages to it. Despite the fact that not everybody is shown, everything that is said would still be able to be seen.
I firmly believe that having this as an option would greatly benefit the community, as it would allow people to join in the conversation and chat with their friends when they can't have osu! running, or whilst they are out and about as this would enable mobile users to easily connect as well. It would eliminate one more bump for people who are trying to be more involved.
Thank you for your consideration!
My primary motivation in making this request is to make third party IRC clients significantly easier, faster, and more functional for the majority of users. Currently, when setting up an IRC client to connect to bancho, it is almost imperative that you disable joins and parts in your client so that you are able to see the chat. This can cause not only an inconvenience, but an additional performance hit to the majority of IRC clients available. On a modern PC, even with joins/parts disabled, the client still has to handle some 5,000-10,000+ users coming and going, requiring the client to re-alphabetize the userlist with every logon and logoff, causing CPU usage of anywhere between 0.5% to 10%. This is somewhat tolerable for a good amount of people who would be using IRC, but it also causes bugs in certain clients, though that is no fault of osu!. On the other hand, the amount of power that this repeated action takes up is usually plenty enough to crash a mobile IRC client on the spot, preventing people from accessing osu!bancho while on a mobile device. Allowing this as an option would also provide a practical way for people to see which of their friends are online and communicate with them easily when they are not able to have the game itself open. From my own perspective, having a list of every single person who is logged into the game is relatively useless to a majority of people, and having just a friends list would be a practical replacement.
Possible variations to my suggestion might include:
- also including moderators so that people know where to seek help
- adding an IRC usermode specifically for friends, so that friends would have, for example, halfop mode
- showing only active chatters in the userlist so that only people who are currently speaking are shown (a la inspircd chanmode +D)
I can't think of a good place that this option would fit into IRC itself, other than a channel or server mode, which would be confusing to some people, so the next best place for such an option would seem to be https://osu.ppy.sh/p/irc.
The only notable protocol concern that I can think of would be that people who aren't shown as being online would be talking, which is something IRC is designed to handle pretty well, considering the existance of chanmode +n, which is designed to prevent people who aren't in a channel from sending messages to it. Despite the fact that not everybody is shown, everything that is said would still be able to be seen.
I firmly believe that having this as an option would greatly benefit the community, as it would allow people to join in the conversation and chat with their friends when they can't have osu! running, or whilst they are out and about as this would enable mobile users to easily connect as well. It would eliminate one more bump for people who are trying to be more involved.
Thank you for your consideration!