Comic Chat is a piece of Internet history, but I remember that it was somewhat reviled when I first started being active on IRC. This was around 2002, so it was probably due to some cultural memory rather than anyone having actually used it in years.
The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rather than relying entirely on contextual cues. This was essentially done by adding some nonsense string to every message, which presumably could be decoded by other Comic Chat users, but read like spammy noise to everyone else. I know it did that, because I remember downloading Comic Chat to check it out, but I forget whether it was the default or not.
>Alongside the original snapshots, we’ve included a few AI-powered modernization attempts that demonstrate what’s possible—getting this 1990s-era C++ and MFC code building with current Visual Studio tools, connecting to modern IRC servers, and running legibly on today’s high-resolution Windows machines.
Given that MSFT is all in on Rust and WinUI now, maybe they can try doing a full port similar to Bun using Copilot. Anthropic has been milking their Bun port attempt for as much as they can.
antics9 34 minutes ago [-]
That’s hilarious. I hope to see some fun spinoffs.
Ran comic chat on a freshly installed Win98 (or 95, don’t remember) Pentium II.
cube00 15 minutes ago [-]
v1.0-pre and v1.0 share the same internal version number (rup 206, "Beta 2") but differ in ~99 of 111 shared source files [1]
While I shouldn't complain because they just won't do these releases in the future and I accept it was a different time; I still find it surprising Microsoft didn't have better version control given I thought they took it very seriously to the point of building their own internal version control systems.
Microsoft had just acquired SourceSafe in 1995, but it's not clear to me how similar to modern version control systems SourceSafe even was in 1995/6. It may have been more of a distributed lock manager than change management system.
mettamage 21 minutes ago [-]
This is so peak, haha, love it. Thanks HN, made my day :)
MBCook 28 minutes ago [-]
I think it was my introduction to IRC. If not it would have been shortly after.
ritonlajoie 18 minutes ago [-]
This was my first introduction to internet
8 minutes ago [-]
unfunco 18 minutes ago [-]
Only tangentially related, but I'm convinced Comic Sans is the best font option available in Slack, and everyone should try it.
brcmthrowaway 23 minutes ago [-]
The creator is still at Microsoft. Lifer.
ahartmetz 20 minutes ago [-]
As "Principal Program Manager, Copilot Acceleration Team" even. That's sad.
It sounds like person in charge of "Hey do you want Copilot? How about now? How about now? And now?! Here's another popup! Do you want it now? Why not?! Have you tried Copilot?" Etc...
(I know about title inflation, he's probably not in charge of all that much, but still)
dmd 17 minutes ago [-]
Copilot means so many things now it doesn't even tell you anything about they do.
thebeardisred 21 minutes ago [-]
Yes… Ha ha ha… YES!
jdw64 35 minutes ago [-]
I still think this project has potential.
superkuh 27 minutes ago [-]
Microsoft Comic Chat was my first introduction to IRC. I was just a kid poking around in system32 directory and found mschat.exe. It opened a whole new world. I still participate in IRC communities to this day. I regularly reference it.
So it's a shame that microsoft is blocking non-corporate browsers from accessing this news release, "The request is blocked. 20260716T162640Z-r17d8486fc4rbjkdhC1CHI16pc00000008m000000000a54t" I imagine most people who care about MS Comic Chat aren't using Chrome or Edge. A better URL since MS is blocking might be https://www.phoronix.com/news/Microsoft-Comic-Chat-OSS or just the github repo that's in another comment.
cool_dude85 8 minutes ago [-]
\me plays ahhhBeer.wav
animanoir 21 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:58:22 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rather than relying entirely on contextual cues. This was essentially done by adding some nonsense string to every message, which presumably could be decoded by other Comic Chat users, but read like spammy noise to everyone else. I know it did that, because I remember downloading Comic Chat to check it out, but I forget whether it was the default or not.
I can't believe this is still going
Related: The authors wrote a paper on their design of the layout engine.
Given that MSFT is all in on Rust and WinUI now, maybe they can try doing a full port similar to Bun using Copilot. Anthropic has been milking their Bun port attempt for as much as they can.
Ran comic chat on a freshly installed Win98 (or 95, don’t remember) Pentium II.
[1]: https://github.com/microsoft/comic-chat#:~:text=v1.0%2Dpre%2...
It sounds like person in charge of "Hey do you want Copilot? How about now? How about now? And now?! Here's another popup! Do you want it now? Why not?! Have you tried Copilot?" Etc...
(I know about title inflation, he's probably not in charge of all that much, but still)
So it's a shame that microsoft is blocking non-corporate browsers from accessing this news release, "The request is blocked. 20260716T162640Z-r17d8486fc4rbjkdhC1CHI16pc00000008m000000000a54t" I imagine most people who care about MS Comic Chat aren't using Chrome or Edge. A better URL since MS is blocking might be https://www.phoronix.com/news/Microsoft-Comic-Chat-OSS or just the github repo that's in another comment.