And thus, on June 24th 1999, started the public life of the bot R²-D².

We now present... after much anticipation:

The History Of R2D2

The original R²D² was first worked on in early June, 1999... in private rooms so that his development would be kept secret (and less annoying to friends in the room, bot testing is not pretty). His scripts were first generic bot scripts until PrincessLeia2 was able to write her own scripts. At one time during his development he had a slot machine, another part he was a game bot.. but by June 24, 1999, his official "release date" (and birthdate) he was in the form that many of use know and love today, but with the nick R²-D². It wasn't until July 27 of 1999 that he finally was settled in with the nick R²D², and later after a change of servers, he became just R2D2.

Early Script Development

If you haven't guessed already, R²D² started out as an mIRC bot. He's always had a few scripts that work when you use a ! like !coffee ... a popular request still in it's original form. Development of some of the other features took a bit more time. He started out with a quite annoying script that responded when chatter's said "hehe" ... he'd respond with a random response taken from a hehe.txt file. (wanna see the original hehe.txt file? Check it out here: hehe.txt) He'd also respond when someone said a "bad word" saying "nickname said a bad word!" ... another of his older scripts was one for PrincessLeia's Wine:

* R²D² hands PrincessLeia2 a glass of PrincessLeia2's 300 year old mystical red wine

He also had a "fool" script that got very annoying once people discovered it, much like all his scripts %) he would respond everytime someone said the word "fool"

-R²D²- Who is the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him

He would also cry when slapped with anything.. and ask if you still loved him when you called him a dumb bot. He also has always had an !8-ball script, and countless others...

Later mIRC Development

R²D² was neglected for about a year, when PrincessLeia2 was mostly offline... but when she came back he had a few new scripts added. A working mp3 script was created, and he responded to the requests of almost everything a person wanted with an ! before it. And then came his most important use, a room moderator bot. He had always had !kick scripts that his friends could use, but we decided to make #13thHour +m (moderated, so that only people who had voice or ops could talk). And since we weren't always around we needed a way to continue to give voice to our friends even when we were not there, this is where R²D² came in, he had a friend list to voice friends when they came into the room. Although this was based simply on nickname, and obviously wasn't fool-proof (people who changed their nicks constantly would not be voiced with their new nicks... etc) it worked well. So now R²D² was a permanent and necessary part of #13thHour.

X-Chat R2D2

As PrincessLeia2 moved more away from using windows, it became apparent that her mIRC bot was definately a thing of the past. Keeping him running was difficult since he lived on the only windows machine in the house, and his connection was faulty. It took months, but eventually it was decided that R²D² needed to be a linux bot. Written as a Perl script for X-Chat, the first linux R²D² was quite sucessful. He didn't have as many features as the mIRC R²D², but that was simply because mIRC scripting is so much simpler, while with Perl in x-chat it took a lot more room to do the same. Also, most of his scripts were pretty much unused, it wasn't worth the extra effort of putting them all in. The favorites were saved however, as well as the all important voice on join of those in a friend list, and the ! for anything you want...

irssi R2D2

X-Chat is a graphical chat client that runs on X in linux. And although it is a great program, it takes up more ram than most programs, and so isn't great for running 24/7, like R²D² needed to be. Plus, everytime x is shut down, or his machine was rebooted, he was down... definately not good for a busy machine. So he was moved first to text-xchat so he could run using little ram, and stay up when x wasn't. Still that was not a good solution. Now PrincessLeia2 and Time ran their chat clients from their webpage server, hardly ever had downtime, and since it was a box with a much faster connection it was preferable for connection, so R²D² would be up constantly, he was then converted to a Perl Irssi script. Doing all the same things as the X-Chat R²D², he has turned out to be a very sucessful script, with much more dependability than previous versions.

R2D2 In Love

Bot love? Sorta. Time had a bot named Clockbot, and R²D² has had a bit of a crush on it for a few years. Still he has a script that responds when someone says "Clockbot" in the channel(wanna see all his responses? Check out clocky.txt). I guess some might say it was PrincessLeia2 living precariously through her bot all that time... Unfortunately Clockbot no longer is permanently in #13thHour, but he does drop by from time to time %)

R2D2's Different "Homes"

Originally written on a Pentium 3, 450 mhz computer he was moved more than a few times. Resided on a 133 mhz 586 for some time, as well as being in "storage" on a zip disk for a month or so. He then moved again to the Pentium 3, where he stayed most of his life. Then when PrincessLeia2 moved in with Time R²D² was moved to a 300 mhz K6, where he ran on windows 2000 for a few months. Once the X-Chat R²D² was completed he was moved back to the Pentium 3. And currently resides as an irssi bot on a Colbalt box that this webserver is on.

Leia And R2-D2

Download R2D2

Want a copy of one of the R2D2s? They arent much use for anyone but PrincessLeia2 and #13thHour... but if you are developing a bot in any of these platforms they could be of *some* use %) The zip files contain all the files referred to in the script.

mIRC R2D2 Zip File(530 KB, includes full version of mIRC 5.41)

xchat R2D2 Zip File(3.2k)
Or View Just xchatr2d2.pl (change to .pl if downloading)

irssi "Modular R2D2"