Long-distance Birds Flying Between Computers Running ToonTalk

Long-distance Birds

A Picture of a bird

Briefly you can copy a bird to the clipboard (e.g. using control-c) and then paste it (e.g. using control-v) into an email, chat, instant message, web page, or floppy so that it ends up on another computer running ToonTalk. If you give the bird something and the other computer is still running ToonTalk and there is a network (and no fire walls or the like in-between) then it should arrive on the nest on the other computer. If the other computer starts running ToonTalk before you quit your ToonTalk then the message will be delivered soon afterwards.

The nest can be saved (e.g. in a city) on one computer and the bird on another and the connection will be re-established when both systems are running and the bird and nest are recreated. Currently this will not work if the computer with the nest as a different Internet address (IP) than when it was created. The bird can be recreated on a different computer or even on multiple other computers and all the birds will fly to the same nest.

You can also load the bird and nest into the same ToonTalk on the same computer and the connection will be established and work without using the network.

If you want to copy a bird to the clipboard without making it network capable you'll need to copy the bird's nest at the same time. E.g. put them both in a box before copying to the clipboard.

You can set the LogNetworkEvents option to produce a detailed log of the long-distance bird activities.

If you establish a long-distance bird and nest connection with another computer and both ToonTalk cities are saved, then when the cities are visited the connections will be intact only if on each computer the Internet connection has the same IP address as before. Frequently with modem connections a different address is assigned and you'll need to exchange long-distance birds over again.

Future enhancements may support dynamic IP addresses. Also we plan to enable nests to be relocated and copied. And messages will be sent even if both computers aren't running at the same time. A detailed plan for doing this is here.

Long-distance birds require DirectX 7 or later.