zine/issues/1/diving_into_the_depths_of_the_tildeverse.md

# Diving Into the Depths Of the Tildeverse

author: ubergeek

## Intro

There's a whole lot going on with the tildeverse, and lots of little
projects, many of which take some discovering. Here's I'll dive into
some of them, which I've since discovered.

## \~tel

\~tel isn't quite a tilde, but is still considered a member of the
tildeverse. There's no shell accounts to log into, *but*... There are
SIP extensions. These are basically phone extensions, in a small phone
network (Yes, it's a network, as there are interlinked phone systems now
on there). You can see what is going on by getting into \#tildetel on
IRC, and by checking our tilde.tel

## TriviaBot, idlerpg, And Other IRC Games

There's a few IRC games running. TriviaBot runs in \#trivia. This bot
asks simple questions, and it keeps a daily, weekly, and monthly score
(As well as all-time scores). No need to register.

idlerpg is a role playing game, probably unlike any other you've played.
You advance by doing *nothing*! That's right, the longer you idle in the
channel, the better your progress. You get penalized for chattng, nick
changes, etc. It's available in \#idlerpg

BitBot runs in many channels, but in \#meta, you can choose to be a ducc
fren (aka, A Duck Friend, it's not a typo, you'll see that a lot in
\#meta) or a duck foe (Just what it says), but "bef"riending, "boop"ing,
and "trap"ping them when they appear. If you see this in \#meta:

    ・゜゜・。。・゜゜\_o< QUACK!

You can type ",bef", ",boop", or ",trap". bef and boop are synonyms, and
trap traps the duck. BitBot keeps track of frens and foes.

## Tilderadio

The tildeverse has its own radio station! You can join in with the
fanbase in IRC in \#tilderadio, and listen in at https://tilderadio.org.
People run shows, and often interact with the audience in IRC.

## Gopher

Most tildeverse servers also host content via the gopher protocol. You
can access this using `lynx` on the shell of most tildeverse servers, or
by using the tildeverse [gopher proxy](https://gopher.tildeverse.org/).
All of them are also linked on the tildeverse gopherhole (Yep, that's
what gopher pages are called) at
[gopher.tildeverse.org](gopher://gopher.tildeverse.org). Check it out,
there's dozens of us! Dozens!

## Tildeverse Search Engine

The tildeverse also has our own search engine, available at [tildeverse
search home page](https://search.tildeverse.org). There is a Firefox
plugin available in the Firefox app store that will set your browser to
use it as the default search engine as well, written by Yours Truly
(ubergeek).

## Tildeverse UUCP Network

Way back when, if you wanted to transfer files, or send email, you used
the UUCP protocol (Unix-Unix Copy Protocol). Some tildeverse servers
have this set up today. You can join in \#uucp for more details. Praetor
is wrangling that project, the site is at
[dataforge](http://uucp.dataforge.tk).

## Cosmic Storytelling

Cosmic.voyage is a tilde server, mostly... But with a very central
focus: Writing stories. Here is an excerpt from their site:

    Here are the annals of Relay Station 001, housed at Lagrange point
    L4 in the SOL system. Found within are the records of
    transmissions from the oldest and farthest flung ships to have
    left Earth of old. These are pen-pal letters, reports, updates,
    cries for help, and calls into the darkness. What is delivered to
    the system is unfiltered. Some of it is intelligible. For some,
    common language has drifted too far for clear translation.

So, that's the gist of it: extra-solar travel email :) It has a very
long, and twisting story so far! They are in IRC as well, in \#cosmic.

## .tilde Domain Names!

The tildeverse also has their own top-level domain name system: .tilde.
In order to request a domain name there, you can go to \#.tilde in chat,
or do a pull request to the repo at
[tildegit](https://tildegit.org/.tilde/.tilde).

Now, these aren't domain names you can hit everywhere, sadly. More an
experimental feature. You can however use one of their resolvers for
your DNS server, and then be able to access .tilde domains. Their
resolvers also enable you to access regular domain names too. Many
tildeverse members use these resolvers, too, so you hit those .tilde
domains from most tildeverse servers. How to do that, and more can be
found at [the tildenic page](https://tildenic.org).

## Tildenet

A number of tildeverse members are also linking their machines together
via VPN connections, with their own address space, which allows the
servers to offer far more services openly on that network, that wouldn't
be safe to run to the wider, open internet. Things like remote file
systems, telnet games, etc.

## Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Many of the tildeverse members have a command "dcss", which is a wrapper
to just ssh to dcss\@crawl.tildeverse.org, so you don't really need to
be on a tildeserver to use it, but it's a lot more fun!

## Minecraft and Minetest

There are a number of minecraft and minetest servers out there, like
theasylum, thunix, and team are some of the minetest servers. town and
team host a minecraft server as well. The "Unoffical Tildeverse
Minecraft Server" has a page [here](https://mc.tildeverse.org/) which
has a map, list of players, and link to the mumble chat (A voice chat
system).

## Various other games

Other games that aren't as popular (Yet), but still are out there.
Thunix hosts a bzflag game server. Most servers have the bsdgames
package installed (Or equivalent), which has atc (An air traffic
controller sim), tron bikes (From the movie), adventure (Text-based
rpg), monopoly, and gofish. The tilde's MOTD should show you those on
login.

## And more!

There is way too much to cover in a single article, but some servers
host tor proxies, forums (like iris and bbj), and other services.
Hopefully those are documented on the servers themselves. If there is a
service that I didn't cover here, and you think it should be, hit me up
at [ubergeek at thunix dot net](mailto:ubergeek@thunix.net), and I'll do
a follow up :)