Comic Chat inspired me to make multiplayer games with IRC as the lobby server. But I specifically did not do what Microsoft did and send the metadata through the public channel, because I too had gone through the public ridicule of using Comic Chat. Instead, I used DMs between users to perform the signaling (which would then open a socket to create a direct TCP connection between the players).
It was pretty easy to do. Had to have been, because I was a pretty terrible programmer at the time.
It was pretty easy to do. Had to have been, because I was a pretty terrible programmer at the time.