Etiquette

People play iSketch to have a good time, not to be offended or disgusted. Use the chat box for friendly banter or to chat politely with the other people in your room.

Things NOT to do in the chat:
  1. Flood: Repeatedly sending the same message to the chat box. It's irritating.
  2. Use all capitals: If you've ever used any other form of Internet chat (IRC, AOL chat), you know that capitalization is usually regarded as cyber-shouting and unnecessary.
  3. Make prejudiced comments: Don't attack people's race, religion or any other qualities.
  4. Engage in "cybersex": The virtual equivalent of public displays of affection, only not as cute. If you find true love on iSketch, good for you; but remember: you can send private messages! Just type "/MSG username your message".
If someone is causing trouble, you can use the /IGNORE command to prevent their messages from appearing.

The windows

There are three main windows:
GAME is where your guesses should go.
CHAT is for chatting with other players, both openly or privately.
Click on either "Game" or "Chat" window to make it active (the active window will be yellow). You can also press the TAB key to toggle between the windows.
USERS lists the players in the room with their corresponding scores.

Pointing at a username in the userlist will show you the player's profile.
Clicking and holding down the mouse button on a player's name will show a window with some command shortcuts:

Selecting the username in the pop-up window allows you to chat privately with the player. The window will turn blue indicating a private chat. Click anywhere else to return to normal mode.
Ignore will hide messages from the selected player. To cancel, click again.
Boot gives you the option to vote a player out of the game. This option is not available for newbies.

Text commands

There are a number of commands available you may type in the text input box. Those of you familiar with IRC will recognize many of them. All commands begin with a forward slash (/) in order to separate them from normal chat text.

Command Explanation Example
/ME Tells the other users about what you are doing. /ME smiles
/MSG Sends a private message to any connected user. You can send messages to users in other rooms this way. /MSG Username Hi there!
/QUERY Starts a private chat with a user. Same thing as clicking on a name in the userlist. Handy when you want to start a chat with someone who isn't in the same room. You can also add an initial message after the Username if you want. /QUERY Username
/USERS Displays the names of all the players in a room. /USERS Trivia
/FIND Tells you what room (if any) a user is in. Useful to check if your friends are playing without having to enter every room and see if they are there. /FIND Username
/AWAY Same thing as clicking "Away". Used when you have to leave the game for shorter periods. /AWAY
/DRAWORDER Lists the drawing queue in the current room. /DRAWORDER
/RR Displays the room description as shown when you click on the room name from the lobby. Displays what the custom room creator enters as room description. /RR
/IGNORE Mutes a specific user. Anything that user says will not be visible for you. If you want to un-mute the user you issue the same command again. /IGNORE Username
/TIME Displays the local time of a player. /TIME Username
/PING Tells you how fast your network connection is. The username is optional and will tell you how fast the connection between you and another player is. If you just enter "/PING" it will tell you the time (in milliseconds) for a message to pass to the server and back. A good value is 500ms, values over 1000ms are bad. /PING Username
/JOIN Go directly to another room. Same thing as going back to the roomlist and selecting a room there. Be sure to spell the roomname right or you will end up in an empty room. /JOIN French
/BACK Sends you back to the room you were previously in. /BACK
/COPY Copies the current image to your clipboard. You can then paste it into your favourite image-editing program and save it from there. /COPY
/CLEAR Removes all text from the chat windows. /CLEAR
/PROFILE Shows the profile of a user. Handy if you want to check the profile of someone in another room. /PROFILE Username
/INVITE Invites another user to play in the room you are currently in. /INVITE Username
/ACCEPT Accept an invitation and join that room. /ACCEPT
/PARAM Shows the room settings. (Time, wordlist, hints etc.) /PARAM
/STATS Shows how much time you have spent on iSketch as well as the number of games played and won. /STATS
/NOTIFY Add a username to a list of names to look out for. When a name on the list logs on, you will be notified (and the name removed from the notification list.) To remove a name from the list, just repeat the command. To list the current notification list, just enter the command without a username. /NOTIFY Username
/TEAM Join a team. Teamnames can be a maximum of three letters. We suggest you name them numerically ("1", "2" etc.) If you want to leave a team, use the command without any team name. /TEAM 1
/TEAMS Lists the current teams in the room. /TEAMS
/KISS Gives a person a kiss. :-* /KISS Username
/HUG Hug someone. /HUG Username
/FLIRT Flirt with someone. ;) /FLIRT Username
/SLAP Slap someone. /SLAP Username
/LAUGH Laugh at/with someone :-D /LAUGH Username
/CLAP Applaud someone. /CLAP Username
/BYE Say goodbye to someone /BYE Username
/USERCOUNT Tells you how many players in total there are online. /USERCOUNT

Operator commands

The following commands can only be used by room operators in user-created rooms. The person that created the room is automatically made an operator, he can then assign other players to be operators as well.

CommandExplanationExample
/OP Gives operator status to someone else. /OP Username
/DEOP Removes an operator's op status. /DEOP Username
/OPLIST Lists all operators in the room. /OPLIST
/RESET Restarts the current game. All scores will be reset and a new game will start from round 1. /RESET
/SKIP Skips the current artist. You can enter an optional comment after the username if you wish. /SKIP Username No text please!
/KICK Kicks a person out from the server. You can enter an optional comment after the username if you wish. /KICK Username Don't come back!
/MODIFY Takes you to a screen where you can change the settings for a user created room. /MODIFY
/SET Modify room parameters. The following parameters are available:
WhatParameterShort
Time / roundTIMET
Grace periodGRACEG
Number of wordsWORDSW
Player limitLIMITL
Total roundsROUNDSR
Number of artistsARTISTSA
Stroke limitSTROKES
Guess limitGUESSGU
Number of artistsARTISTSA
Game typeTYPETY
Game pausePAUSEP
Puzzle difficultyDIFFICULTYD
 /SET TIME 180
/SET D 2
/SET L 0