Chatroom is closing

Starting later today, Chatroom is closing. The chatroom section of the game will no longer be accessible starting next update.

Why?

Because of Hardware limitations. I can't port-foward yet, and so I was using ngrok for the entire time when Chatroom was alive. Thing is, the server runs on my hardware. To keep the server online at all times, I have to leave my computer on 24/7, and I can't do that.

For the game to receive chat messages in real-time, the game sends a GET request ** every second. ** (A GET request is when you retrieve data from a server.) For the game to send chat messages in real time, the game sends a POST request (a POST request is when you upload data to a server.) 

Now, imagine there's 20 people in the same chatroom. The server receives 20 GET requests PER second, and while it may not lag the server, the free plan of NGROK isn't for that. Ngrok is a tool which exposes your local server to the whole internet. It comes with a free plan, but it's very limited! The server can only get 20,000 requests *per month*. If it goes past it, ngrok shuts down the server.

Considering there's 20 people that send a GET request to the server every second, the server would only be up for only 15 minutes before it shuts down. And the limit can be surpassed even faster if people chat a lot there.

TL;DR - it just isn't worth it.

There's a little chance it will return, but for now, I don't know yet.

Even though nobody joined, it was a nice experiment after all, and it helped me know how PHP and ngrok work.