CodeCombat has a developer chat room on Slack (or HipChat if you prefer not to register), where we hang out when we're awake. Stop by, say hi, and ask a question any time. Although the core devs are asleep during the night (US Pacific time), there are usually a few other players awake.
There is absolutely no inappropriate messages allowed in the rooms. If you would like to see the rules please go here.
There's also an off-topic room at http://www.hipchat.com/gaXOD7lQ8.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you help me set up my dev environment?
We'll try! It should be a cinch on Linux or Mac, but it's pretty hard to get right on Windows right now. If you can't find us for help on Windows, you might try installing it on a Linux VM. (We'll be happy when someone can take the time and help us update our Windows installer.)
What can I do to get into Google Summer of Code?
We can't guarantee whether CodeCombat will participate or how many slots we'll get (last year there were four), but if we do participate, two things are certain: 1) competition will be high, and 2) preference will have to go to those who have already been contributing to our GitHub so that we know you can be effective working with our stack. So if you'd like to get paid to hack on CodeCombat for the summer for GSoC, let's start hacking on stuff together now. (And you might want to pick a backup organization, too, in case we don't participate or there aren't enough slots.)
Where can I see the chat logs?
On Slack, logs are available. On HipChat, the guest web client doesn't show logs, unfortunately. The native client does, but you need us to provide you with a CodeCombat HipChat account to use the native client–which we are happy to do for anyone who is contributing to the project.
Can I connect with IRC?
Unfortunately, you can only use IRC with HipChat if we buy you an account. When you get an account, you can connect using IRC by following this tutorial.
Why isn't this just IRC?
In our experience, IRC is often unfriendly to beginners, plus it doesn't have the nice modern protocol and easy integrations with other apps. That said, it would be nice to be able to combine IRC with something that had nice webchat for guests and a nice native client for CodeCombateers, so if you know of anything that fills the bill, let us know.