Heya. I will need your opinion on this one.

Over some time ago, I had an idea of an experimental jj2 server-side program that would not only take direct commands by the host, but also by clients, allowing them to partially control the game flow. Such utilities could be specially useful to form an idle server. These programs would run server-side to help control the gameplay while allowing players to communicate with them by issuing simple commands over jj2 chat. This would partially turn jj2 into a console-like application. The big question, however, is how to initialize a console command. How to make a program recognise it as a command and differ it from normal chat? Let me give you some examples.


Suppose a player enters the following text into jj2 chat and presses enter.
How would the program recognise this command, in this case, the first line and differ it from the second line which, in this case, is normal chat?

Now consider the following example. I have seen some people use this as a joke and so I will be using it here as an example.
The text in these two lines is the same as above, however there is a slight modification to the command. Notice that an exclamation mark has been added in front of the command (first line)? In this case, the program will have no trouble differing commands from normal text. This is an excellent way of keeping normal text from interfering with the console commands.

The reason for this conversation is the fact that I would like to hear some of your opinions on this topic (big finger pointed at you, who play jj2), specially if you have other ideas on how to differ commands from text eg. what character would be most suitable to stand in front of a console command (for the above example) or perhaps even another way of differing commands from normal text. Least confusing/most easy way to send a console command? Anything.
If you have any other ideas such as features such programs could offer, new console commands, functionality, etc, post them and we'll discuss it.

~Over