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README.md

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+# **Project Mercurys**
+
+### _Welcome to Mercurys!_
+
+Mercurys is a fun little side-project I'm working on in between my studies. 
+It's basically a console-based chat application that uses a simple Socket connection to transmit and receive data.
+This is my first real programming project, and I have a lot of hopes for this!
+
+#### Features:
+
+* Uses a custom encryption-decryption algorithm [developed by myself]
+* Uses multi-threading to simultaneously read and write messages to and from the server/client
+* Works on a LAN connection [as of yet]
+
+### How does one use Mercurys?
+
+Well it's as simple as can be, really. All one needs to do is follow these steps:
+
+_If you are the host:_
+1. Download the project and open it in your IDE of choice
+2. In the TextServer.java file, set the "hostAddress" variable to your own LAN IP address.
+   [That should look something like "192.168._.___"]
+3. Compile and run TextServer.java [src/com/mercurys/TextServer.java]
+4. Now the server has been initialised and will wait for a client socket to connect
+5. Once a client socket has connected to the IP [set by you in step 2], the program will show a confirmatory message
+6. Now you can send and receive messages from the user at the other end of the connection!
+
+_If you are the client:_ 
+1. Download the project and open it in your IDE of choice
+2. Compile and run the TextClient.java file [src/com/mercurys/TextClient.java]
+3. Enter the IP address of the host when prompted
+4. Once the connection is successful, the program will show a confirmatory message
+5. Now you can send and receive messages from the user at the other end of the connection!
+
+Once you have finished with your talks and wish to close the connection, both of the users have to enter "-x-" 
+[without the double quotes] to close the connection and stop the program.
+
+#### Future Plans:
+
+I have many new features and upgrades planned for this project, such as:
+* Enabling WAN connections
+* Upgrading to multi-client chatting, thus making it a sort of chat room
+* Enabling media transfer such as images [you can see the work in progress in the "unfinished" folder]
+* Adding a GUI and making this a proper chat application
+
+### Thank you for visiting!