Main Street (2D virtual world feature)

[Melooon]

~~~ Main Street ~~~

Hello! You will notice a new Rout 66 icon (this may be a temp choice) across MelonLand pages today! This is the access button for Main Street! This is a tiny multiplayer world that exists across most ML sites and particularly exists on the Everyone Site.

Main Street lets you chat with people and walk around on every page, but its also fully scriptable and has persistent objects! Meaning that its a Bartle-complete virtual world 

When used on the forum there is one shared street for all forum pages, so you can chat with people while you are reading one thread and they are reading another

   

On the Everyone Site each page gets its own street and you can script your own custom logic and features into it! In theory this means you can now code an entire MMO on the everyone site just using native ML code and APIs. You can get full scripting details on the wiki if you'd like to code your own bits: https://wiki.melonland.net/street

   

Anyway, that aside its a fun and sorta stupid feature, so I hope you enjoy messing around with it! 

Lemmy know if you have any feature requests or run into bugs!    GOOD LUCK

[larvapuppy]

This is fun beyond my wildest dreams! 

I notice that there is a command to clear placed objects, but how do we place objects in the first place? Or is this still being worked on?  Maybe this can be a way to play with our artifacts by placing them down, animating them, resizing them, sticking them to one another's avatars, kicking them around, etc. [Edit: additional artifact-related idea: Dropping unwanted artifacts on the page and allowing others to click on them to adopt]

Having an optional standardized avatar to switch to would also be really cool... like a pixel doll to dress up...  They could be humans, or little creatures ( customizable Ozwomp-type guys? ). They could animate as they walk 

Another feature I would love to suggest is a way to draw on the page live together. There was a browser extension that did this long ago called Goggles and I mourn it every day (on any webpage, you could turn it on to see others' graffiti). I think it could get messy though so maybe make it toggleable and/or make it clear itself every 24h?

[poesu]

I'd like a feature to quit the mode. I didn't find a way to remove avatars without refreshing the page Is it there somewhere or not implemented yet?

Another question: can we someday implement this on our personal sites? Maybe only for ML users at first and then adding a guest mode? I don't know if that's a big ask, but I love the idea. Avatars make it more personal than a cursor like it is in Cursor Party.

Dropping unwanted artifacts on the page and allowing others to click on them to adopt

That would be SO COOL.

[Melooon]

I notice that there is a command to clear placed objects, but how do we place objects in the first place? Or is this still being worked on?  Maybe this can be a way to play with our artifacts by placing them down
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Having an optional standardized avatar to switch to would also be really cool
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Another feature I would love to suggest is a way to draw on the page live together.

Glad you like it  So currently the only way to place object's is via custom scripting on everyone site pages. I did think of artifacts when adding that in, and right now someone could script a whole artifact dropping system using the API, so all the support is there, its just not yet 

A profile config for avatar stuff and related thingys is very much planned tooo, it will be very needed for future plans  Are you saying you'd like some sort of avatar builder type thing? That's not something I though of before, but it sounds fun. What would it offer in its most basic form?

Drawing is a really cool idea and it fits the street theme well! I did get another request for an r/place-type drawing board in the art hub, but I didn't wanna just add the same drawing feature a bunch of other websites already have. This would be a cool twist on it.

I have questions though! Would it be like a drawing canvas you use a mouse on? Or would avatars be the things that draw the line depending on where they walk? Would people "own" their lines, or would it just be a big pixel grid.. And I guess more relevant to this script, would drawings be "objects" e.g. like a png that sits on the world like an avatar does, or would it be a separate paint-style canvas layer with drawings that cant be moved?

An important thing is that, the main street world can't adapt to the HTML (and it never will be able to). So for example if you draw a circle around a HTML button, it will not move if the button moves (with a page resize) - I made it so it assumes that either you don't care about the avatars matching the HTML page, or you coded the HTML page to be static-width-left-align, so nothing ever moves!

I'd like a feature to quit the mode.
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Another question: can we someday implement this on our personal sites?

A disconnect button is a good idea, I'd like to add a button row that allows auto loading and disconnect, along with an "online count" counter.

Yes! That's what the Passport feature I added in april is intended for  Right now the main street is ML only, but when its more built up and tested it can allow in other sites. Prob it will be a ML supporter feature to reduce grifing and keep the server stable.

[dotmidi]

Another feature I would love to suggest is a way to draw on the page live together. There was a browser extension that did this long ago called Goggles and I mourn it every day (on any webpage, you could turn it on to see others' graffiti). I think it could get messy though so maybe make it toggleable and/or make it clear itself every 24h?

This is exactly what I was reminded of when the feature added! I would really love something simliar to Goggles with Main Street!

I have questions though! Would it be like a drawing canvas you use a mouse on? Or would avatars be the things that draw the line depending on where they walk? Would people "own" their lines, or would it just be a big pixel grid.. And I guess more relevant to this script, would drawings be "objects" e.g. like a png that sits on the world like an avatar does, or would it be a separate paint-style canvas layer with drawings that cant be moved?

Goggles was interesting because it was this extension that lets you draw ms-paint style onto web pages , but only people who had the extension could also see it! It was very collaborative and I can only remember it most notably in the Homestuck fandom where people would draw something relevant to a part of the story but it would suit the forum well because of the on/off feature of Main Street. It would be nice if each area/room of the forum is treated like its own area so people could draw/write something relevant to a topic... so for example, someone could go in the art hub and maybe make a secret related doodle under artworks where you specifically have to be using Main Street and on that page to see it.  That's basically what the Goggles experience was like
I think larvapuppy is right that if we were to have a draw-on feature, it'd be best for it to clear itself... 24 hours might be good but I think having it reset every Monday like how the forum closes would be more suitable. And people owning their lines, but if there's anything uncomfortable drawn moderators should be able to clear/erase the page

Having an optional standardized avatar to switch to would also be really cool... like a pixel doll to dress up...  They could be humans, or little creatures ( customizable Ozwomp-type guys? ). They could animate as they walk 

As for customizable avatars, I really like the idea of being able to create our own Ozwomp creatures to suit us Maybe with simple shapes as bases and then we are given the ability to draw on extra details... just throwing out ideas