maps.en.md

HowTo rC3 world maps

deutschsprachige Version

As last year's, this year's rC3 will feature a kind of 2D adventure, the rc3.world. This tutorial is intended to explain how assemblies can contribute their own maps and content. For any remaining questions, don't hesitate to contact us via mail; we'll do our best to extend this page.

Meta Information

Disclaimer

This tutorial is "work in progess" and may be occasionally updated, checking it from time to time is recommended.

Known Bugs

The following bugs are already known, and we're working on resolving them:

• Exits on the far right end of a map don't work.
• Loading a tileset twice (with the same name) results in interesting rendering bugs (e.g. missing tiles in WorkAdventure)

Quick overview

Limitations

Instances wont scale indefinitely, please keep that in mind while building maps. Even if the infrastructure itself could handle a high number of clients on a single map, workadventure will still attempt to render all avatars at the same time, to the point that browsers (and network connections) won't be able to keep up. From experience, the limit appears to be around 200 players. Please keep that in mind when designing maps.

Even so, map size is relatively independent from simple user count, and can be set flexibly. Maps at around 50x50 tiles seem to be pretty fine; maps at around 500x500 tiles will take a non-trivial time to load. In general we recommend against unreasonably large maps, so visitors won't get "lost" in them and still have a chance to stumble across each other.

Please don't use any tilesets whose textures are larger than 4096x4096 pixels; rendering errors may occur otherwise, depending on browser and WebGL support

As last year, links leaving the event will be prefixed with a dereferrer ("you are now leaving the event area").

Scripts

You can use all features included in workadventure's "scripting api extra"; these will all be supported by rc3.world. However, please note that due to the large amount of review this would necessitate, including your own self-written javascript will only be possible upon request.

Starter-Kit

We will again offer a map building starter kit containing a simple map repository which you can clone, use as inspiration, or fork and use as the basis for your own map. However, it is — as well as corresponding tilesets — still a work in progress and will be published here once it is done.

Best Practices

To make visiting the world as comfortable as possible, a set of best practices for designing maps has emerged after last year's rC3 and subsequent divocs. Please read them carefully and keep them in mind when building your new (or updating your old) maps.

The back office will also automatically alert you in case of some especially obvious violations (e.g. exits to nonexistant maps), or suggest improvements.

How does it end up in the world?

To contribute maps to the world, you have to register an assembly.

Please store your maps in a git repo of your choice and and enter a (publicly clonable) URL to it our backend. Our infrastructure will then periodically pull your map in, run a rudimentary linter on it to check for a few requirements and general consistency, and then deploy it to rc3.world.

Please note that your map may also be rejected in case it contains errors (e.g. exits pointing to maps that do not exist) or is simply in the wrong format. If that is the case, the back office will notify you and show you an appropriate error along with a short explanation — so in case your map doesn't change even after waiting and multiple reloads, please take a look there and check.

Links between maps

Within your repository you can use normal, relative links — e.g. to get from one map in main.json to another at garden/secret-base.json, just enter the corresponding path (same for the other direction: ../main.json will take you back).

The same also holds for links to tilesets etc.

Please do not use absolute paths (i.e. paths starting with a /), since — on the rc3.world – these paths would be outside of your repository.

Links to places outside your own assembly

Attention: Does not work as it did last year!

To get to other assemblies or other places in general (e.g. the lobby or lounge), use the following link schema:

world://<assembly>/<map>.json

Where assembly is the "technical name" (i.e. slug) of the target assembly, as set in the Maschinenraum for your own assembly. The remaining path is then relative to the map repository of the linked assembly.

To get back to the lounge, just use lounge as the slug.

Since the validity of such links does not just depend on your own repository but also the entire event (and may even change over time), we cannot check such links statically when pulling in your repository. So please take extra care that these links don't lead into nothingness.

Entrypoint / Lobby / Exit

We will create central entry maps, through which one can reach everyone's assembly maps.

Obviously, your own map should contain at least one exit back to the lobby. As a recognisable and consistent exit, we recommend you use the following tile to mark it:

Map design

Tiles

Fundamentally, maps consist of so-called tiles or sprites (there are differences between these two terms, but they will in the following be used as synonyms). Please only use tiles that are 32x32 pixels large.

Tiles can also be transparent, and are saved in the PNG format.

Finding tiles:

• Countless tiles are available on the internet, often combined into tilesets (multiple tiles for one topic)
• Some examples of websites offering awesome tiles:
  • itch.io
  • opengameart.org
  • deviantart.com
• Be sure to check that the tiles have the correct size!
• Check the license of the tiles!
  • We will not actively check the licenses of your tiles, but react to violations on a "takedown on notice" principle!
• Shared Tiles Repo

How to design / "pixel" tiles

You can also design your own tiles (or edit exisiting ones); this is frequently referred to as "pixeling". We recommend using the editor krita, though of course the principle is the same for other programs.

• Please double check that your tiles are 32x32 pixels in size. You can enable a grid under view -> show grid, and under settings -> dockers -> grid you can select the grid size.
• Use transparency for modelling transitions between different materials. This is more flexible and saves you time by not modeling every possible transition between all materials.
• You can also watch blinry's pixel-art on media.ccc.de

Maps

Map are created with the editor Tiled. As in many graphics editors, a map consists of multiple layers, which are stacked on top of each other when rendering. Layers can also be (partially or wholly) transparent.

Creating a new map in tiled

When creating a new map, please ensure the following:

• The map must be orthogonal, and its tile size 32x32 pixels
• When editing a map, it may be useful to set its size to be infinite instead of deciding a fixed size beforehand. However, you will have to set its size back to some (finite) fixed size when saving it before you can load it into workadventure!

Map design - Layer

A map can consist of an arbitrary number of tile layers, which are stacked on top of each other. Each map will need at least one tile layer named start. Visitors to your map will then spawn on a random tile of this layer by default (you can move this layer to the bottom of the stack, and let its tiles be covered by other layers). You will also need another layer named floorLayer of the type objectgroup, which defines on which layer avatars will move (i.e. which layers will be rendered above or below them).

For a better mapping experience, highlight the current layer:

Walls and collision

To mark tiles as impervious, open them in the tile editor and set the custom property collides to the boolean value true for the specific tile (not the containing layer!). Although Tiled allows defining custom collision shapes for tiles, these are unsupported and simply ignored by our software.

Tile integration

Tiles must be integrated into the map in Tiled; references to external tilesets in the TSX format is not possible. (This does not mean that the image data itself will be embedded. PNG must be included in the repository as seperate files as well.)

Additional functionality per layer

Start layer

Apart from the default start layer it's possible to create additional entrypoints to your map. These layers work in a very similar way: simply place tiles anywhere you'd like avatars to spawn. To mark them as an entry point, set the custom property startLayer (type boolean) to true. The name of this layer will double as the "jump address" for this entry – if your map is called foo.json and you have a layer bar that you want to jump to, then the corresponding address would be foo.json#bar.

Exits

Exits to other maps work similar to entries: create a new layer, put any tile where you want the exits to be, then give the layer the custom property exitUrl (type string). The value of the property should be the map and start layer of the map you want to jump to, for example foo.json#bar to get to the layer bar of the map foo.json (if you leave out the #bar, the exit will instead lead to the start layer of foo.json)

For exits to the lobby, the lounge, or other assemblies, take a look at the quick reference above.

Embedding websites

You can embed websites, which will open when upon stepping on predefined tiles. Same as for start and exit layers, add a layer, place tiles at the desired positions, and then set the property openWebsite (type string). Use https!

Also not that websites which are outside of rC3 will be automatically prefixed with a dereferrer, which will alert visitors that they are now "leaving the event area".

Embedding jitsi

You can embed Jitsi rooms in the same way. Simply set the custom property jitsiRoom (type string) and assign it the name of your jitsi room as its value.

To avoid unintentional collisions between different assemblies (e.g. so that everyone can define their own "hackcenter") names of jitsi rooms are local to your own assembly. If you want to share a room with a different assembly, just prefix its name with shared-.

In general we recommend also setting the property jitsiTrigger to onaction, which will cause the room to open only after explicit user interaction (a press on the space bar), which makes visiting the world much easier on older laptops and prevents people accidentally stumbling into your session. You can also set a custom message to be displayed where the jitsi can be opened by setting the jitsiTriggerMessage property (which will overwrite the default "press SPACE to open jitsi meet").

Embedding Big Blue Button

This works essentially the same as with jitsi: set bbbRoom to your room's name, and bbbTrigger along with bbbTriggerMessage to prevent the room from popping open unexpectedly.

Silent areas

If you want to prevent audio/video communication between participants in some areas, define a corresponding layer and set the custom property silent (type boolean) to true. All tiles of this layer will then no longer allow conversations. This is especially useful for narrow passages or hallways where it's not always possible to easily walk past each other.

Award badges

You can award badges when stepping on certain tiles. Add a layer of type objectgroup (important!), and then don't place tiles but points and/or rectangles on that layer. Then set the custom property getBadge (type string) to the token of your badge (which you can find in the Maschinenraum, where you can also create new badges). Note that you will need a Map redeem token.

Badges will then be awarded to visitors walking across the corresponding areas of the map.

Animated Tiles

Tiles can be combined to animations (loops), e.g. to make floating water or bliking lights look better. All frames need to be their own single 32x32 tile. Create animations in the tileset editor by clicking on the tile to animate (or pick an arbitrary free tile, so as to not overwrite existing ones) and then open the animation editor:

You can now add all tiles that should be part of the animation via drag and drop to the "playlist" and adjust the frame duration (given in milliseconds):

To show animations in tiled, set the corresponding option:

Tip: The engine does tile-updates only every 100ms, do animations with a shorter frame duration will most likely not look that good or even don't work at all.

Larger animations covering multiple tiles need to animated in tiled tile by tile, and work relatively fine. (Occationally some tiles don't run in sync with the rest, Cthulhu knows why...)

Sound

Layers with the property playAudio (type string) will play a sound when stepping on their tiles. Only mp3 files included via a path relativ to your map are supported. External files can not be included. If you want to include streams, please write an email to world@rc3.world. If you want the audio to also loop, additionally set audioLoop (type boolean) to true.

Please only use GEMA-free sound snippets! If you embed streams you are also be required to keep a tracklist to be able to prove to GEMA that you only played "gema-free music".

Please document the copyright and license of your music in the map's mapCopyright property, since there is not (yet) any dedicated property per audio-playing map layer.

Packaging, Deployment and Infrastructure

Saving and exporting maps

Maps need to be saved as json files, tilesets should be embedded prior to this. The relevant files will be your map in json format along with the tilesets used, which are saved as PNGs.

Infinite maps need to be converted to finite dimension maps before exporting. To do so just untick the "infinite" tick box, then save.

Licenses

Please pay attention to the licenses and copyright of your tilesets. You must (!) set those via the copyright property directly on the tilesets within your map json! (just add a custom property to the tileset in Tiled).

The same applies to your entire map: document its licence / copyright by setting the property mapCopyright (type string) on the map (not on a layer / tileset!).

Directory structure

Please ensure that the right folder structure is used when saving your maps:

• The entry map needs to be called main.json, and be in the root directory
• Other maps can be saved in the main directory or in subdirectories
• Ensure that links between maps use the correct relative URL (cf. the corresponding section above)
• Ensure that the paths to the tilesets are correct (you may need to adjust them in json by hand)

Your map repository should then look something like this:

.
├── bla
│   └── keks.json
├── blubb.json
├── foo
│   ├── bar.json
│   └── tileset2.png
├── main.json
└── tileset.png

Testing

We will offer a test instance whose behaviour should be as close as possible to the "real" infrastructure used during the event so you can test your map beforehand. It is currently still a work in progress and should go live soon.

Self-Hosting

Please do not try to host your own instance! We will not allow jumps to external instances!