An ambient life simulation driven by the user activity within a Discord server

D-Zone is a graphical simulation meant to abstractly represent the activity in your Discord server.

This is not meant for any actual monitoring or diagnostics, only an experiment in the abstraction of chatroom data represented via autonomous characters in a scene.

Hopefully the simulation is interesting to watch. You can see the current (uninteresting) client version simulating the discord.io server here: pixelatomy.com/dzone

If you're an absolute beginner and have never used Node, I have written a more beginner-friendly guide

This project is still very early in development, so there isn't much point in running it yet. But in case you're curious, here's what you need to do:

npm install d-zone --no-optional

Contained in the package are the server files and client files.

Rename discord-config-example.json to discord-config.json and insert the login and server info for your Discord server(s). You must specify one default Discord server. You can include multiple servers here, and as long as your bot can connect to them, they will be available for clients to view. You can password-protect a server from being viewed by a client by using the password property. If you want certain channels to be ignored, you can include the ignoreChannels property, which accepts an array of channel names or IDs, and ignores any messages in those channels. Alternatively, you can use the listenChannels property which works the same way but serves as a whitelist instead, so your bot will only relay messages in those channels. Finally, you can add an alias property to specify a custom name for the server instead of the actual server name.

You can automatically populate your discord-config.json with all your bot's servers by running Update Configuration.bat. Your token must be present in discord-config.json.

Rename socket-config-example.json to socket-config.json and insert the IP and port you want to run the websocket on.

Start the server with npm start or just node index.js

The client files are all contained within the web folder, and need to be built into /static/bundle.js with npm run-script build or npm run-script watch. Upload everything in the web folder except the script folder. Do not remove the web folder from the package; the server component requires it.

Important: D-Zone currently does not support https, so your host/subdomain must not have SSL enabled. If you are savvy with websockets over SSL, please consider submitting a pull request to add support! Regardless, this will be supported in the rewrite in progress, but I have no ETA.

If everything works, the client should connect to the default server, generate a world, and receive live updates via websocket from the server.

Remember, this project is still being developed (as is discord.io), so keep your D-Zone up to date with npm update

Don't forget to rebuild bundle.js and re-upload the web files after updating!

The game engine architecture is currently loosely based on crtrdg.

It consists of both a server and client component:

The server runs a Discord bot which monitors the activity and user statuses in the server(s) of your choice. This data is sent to clients in real time via websockets.

The client (also designed with node via browserify) runs a graphical simulation in a canvas depicting an isometric scene populated by objects and autonomous characters. The activity in the scene is dictated and influenced by the data received from the server component. Clients are able to change which Discord server they are viewing with in-game UI.

Core client modules such as the renderer and input controller are loosely based on implementations found in playground.js.

Disclaimer: I cannot be held responsible for anything that happens to your computer, your server, your bot, or anything else as a result of using this package.

Please consider the privacy of the users on your server. D-Zone will allow anyone with the URL (and password, if used) to monitor the chat of anyone in any channel that your bot has permission to see.