rc3.world Best Practices

Best Practices

After last year's rc3 and the following divocs the following crystallised as best practices for map building (apart from the technical requirements of workadventure itself). Please keep them in mind while designing your assemblies.

Logic

  • Place collisions only in places where they make sense — so please avoid things like invisible walls
  • Make exists (especially those back to your main map) obviously visible; don't build one-way portals to maps with no way back
  • "Riddle"-maps should have an easily visible exit directly next to the start; ideally it should be impossible to accidentally "fall" into the map
  • please avoid endless exit-loops, or clearly mark them as portals — exits should not lead lead to entrypoints of the same map
  • place active elements far enough apart that it's easy to walk between them, especially if your map connects several other maps
  • it's best to create just a single tile with the property collides set to true, and only use it in a single layer "collisions"
  • you can use group layer to collect similar layers (e.g. all layers defining entries or exits, all layers opening websites, etc.). This leaves your map's behaviour unchanged, but makes working with (potentially large) maps with the Tiled editor much easier

Accessability

  • avoid animations or design them to be unobtrusive
  • take care to have sufficient contrast (especially between e.g. walls/floor)
  • mark areas playing sounds/music or opening jitsis (e.g. with a sign); don't place them directly on the entrypoint where people might run into them by mistake
  • interactive elements and especially video conferences should be placed and designed to be clearly recognisable even before walking in; also be sure to leave sufficient space around them if people want to just walk past them
  • jitsis and websites should only open after pressing the spacebar (i.e. set jitsiTrigger / openWebsiteTrigger where appropriate)
  • include silent areas (a layer with property silent set to true)
  • mark thin passages as silent areas, or widen them so people can walk past each other without initiating a chat bubble
  • please consider directions when adding links between maps — walking straight through an exit, then continuing straight onwards should not immideately lead into another exit (if in doubt, just leave a few tiles' distance); turning around immediately behind an exit and walking back in the opposite direction should lead back to the previous map (in short, "doors should behave like doors")
  • if applicable, include content warnings
  • warnings in front of long labyrinths or epileptic animations should be signs next to the exit that leads to the corresponding map, or next to an early exit directly at the map's start

Reachability without the world

Not everyone can or wants to interact with the event through the world. So no matter how beautiful your carefully designed worlds may be — please think about how one might reach your assembly without walking through the world. Add links to your jitsi-rooms to your assembly's page in the hub (especially if workshops take place in them!), don't publish your schedule exlusively as a sign on your map, etc.