Create something that is a community effort.

[Proxtx]

With the reopening of r/place and remembering the fun I had with building something with a community I follow, I suggest something similar to be done with the Lilypad server. For everyone who doesn't know what r/place is: it's a giant canvas where every Reddit user can set the color of a specific pixel every 5 minutes. This leads to communities working together to get their community onto that canvas.

I do not suggesting the Lilypad to participate in r/place but to recreate this feeling of a real group effort.

With this being a community with a lot of programmers I'm sure that we can create something incredible.

But the question remains what exactly?

I think the community project should:

1. Allow everyone in the DC participate
2. Not be the same as r/place (unoriginal)
3. Have an end result
4. Require collaboration

What do you think? Is this a good idea? Do you have any ideas? Any improvements to the requirements?

I'm open to constructive criticism.

[emilyyyylime]

We could uh just program something together I guess

[Proxtx]

That would be a bit unoriginal don't you think? I think that the programming part would be the thing that would enable the community part to work.

[Proxtx]

Here is an idea of mine that would fit the requirements: What if the community creates a video. The community can decide the topic and do anything they want. Each member can do a pull request to the current project. The community can then vote on the changes.

As to the technical site: We would create a simple ffmpeg wrapper that turns information found in a JSON file into a video. In addition we could write a simple visualizer that visualizes the JSON file itself. The protocol for the JSON file could be fairly simple as well: have multiple layers that each can hold a video stream or an audio stream. The JSON file would be hosted in a public repository that is managed by a bot that conducts votes based on reactions to pull requestes.

This is obviously just an idea that I think would be very cool.

[TodePond]

Hey I really like the goal of this! It makes me think of exquisite corpse. I saw an amazing exhibition that featured a lot of it. Exquisite corpse (cadavre exquis) is a collaborative drawing approach done by surrealist artists, which fits closely with the sandpond saga's surrealist influences!

I think it would be best to start with something simple like drawing, because it'll be easier to make, and we'll learn stuff in the process. We could lead up to more ambitious things though! eg: I could even see us doing an 'exquisite corpse' where we all do a frame of an animation.

But first, maybe we could do a classic exquisit corpse where we each draw one part of a 'body', but can only see the very edges of the surrounding pieces.

Let me make some mockups of what I'm imagining...

[TodePond]

[FrancescoVMK]

Another cool idea could be to create a multiplayer SandPond.

Something like a place in which everybody can create their own element and place it in the world.

Maybe with a voting system to decide if we want to add the element.

[TodePond]

The only problem is that you need to at least know the border of the drawing so that you can draw something that connects to it.

Yes that's what those little grey bits are on the editor :)

You could also have a little faint line to show what part of your drawing will be visible to others.

[Magnogen]

this is amazing, just leaving a comment here so i get notified by any new features :)

[TodePond]

this is amazing, just leaving a comment here so i get notified by any new features :)

Cool! Great :) by the way, you can also hit subscribe to do this, although it is great to hear your thoughts too!

[emilyyyylime]

Wow this sounds like such a fun idea! ^^

But it does look like there's a whole system to build as a precursor to doing this

[Proxtx]

I would be willing to help / lead the coding part of this project.

[TodePond]

I'd also be up for doing some work on this. Tomorrow I'll set up a project for it

[Proxtx]

Ok cool. I'm not gonna be home for another 5 days but after that I can help.

[TodePond]

Done some setup work: #47

Will use this project to track progress: https://github.com/users/TodePond/projects/4/views/1

[skifli]

Hey, I'd be willing to help as well with the project. Let me know if you need any more contributors :).