Telegram Space

Dependencies

• godot 4.0 stable

  • https://godotengine.org/article/godot-4-0-sets-sail/
  • https://downloads.tuxfamily.org/godotengine/4.0
  • after downloading and installing Godot, open a project in Godot, in top menu select Editor -> Manage Export templates... and click Download and install to install the export templates

• rust 1.66.1 (90743e729 2023-01-10)

  • https://rustup.rs/

• sfz 0.7.1 (for serving build artifacts)

  • https://crates.io/crates/sfz
  • after installing rust, run cargo install sfz
  • You can also do brew install on macOS: https://github.com/weihanglo/sfz#macos
  • or just download prebuilt binary from gh: https://github.com/weihanglo/sfz#prebuilt-binaries

CI

• f8122dac91/godot-4.0-ci-exporter: https://hub.docker.com/r/f8122dac91/godot-4.0-ci-exporter

How to Build

Server

• run cargo build in server/

Client

• option 1: export the project using the editor
• option 2:
  • edit the godot binary location in client/build.sh
  • run the script
• html5 build artifacts should be exported to client/exports

How to Run

Server

• run cargo run in server/

Client

• serve the exports by running sfz --coi --render-index --port 5000 in client/exports
• go to http://localhost:5000

Non-Goal

Robustness:

This is a prototype for MVP, so for the sake of similicity, we won't waste our time on making things robust. So for now, the networking/protocol implementation only contains happy path, and we just simply trust clients to never lie, and server to never fail.

Efficiency:

So for now we won't worry about things like:

• Websocket being by default only supports TCP and UDP being more suitable for realtime usage
• WebRTC is UDP based but design to be used in P2P architecture so requires a hack to use it for server-client architecture

Visual Design:

Game engins are built to support dynamically loading game assets, updating, remastering etc, meaning we should not worry about ironing out all the nitty-gritty details for the graphics for now. We can do that later when we transition to production mode.

Extra Miles:

There are industry standard optimization techniques--e.g. coordinate interpolation, extrapolation, etc--which requires a bit more complex networking architecture. We won't touch this at this time.

Goal

System Validation:

• wasm + webgl client using any of the common transport or application layer protocols
  • is it fast enough?
  • is it reliable?
  • can it be developed with reasonable amount of pain?
• is Godot 4 wasm target ready for production?

UX Validation:

• general performance (feel, smoothness)
• mode of interaction (touch input on mobile)
• integration:
  • can a user enter the client smoothly from telegram?
  • can it be loaded on different mobile platforms and web browsers?
  • can wasm + webgl render reliably on in-app view?