metaboard

Multiplayer drawing boards for sharing knowledge in Roblox.

Installation

There are two components to install: the metaboard backend code, and a metaboard model to draw on.

From Github Releases

Download the latest release (look for metaboard-v*.rbxm). In Roblox Studio, right click on ServerScriptService, click Insert from File and insert the metaboard-v*.rbxm file. This is a startup script that puts the metaboard ModuleScript in ReplicatedStorage, and then gets the server and clients to call metaboard.Client:Start() and the server to call metaboard.Server:Start(). You will need to manually update this file if you want the newest release.

With Wally

Add metaboard as a dependency of your project in your wally.toml file

# wally.toml

[dependencies]
metaboard = "metauni/metaboard@X.X.X" # Replace with current version number

Install it

wally install

Call the startup methods from the client and server

local metaboard = require(path.to.metaboard)

-- From Server
metaboard.Server:Start()

-- From Client
metaboard.Client:Start()

With Rojo

Clone/download the repository, and ensure you have Rojo and Wally installed (you can install them with aftman install if you have Aftman)

Install the dependencies (see License)

wally install

To build the latest release (as a startup script),

rojo build release.project.json -o metaboard.rbxm

To sync the latest release into Roblox Studio (at ServerScriptService > metaboardStartup)

rojo serve dev.project.json

To build metaboard as a ModuleScript (no startup logic)

rojo build module.project.json -o metaboard.rbxm

Note: the default.project.json is for Wally. On its own it will not build metaboard with its package dependencies.

Adding boards to your game

metauni maintains a few example boards you can use. The easiest method to add these in Roblox Studio is to go to Toolbox > Marketplace and search "metaboard".

• WhiteBoard
• BlackBoard
• TechBoard
  • This is really two boards, both the FrontBoard and BackBoard are tagged as metaboards.

Don't be afraid to resize and stretch these boards as you please!

Board Structure

To turn a Part into a metaboard, use the Tag Editor plugin to give it the tag "metaboard". If your board is a Model, make the drawing surface the PrimaryPart, and tag the PrimaryPart as "metaboard". A StringValue called "Face" parented to the Part (not the Model) will define which face of the part is used as the drawing surface.

For more customised positioning of the board, make an invisible part for the board and size/position it on your model however you like.

Custom Configuration

All of the configuration values used in metaboard are stored in a ModuleScript at lib -> Config. There are cases where you may want to use different config values on a per-place basis. Instead of modifying the Config script, you can copy the ModuleScript called metaboardPlaceConfig from lib to ReplicatedStorage. This ModuleScript returns a function which takes the config table as its argument and modifies the keys (no return value). All scripts that import the original Config file will receive the table with these edits applied (but only if metaboardPlaceConfig is a child of ReplicatedStorage).

You can keep this same config file around when you update the metaboard package.

Persistent Boards

Any metaboard can be synced to a DataStore so that it retains its contents across server restarts.

By default, metaboard uses a datastore called "MetaboardPersistence" to save and restore board data. You can configure which datastore is used in metaboardPlaceConfig. For example you could use a different datastore for each place. There you can also set Config.Persistence.ReadOnly to true, so that you can see and draw on the existing boards in Studio without modifying anything in the datastore.

Note that Config.Persistence.DataStoreName is ignored in pockets, where automatic naming is used.

To enable persistence for a board, create an IntValue under the board called PersistId and choose a unique value. This value is used to determine the key in the datastore where the board data will be saved, so it must be unique to prevent overwriting another board's data. You should also keep track of keys you've used in the past for the same reason.

Since persistent boards use the Roblox DataStore API there are several limitations you should be aware of:

• The DataStore keys for persistent boards are the same in any live server, and SetAsync is currently used rather than UpdateAsync, so there is a risk of data corruption if two players in different servers attempt to the use the "same" persistent board. We strongly recommend therefore that you reserve use of persistent boards to private servers.

• Changed persistent boards are autosaved by default every 30sec - this can be modified (see Custom Configuration).

• On server shutdown there is a 30sec hard limit, within which all boards which have changed after the last autosave must be saved if we are to avoid dataloss. A full board costs about 1.2sec to save under adversarial conditions (i.e. many other full boards). So if we assume we have 20 of those 30 seconds for metaboard shutdown, we can afford at most 16 changed boards per autosave period. There is a budget for datastore requests, but the more likely bottleneck is save time per-board.

License

metaboard uses the MPL-2.0 License. See LICENSE.

External packages used in metaboard can be found in wally.toml, and license information for those packages in PACKAGE-LICENSES.md.