Suggestions for Canvas and future events!

Hey everyone! Thanks for participating in Canvas. I wanted to make a thread to collect together suggestions people have that can be worked on before the next Canvas.

Feel free to also throw in suggestions for future Events we can build and run for the fediverse.

Ill be collecting suggestions together and making issues for them in the repository for myself or some other contributors to work on (the projects open source so anyones free to contribute! https://git.sc07.company/sc07/canvas Feel free to reach out to me and I can help get you set up with the codebase)

jonathanvmv8f ,

Not suggesting any big things here... All I propose is to have the options for toggling the canvas overlays (empty canvas, heat, template) directly within the canvas editing screen instead of putting it in the sidebar, kinda like Google Maps. I think the sidebar version would be preferred in mobiles, so you could make this desktop only.

Alternatively, you could allow the user to place pixels on the canvas even while the sidebar is opened, like the way it was for the first 48 hours of the event. Also ensure the right side of the color palette is not hidden by the sidebar.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

Suggestions:

  • When getting rid of bots, undo their changes.
  • Assign the pixel timer based also on IP, not just account. That should discourage people who used multiple accounts just to have more pixels.
  • Don't let freshly created accounts to place pixels. They compound with both issues above.
eatham ,
@eatham@aussie.zone avatar

IPs should never be used to moderate, they are shared across too many people. Often multiple neighborhoods will share an IP.

db0 ,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

That's the closest thing we have though. The alternative is just people using alts, and at that point might as well not have limits. There can be ways to add exceptions if needed.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

I do not like the idea of using IPs for that either, but since it's only for the timing instead of locking people out of the service, it's less of a concern.

And as db0 said IPs are far from optimal but they're the best thing that "we" [actually the devs] have available. If you have some alternative way to discourage simultaneous multi-accounting, by all means, suggest it here.

RandomVideos ,

A really small canvas with a short time sounds cool

bstix ,

Okay wild idea for a smaller canvas :

Have the canvas fade out to white a little every hour.

Eventually old pixels would die and people would either have to maintain or draw new stuff.
It would make the timelapse more interesting and more animated by default.

db0 ,
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

If alts are really discouraged, please take steps to actually prevent them.

sxan ,
@sxan@midwest.social avatar

Is there a history of the changes stored? I'd love to watch an accelerated animation of the creation process.

I did not find a way to simply "view the entire canvas & download a snapshot," which would be nice.

eatham ,
@eatham@aussie.zone avatar

There are time lapses, and all the data has been released.

tuna ,

On mobile I kept opening the whois pixel by accident when dragging. I often tap and hold to initiate a drag because I'm still looking at the art, but when i drag away and let go, it opens the whois thing. I think if you drag a certain screen-space distance away it should cancel the whois pixel lookup.

The heatmap I found too hard to tell where recent pixels were placed. I think at 100% opacity the "cold" pixels should be dark blue instead of their actual color.

A couple times I placed a dot, realized I actually didn't want it there and ran out of time to undo, which felt bad having to wait 30s. I wish it was a bit longer.

When you try to place a pixel a few milliseconds too early I feel like it should queue it and wait the few milliseconds for you.

I'm not super sure on the canvas having transparency. Most people treated the canvas as white, not transparent. If you wanted a white-on-white drawing, people will just make an outline.

Maybe a concept worth testing: if you place a pixel next to your own pixels, you get a (slightly) reduced cooldown, that way you get an extra boost when completing your art. (At the same time, I think there is beauty in the canvas being as simple as possible:)

eco_game ,

+1 on the mobile draggging issue

mindbleach ,

Escalating timers are an antipattern. It punishes anyone who looks away for more than thirty seconds - and thirty seconds per click is not exactly a brisk pace for maintaining attention.

Other than that, good shit, well done. Undo was a welcome surprise. Ditto the repetition prevention.

No wait, one other thing. (Complaint sandwich!) Scaling should be in integer powers. Everything but fully-zoomed-out and extremely-blown-up looked lumpy and distracting. Especially with all the pixel art going on.

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

I think it was 30s between every pixel at the start.

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

It was sort of, but it was a bug. If you just left them, you'd get one every 33ish seconds until you had 6. But if you had 2 then used one, you'd have to wait 66 seconds until you got another, unless you used your last one then it was back to 33.

It was fixed partway through to be as originally intended.

lvxferre ,
@lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

I like the escalating time, but the pacing issue is a fair point.

So perhaps the escalation could be delayed? Give it a tiny larger timer (let's say, 40s?), and make the second pixel take as much time as the first. Like this:

  • current times - 30s, 60s, 90s, 120s, 150s, 180s; total 630s
  • my proposal - 40s, 40s, 80s, 120s, 160s, 200s; total 640s

This way you'd be only getting less pixels per minute after 80s of inactivity, not 30s.

Deebster ,
@Deebster@programming.dev avatar

One effect of this is that someone steadily editing got more pixels than someone editing in batches, which felt like a feature when defending against trolls.

fubarx ,

It would be amazing if parts of it could be animated. Maybe multiple layers of canvases (say, 5 frames, shown over a second). Each with their own images, which could be viewed as a flipbook.

Instead of going for a larger canvas, go for more layers.

Just a thought.

GammaGames ,
@GammaGames@beehaw.org avatar

Thanks for making it open source! I’m curious how complex the authentication stuff was. I didn’t place many pixels but it was fun to peek in and see what changed every once in a while! Would definitely be a fan of more in the future, though I don’t have any ideas

Smash ,

I often got the "you've already placed a pixel of that color there" error, even though I never touched this area. I also couldn't fix my own pixelart easily because of this.

user224 ,
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

You could get around that bug by choosing a different color and then pressing undo. After that it reverted to the correct color.

BlueEther ,
@BlueEther@no.lastname.nz avatar

I'd be keen to run/test a local version, what do I need in the .env.local as a minimum to get up and running?

GammaGames , (edited )
@GammaGames@beehaw.org avatar

It looks like the compose file has REDIS_HOST and DATABASE_URL and point to included services. There’s also a few in the dockerfile for setting PORT (3000) and some node stuff I don’t understand

squirrel ,

The event was fun for the first 48 hours - before the expansion. After that it was mostly policing and defending existing art. I would prefer a 48 hour canvas without expansion.

That said, it was fun anyways. Thanks for all your work and thanks to grant for setting everything up and fixing issues on the fly.

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