Should we have a “game mode” and a “builder mode”? What does private messaging look like? What does your character’s inventory look like? Is inventory separate from uploading a photo?
We’re discussing the new user interface and we have a lot of ideas!
Rey’s UI sketch is a “whole picture view” of things, trying to integrate many of the ideas we’ve had–a personal profile, a minimap, a thought bar, uploading photos, emojis, and then panels on the left including contact list, inventory, message inbox, builder library, and settings:
My (Duane’s) prototype focuses more on the “content creation” side, using a horizontal expanding panel, or accordion. It includes writing, expressing emotion as emojis, choosing existing photos or uploading new photos, and drawing:
If you’d like to join in the discussion, visit us on Discord. We love meeting other creative minds!
We’re happy to announce a new open source (MIT licensed) library called jitsi-svelte, available on npm and github.
I’ve been using lib-jitsi-meet for a few months now and have a little bit of an understanding of its API. A little while ago, we switched to using svelte as our HTML framework in Relm and I’ve absolutely loved it.
So, naturally, we needed a way to bring these two awesome pieces of technology together. Now, the jitsi-svelte library allows you to easily create your own custom Jitsi client, in the Svelte framework.
There are quite a few intricacies to getting video conferencing working well, and if you’re writing a Svelte3-based app, there is some additional complexity in getting all of Jitsi’s events to work together with reactive stores.
Jitsi-svelte simplifies all of this and provides the svelte stores you need to build a web-based video conferencing app. It also provides Svelte components for Audio & Video, among others.
Additionally, users expect to see themselves before entering a video conference, and ideally, need the ability to set up their cam and mic hardware as well. We were inspired by Whereby’s intro screen and created what we call the “Mirror” component that mimics their UX & design.
If you’re developing a svelte-based video conferencing app, check out jitsi-svelte and see if it fits your needs.
Our online spaces need to be more welcoming—they need to have more hospitality, more civilization, and more heaping helpings of kindness. You might be skeptical that there’s hope—after all, the social networks are most often a crap shoot: opening Twitter, for example, is more like “joining the fray” than feeling connected with warm friends.
Relm is a radical attempt to change what’s possible online. We understand the deep responsibility we have to our generation’s psychological health & well-being, and we are building a platform where human connection can grow, even through the thin wires of the internet that now connect our society.
A friend asked today how Relm is a kinder, gentler community. There are a few things we’re working on:
Relm is audio on & video-enabled by default—so there’s a more human side to people. We think this is a necessary (but insufficient) requirement to enable our evolved sense of empathy towards each other as human beings.
We’re simulating having a body, like in a video-game world, which enables more forms of communication. For example, sitting down with someone indicates more focused attention, or walking away can indicate boredom (among other things).
[future work]: There will be a lobby that allows an anonymous person to enter a relm and get “vetted” before entering. Similar to the role a front desk plays at an office building or theme park.
[future work]: We want to create a sense of ritual around entering a community, so it doesn’t feel bureaucratic—like your entry depends upon filling out a form correctly (e.g. “login”, “password”). Instead, we want it to be about making a commitment to people—someone (ideally, a friend) gives you a tour and explains the rules of conduct. (We use cryptographic keys generated in-browser to avoid the login form).
[future work]: We’ve thought a lot about autonomy vs. control. In some situations, there are stricter expectations around control—imagine an auditorium with 100 people ready to listen to a presentation, for example. We’d like to simulate capabilities similar to civilization in the real world in these cases–a security officer, for example, that has the ability to escort people out if they’ve crossed a line (but we don’t want this to be “first line” tactics, because sometimes disturbing the peace/heckling is a legit form of expression/free speech).
These are just some ideas, but I hope it outlines some of the work that’s going in to making Relm a kind, gentle place where online communities can find health & happiness together. If you’re interested in joining us, come by our Discord channel and chat!
In some ways Relm is like Zoom (video chat!), but at the same time, a lot of people notice it also looks like… a video game world!? So, what’s up with that, and is it better than Zoom?
Video game worlds are fun, and multiplayer campaigns are so great for building team spirit and camaraderie. If that’s the case, we wonder, then why not use them in our everyday work? Why confine ourselves to bland video chat software?
Today, there are a few things that we think already make Relm better than Zoom:
Have you experienced Zoom fatigue? We think it’s so unnatural to be placed with faces towards one another for an hour or more. Having the freedom to move yourself around, shift your attention, and meet in different settings is a big improvement over traditional video conferences–you won’t be as tired, because your brain is naturally novelty-seeking and you’ll find video chat in Relm refreshing.
Has your team started using Zoom backgrounds for fun and self-expression? The fact that so many of us take advantage of this points to the need for self-expression. In Relm, you have many more ways to show your mood, tell a story, or create an environment that strikes up conversation. Relm is like a “shared team background” that can be the starting point for team or community culture.
When you start up Zoom, you’re always in the same place–facing each other, with your office or synthetic background behind you. In real life, the environment we meet in is a huge social cue that normally constrains what can be talked about. When inviting someone to your home, this signals something far more intimate than meeting in the office. In Relm, you can build environments that allow many types of constraints and levels of intimacy for conversation.
But this is just the beginning! We hope to build a real global village, an open source platform where you can be you, where you can feel belonging and status in a healthy, human way.
Relm is attempting to combine a kind of social network (like Facebook) with video conferencing software (like Zoom or Whereby), with an MMO video game world (like World of Warcraft).
It’s an ambitious project, but one that we feel inspired to attempt today in this work-from-home, school-from-home, everything-from-home environment. We are building the online space that’s worthy of our spending time there. If this is inspiring to you, contact us!
Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. But the world wide web was not designed to meet our social needs. When we look around at the networks we’ve created online, we see a travesty of real connection with each other—sometimes an emotional wasteland filled with failed efforts to see and to be seen, to be with and to belong.
Today, we have Facebook “friends”, Instagram influencers, LinkedIn connections, and Twitter mobs. In addition, we see more depression, anxiety, and loneliness in our society than ever before.
But if we can re-imagine the web the way it should be—not as an inter-linked store of hypertext documents, but as a place to work together and build community together—why not fashion for ourselves an online universe that is pro-social and social-first?
We evolved in a spatial world, and we thrive in 3 dimensions. Video games and MMO worlds have led the way in showing us how to build trust and culture online—and we should take their lessons seriously enough to integrate the experience they offer in fields as far away as remote teamwork and business meetings.
Our surroundings tell us about ourselves, and hold us in relationship to one another. As we work, create, and collaborate together, we need a virtual world in which to do it—not necessarily because it’s efficient, but because it’s the most human way we know to be online together.
We believe that the architecture of the web experience needs to be re-designed for online teams and communities. A healthy online universe for human beings prioritizes:
Belonging over status updates
Visual and auditory communication over textual communication
Real-time interactions over asynchronous requests/responses
Rootedness in community over fast network growth
Hospitality over bureaucracy (e.g. login forms)
Opportunity for human connection (& serendipity) over efficiency
Socially meaningful surroundings over missing context or sterile environments
Representing ourselves as avatars over having little to no representation of “me”
Fun throughout!
The next version of the web experience should be a social universe—a place where we can see, be seen, and belong—just like our ancestors’ communities, but online.
I’m thrilled to announce that I (Duane) am starting full-time this week at Relm.US Inc. as CTO and acting CEO. When my brother, Chris, and I started this video game-like virtual world for teams last Christmas, we had no idea how important it would become in 2020 to help people feel connected online.
What is Relm? Imagine if Zoom and Animal Crossing had a baby. Let people customize their avatar and environment, then bring in business apps like whiteboards and kanban boards. All in a fun, human-connecting, open-source world.
As more and more teams, conferences, and classes have begun experimenting with flex work and hybrid online arrangements, it’s clear to us that although it’s wonderful to see collaborative tools online, tools are not enough. We need an environment to surround us and give us context as we work together–we need a place that grounds us, and gives us human connection throughout the day.
If you’re interested in learning more or if you’re seriously passionate about this kind of new development, let’s talk!
Most of the development work has been focused on a server update that will be coming soon, but there have also been some helpful updates and improvements that have landed on the browser side:
NEW: Preliminary support for packed-glb and packed-gltf formats. See command-line gltfpack utility. This reduces some meshes and animations to 20% of original size.
NEW: Selecting a 3D object now highlights its edges in black.
NEW: Documentation (“Help”) now shows thought bar in command descriptions
NEW: When selecting a single item, a toast message now shows you what you selected (type and ID)
CHANGED: The upload limit has been changed to 4mb.
CHANGED: On Mac OS, you can now Cmd+click to remove selection (ctrl-click is indistinguishable from right-click)
FIXED: Restore landing coords to working state (x,z params in URL)
FIXED: Uploading a 3D object used to only accept a single mesh; now all meshes in a glb/gltf file are accepted.
FIXED: Documentation shows /share command for screen sharing
FIXED: You can now drag objects that are “underneath” other objects, if the under-object is selected.
FIXED: Players would sometimes get caught in “infinite reload loop” when triggering portal to other relm.
FIXED: Players would sometimes “moonwalk” (from other players’ perspectives) rather than instantly teleport when using portal.
The Open Source Ecology group has a cool use-case for Relm: since they build actual life-size machines, they can collaborate in virtual space and coordinate builds. They requested the ability to highlight edges of 3D objects in order to better show off some of their CAD models.
An oft-requested feature is now here: screensharing!
If you click on someone’s screen, you’ll get a full screen version of their screen.
For now, the only way to initiate a screen share is via the command /share. Sending the /share command again will exit screen sharing mode and return to regular video.
Would seeing each others’ screens side-by-side be useful for a follow-along tutorial? Maybe as a way to show what you’re working on with the team? We’re excited to see how people use this new capability!
Relm had a big refactor last month and as a result, there are quite a few new features:
Foldable images: creates an improved illusion that a 2D image is 3D by putting a “crease” down the center.
Ground: we now have flexible flooring! No more grey background. Ground can be circle-shaped, square-shaped, or “roughly circle”-shaped (pictured below) and keeps players within bounds.
Editor: object properties can be directly edited (currently as JSON)
Faster downloads: all images are now converted to both WebP and PNG so that we can use the much lighter-weight WebP format on browsers that support it.
More vibrant colors: the world was white-tinted, but now has truer more beautiful colors on textures.
The “Help” screen documentation is accurate again.
We were fascinated to read Chip Cutter’s article in the Wall Street Journal, “Office Culture: The Office is Far Away. Can Its Culture Survive?” He notes that managers “are fretting about how they can instill culture and encourage innovation when employees who once spent days together now rarely see each other in person.”
When we started Relm back in December of 2019, COVID-19 wasn’t even on our radar. Our co-founder, Chris Johnson, was connecting with his clients over phone and video conference from his remote location in British Columbia, Canada. But he felt lonely. And worse, he noticed that he couldn’t even tell how some of his associates and employees were doing.
One morning, he called up one of his associates only to find that he had attempted to take his life a day earlier. Chris was shocked, and discouraged. The news was made worse by the fact that Chris didn’t even have a hint that his associate was carrying some unspoken pain in his life. This potential loss of life seemed to have come out of the blue.
But what if it could be different? What if remote work could be a little more like face-to-face office work? You get a chance to check in with each other, ask how the weekend was, get coffee together. These rituals and human touch points that we’ve taken for granted are actually the bedrock of human connection and trust.
Teams need each other–and they need to trust each other–in order to work effectively. And more importantly, we need each other when we’re going through difficult times, for reassurance and advice. Life is not straight-forward. No one should need to feel structural loneliness.
Relm’s value proposition is this: if you’re in a remote team, we think work should be more fun, more human, and more focused on the rituals and emotions that build us up as teams and as people. We think you are probably a part of a forward-thinking company that is willing to spend more time in a remote work situation to have fun together, build culture, and ultimately to be human first. If we can bring our whole selves to work, the world will be better for it.
Do your employees need more space to be themselves, together? If you’re on the edge of the adoption curve, and willing to build your remote company culture in a game-like browser-based virtual world, let’s talk!
