Work-Adventure/install

Introduction

Since early 2021, Techinc hosts an 'instance' of Work-Adventure on play.social.techinc.nl.

[Work-Adventure] can be described as a spatially-enabled meet/chat space in an environment that is akin to 16-bit RPG games from the 90's. It allows text-based messaging, has direct web-rtc enabled video/audio chats available for up to 4 people in eachother's vincinity, as well as providign mechanisms to have 'rooms' of more participants by leveraging a [JITSI] server of choice.

The software has been designed by [The Coding Machine] and is released on their [github repo] as open source. The release is fully functional, apart from lacking an authentication/management backend that would allow restricting access, moderation, administrator-rights, etc. The API is documented however, and creation of a custom backend seems relatively easy to do.

By default, installing the github-provided release is most easily done via their included 'docker-compose.yaml', as listed on the README.MD file in the repo. While the mechanism works well, it lacks instructions on how to configure and run the software in a publically-accessible context instead of just on 'workadventure.localhost' as the README.MD explains you how to do.

The challenge for newcomers to docker comes with the way that the software is composed from multiple moving parts that are all required to be started alongside eachother. This is true of Work-Adventure itself which starts 4 service-containers all on its own; but becomes even more clear when you also want to host the JITSI-instance locally (instead of relying on jitsi.meet) and you want to use ssl-certs to make things work properly, as webrtc and CORS is rather picky about non-https content loaded into https-enabled sites.

All of the above can make an installation of work-adventure (with, or without Jitsi locally) a challenging endevour. This guide hopes to give some aid in understanding and configuring the infra.