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.

Parts

Work-adventure

Work-adventure is found [on github] as a project deployed through 'docker-compose'. You do not need to know exactly the role of each container to get it to work with the install-guide supplied later, but it is handy to understand 'reverse-proxy', 'front' and 'maps', mainly. There is a '.env.template' file that should be copied to '.env' and edited for settings. (more about this later).

By default, the docker-compose file provisions the following containers:

• reverse-proxy: a 'traefik:v2.0' container from the public docker repo's. This is an auto-configuring proxy-service that can be crucial in getting things to run smoothly. Understanding what it does can be crucial to getting work-adventure and jitsi to work. This guide contains info about this, later.
• front: based on a 'node-js' image from TheCodingMachine docker-repo. Runs code for the interface part of the game. Has sprites for characters, login-screens, menu's, etc.
• pusher: tbd
• maps: Serves the 'map' files via an apache server. No active components
• back: tbd
• uploader: tbd
• messages: A container without a need of being reachable from the outside world; internally used to distribute/sync ProtoBuf messaging format between instances (i think)
• coturn: provides a TURN-server to allow NAT-traversal for those behind restricted/crippled networks. (not enabled yet on techinc infra; we use a public one)

JITSI

Jitsi is easily installed using [their github-repo for a docker-compose install]. There is an 'env.example' file that should be copied to .env and edited (more about this later).

Their docker-compose file provides the following containers:

• web: The frontend-service that clients talk to
• prosody: The XMPP service that carries text-messages and internal system-messages between parts.
• jicofo: Jitsi COnference FOcus; a part responsible in organizing video-connections between participants and the JitsiVideoBridge (jvb)
• jvb: The Jitsi Video Bridge server serves as a router for video-data; reducing bandwidth-load on participants.

Of note is that the jitsi-setup does not provide a config for use with Traefik by default, though there are some examples provided in 'examples' for traefik and kubernetes. Inspiration from these have been used to create a working docker-compose file using traefik v2.0 in a way that works well with Work-adventure

Understanding Docker and Traefik

If you are familiar with Traefik and docker, you can likely skip all this. If it is your first run-in with either, this chapter is likely essential to make any sense of what is going on in the install-instructions further on; though they will likely work well enough, regardless.

tbd.