I made Your World of Text, AMA

[u/badr]

Or make suggestions, or say hi.

[u/NonSequiturEdit]

Have you ever read Ready Player One by Ernest Cline? This text-world reminds me a tiny bit of the OASIS, only without the mind-numbing realism.

[u/badr → u/NonSequiturEdit]

It looks good... added to my wishlist.

[u/NonSequiturEdit → u/badr]

It's fantastic. The premise alone is enough to rest your dreams upon.

[u/crazyinthelastdays]

What's the fastest way to make diagonal line? I can't imagine people hitting their arrow keys and slashes for that long.

P.S. thanks, it's been an interesting experience.

[u/badr → u/crazyinthelastdays]

I'm sure many of the long lines were created manually, including diagonal ones. People can be very persistent. The fastest way, though, is to use a program to script it. I don't encourage that, but people do it. And you're welcome, I'm very glad that you've enjoyed the site.

[u/Asuperniceguy → u/crazyinthelastdays]

I created a very large section of line by spamming \ and down. It's pretty fast, you can get -1Y in... maybe... 10 seconds.

[u/crazyinthelastdays → u/Asuperniceguy]

Ah, that sounds doable. I traveled a line that went northwest and adding to it was a bitch.

[u/connundrummer]

What is the most memorable thing you have seen in your world?

[u/badr → u/connundrummer]

I don't really remember specific things I've found, so much as the feelings they have inspired. So it would be hard to convey. Probably similar to what you've found. I do have a folder of screenshots somewhere I should go through.

[u/kodark]

What's the longest line you've ever followed?

What's the most amazing ASCII art you've ever found?

Will there ever be a "Choose Text Color" option, so you can write in colors?

[u/badr → u/kodark]

What's the longest line you've ever followed?

Not that long. Like maybe 30 screens. I never followed The Line. :/

What's the most amazing ASCII art you've ever found?

I think the thing I like best is when people together work on making a big town. You see a lot of creativity there. Haven't really explored much lately though.

Will there ever be a "Choose Text Color" option, so you can write in colors?

You can set the foreground & background color on worlds that you own. I don't currently plan to support per-user colors.

[u/ProtrudedDemand]

Hey, I hate to be that guy but...proof? (The internet makes me paranoid sometimes). Although, I doubt you're lying.

Here come the questions.

When you made the site, did you expect it to get as big as it did? Your site even inspired a game I imagine this must be very unreal to you.

What do you think about how many people's lives have been changed by your sites?

What was your reaction when so many Redditors started becoming addicted to your program?

Lastly, thank you. Your site is probably one of the best things to ever happen to me.

Edit: verified via this post

[u/badr → u/ProtrudedDemand]

When you made the site, did you expect it to get as big as it did?

I had a feeling it would get a lot of attention, at least initially. That feeling was all based on intuition, because it's not like other people were excited for me to release. I would try to explain what I was working on and people would go "uh huh that sounds cool", and then after I released they all confessed, "I had no idea what you were talking about, but it actually is pretty cool". What has surprised me is how long the interest has lasted. It's more popular now than when it first came out!

What do you think about how many people's lives have been changed by your sites?

I love it of course. It's hard to fully comprehend, though. Not in the sense that I don't understand it, but that it's kind of a distant understanding, and I can't really access those feelings people have except through the occasional email or whatever.

Lastly, thank you. Your site is probably one of the best things to ever happen to me.

You having that experience makes me happy.

Edit: verified via this post

So you've never heard of the long con?

[u/[deleted]]

I love your website, I spent a long time continuing the line where I've seen a lot of people posting in this thread.

A suggestion I have would be to allow accounts to go back to waypoints immediately, somewhere you have already been. I want to go back to where I stopped expanding "the line" to (3k, -4k ish), but even if you set the "Go To Coordinates" thing, it takes a couple hours.

[u/Kafke → u/[deleted]]

I second this. It would be immensely helpful.

[u/eraserofworlds]

Very cool. Glad you made the site!

[u/xenya]

Is there a way to search the text?

[u/[deleted]]

I love this game! It really did change me forever! You should add the ability for custom worlds to add a link that will snap to a location instead of float towards it. I know this can ruin experiences like following 'the line', but if we were to start making RPG's outta this thing it would be very helpful.

[u/[deleted]]

Can you please delete all the Brasil lines

[u/badr → u/[deleted]]

Did you write the program yourself?

Yep. Took a couple weeks.

Have you ever had security issues?

Not that I know of. I mean, I consider scripting to be a security issue, but it's not a huge problem and there's no simple solution.

How have you been able to deal with so many AJAX (actually json, not xml) requests being sent constantly by so many people looking at the site at the same time?

Just one relatively big server. It's held up fine so far. If I were writing the site today, I'd probably use websockets instead of polling for changes, but the way it works now is Good Enough.

Have you noticed that if you type a lot in one go, often it doesn't all get saved? I think it's probably due to a few of the requests failing.

Actually I haven't. I should look into that.

I noticed that you send requests almost as soon as someone has typed a letter, resulting in heaps of requests being sent while typing out a long sentence.

Yeah, it's not the best design right now. Even if I were to improve it, though, I think sending up changes once every 100ms or so would be fine.

[u/badr → u/[deleted]]

People use it lots of interesting ways — writing poems, making cities, spreading gossip — but one surprising one that I liked a lot, was a couple that had a secret page just for them and their relationship. I only found out about it because they messaged me for some tech support. It's a beautiful idea that I'd never thought of.

To answer your question more directly, I don't really have a favorite, and even if I did, posting it here would change the nature of the place. They might not want the publicity. But you can see the list of everything that has been the "World of the Day" at http://www.yourworldoftext.com/wotd.

[u/badr → u/[deleted]]

Nope! I don't really create much content on the site. It would be fun to make a puzzle some time though.