Research notes from my invention residency with PartyKit, summer 2023:
- Month 1 sketchbook — getting to know the platform, experimenting with realtime and multiplayer websites, and lots of open code.
- AI and non-player characters — how would it feel to interact with AIs as if they were teammates? What if these AIs were (ahem) virtual dolphins?
- Facepiles — those lines of user avatars that communicate realtime presence on a page: a review.
There’s also a longer essay on my blog unpacking some of these ideas, and drawing the line between human-AI interaction and multiplayer more generally:
Read I built my first AI NPC teammates and here’s what I learnt (Aug 2023)
Blog posts on the PartyKit blog:
- The wisdom of crowds a.k.a. doing your own experiments* (14 Sep, 2023): Building a simple multiplayer drawing challenge, and what I learnt.
- AI chatbots for Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats* (19 Sep, 2023): AI chatbots with personality, for group teams. The code uses Yjs and is open for you to customise.
- Dancing cursors and Voronoi diagrams* (25 Sep, 2023): Real-time multiplayer cursors on the PartyKit homepage drive an interactive Voronoi diagram. Here’s how it works.
- Using Stencil to make a live poll Web Component* (29 Sep, 2023): Building a live poll Web Component with Stencil and PartyKit, plus a meditation on the art of maintenance.
- Exploring AI interaction design and multiplayer with tldraw** (4 Oct, 2023): How might we interact with AI? I'm exploring this with tldraw, a multiplayer whiteboard app.
- A single-serving waterhole in the Namib Desert using Remix (16 Oct, 2023): I work with a window open to a YouTube live stream of a waterhole in Namibia, animals and all. Now it’s multiplayer and hosted on PartyKit using the Remix starter kit.
* See also the Month 1 sketchbook research note, above.
** This is an updated version of the AI and non-player characters note.
— Matt, Oct 2023