an experimental decentralized virtual pet site
Q: Decentralized? Is this about bitcoin?
A: No, but it should be. Sorry. You can go.
Q: I'm still listening.
A: Thanks.
People are using it differently than they did when I was a tiny baby on the internet.
OK, but seriously. I grew up spending hours a day on Neopets (the longest-living "virtual pet site", where you take care of imaginary creatures) and playing Starcraft with strangers who didn't know I was nine years old.
Now, the bulk of your online time is probably spent on a few different websites - Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Maybe you use a lot of chat clients too - Slack, IRC, Discord, etc, etc.
That's bad news for online games (and probably for you, but don't worry about it). I was throwing around ideas of how to have people use a virtual pet site without spending a huge amount of time on that virtual pet site, and that's what I mean by decentralized. What if you were interacting with all the good stuff - seeing your fake pet, training it, cuddling it, etc - but without having to leave the cozy little nest of your favorite platforms?
It turns out it's totally possible to make that happen, due to the magic of APIs - which I like to think of as funny little doors carved into the side of basically every website there is, as long as you have the keys. So that's that - I want to make a virtual pet website that, from day 1, is designed to latch onto the APIs of other websites so you can perform the major site functions from wherever you already are.
This is a Discord bot made using node.js, discord.js and postgreSQL. It's up and running on the Heroku platform right now and it can be invited into your discord groups as long as you have the right permissions!.
Although the WilderNest bot is a work in progress, there are a few commands that work already.
~wn I'm Bob will create a user under the name Bob with your discord ID attached.
~wn Pets will list your current pets. (Probably none.)
~wn Pet make Susan will create a pet named Susan, with you as their owner.
~wn hi Susan will allow you to see a picture of your pet. You can press the heart react to pet it, which will briefly animate it.
Currently, petting your pet (hmm... that's going to need different terminology) is just for fun. In the future, it could alter internal affection values.
Twitter integration.
Maybe IRC, in case you don't use Discord.
Eventually, a web interface (so you can sign up there and use Twitter/Discord's lovely authentication systems to link your account).
Also, lots more pets, games, etc. Hopefully, ones you can use from anywhere.
Pets are (and will continue to be) drawn by the talented Bo Moore.
Huge thanks to https://discordjs.guide/ and https://www.heroku.com/ for playing so nicely together.
