6 ms·

Show HN: I made a collaborative ASCII editor

53 points by AyyTee 5y ago

I made a website for drawing ascii art with other people https://ascii-collab.app/ It's been online for a little over a year so there's a fair bit of stuff to browse if you want to look around (so much that I even made a poster https://ascii-collab.app/poster.png) There are other websites like yourworldoftext that do this but ascii-collab has some extra features like per-user undo/redo, box selection, a color highlight mode to see who made particular changes, and there's admin tools so I can remove spam. The code is open sourced here https://github.com/MartinSStewart/ascii-collab if anyone is interested. Enjoy!

mauro-balades 5y ago
nice!
tacoluv 5y ago
this is super cool - and you posted the source code!! btw - with all these contributions, this could make for a really cool art piece/perhaps a book :)
- AyyTee 5y ago
  Besides the poster, I also made a mug https://ascii-collab.app/mug-front.jpg https://ascii-collab.app/mug-front.jpg https://ascii-collab.app/mug-back.jpg https://ascii-collab.app/mug-back.jpg and a tshirt (I don't have any photos uploaded of the tshirt though)
KevinOfNeu 5y ago
cool!thx.
Minor49er 5y ago
These are always fun. This brought back memories of Drawball
GuestHNUser 5y ago
This is awesome! Thanks for sharing the poster image. Curious, how did people find your website before?
- AyyTee 5y ago
  I posted it in a few discord servers and on reddit once so I think that's how the majority of people find it. I haven't made any attempt at SEO so I doubt many people find it on Google.
duck 5y ago
Very cool, nice work! Just to add clickable links for others: https://ascii-collab.app/ https://ascii-collab.app/ https://github.com/MartinSStewart/ascii-collab https://github.com/MartinSStewart/ascii-collab
higgins 5y ago
Great work! Best fun project I've seen this week.
louisstow 5y ago
Nice! I've been running a similar ASCII based collab tool called https://walloftext.co https://walloftext.co
bdr 5y ago
Hey, yourworldoftext creator here! It was launched here on HN. Thanks for the mention. I love what you've done--lots of great features here. Curious to hear more about how you deal with spam. And generally happy to chat/brainstorm anytime.
- AyyTee 5y ago
  Hey, thanks for making yourworldoftext! Drawing an ascii town with friends on your site is what inspired me to make this. In regards to dealing with spam, by far the most effective trick is to get very little traffic (how foolish of me to post my site here!) The site also saves old changes even if they have been covered up so it's possible for me to remove vandalism and restore what was underneath. Lastly I have a theory that people are more likely to spam if they see that there's lot of spam already and they are less likely if it looks like everything so far was written with intent. So I try to stay on top of removing spam as soon as it appears.
cobertos 5y ago
I really enjoy being able to hide other users, makes it so easy to uncover things that have been wiped over. Something had said "I am the admin and I get a notification every time the site updates". It'd be really cool as a user to be able to set a "notification area" for a small spot to keep little ASCII chat collabs/flings open to multiple people.
- AyyTee 5y ago
  That could be a neat feature! It's already possible to get notified of changes via this link https://ascii-collab.app/notify-me https://ascii-collab.app/notify-me but it's for all changes. Before posting to HN this site didn't get much traffic so this was enough but creating a notification area could be a good idea if a lot of people stick around.
ms123 5y ago
This is awesome, great work! What inspired you to create it?
- AyyTee 5y ago
  Doodling on yourworldoftext while wishing there was an undo button :)
ggeorgovassilis 5y ago
Nice! And of course there are already ducks on the front page :) Friendly plug for my own online animated ASCII editor (with animated GIF export!) https://animasci.com/ https://animasci.com/
- AyyTee 5y ago
  Cool site! I tried making something https://animasci.com/play/f7607788-b0a8-4a2c-acb5-81471952d8f6/Heartbeat https://animasci.com/play/f7607788-b0a8-4a2c-acb5-81471952d8...
  - ggeorgovassilis 5y ago
    Beautiful :)
RonaldOlzheim 5y ago
Can you add me on Linkedin? --> I want to follow the progress.
- AyyTee 5y ago
  I'm not active on Linkedin but you can see changes as they are made in the github repo I linked. Or you can subscribe on the ascii-collab site to see what people are drawing.

53 points by AyyTee 5y ago

mauro-balades 5y ago

nice!

tacoluv 5y ago

this is super cool - and you posted the source code!! btw - with all these contributions, this could make for a really cool art piece/perhaps a book :)

AyyTee 5y ago
Besides the poster, I also made a mug https://ascii-collab.app/mug-front.jpg https://ascii-collab.app/mug-front.jpg https://ascii-collab.app/mug-back.jpg https://ascii-collab.app/mug-back.jpg and a tshirt (I don't have any photos uploaded of the tshirt though)

KevinOfNeu 5y ago

cool!thx.

Minor49er 5y ago

These are always fun. This brought back memories of Drawball

GuestHNUser 5y ago

This is awesome! Thanks for sharing the poster image. Curious, how did people find your website before?

AyyTee 5y ago
I posted it in a few discord servers and on reddit once so I think that's how the majority of people find it. I haven't made any attempt at SEO so I doubt many people find it on Google.

duck 5y ago

Very cool, nice work! Just to add clickable links for others: https://ascii-collab.app/ https://ascii-collab.app/ https://github.com/MartinSStewart/ascii-collab https://github.com/MartinSStewart/ascii-collab

higgins 5y ago

Great work! Best fun project I've seen this week.

louisstow 5y ago

Nice! I've been running a similar ASCII based collab tool called https://walloftext.co https://walloftext.co

bdr 5y ago

Hey, yourworldoftext creator here! It was launched here on HN. Thanks for the mention. I love what you've done--lots of great features here. Curious to hear more about how you deal with spam. And generally happy to chat/brainstorm anytime.

AyyTee 5y ago
Hey, thanks for making yourworldoftext! Drawing an ascii town with friends on your site is what inspired me to make this. In regards to dealing with spam, by far the most effective trick is to get very little traffic (how foolish of me to post my site here!) The site also saves old changes even if they have been covered up so it's possible for me to remove vandalism and restore what was underneath. Lastly I have a theory that people are more likely to spam if they see that there's lot of spam already and they are less likely if it looks like everything so far was written with intent. So I try to stay on top of removing spam as soon as it appears.

cobertos 5y ago

I really enjoy being able to hide other users, makes it so easy to uncover things that have been wiped over. Something had said "I am the admin and I get a notification every time the site updates". It'd be really cool as a user to be able to set a "notification area" for a small spot to keep little ASCII chat collabs/flings open to multiple people.

AyyTee 5y ago
That could be a neat feature! It's already possible to get notified of changes via this link https://ascii-collab.app/notify-me https://ascii-collab.app/notify-me but it's for all changes. Before posting to HN this site didn't get much traffic so this was enough but creating a notification area could be a good idea if a lot of people stick around.

ms123 5y ago

This is awesome, great work! What inspired you to create it?

AyyTee 5y ago
Doodling on yourworldoftext while wishing there was an undo button :)

ggeorgovassilis 5y ago

Nice! And of course there are already ducks on the front page :) Friendly plug for my own online animated ASCII editor (with animated GIF export!) https://animasci.com/ https://animasci.com/

AyyTee 5y ago
Cool site! I tried making something https://animasci.com/play/f7607788-b0a8-4a2c-acb5-81471952d8f6/Heartbeat https://animasci.com/play/f7607788-b0a8-4a2c-acb5-81471952d8...
- ggeorgovassilis 5y ago
  Beautiful :)

RonaldOlzheim 5y ago

Can you add me on Linkedin? --> I want to follow the progress.

AyyTee 5y ago
I'm not active on Linkedin but you can see changes as they are made in the github repo I linked. Or you can subscribe on the ascii-collab site to see what people are drawing.