metaboard

Interactive drawing boards in Roblox.

Installation

There are two components to install: the metaboard backend code, and a metaboard model to draw on.

From Roblox

You can find metaboard in Roblox Studio by searching "metaboard" in the Toolbox. Double-click it to insert it (it will appear under Workspace) and then move it to ServerScriptService. This contains the Scripts, LocalScripts and Guis for handling all metaboard interaction, which are automatically distributed when you start your Roblox game. You will need to manually update this file if you want the newest release.

From Github Releases

Download the latest release. In Roblox Studio, right click on ServerScriptService, click Insert from File and insert the metaboard-v*.rbxmx file. This contains the Scripts, LocalScripts and Guis for handling all metaboard interaction, which are automatically distributed when you start your Roblox game. You will need to manually update this file if you want the newest release.

Adding boards to your game

metauni maintains a few example boards you can use. The easiest method to add these in Roblox Studio is to go to Toolbox > Marketplace and search "metaboard".

• WhiteBoard
• BlackBoard
• TechBoard
  • This is really two boards, both the FrontBoard and BackBoard are tagged as metaboards.

Don't be afraid to resize and stretch these boards as you please!

Board Structure

A metaboard can be either a BasePart or a Model with a PrimaryPart. To turn a BasePart/Model into a metaboard, use the Tag Editor plugin to give it the tag "metaboard". Then add any of the following optional values as children.

Object	Name	Value	Description
StringValue	Face	String (one of "Front" (default), "Back", "Left", "Right", "Top", "Bottom")	The surface of the part that should be used as the board
BoolValue	Clickable	Bool	Set to false to prevent opening this board in the gui

If the metaboard is a Model, the PrimaryPart should be set to the part which defines the drawing surface of the model (make sure the right Face : StringValue is configured).

For more customised positioning of the board, make an invisible part for the board and size/position it on your model however you like (you should tag the parent model as the metaboard, not the invisible part, and remember to set the invisible part as the PrimaryPart).

Subscriber Boards

Any metaboard can be a subscriber of another board (the broadcaster), meaning anything that appears on the broadcaster board is replicated onto the subscriber board.

There are two ways of setting up this link

1. Create a folder called "Subscribers" as a child of the broadcaster, then make an ObjectValue called "Subscriber" and set its Value to the subscriber. You can make any number of subscribers in this folder.
2. Create an ObjectValue under the subscriber called "SubscribedTo" and set its Value to the broadcaster. You can make any number of these to subscribe to multiple boards (they must all be called "SubscribedTo").

When you start your world, any links made with the second method will be converted according to use the first method.

WARNING

Subscriber boards can have undefined behaviour, and can introduce performance strains if used liberally.

Persistent Boards

Any metaboard can be synced to a DataStore so that it retains its contents across server restarts. To enable persistence for a board, create an IntValue under the board called "PersistId" and set it it to the subkey used to store the board contents.

Since persistent boards use the Roblox DataStore API there are several limitations you should be aware of:

• In private servers the DataStore key for a board is of the form "ps:metaboard". Since keys for DataStores cannot exceed 50 characters in length, and player Ids are (currently) eight digits, that means that you should keep PersistId's to 30 digits or less.

• The DataStore keys for persistent boards are the same in any live server, and SetAsync is currently used rather than UpdateAsync, so there is a risk of data corruption if two players in different servers attempt to the use the "same" persistent board. We strongly recommend therefore that you reserve use of persistent boards to private servers.

• Persistent boards will be locked and only Clear allowed if the board reaches a threshold where it would exceed the storage requirement for the DataStore.

• The GetAsync rate limit on DataStores has been handled by throttling the loading of persistent boards so that they never hit this limit (the throttling is conservative).

• Changed persistent boards are autosaved by default every 30sec.

• On server shutdown there is a 30sec hard limit, within which all boards which have changed after the last autosave must be saved if we are to avoid dataloss. Given that SetAsync has a rate limit of 60 + numPlayers * 10 calls per minute, and assuming we can spend at most 20sec on boards, that means we can support at most 20 + numPlayers * 3 changed boards since the last autosave if we are to avoid dataloss, purely due to rate limits. A full board costs about 1.2sec to save under adversarial conditions (i.e. many other full boards). So to be safe we can afford at most 16 changed boards per autosave period.