I set up a web app manifest for Tilemap Town's web app, so you can "install" it now if you want to pretend it's a native app. I would like to eventually do one (for desktops! I probably won't ever make a fully featured phone app), but this is nice in the meantime. At the very least it's nice having a chat app in my taskbar instead of in a browser tab. I also did some fixes on the touch screen client to make it more useful on phones; you can finally drag windows around, the movement buttons automatically repeat when held, and those buttons also move out of the way when the chat log is open.

I added an experimental client that uses a "messaging mode" I previously implemented on Tilemap Town's server, where you log into an account only partially and don't enter the world. From here you can send private messages and access your mail, and I would like to eventually add a feature where you can manage a friends list and see when friends are online (and there is server-side support for this). It's sort of like Furcadia Pounce though you can only log an account into one client at a time, so you can't have them both going together. When you connect with this client, it will not broadcast the connection to everyone on the server, and reconnecting is meant to be less messy for the user too. The intention is that if you're out and about with your phone, you can use this client, and the connection going in and out is fine because that's what the client and this client mode is made for.

I also implemented a feature where if you send someone a private message and they're offline, the server will just hold onto the message until the person comes online, and then send it to them then (with a timestamp on it for when you sent it, and a note about how it was sent while you were offline, which is currently shown with an envelope icon on the web client.) Messages are deleted from the server when they are received, which is how it works on Second Life too. If the server restarts before someone logs in to see the messages that are waiting for them, the messages will get converted into mail.

With the new messaging mode client and the offline message feature together, that means you can conveniently have a conversation with someone whose connection is going in and out, and it will just work as expected (I hope).

I do feel like this is getting into territory where the scope can spiral out of control if I'm not careful, and I think that not permanent storing conversation history is a very important boundary to prevent that. Tilemap Town is a virtual world you can chat and hang out in, and is focused around chat that happens specifically on a map, specifically with the people who are present to see it, but it's helpful to have communication that's not tied to those things. At the same time, Tilemap Town should never evolve into a Discord clone.

I think sometimes I expect the platform to do a lot because it makes me feel good to have a chat platform that is under my control and that will always be there as long as I want, no matter what happens to Discord or other platforms one day. And in the situation that I did need a hangout that I control, it does a better job at that than IRC. But I think it does plenty for what it actually needs to do.