TheMaskedMan00
Hello VRChat Devs and World Creators, For a better formatted & More In Depth Version of this Feature Request that includes Images and Descriptions of each node, please go to my post on the Dev Forum: https://ask.vrchat.com/t/feature-request-give-udon-u-access-to-instance-information-group-information/27923
Due to the character limits on canny, I cannot put the full post here, Again, Please refer to the dev forum post linked above
I propose adding the following Nodes:
InstanceInfo
IsUserInGroup
DoesUserHaveRole
GetGroupRules
GetGroupDescription
GetGroupBanner
Now let’s go over some examples for how these nodes will benefit world creators.
Determining the Instance Type is super useful as world creators can choose to enable/disable certain features of a world depending on the instance type.
For example:
In a Public instance I would make sure the permissions system is disabled and all staff objects will be disabled, While in a Group Public instance we would enable all the permission systems and enable staff objects.
A notification could appear in front of the player when joining any Group Instance, informing them that they have joined a group instance and Groups can set their own rules. Using the “GetGroupDescription” and “GetGroupRules” Nodes, we can put the rules and description inside the world to make it easier for people to see the rules (cause lets be honest, nobody reads group rules before joining a group public)
The “OnInstanceClosed” Event can be used to turn off an open sign at the entrance of a store or bar.
The “IsUserInGroup” and “DoesUserHaveRole” Nodes can save world creators and group owners a huge amount of time and hassle, because groups can assign roles to players in the group and have those roles affect what abilities they have within the worlds, eliminating the need for world creators to create super convoluted permission systems for manually assigning roles to players.
It can also be useful for things like Patreon/Paid Perks in a world, A lot of people still don’t use/don’t have access to the Creator Economy, or they simply use both. World creators need to set up an external GitHub.io site or a pastebin containing the usernames of paid supporters, and keeping track of people changing usernames and what not is very annoying, Remote string loading also poses the risk of people spoofing URLS to include their name in the list (and yes even though UDON Code Signing has been released, this is still an issue). Being able to access a Main Group for the world and checking if the player has a specific role will eliminate all these issues:
* It doesn’t matter if a player changes their username as we won’t be comparing usernames from a list anymore.
* Bad actors cannot spoof URLS since we are no longer loading URLS anymore.
* Skilled Programmers can set up API applications to automatically add & remove players from roles depending on certain factors (like if they subscribed/unsubscribed)
* Since we aren’t relying on external services like GitHub or pastebin anymore, we don’t need to worry about services going down or some people not having Untrusted URLS enabled.
This is why I have included the “GroupID” Variable in the GroupAPI nodes, as having access to external groups would make that possible.
Quick note:
I have thought about people potentially abusing the GroupAPI to spy on players and see what groups they are in, but the amount of time this would take as well as the fact that the player actually has to be IN the world for the GroupAPI to check makes me think that people won’t go through all this trouble. Besides, you can see what groups people are in by simply visiting their profile.
If you are really worried about it, you could just make it so if the user has the group hidden from everyone on their profile, it will not show them in the GroupsAPI.
GetGroupBanner can be used for automatic decoration of a group instance, like changing a banner above the entrance to the group’s banner.
Getting the GroupID of the group hosting an instance is crucial not only for the rest of the nodes but also having verification, What I would do is have a list of group ID’s that correspond to groups I know follow the guidelines set in place by us, and that they follow the VRChat TOS. If the current group ID is on the list then I can show a little “Trusted Group” Icon somewhere to inform new users that they can trust the group.