HOW TO MAKE/USE R/PLACE TEMPLATES
A tutorial by Mikarific from r/PlacePride
Template overlays work differently this year to how they worked last year. Last year, most factions had their own copy of the overlay script with the overlay baked into the script itself, meaning that if you wanted to use more than one template you had to install more than one script, and when factions wanted to include their allies in their script they needed to update the image of their overlay.
This year, the main overlay script is something you just need to install once, one and done, and then you can view the template of any faction that uses this script by simply going to that faction’s “template link”.
USING A TEMPLATE
INSTALLING THE SCRIPT
To install the overlay script, you need to install a monkey. We, the developers of this overlay script, highly recommend you to use Violentmonkey.
Once Violentmonkey has been installed, you need to install the latest version of the template manager script. You can do this by going to this link in your browser of choice and clicking "Confirm installation".
USING THE OVERLAY
Once the script has been installed, all you need to do is find the “template link” of your faction of choice (EG: https://new.reddit.com/r/place?jsontemplate=https://pride.place/template.json), and start placing pixels with the overlay!
The script has many settings that you can use, but I’ll just go over a few of them. To start, click the settings icon to open the settings. You can also drag this icon around if you want to put it somewhere else.
If you would like a template to always load regardless of what r/place link you go to, you can paste the link to that template here and click “Always load”.
If you’d like to remove a template from always loading, you can click on it.
If you see a template and don’t know who’s template it is, you can click the “Show contact info besides templates” button to see who a template belongs to. This can be useful because sometimes factions will include the allies of that factions' templates within their own template.
Some factions will have notifications, if one of your templates or one of your allies templates supports notifications, you can check the box next to the notification categories that you want and you’ll receive messages on the canvas itself from the leaders of that faction.
If all you want to do is use templates other people have made, this is all you need to know! For the rest of you that want to make your own templates…
CREATING A TEMPLATE
MAKING THE ARTWORK
The first thing you need to make a template is artwork to make a template of. I won’t go into too much detail on how to do this because if you’re leading an r/place faction and don’t know how to make artwork in an image editor on a computer… uhm… consider don’t. However, there are a few things that I will mention.
- We currently don’t know the palette for r/place this year, so we are operating under the assumption that it will be the same as last year.
- You can use my tool at charity.pxls.space to take an image and automatically convert it to the palette with various settings.
- When you’re done with your template you can export your image in indexed color mode to save on file size, meaning your template will load faster.
HOSTING THE TEMPLATE IMAGE
Once you have a 1:1 image of your template in the r/place palette, you need to host it somewhere. You could upload it to a discord channel and get the link to that image. You could upload it to imgur. You could make a github repo for all your template files and put it there. You just need to obtain a url that links directly to the 1:1 image.
For example, my 1:1 template image is located at https://pride.place/template.png.
CREATING THE TEMPLATE JSON
Now that you have a 1:1 image hosted somewhere, you need to create your template json. This tutorial will be showing you how to do this with my tool at charity.pxls.space, however if you want to use more advanced features like priority masks, animated templates, or broadcaster for on-screen notifications, you’ll need to edit the json file manually.
First things first, input the contact information for your template in the “Contact Information” field. This should include where someone can contact you or your faction.
Now you need to add a template to your template json. A template json can include more than one artwork or “template” with more than one 1:1 image. If you have multiple art pieces spread across the canvas, you should add each of your 1:1 image to the template json as a separate “template” within your template json. To add an image to your template, open the “Templates” dropdown and click on “Add Template”.
Now you should see a new menu. To the left is a window where you can edit and change the template settings of one of your 1:1 images, and to the right is a window including the current state of the r/place canvas.
The first thing you want to do is give the art piece you’re adding a name. This name will show up at the top left corner of your template when someone uses the “Show contact info besides templates” option.
Now you want to add a template source. Remember that direct image url we made earlier? This is where we put that. To add a template source, click the “Add Source” button.
Then, paste the direct image url we made in the “Template Image URL” field and click “Load”.
If done correctly, you should see the 1:1 template image you created appear on the canvas window to the right. This will let you preview where your template will be on the canvas.
Now you need to set the location of your template image. You can do this by dragging the template image preview on the canvas window, or by manually inputting the coordinates of where the top left pixel of the image should be located on the canvas.
Once you’re satisfied with the location of your template image, click “Done”.
If you have more than one location on the canvas with more than one 1:1 image, you can click the “Add Template” button again to add another image to the template json. Otherwise, you’re done! Well… mostly…
If you have allies that also use the same template format, you can add them to your template json in the “Whitelist” section. Doing this means that any time someone loads your faction’s template, they’ll also automatically see the latest templates of your allies without you needing to update your template image at all!
To do this, open the “Whitelist” dropdown, enter the name of your allied faction in the “Name” field, and the url to their template json in the “URL” field. Then click “Whitelist”.
You can also add templates to the “Blacklist”, this will prevent that template json from being loaded if for some reason there's a malicious template link.
HOSTING THE TEMPLATE JSON
Now that you’ve created your template json, you need to host it somewhere! It’s VERY important that wherever you host the json file, you can edit the contents of the json later for when you need to update the template. Otherwise, whenever you need to update your template, you need to get all your allies to include a different template .json url in their whitelist and get every user to switch to a new template url! This tutorial will be showing you how to do this with Rentry. However, other options exist, such as putting the template json in a github repo.
To host a template json with Rentry, go to https://rentry.co and copy/paste the template json that you generated with Charity into the text box.
Now you need to set a custom edit code and a custom url. The custom edit code acts as a password, only people with the edit code can edit the template json. The custom url is the name that the template will have in your json url.
Set the custom edit code to a password you’ll remember and the custom url to something like the name of your faction (with no spaces). Then click “Go”.
Now you’ve uploaded your template json to Rentry! Now you need to get your raw json link. To do this, click on the “Export” button and select “Raw”.
Now, all you need to do to create your template link is to create a link to r/place with the query parameter “jsontemplate” set to the link to your raw json. To do this, simply take the link to your raw json, and add “https://new.reddit.com/r/place?jsontemplate=” before it. This is the link to your template. It’s best to make sure that the template link you give people uses new.reddit.com and not just reddit.com to ensure that it works for people that use old reddit.
For example: https://new.reddit.com/r/place?jsontemplate=https://pride.place/template.json
Now that you have a template link, you can test it! Just follow the instructions in the Using A Template section and check if your template works!
EDITING A TEMPLATE
MAKING THE CHANGES
To edit an existing template json with Charity, click the “Import” button.
In the popup modal that shows up, copy and paste the template you’d like to edit and click “Done”.
Then, simply make the changes you’d like to make!
CHANGING THE HOSTED JSON
Once you’re done, you need to update your template json. If you used Rentry, you can go to the link to your raw template and remove the “/raw” part. For example, If your template is located at https://rentry.co/placepride/raw, you need to go to https://rentry.co/placepride. From here, click the “Edit” button.
Then replace the contents of the text box with the json that you generated with Charity. Then enter your edit code and click “Save”.
That’s it! You’ve edited your template!
TRACKING TEMPLATE PROGRESS USING CHARITY
INVITING CHARITY TO YOUR SERVER
To track template progress using the Charity discord bot, you first need to invite the discord bot to your discord server.
CHANGING YOUR TRACKED TEMPLATE
Once you’ve added the Charity discord bot to your server, anyone with the “Administrator” or “Manage Server” permissions can change what template your discord server is tracking. Charity can only track one template json link per discord server, and Charity can only track templates in discord servers with 50 members or more.
To change the template link that Charity is tracking for your discord server, run “/track <template>”. The template link you provide here must be the link to the raw json, not the link to r/place. This command is only available to people with the “Administrator” or “Manage Server” permissions.
CHECKING TEMPLATE PROGRESS
Now that you’ve changed the template that your discord server is tracking, you can check the progress of the template with “/progress”.
If you want to pin the progress of your template to a channel, you can run the “/pin” command. This command is only available to people with the “Administrator” or “Manage Server” permissions. Doing this will create a template progress message that automatically updates every 5 minutes. A discord server can only have one “pin”, so doing the command again will cause the first one to no longer update.
CREATING A GRID SPREADSHEET
Charity also offers the ability to create grid images for people that cannot use the template overlay for whatever reason. To do this, you can simply run the “/grid tracked” command to make a grid of the tracked template.
This returns with an image of the template including coordinates, and a link to a google spreadsheet version. If for whatever reason someone cannot use the template overlay, you can send them to the spreadsheet.
(meme by @yoyoeeg on Discord)