bwpaint

You put a board in the world. You walk up to it. You press E. The camera politely stops moving and a mouse cursor appears, and you may now draw whatever you like on it. A pencil, a bucket, an ellipse, a sad little line.

Think mspaint or the whiteboard in Duke Nukem Forever, but you are standing in a field and the canvas is a rectangle.

But how?

1. Install BepInEx 6 (IL2CPP build) for Big Walk and run the game once.
2. Drop the mod folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Start the game. Press F10. A board appears about two and a half meters in front of you, standing on the actual ground.
4. Look at it, get within about 3.5 meters, press E.
5. Draw.

But what do the buttons do?

Outside of draw mode there are only three things to know.

Find saved pngs in BepInEx/Whiteboards/, named whiteboard_ followed by the date and time. It defaults to 1280 x 640 on a white background. The info pad also tells you the full path when it saves.

Everything else only works in draw mode, so none of it steals keys from the game while you're out walking.

In draw mode

Your camera locks, your movement locks, your cursor comes back. Left mouse draws. An info pad shows up at the top of the screen telling you your tool, colour, brush size and so on.

Switching tools, undoing and wiping are ignored while you're holding the mouse button down mid-stroke.

The shapes show a live preview while you drag, so you can change your mind before letting go. Right-click if you really regret it.

But the board is too small

Hold + or - in draw mode. It goes from half size to four times size, and the bottom edge stays where it was so it doesn't sink into the grass or float away.

Note that resizing changes how big the board is in the world, not how many pixels it has. Make it huge and your pixels get chunky. Make it tiny and you've made a postage stamp.

But can everyone see it?

Yes, if everyone has the mod. There is one shared board per lobby. When someone places it, everyone sees it. When someone draws on it, everyone watches the lines appear.

The rule is one artist at a time. Whoever presses E first holds the pen, and everyone else sees "Someone else is drawing" until they step away (E again) or leave. No fights over the undo button, no two people filling the same circle with different colours. If the artist vanishes mid-masterpiece, the pen frees itself after a few seconds.

Anyone can pick the board up (F10) or move it, as long as nobody is drawing. Picking it up hides it for everyone. Placing it brings it back, wherever you stand. Drawings stay on it in between.

If you join late, the host sends you the board as it currently looks, so you don't miss the first half of the doodle. You just can't undo strokes from before you arrived.

Everybody in the lobby needs the mod. The sharing works by sending the game's networking some messages it has never heard of. A host without the mod may react to those by dropping you. If you're joining a lobby of unmodded people, set Enabled under [Multiplayer] in the config to false, and the mod will behave as a solo board.

Compatibility

• Needs BepInEx 6 IL2CPP.
• Key Confusion: other mods using the same keys still trigger.
• Draw mode borrows your input from the game while it's on, and gives it back when you leave. If another mod also fights over the cursor or movement, they will argue about it.
• If you pick the board up (F10) while drawing, it drops you out of draw mode first, so your controls don't get stranded.

Something is weird

• E does nothing. You need to be looking at the front of the board, within about 3.5 meters. The back of the board is just a very smooth wall. Walk around it.
• My camera is stuck / I can't move. You're probably still in draw mode. Press E again (or F10 to pick the board up).
• The board is invisible. The mod tries a few different shaders to find one that renders in the game. If you've messed with the shaders, the BepInEx log will say "no usable shader found".
• Nothing happens when I click the edges. Left click only draws on the board face itself, not the frame around it. Aim at the white part.
• Undo doesn't undo the wipe. Correct. Wiping is permanent and also clears your undo history.

Config

gogogadgetjustice.bigwalk.whiteboard

It just lets you enable or disable multiplayer currently. Things like how close you need to be (3.5 m), the brush size limits and the undo depth (50 strokes) are currently constants.

To Do, Maybe

• Spray can, Text tool, Copy/paste, selections, all the other things paint programs have done since 1985.
• Configurable keys.

Digital Tip Jar

If you enjoy drawing in a video game about walking, consider supporting on Ko-fi.

License

CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial) & skiwsgaard non-commercial fishing license addendum. Reach out if you do something cool with this.

^{_{the paul is dead late 1960s meme reference of the icon lacks any audience here. and yet.}}