ADR-74: Add Emote schema and versioning

More details about this document
Latest published version:
https://adr.decentraland.org/adr/ADR-74
Authors:
pedrotambo
marianogoldman
agusaldasoro
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GitHub decentraland/adr (pull requests, new issue, open issues)
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Context and Problem Statement

Currently, Emotes are being deployed as Wearables in the Catalysts. Even though they are very similar, they are not. For instance, there are emotes deployed with the arbitrary category "hat" just to pass the validations. Secondly, emotes metadata structure is likely to change so versioning of this changes are needed. This way, its changes can be tracked over time and validations can be done according to its corresponding timestamp. For instance, when starting a new Catalyst from scratch, entities from different timestamps will be received and will need to validate them with the validations that where present at that timestamp.

Proposed solution

Add Emotes schema as similar as possible to the current schema but flexible enough to add versioning.

Let's see first the current schema of a Wearable (also used for Emotes):

export type Wearable = {
  id: string
  name: string
  description: string
  i18n: I18N[]
  thumbnail: string
  image: string
  metrics?: Metrics
  content?: Record<string, string>
  collectionAddress: string
  rarity: Rarity
  merkleProof: MerkleProof
  data: {
    replaces: WearableCategory[]
    hides: WearableCategory[]
    tags: string[]
    representations: WearableRepresentation[]
    category: WearableCategory
  }
}

Changes involved

1. Share common properties

Share some common properties between Wearables/Emotes that are not expected to change in the feature, so there will be no versioning for them (at least in the way described later). Move content?: Record<string, string> to ThirdPartyProps as they're only used in that case. Compared to the current schema, all properties are present except the data property (that will go in the versioned part) and content (that is removed):

export type BaseItem = DisplayableDeployment & {
  id: string
  name: string
  description: string
  i18n: I18N[]
  thumbnail: string
  image: string
  metrics?: Metrics
}
2. Add Emote versioned data
export type StandardProps = {
  collectionAddress: string
  rarity: Rarity
}
export type ThirdPartyProps = {
  merkleProof: MerkleProof
  content: Record<string, string>
}
export type EmoteDataADR74 = {
  category: EmoteCategory
  representations: EmoteRepresentationADR74[]
  tags: string[]
}

export type EmoteADR74 = BaseItem &
  (StandardProps | ThirdPartyProps) & { emoteDataADR74: EmoteDataADR74 }

// hypothetical future ADR 102
export type EmoteADR102 = BaseItem & { emoteDataADR102: EmoteDataADR102 }
export type Emote = EmoteADR74 | EmoteADR102
3. Create new EmoteCategory and EmoteRepresentation types specific for Emotes.

Although they're pretty similar, they are different to the ones for Wearables and may diverge more in the future. They will also be included in the versioned properties. One caveat, EmoteCategory is imported from src/dapps but it's not versioned as there only matters the latest version in that context. For that, this proposal suggests changing the dependency to the other way, the latest version is imported in src/dapps from src/platform/. If a new category is added, it will be added to EmoteCategory and a new type called EmoteCategoryADR74 will be created to validate emotes before this new change.

// <src/platform/…>
export type EmoteRepresentationADR74 = {
  bodyShapes: BodyShape[]
  mainFile: string
  contents: string[]
}

export enum EmoteCategory {
  SIMPLE = "simple",
  LOOP = "loop"
}

// <src/dapps/…>
import { EmoteCategory } from ".../src/platform/..."
4. Stop exporting qualitative types.

(Breaking change) Stop exporting the ThirdPartyWearable, StandardWearable and don't export the analogues for Emote. Instead, the exported types will be Wearable, Emote, StandardProps, ThirdPartyProps and the functions isStandard, isThirdParty. This way, the explosion of the combination of those types (and future properties added) will be prevented:

export function isStandard(item: Item): item is Item & StandardProps {
  /* ... */
}
export function isThirdParty(item: Item): item is Item & ThirdPartyProps {
  /* ... */
}
// Instead of
export type ThirdPartyEmote = TypeDecl
export type StandardEmote = TypeDecl
export type ThirdPartyWearable = TypeDecl
export type StandardWearable = TypeDecl
// Now imaging that we add a new set of properties, let's call it t'Magical' that is combinable with the others:
export type ThirdPartyEmote = TypeDecl
export type StandardEmote = TypeDecl
export type ThirdPartyWearable = TypeDecl
export type StandardWearable = TypeDecl
export type MagicalThirdPartyEmote = TypeDecl
export type MagicalStandardEmote = TypeDecl
export type MagicalThirdPartyWearable = TypeDecl
export type MagicalStandardWearable = TypeDecl
// and so on ...
5. Extend Collection contract metadata to store the loop value

Since the ADR74 Emotes will have proper categories now, we need to start saving the loop value in another field, as it used to be stored as the category in the contract metadata. It will be stored at the end of the current metadata string as 0 (false) or 1 (true). It's added at the end to avoid introducing breaking changes. In summary, for emotes, the metadata stored in the contract will now be: ${version}:${type}:${name}:${description}:${category}:${bodyShapeTypes}:${loop}

6. Extend Collection contract metadata to store sound and geometry properties

As of Emotes 2.0 initiative, emotes will now have the possibility to have additional properties to enhance their behavior. These new properties are sound and geometry. To categorize this, a new section will be added to the end of the current emote metadata stored in the contract.

The possible values will be: s : Emote has only sound g : Emote has only additional geometry sg: Emote has sound and geometry

In summary, for new emotes with geometry and sound, the metadata stored in the contract will now be: ${version}:${type}:${name}:${description}:${category}:${bodyShapeTypes}:${loop}:${additionalProperties}

Benefit

The bigger benefit is that the validation of schemas over time becomes somehow trivial:

function validate(emote) {
  adrXX = identifyADR(emote.timestamp)
  if (emoteDoesNotHaveTheField("emoteData" + ardXX)) return false
  Emote.schema.validate(emote)
}

*under the assumption that the common properties do not change. This would give the possibility to iterate schema changes quicker and also easily identify the versions over the time along with its reasons explained in the specific ADR.

Date: 2022-09-12T13:00:00Z (timestamp 1669852800000)

License

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0-1.0. DRAFT Living