Turn RimWorld into a massive social experiment. RatLab allows your viewers to interact directly with your game through a live web dashboard—spawning items, triggering raids, and managing the chaos—all with minimal performance impact on your game.
RatLab introduces a groundbreaking Live Optical View that reconstructs the game world in the browser:
- Zero-Lag "My Pawn" Feed: Adopters get a private, 60fps tactical view of their pawn that moves smoothly independently of the video stream.
- Sub-Pixel Rendering: Custom canvas engine with smooth camera tracking that locks to pawn movement.
- Direct Memory Access: Optimized data polling (10Hz) bypasses standard API calls for ultra-low latency updates.
Previous streaming mods slowed RimWorld down by forcing the Unity engine to compress video. RatLab uses a Triple-Tier Strategy:
- Ultrafast Tier (10Hz): Direct memory access sends lightweight pawn positions and health data instantly.
- Fast Tier (1Hz): Scans visible terrain, items, and buildings for the Optical View.
- Slow Tier (5s+): Updates heavy data like inventories, skills, and world stats.
- Sidecar Process: A separate, lightweight Go process handles video capture (if enabled), keeping the game thread free.
Viewers access your colony via ratlab.online. No Twitch account required.
- Adoption System: Viewers can "Adopt" a colonist to get a private control panel and live feed.
- Real-Time Dashboard: Monitor colony wealth, power consumption, and faction relations.
- Interactive Pings: Click anywhere on the video to spawn visual markers in-game for the streamer.
- Live Inventory: Inspect every stockpile and colonist inventory in real-time.
- Economy Management: Set passive income rates and individual action prices.
- Voting Queue: Viewers vote on events before they happen.
- Full DLC Support:
- Royalty: Tribute Collectors, Anima Trees.
- Ideology: Rituals, Hacker Camps.
- Biotech: Bossgroups, Wastepacks, Genepacks.
- Anomaly: Death Palls, Golden Cubes, Pit Gates.
- Odyssey: (Custom Mod Support)
- Subscribe: Get "RatLab" on the Steam Workshop.
- Launch: Start RimWorld. The mod automatically launches the Sidecar process.
- Connect: Copy your Session Link from the in-game settings window.
- Share: Send the link to your viewers.
This monorepo contains the entire RatLab ecosystem:
Ratlab Mod/: The C# RimWorld mod source code.- Core:
PlayerStorytellerMapComponent.cs(Orchestrator) - Polling:
GameDataPoller.cs(Optimized memory access) - Logic:
GameActionExecutor.cs(Event triggers)
- Core:
Ratlab Server/: The Node.js backend and web dashboard frontend.- Viewer:
public/js/viewer/(MapRenderer, Colonists, Optical Engine) - Server:
src/(Socket.io, Session Store, API Routes)
- Viewer:
go-sidecar/: The Go source code for the video streaming sidecar.
- Visual Studio 2022 (C#)
- Go 1.21+
- Node.js 18+
- FFmpeg (for Sidecar compilation)
See DEVELOPER.md for detailed build and debugging instructions.
- IP Masking: Viewers connect to our cloud relay server, never directly to you. Your IP is hidden.
- Encryption: All data is transmitted via encrypted WebSocket (WSS).
- Data Persistence: No video is recorded. Session data is wiped from RAM when the session ends.
- Open Source: The "Sidecar" executable is open source and can be audited in the
go-sidecar/directory.
- Concept & Code: Benjamin
- Art: [Artist Name]
- Dependency: RIMAPI by aenclave