TextWall

TextWall
	TextWall on November 20, 2024
Created by	Duck
URL	https://textwall.cc
Launched	February 2020; 5 years ago

TextWall was a text canvas website launched in February 2020 by Duck. It has some advantages to OWOT, such as a modern and intuitive graphical user interface, different fonts, smooth scrolling and everyone's cursors visible without a nametag script, but also some disadvantages such as the limited number of colors, and the text canvas being so much smaller than OWOT's.

TextWall has gone offline several times throughout its history, causing many TextWallers to migrate to OWOT. The site went down permanently in 2024/2025, causing FP to host his own version of the site at tw.2s4.me.

Check out TextWall's Fandom wiki here.

Relationship with OWOT

Many OWOT users have shown a strong distaste of TextWall's userbase, which is generally younger than OWOT's across the board(though it should be noted that both sites are predominantly inhabited by minors). The TextWaller migration brought with it several traditions from TextWall that many OWOTers found to be irritating, such as antiswear and fictional googology.

Anti-TextWall sentiments have resulted in raids against the website, and even instances where death threats were sent to Textwallers.

yeah. the textwall immigration wave destroyed the owot userbase and the stain is still there. there's still a bunch of little kids or dumbfucks every once in a while but back then they were fucking everywhere. even if you uttered the word "fuck" once you'd get a handful of kids spiraling telling you that SWEARING BAD!!! U MUST NOT SWEAR!!
they tried to... reclaim owot. transform its rules and already built community to fit themselves and what they wanted. selfish and annoying. parasitic, even. and they are still here.
trollboxers are coming too, there's a few good trollboxers but the rest are the same as the textwall kids from back then
– d9eoead on TextWallers

It should be noted that some Textwall migrants, such as lime.owot, have since been accepted into the OWOT community.

Differences from OWOT

UI

TextWall's most noticeable difference from OWOT is its modern UI.

TextWall's settings menu, color slider and chat

Visible cursors

Cursors in TextWall are visible to the public by default. They also display their owners' usernames(or IDs for anons).

Various cursors at tw2s4.me's Spawn

Limited color palette

TextWall only has 31 colors, all of which are rather light. This limits the range of creations, but also makes the canvas more visually appealing(whereas OWOT can often look like an eyesore when it is spammed with a wide range of bright, contrasting colors).

Fonts

TextWall allows users to choose between a list of fonts, and to customize the sizes of characters on the canvas.

These features are also accessible on OWOT and YWOT using the console.

Inconsolata, the default font
Libertinus Mono
Cascadia Mono
Customizing font size

Coordinate system

Each coordinate in TextWall corresponds to a single character/cell, whereas each coordinate in OWOT is composed of 4x4 tiles(which are themselves divided into 16x8 cells).

Canvas size

TextWall starts to show noticeable glitches whenever you teleport beyond a certain point.

List of glitches, copied from textwall.fandom.com/wiki/Tw.2s4.me#Known_Glitches:

X 900,000 / Y 900,000: Username begins to fall off the canvas.
X 3,500,000 / Y 3,500,000: The cursor appears slightly above the username.
X 5,000,000 / Y 5,000,000: Cursor stretches to 1–1.5 times its normal size when moved.
X 7,000,000 / Y 7,000,000: Usernames turn into gray rectangles with names positioned bottom-left. Gray lines appear; text is rendered above the cursor.
X 10,000,000 / Y 10,000,000: Username detaches and appears in the top-left when moving downward.
X 15,000,000 / Y 15,000,000: Cursor becomes larger; users appear nearly anonymous. Text appears three times smaller and is offset above the cursor.
X 30,000,000 / Y 30,000,000: Cursors disappear, but text enlarges.
X 60,000,000 / Y 60,000,000: Gray outlines on the canvas become thicker.
X 95,000,000 / Y 95,000,000: Text lengthens by about 1.5 blocks.
X 97,500,000 / Y 97,500,000: Gray outlines become thinner and stretch.
X 98,000,000 / Y 98,000,000: Writing limit is reached. Although the wall is infinite, severe glitches begin to corrupt the main wall.
X 337,500,000 / Y 337,500,000: Gray outlines become solid-filled.
X 999,999,999,999 / Y 1,000,000,000,000: Marks the outermost border of the canvas.

Worlds

Users can access walls(the equivalent of worlds on OWOT) by adding characters after the TextWall URL. Unlike in OWOT worlds, however, walls are not located in separate canvases. Each one corresponds to a different coordinate on the main canvas. For example, entering tw.2s4.me/help teleports you to X:-89120 Y:-59510.

TextWall's teleportation menu

Moderation

It is unknown Duck handled moderation in the original TextWall.

FP is significantly more liberal about appointing admins on tw.2s4.me than on OWOT, most likely due to the fact that he himself doesn't pay much attention to the site and is willing to let the community moderate it in his stead. Moderators on FP's TextWall include lime.owot, Waller Ameno, and others.

There is also a heavy limit on the speed of pasting/writing text, especially for anons. Erasing and pasting spaces is much faster, however.

Default pasting speed for anons in tw.2s4.me, notice how the process speeds up when pasting blank spaces

Feature set (aka. TODO list)

Limited colors
- 15 colors from 2020 to April 2022 (the r/place 2017 palette minus white)
- 31 colors since April 2022 (the r/place 2022 palette minus white)
Text protection
- Precise text protection (added in July 2023)
Text copying (added in 2021)
- Ability to copy colors as well (added in 2022)
- Ability to copy text decorations (added in late 2022(?))
Registration (added in 2021)
Smooth momentum
Menu on top left
- Paste button for mobile (added in 2023(?))
- Home button - jump to spawn or center of a user world
- Copy character
- Open palette
- Open settings
- Day/night button
  - Ability to set custom background and text color
- Warp to coordinates or a user page/world
Asynchronous renderer
Ability to set your client's font
- Various monospace fonts
  - Inconsolata, Courier, Cuisine, etc.
  - Fixedsys (pixelated)
- Various bitmap fonts
  - Terminus
  - IBM-VGA
  - Fixed
  - Unifont
Chatbox (added in 2021/22, put on hold in 2023)
Text decorations (added in September(?) 2022)
- Can right click to see B/I/U/S markup
  - Animation to the context menu added in summer 2023)
Symbols for Legacy Computing (added in September(?) 2022)
- Used font file for all symbols
- Removed in January 2023
- Re-added in July 2023
  - All symbols are rendered in code
    - Includes all box-drawing characters
Ability to see user's cursors
- Cursors gained smooth panning in 2021(?)
- Nametags under cursors
- Ability to hide other user's cursors
- Ability to become anonymous
User walls (added in 2022)
- Ability to protect text
  - Member areas
  - Owner areas (added in July 2023)
- Ability to manage members
- Ability to make wall read-only
- Ability to see all of a user's walls
  - Ability to make wall unlisted (added in 2023)
Client obfuscation
- Became more rigorously obfuscated in early August 2023
- Efforts to hinder Devtools occurred in late July 2023
Pinch to zoom on mobile
- Improved on/near August 7, 2023, can now zoom in precisely
Captcha is required to access the website (began in June 2023)

Closure incidents

Our World of News covers the closure of Textwall(June 10th, 2024)

November 2021

On November 1st, 2021, TextWall briefly shut down for a few hours. It was reported that the lead developer lost interest in the website in the spur of the moment after some spamming raids. Shortly after the server went down, the DNS records for the site and its derivatives were deleted and TextWall was removed from the DuckGroup website. After the website was reinstated, the main page was mostly erased, and only registered users could write on any page. Registration was closed for a while.

June 2023

On June 24th, 2023, TextWall briefly shut down again until the next morning. This is assumed to have occurred in the spur of the moment right after a battle between two scripters (falling1 and KKosty4ka). Shortly after the server went down, the site's DNS records were deleted. After the website was reinstated, only whitelisted users could access the site. The next day, access was granted to everybody, and a CAPTCHA to access the website was added.

June 2024

On June 9th, 2024, TextWall briefly shut down following instances of soyjak.party users flocking to it. Several worlds were created, most filled with braille pastes and the usual Soyjak markings. The site was restored on June 13th with

Welcome to TextWall
Sorry for the downtime

written in the center. Additional features included an Explore tab in the settings panel which lets users search for publicly listed worlds under a given username, and the lack of ability to see the total number of users site-wide.