Vanta Roleplay

Overview

A full platform for Vanta RP, a Garry's Mod DarkRP community: the game server's addon suite, the community website and a Discord bot, built as three repos that share one database and stay in sync. Players can do from the browser most of what they do in the city: check their bank, shop the marketplace, read their mail, follow events. Staff run the game, the site and the Discord from a single admin panel.

What we built

The game server

• A custom addon suite. 34 addons built on a shared library (VantaLib) that provides the UI kit, settings menus, player data, levels, the admin panel and popups, so every system looks and behaves the same.
• Economy and progression. Inventory with serial numbers, a player marketplace, banking, custom printers, crates, skills, power-ups, quests, daily rewards and a coin exchange.
• City life. Mining, fishing, factions, hitmen and payphones, city mail, community goals, server events, a day and night cycle with weather, and a cinema rebuilt on PlayX.
• Player-made jobs. A Job Creator for designing a custom job, plus Vanta Access for buying tools and jobs.
• Staff tooling. Admin logs, reports and sits, a map setup tool, an economy monitor and AFK handling.
• A full interface. HUD, F4 menu, chat box with emojis, GIFs and mentions, and a scoreboard that draws each player's member card from the website.

The website

• The game in the browser. Live server status, a 3D city map rendered from the map's own .bsp with every player shown where they're standing, and a live activity feed of raids, arrests and lottery wins. The site's clock and weather match the game.
• My Vanta. Each player's own subdomain with their cash, bank history, skills, quests, purchases, warnings and city mail. Mail written on the site or in game arrives in both places.
• Marketplace and store. The in-game market on the web, paid with wallet cash or Vanta Coins, with orders delivered by the game server whether the player is online or not. Coins sell through PayPal with verified IPNs, gifting, promo codes, in-game sales, emailed receipts and a monthly goal bar.
• Community. Forums with reactions, mentions, GIF search and moderation, a suggestions roadmap, member cards players style themselves, Player of the Week, an invite programme that pays both players, and a piano sheet music library.
• Support without a developer. A help bubble that answers DarkRP and addon questions with no AI involved, then hands off to staff, with alerts on the site, by email, in game and on Discord.
• One admin panel. Orders, refunds, warnings, events, announcements, the in-game loading screen, roles and permissions, view-as-user, a staff log and a full Discord management section.
• Fast and deployable. Deferred props with skeletons, pages warmed while the browser is idle, a circuit breaker for the game database, and one-click GitHub releases that put the site into maintenance mode, build, migrate and bring it back up.

The Discord bot

• Rebuilt in TypeScript. The original Python bot was rewritten on discord.js 14 as 20 modules, each with its own settings.
• Configured from the website. Channels, roles, texts and which modules are on are all set in the panel, not through commands. The panel also closes tickets, marks suggestions, lifts cases and resolves errors, and the bot carries those out on its next sync.
• Community features. Verification, rules, welcomes, live counters, tickets with transcripts, staff applications reviewed on the site, suggestions, giveaways, a counting channel and event announcements.
• Connected to the game. Account linking with a code from F4, live status and leaderboards, !report from in game, and /warn that syncs to the player's in-game record.
• Protection. Moderation cases with a mod log, AutoMod, anti-raid with automatic lockdown, anti-nuke that strips a rogue admin's roles, and a scam shield for phishing and fake-Nitro links.