Playing games

While you play a Rally game, the game has the keyboard and the mouse. Two keys belong to Rally:

Key	What it does
Tab	Opens the Rally menu over the game. Tab or Esc closes it. In Build live, a tap of Tab opens the Tab menu instead (the chat with Rallo, and the bar at the top), and holding Tab a moment opens the Rally menu.
Enter	Opens the chat. Enter sends your message and gives the keyboard back to the game.

The chat doesn’t take the mouse from the game: you type, press Enter and play on, still looking around with the mouse. The menus are for clicking, so they give you the mouse pointer back (and the game holds still meanwhile). Once you close one, the first key you press hands the mouse back to the game; Esc leaves it with you.

On a phone or tablet, use the buttons in the top-left corner of the game instead: the Rally logo opens the menu and the speech bubble opens the chat. A number on the bubble counts messages you haven’t seen. In Build live, Rallo’s face, beside them, opens the Tab menu.

The back arrow before them (in Play) takes you back to where you were on Rally without leaving the game: it keeps running in the mini player, a small window in the corner of Rally’s pages, until you Expand it again or Close it. Your browser’s back button to a Rally page does the same. See Playing games.

The Rally menu

The menu shows who’s in the game with you, and lets you:

• go back to the game, or open the chat;
• minimize it (keep playing): back to Rally with the game in the mini player;
• copy a link to the server you’re on, so friends who open it join you there;
• play full screen;
• leave the game.

If you own the game or collaborate on it, the menu also has Build it with AI, which opens the game in Build live (you build it with Rallo, Rally’s AI, from inside the running world), and Open in Studio.

Use the arrow keys to move through the menu and Enter to choose.

The chat

Messages go to everyone on the same game server and appear in the bottom-left corner of the game. They fade after a few seconds; open the chat to see what was said before. When you join a server, you see the last messages said there.

• Messages are one line, up to 200 characters.
• Rally’s word filter applies, and sending too many messages too fast is refused for a few seconds.
• If you’ve blocked someone, or they’ve blocked you, neither of you sees the other’s messages.
• Nothing is saved: the chat is only for the people playing right now.

Talking to Rallo in Build live

In a Build live session you build the world with Rallo, Rally’s AI, from inside it:

• Tap Tab (or Rallo’s face by the corner buttons) for the Tab menu: the chat with Rallo at the bottom of the world (what Rallo says, with a box below to ask in), and a bar at the top. Type what you’d like and press Enter: like the people’s chat, that sends it and takes you back to the game. It knows what’s under your crosshair, so “make this bigger” works. Before you’ve asked anything, Rallo offers a few ideas to start from.
• The bar at the top (only while the Tab menu is open) has the game’s menu (its page, Play, Leave), Game view and Studio view, which version players have, the version history, Publish (for the owner, lit when you’ve made changes since), who’s building with you, and Invite.
• Studio view (for the owner and collaborators) opens Rally Studio inside the session, below the bar: what you change there appears in the world as you go, for everyone building. Game view takes you back to the world, which kept running meanwhile.
• The chat shows everyone’s requests and Rallo’s replies. While Rallo works you see what it’s thinking, what it says and each step it takes, then what it did, with Undo (and Stop while it works). Tap Tab again to watch, and Tab or Esc to go back to the world. While it’s open you have the mouse pointer to click with, and the game holds still.
• While the chat is closed, a line at the top of the world says what Rallo is doing.
• When you create a game, its description is Rallo’s first request, and the chat with Rallo opens so you can watch it start.
• Enter opens the chat with the people building with you. Tab there takes you to Rallo’s chat, and a message that starts with @rallo asks Rallo too. Requests, and Rallo’s answers, show up in that chat as well.
• Rule changes (how the game plays: scoring, damage, abilities) go live while everyone keeps playing: nobody rejoins and the world isn’t reset. Rallo’s go live when its request finishes, and code you change in Studio view a moment after you stop typing. Code that doesn’t work doesn’t go live: the bar at the top of the world says what went wrong, and Rallo fixes its own.
• Who can change the rules: the owner, collaborators, and invited people the owner lets (they can by default). Others can ask Rallo for building only.
• Hold Tab (or use the Rally logo) for the Rally menu. It has the owner’s controls too: Publish for players, Reset the world and End the session, Build settings, and People: everyone who can build, with a switch for whether each invited person can change the rules, and Remove. Someone you remove leaves the world at once, and your invite link won’t let them back in until you press Let back in.

For game makers

Your scripts still get Tab and Enter, but with gameProcessed set to true, the same as keys typed into a text box. Handlers that skip processed input (most do) leave them alone. Don’t use Tab or Enter for game actions: players can’t press them without opening Rally’s menu or chat. See Input.

Rally’s buttons cover the top-left corner of the game: a band 52 pixels tall from the top, and 136 pixels wide from the left. Keep your own on-screen UI out of it. In the mini player the buttons are hidden and the game is small, but it keeps running. Web games are told where the buttons are and when the mini player opens: see Rally’s buttons.