Intentions Game

Getting Started

Major Versions

Important

As of v1.7.13, Package management has been migrated to use pnpm in light of a recent increase in supply-chain attacks.

All recent versions include features from earlier versions.

• v1.7.13 (latest): Includes all social status features, with additional questionnaires and paradigms that can be toggled. Contains small UI fixes to MRI-compatible versions and code quality improvements.
• v1.7.2: First version to include MRI-compatible features, supporting input from a 4-button controller with UI indicators, and a trigger waiting period. Adds offline support by performing all computations in-browser with WebR. Removes support for external server computations.
• v1.7.0: Initial release, basic 3-Phase experiment timeline, all computations handled by external server requiring persistent internet connectivity.

Development

• pnpm clean: Remove all client build artefacts and logs.
• pnpm build: Create a production build of the client.
• pnpm lint: Run the client source code through ESLint to check for any style violations.
• pnpm start: Start a Webpack HMR-compatible development server to preview the client locally on localhost:8080.
• pnpm test: Run all client tests.

Components

Client

Before building or previewing the client, ensure that the Node.js version 22+ is installed on your system. Download Node.js here and install pnpm using this command npm i -g pnpm.

After installing pnpm, run pnpm install in the top-level repository directory to install all dependencies. Refer to Development below for other commands to build and preview the client.

Experiment Manipulations

Parameter	Type	Description	Notes
partner	string	Sets the partner type for testing purposes	"test" is a shorter collection of trials, otherwise use "default"
requireID	boolean	Controls whether participant ID is required
useButtonInput	boolean	Enables button-based input scheme	Includes additional instructions, enables selection indicators for all screens
useOfflinePackages	boolean	Enables offline R package usage	Only use for local deployments
enableSocialStatusQuestionnaire	boolean	Controls display of the social status questionnaire	Shows a social status questionnaire at the start of the experiment
enableEndingQuestionnaires	boolean	Controls post-experiment questionnaire display	Shows a DASS and social media usage questionnaire at the conclusion of the experiment
useAdultQuestionnaires	boolean	Enables adult-specific questionnaire content	Requires enableEndingQuestionnaires to be true, uses the adult questions if true, else false to show the adolescent set
enableStatusPhaseOne	boolean	Enables social status display in first phase	Includes additional instructions and social status questionnaire prior to experiment starting, shows status display above partner in Phase One
enableStatusPhaseTwo	boolean	Enables social status display in second phase	Includes additional instructions and social status questionnaire prior to experiment starting, shows status display above partner in Phase Two
enableStatusPhaseThree	boolean	Enables social status display in third phase	Includes additional instructions and social status questionnaire prior to experiment starting, shows status display above partner in Phase Three
isPartnerHighStatusPhaseOne	boolean	Sets partner as high status in first phase	Requires enableStatusPhaseOne to be true
isPartnerHighStatusPhaseTwo	boolean	Sets partner as high status in second phase	Requires enableStatusPhaseTwo to be true
isPartnerHighStatusPhaseThree	boolean	Sets partner as high status in third phase	Requires enableStatusPhaseThree to be true
enableCyberball	boolean	Enables Cyberball exclusion/inclusion task	Includes additional instructions and social status questionnaire prior to experiment starting
cyberballIsInclusive	boolean	Controls whether Cyberball task is inclusive	Cyberball operates in inclusion mode when true, otherwise operating in exclusion mode, changes to probabilities can be made in configuration.ts
cyberballIsPartnerHighStatus	boolean	Sets partner as high status in Cyberball task	Shows social status display above Partner A, partner has high status when true, otherwise low status when false

Offline Usage

The task includes a packages directory containing all required R packages. To use these packages, set the useOfflinePackages manipulation within Configuration.ts to true. Each package was built and prepared using the rwasm tool.

Use the pnpm build command to build the client with the offline packages, build output is placed in the dist directory. To run the task, use the pnpm start command if running from source code. If using a compiled version of the task, start an instance of http-server in the directory containing index.html.

Important

For offline operation, http-server or an equivalent must be used to host and run the experiment locally, otherwise requests to use the WebR runtime will be blocked by the browser.

Additional Features

• Alternate input scheme for usage with MRI controllers. Keys 1 and 2 used to move UI selection cursor, 3 used to interact with UI element. Experiment collects 5 key input timestamps (in Unix epoch format) and stores at the end of the data file.
• Incrementally saving data to localStorage for each experiment. In the case of the game crashing or exiting the browser window, the next time the game is accessed, an alert will prompt the user that the previous experiment did not complete and allow them to download the data captured. This feature is disabled by default (for online testing scenarios using Gorilla). It is advisable to enable this feature when the faciliator is physically present to deliver the experiment.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Issues and Feedback

Please contact Henry Burgess <henry.burgess@wustl.edu> for all code-related issues and feedback.