TELEKNEIPE

In the far future, in a postapocalyptical ruin of a city, you find yourself in an empty crossing in front of a building. On the bottom floor a shop is overgrown by lush green plants and some of the big windows are broken and taped shut.

You are about to move on, when out of the corner of your eye, behind one of the windows, you notice a movement.

• Get closer

Above the entrance a long-gone neon sign says

BAR

The door is slightly ajar. Next to it, there is a small sign.

• Get in
• Read the sign
• Go around the back

Telekneipe is a virtual dive-bar experience. For that purpose, input from your microphone and images from your webcam are shared with others (your browser will ask you for permission before the data is acquired). Telekneipe has no access to this data, this webpage only helps you to broker a peer-to-peer connection to others. The front entrance takes you to a public space. Go around the back to start a hidden session, protected by a password of your choosing.

The connection is encrypted by an end-to-end encryptions (DTLS and SRTP, using WebRTC). Since Telekneipe is an experimental software we can not guarantee that your conversations are private and not intercepted - by accident or malintent - by others. You can find more info in our FAQ.

The same rules of any good bar apply to Telekneipe, and we will not tolerate sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, antisemitic, antiislamic and any other discriminatory behaviour.

• Back

• Did you program this yourself?

Telekneipe is based on a great open-source project called Workadventure. The software package takes care of the server communication as well as the heavy lifting on your computer to show you the game-environment (based on Phaser) as well as initiating communication with other peers. We only apply a few modifications to enhance functionality for the Telekneipe Experience. We will publish the source code for these adjustments soon.

• Why does communication seem more fluid than in other video chat applications?

In principle, the peer-to-peer communication has a lower delay between you and the person you're speaking to than server-based applications, since data does not need to flow through a central server. The downside is, that the more people you are talking to simultaneously, the more copies of your audio+video needs to flow through your internet upload. Telekneipe uses stylized low-fi video to circumvent this bottleneck.

• How many people can join a chat circle?

We currently have the limit set to 6. This might change in the future

• Does this site cost you a lot of bandwidth?

Since the traffic-heavy content (audio+video) runs peer-to-peer, the bandwidth cost on the servers are limited. Don't move too much if you want to be economical ;)

• Can you host my small party?

In principle, yes. Please consider using a private instance (aka. the back entrance).

• For my party, can you do xyz?

We can discuss it, contact me. If you don't know how to contact me, you might be better off checking out the offers of the original creators of this software at Workadventure.

• I liked the old Telekneipe. Does it still exist?

Yes. Go to legacy.telekneipe.de.

Back

Walking into the backyard through a nearby archway, you find the back entrance guarded by a bouncer. Getting closer, you realize that the bouncer is a mechanical automaton. A grotesque figure with a beaker-like vent instead of a mouth and an electrical board in place of its chest. As you approach the door, you hear the sound of spinning gears. A stream of musty warm air escapes the vent.

The automaton seems to come to life and a mechanical voice warns you:

CLOSED PARTY TODAY, INVITE PASSWORD ONLY

• "My friends are inside..."
• "I have an invite!"
• "I know the password..."
• Back

YEAH.... RIGHT

You wonder if the sound you just heard was a crack of the speaker or a snark.

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• Back