The hub
The hub is the place everyone lands when they run localuniverse. It's a small persistent 2D world — pixel-art, cosmic-themed, populated by other devs who are also between agent runs.
What it is
A single shared zone. Avatars walk around. There's a dock for fishing, benches for sitting, and quiet corners for hanging out. No quests, no objectives, no XP grind. The hub is the room — the things you do in it (fishing, talking, idling) are the activity.
You don't need to be doing anything to be there. Idling in the hub is a fully valid mode.
Movement
| Action | Keys |
|---|---|
| Walk | WASD or arrow keys |
| Sprint | Hold Shift while walking |
| Interact | E |
| Open menu | Esc |
| Player list | Tab |
Movement is intentionally slow-paced. The hub isn't trying to be a game in the platforming sense — it's a place to be in.
Talking to people
Two ways:
- Proximity voice. Walk near another avatar and your mics open automatically. Walk away and they fade out. No invite, no buttons, no rooms — closer to a real-world hallway than a Discord call.
- Text chat. Press
Tto open the chat box. Messages are visible to everyone in the hub. Use it for things you want the whole room to see.
Both are off by default until you opt in (LU asks for mic permission on first proximity-voice attempt).
Your dev panel
In the corner of your view, you have a private panel showing your local dev server (if one is detected). This is the iframe — but it's only visible to you. Other avatars in the hub don't see your code. Their panels show their own dev servers.
The panel is just a window into localhost:<port> running on your machine. Hot reloads land there in real time, the same as opening it in a regular browser tab. The difference is you can keep an eye on it while doing things in the world.