The 100-Player Twitch Chat Party Pack News

Hey there!

It's been a killer week for updates that have been on my todo list for ages, and here are the major ones.

A ton of fixes and improvements have been made to Minesweeper, and I've changed the name to "Minesweeper Extreme: 100" in order to let players know that this will not be your typical minesweeper game. It'll be faster and more chaotic than usual. Maybe I will add a normal minesweeper option for streamers that don't mind a longer game, but that day is not today.

Anyways, here are all the changes in this version (v0.44):

Increased the game length from 7 minutes to 10 minutes, because that was just waaaay too fast (Minesweeper Extreme: 100)
Earthquakes happen less frequently and with more warning (Minesweeper Extreme: 100)
Fixed a bug where earthquakes would still happen after the game ended. It was silly, but also not correct. (Minesweeper Extreme: 100)
Updated the twitch chat alerts to be clearer and more interesting to read (Minesweeper Extreme: 100 and Happy Tanksgiving)
Prevented streamers from shooting/digging/flagging before the game actually begins. (Minesweeper Extreme: 100 and Happy Tanksgiving)
Added Beige, Teal, and Apricot hovertanks to the game as color options (Happy Tanksgiving)
Using !join orange has a 1/16 chance of turning your hovertank into an actual orange (Happy Tanksgiving)
Minor art updates (logos, banana hovertank, better alignment, and other things I forgot)

And now it's time for the weekend! If you've got any feedback or feature requests, let me know and I hope you enjoy the latest update.

All the best!
-Jaime

Hello!

Lots of progress has been made on fixing the resolution of these games. We're not done yet, but here's what happened:

When I started building this game, I thought it would be cool to make a cinematic resolution like Kingdom: New Lands. Except that for a Twitch Chat streaming game, you really need every square inch of visual space, and the smaller canvas has been killing me for over a year. So that is fixed now in most places, and everything should be fullscreen for 1080p and 4k. Bombertown is the only game where things aren't quite aligned properly because the UI is so different, and I'll polish things up as I go.

I was able to play Kukoro stream chat games last night and that pack is super, super good. Coming away from the session, I have a lot of ideas for how I can clean things up and make things more fun. Honestly, the biggest takeaway is that people just like doing activities that are controlled by the chat, so having more simple games seem like the way to go.

Anyways, look forward to more fun and more variety in the future!

All changes in version 0.43:

The game is now fullscreen at 1080p and 4k!.
Fixed a bug where the streamer's supertank would fall into a hole but still be declared the winner in Happy Tanksgiving. If you fall in a hole now you die for real.
UI has been updated for Happy Tanksgiving and Bombertown 100.
Added Maroon and Chartreuse tanks, and a special message if you can't spell "chartreuse" like me.
Updated and improved Captain Goose!
BroTeam got some updates to his version of the game which is built-in.
Updates to my internal layout and debugging tools.

What a day! If you've got any feedback or feature requests, let me know and I hope you enjoy the latest update.

All the best!
-Jaime

Hey there!

More improvements are coming down the pipe, and I've got one I'm really happy to highlight: when someone in the chat wins a game of Happy Tanksgiving, they will get a crown in all future games of Happy Tanksgiving! This is the first real piece of the high-score and stats section that I've been able to fully implement, and now that it is rock-solid, I'll be able to start making more improvements to that system. One day I hope to give people special awards that carry over from game to game, or give them cool visual effects. If you have any cool ideas for stats you'd like to see, or awards to achieve, I'm all ears.

Latest changes in version 0.42:

1. When someone in the chat wins in Happy Tanksgiving, they get a crown that stays with them forever. Thanks, AWS!
   
2. Fixed a bug where the cursor would change to the "ping player" cursor in the wrongs spots.
   
3. The crown in Happy Tanksgiving looks more like an actual crown
   
4. The lemon-colored tank also looks more like an actual lemon.
   
5. Code cleanup and improvements on my AWS systems
   

That's all for now and I hope you enjoy the latest update!

All the best!
-Jaime

Hey there!

I'm getting some rapid-fire changes in that have been on my mind for a while and here's where we're at today:

After watching waaaaaay too many people try to play Bombertown with a handful of viewers, it's clear that the game is just not going to work with a small number of players, especially when that game has the most difficult UI to navigate.

For the sake of not creating another poor experience for smaller streamers, I have decided to soft lock the game content, and it will unlock once 20 people or more play Happy Tanksgiving. Once that is done a single time, Bombertown will always be playable.

In terms of what to hit next, I think another quick win I can get done is to have a permanent record of every player that gets a win, so that they will always have a crown when they play (instead of during a single session - right now, their crown resets when the game closes).

I'm also considering a mode for Happy Tanksgiving that makes the game more like Robo-Rally. Everyone plugs in a long list of commands for their hovertank, and then the game executes everyone's commands in order while the streamer tries to survive. I think there's a lot of potential there for chaos and entertainment.

All changes in version 0.41:

1. I don't know how I missed this for so long, but I have correctly updated the game's icon in the Windows Taskbar.
   
2. Bombertown is now unlocked once 20 people or more play Happy Tanksgiving.
   
3. More alerts for important or rare events (example: The person who killed the streamer gets killed by someone else) are sent to the Twitch Chat during Happy Tanksgiving.
   
4. More debugging information is being stored. Twitch made a change to their API and I'm still trying to nail it down.
   
5. The end game awards and stats have been updated and improved for Happy Tanksgiving.
   

That's all for now! Let me know if you've got any feedback or feature requests and I hope you enjoy the latest update!

All the best!
-Jaime

Hello there!

You'll be pleased to know that Happy Tanksgiving has gotten a little bit of an update related to clarity. Now, the boardgamefightclub bot will provide updates and friendly reminders about things that players and streamers might forget. It's not a huge change but it does make things a little more clear. It'll also provide updates when the streamer gets murdered by a viewer. One additional benefit of this: if someone who doesn't speak English is playing, they can click the "translate" button on their browser and get better instructions for what to do in real time.

One thing that is taking me much longer than expected is remembering your Twitch connection so you don't need to reconnect every time. At this very moment, I can't enable the feature because someone can use my bot to spam another channel. I need to find a way to safely remember your connection without allowing someone to trick the system in this way. Once it's good and safe, I'll flip the switch.

Other changes in this new version (0.40):

1. If you mute the music, the game will remember this even if you quit the game and reload.
   
2. Lots of small messages have been added to Happy Tanksgiving to make things clearer for viewers and streamers.
   
3. The game logos have turned into arcade cabinets so it looks slightly more professional, and gives the players a better idea of what they will play, which are basically arcade games.
   

As always, let me know if you've got any feedback or feature requests and I hope you enjoy the latest update!

All the best!
-Jaime