The 100-Player Twitch Chat Party Pack News

Hey there!

A tiny update from me, as most of my work is happening on the backend (high score board getting implemented and I still need to figure out how to get it so it doesn't ask you to authenticate every single time). The music and audio have had a ton of problems for a long time, and I thought they were fixed, but that's not the case and I can't figure it out in GameMaker for the life of me. So I fixed it with some old-fashioned audio editing.

All the music should sound much better, and real sounds will also sound great once they're all in. A quick reminder that all the music is properly licensed with zero worries about DMCA issues. One song was even custom-made for the game (if you're wondering where the art budget went).

As always, I highly value any feedback or requests you have for me, so please let me know and I'll make this game the best that it can be!

All the best,
-Jaime

Happy New Year!

There was a big uptick in people playing today so if one of those people was you, I hope you and your viewers enjoyed the game. This little early access game keeps getting better as more people play it and tell me what is right/wrong, so keep the feedback coming!

I've got some bigger changes on the way, specifically, adding some better on-boarding instructions/tutorial for streamers and the chat. Some viewers and streamers figure the games out quickly and other groups don't, and that's a failing on my part. Regardless, because of the sudden uptick in people playing I wanted to quickly patch in some fixes.

DMCA:

If you're familiar with the Twitch DMCA situation, some streamers have gotten DMCAed because of licensed audio in the games they stream. Here's the situation for this game: Last year I spoke with SOCAN, and because the incredible band Couteau Papillon owns all their masters, Couteau Papillon fully control all their music, not the record companies. Which means the band is the only group that would have a legitimate DMCA claim. The band has done video game music before (notably the Spaceteam soundtrack), and while it cost a pretty penny to license the music and get a new song created, they understand that the game is designed to be streamed and everything is in the clear for this game and for streaming their music over Twitch.

Changes in this new version (0.38):

1. The music is way quieter!! Gamemaker Studio has a huge problem with game audio, and despite the song file being properly leveled against other music, I had to crank it down to get it to sound normal.
   
2. One thing that I didn't catch in the massive GameMaker Studio update, was that sometimes Steam would say that it couldn't find the exe, except that the exe was like.... totally there. That is fixed now!
   
3. Other quick fixes to minor bugs I found have been implemented. I don't have a large streaming audience so it's really, really tough for me to test without having 100 real people playing at once. Luckily, my bug-reporting systems are pretty good!
   

One thing that's still on my todo list:

With Happy Tanksgiving and Bombertown, Streamers start the lobby with some protection until the lobby closes and the game starts. But with Minesweeper 100, it's actually possible for a streamer to dig a space before the lobby closes, discover it's a mine, and kill themselves. And if people are still joining the lobby, the board can expand and reset the space to undug, and now it looks like they got killed for no reason.

This is a terrible experience so it's my highest priority right now, and I may have to simply lock the controls until the game starts. Either way, it'll get fixed.

That's all for now, and I wish you a happy 2021!

-Jaime

I've gotten another big chunk of improvements done, and the biggest thing you'll notice is that the start screen is new and improved. It was a huge surprise to me that so many people outside the US were purchasing this game, and while some of them can read English alright, there's a lot of text to go through, and there were no pictures.

So the start screen will now (hopefully) be much easier to figure out. There are a lot of nice pictures now to make things easier for everyone!

Also, you can skip to the final page by jamming the enter key if you want to speed things up.

Other changes in this new version (0.37):

1. Fixed some bugs related to the end of game awards in Minesweeper 100.
   
2. Added some more custom and secret stuff for streamers that have enjoyed the game
   
3. Stability fixes with the Twitch Chat link system. It should no longer freeze the game when it's on the struggle bus.
   

I'm continuing to take your feedback and make the game better, so keep it coming!

All the best!
-Jaime

This is something I'm super exited to share.

There is now a nuke under the Minesweeper 100 board. If all the mines aren't defused within 7 minutes, the nuke goes off and kills everyone.

You may be wondering why this is! There is a bit of a scaling problem with the game when people die. While I can shrink the battlefield for Happy Tanksgiving and Bombertown, you can't really do that for minesweeper. I thought that having an earthquake occur occasionally (exploding a random mine) would be a solution, and while I still like that feature, it makes survivors become very cautious and methodical.

Which makes the game take way longer.

This game is designed to be fast - in and out, explode and jump right back in. So I've now set a 7 minute timer to force people to move fast or die.

Since I don't have a big Twitch audience, I'm excited to see how this works in other streams. As always I'm happy to receive feedback and I hope you enjoy playing with your community!

Other changes in this new version (0.36):

1. GameMaker Studio 2 released a massive update this month that changed the way a lot of things worked. And it also broke a bunch of stuff. The conversion is complete, and the game is more stable because of all the changes I need to make. Hopefully I got all the bugs, and I'm so sorry if something slipped through.
   
2. Added more custom tank bullets, minesweeper flags, and hats for streamers and viewers
   

All the best!
-Jaime

To all of you that have played my game in the past week, thank you! I've gotten some amazing feedback, and as more people are playing, I'm getting a great sense for what people need and where they can get tripped up. Having more people playing this has definitely made it easier to focus on fixes!

Now, one of the weirdest things about Bombertown is that it needs a huge amount of screenspace to deal with the map, which means the instructions have to be crammed at the bottom of the screen.

The UI has been unchanged since like, 2019, and I've finally cleaned things up so it makes way more sense for new players, especially if a streamer chooses Bombertown as their first game, without having played any of the others. This has happened multiple times and my interface certainly did do those people any favors.

Other bug fixes in this new version (0.35) include:

1. If a Bombertown viewer wins a game, their crown doesn't float over their head like a halo
   
2. Added the music back into Bombertown, along with a control to turn it off
   
3. The Ping cursor would show up after a game was over for all games and get in the way, and so that's fixed now
   
4. Small updates to the Twitch Chat Link system that no one will ever notice but they'll prevent errors
   

All the best!
-Jaime