Games start faster in Splat Chat and Minesweeper: 100
Hey there!
A very small update from Friday's build that I forgot to actually click "publish" on (until now):
Once a viewer joins a game in Splat Chat or Minesweeper: 100, the game will start in 30 seconds instead of 60. Not sure if that's the best amount of time, but 60 seconds is definitely too long. Honestly, for Minesweeper: 100, I might make it so the first player to join immediately starts the game and people can join at any time, but maybe that will be an alternate mode/option.
The streamer character in Splat Chat can now look left and right when they move, so you are no longer an ambiturner. One of these days I will learn how to draw walking animations, but today is not that day.
Added a custom mustard hat in Splat Chat for a streamer, and connected it to their account. No one else has a mustard hat.
Let me know if you have any questions or feedback, and I hope you enjoy the new update!
-Jaime
AFK Mode for Splat Chat works again!
Hope you're doing well!
It was brought to my attention last week that Splat Chat's AFK mode was broken! I am so sorry to all of you that were impacted, and it's all better now. Also, once an AFK game finishes, it'll only take 10 seconds to auto-restart a game, so viewers can look at the final stats and get right back into the action.
All the fixes in this update are.....
AFK Mode has been fixed and is working properly for Splat Chat.
Splat Chat and Minesweeper 100 AFK restart timers have been set from 60 seconds to 10 seconds, so viewers can get right back into a new game.
Removed the Open Lobby button for Splat Chat, so it's in line with Minesweeper 100. For both of these games, the game will start 60 seconds after the first viewer types !join.
I feel like every single time I come back to my code it is a hideous mess and it takes me longer to figure out where I am and what on earth I was thinking when I wrote it. So I spent a few days this week cleaning up my hideous garbage code to make future changes happen faster. There is still a long way to go, but this will just keep making my life easier.
That's all for now! I appreciate all of you that have continued to give the game a try and provide feedback. These games continue to get better as more people play them on stream.
All the best! -Jaime
Crash fix and engine update
Hope you're doing well!
This game has not had an update for a long time, and I appreciate a streamer reaching out to kick me into gear with a crash fix. Here are the things that got updated:
Crash fixes have been solved if you start an AFK mode game but no one joins.
On Minesweeper 100, the lobby countdown won't start until someone joins a game. If you're a streamer and want to test before you go live, type !join into the chat.
This will be applied to AFK versions of all games shortly.
I've updated to the new subscription version of GameMaker Studio 2. There are some big differences under the hood, and all my updates seem to be working properly. I've been doing a ton of testing, but anything's possible. Shoot me an email if you see anything weird. Messages on Steam don't notify me at all and it's the worst.
One last announcement is that I'll be removing access to Bombertown in a future update. Try as hard as I might, the stream delay makes it impossible for the game to work as intended. It feels like Bomberman, but slowed down to a crawl. I'll leave a secret command in case you really want to see how bad it is, but I'd rather try to put in a new game, like a 100-player rock paper scissors tournament. We'll see if I can take the time to make that happen.
That's all for now! I appreciate all of you that have continued to give the game a try and provide feedback. These games continue to get better as more people play them on stream.
All the best! -Jaime
The beginning of custom rules for Minesweeper
Hope you're doing well!
It was a bigger job than I expected, but you can now set up a few custom rules for your games on Minesweeper Extreme: 100!
Yes, it's ugly, but I've run a bunch of tests and everything seems like it's in good working order. The custom rules you can set are...
Your HP can be 1/2/3
You can start with a larger board size
You can adjust the difficulty by selecting how many mines you start with (the middle option is normal difficulty)
In the main menu, you'll need to click Custom Game every time you want to play with these rules. If you click "Play with viewers" it will revert back to the standard rules.
If there are other rules you'd like me to prioritize, let me know at Jaime@boardgamefightclub.com and I'll try to bump those up in the next release.
Other changes I made in this version are...
Fixed a bug where incorrectly-placed Minesweeper flags were not being removed when the streamer died.
Fixed a bug where the time running out in Minesweeper would trigger the nuke, but not end the game if you had 2 or more HP. Now you die for real.
Fixed a crash bug where if a corner square and all the squares around it were completely empty, it would create an infinite loop and slow your game down until it killed the game. This took a lot of time to track down, but it's all better now!
I basically rewrote a lot of the systems for generating a minesweeper board. The game wasn't designed to support adjustable rules, so this took about a week to set up.
That's all the updates for today! And for those of you who have invited me into your stream to watch, or have taken the time to play and provide feedback, I am so thankful for you. You are the reason that these games are getting better and things are getting fixed. Please keep the feedback coming!
All the best, -Jaime
You now get 2 HP in Minesweeper Extreme: 100
Hey there!
A small update for all you Minesweeper Extreme: 100 fans.
Your character now has 2 HP instead of 1 HP. Since you can die on the first mine, this will hopefully make the game feel less unfair.
When you take your first hit, you will have 5 seconds of invincibility so if you want to dig in a straight line really quick, you now have the ability to do that. But only for 5 seconds. Be quick about it.
I have started writing the code which will let you customize your minesweeper games. It'll take me at least a week to have an early version of this ready. My plan is to let you change some elements of the game, such as
Increasing your HP (1/2/3/4)
Increasing the HP for everyone in the chat (1/2/3)
Countdown timer
How often earthquakes happen (15/30/45/60/90/120 seconds)
Earthquakes enabled/disabled
Size of the starting grid
Everyone has their own minesweeper preferences, so I'll do the best I can to give you some more control there.
Let me know if you have any questions or feedback, and I hope you enjoy the new update!
-Jaime
Twitch connection is restored
Hey there!
I am so sorry for the connection issues today :(
I accidentally unchecked a really, really important box so the game was like "OK that sounds great, I will completely forget how to listen to the Twitch Chat once I successfully connect to it." For what it's worth, that box is labelled "Persistent."
I'll add a step in my build process to test for this, so that it doesn't happen again.
Also everything is fixed and I tested the new build, so the game is back to it's old self again, along with the newer changes from this morning.
Thanks!, -Jaime
A little bit of spring cleaning
Hey there!
Hope you're doing well!
Today's update brings some fixes that have been on my todo list for a while. I've needed to spend a lot more time than I expected working on my actual board game (QuickFight: A Legacy Game) because a major board game publisher is interested. But as that work is wrapping up I'm starting to come back and make improvements here because I know how much some of you love playing these video games.
Most of the changes today are small, but they'll make a big difference to those of you that ran into problems. The fixes I can remember are...
When something is clickable, there's now a pointer finger icon for your mouse cursor. That should make it much easier to figure out where you can interact with things, or when there are surprises.
Your Supertank in Happy Tanksgiving can now lean over large holes. Previously, if you touched a hole your tank would fall in and die, which was horrible and I apologize. Now, as long as you don't drive more than half of your Supertank over a hole, you'll stay alive.
"AFK Mode" has been renamed to "Chat-Only Mode" in the main menu. I still need to clean things up a little there (maybe an icon for the game modes that support keyboard and controller), but I hope this makes more sense.
Translation issues and places where the text was too big have been cleaned up.
For those of you who have invited me into your stream to watch, or have taken the time to play and provide feedback, I am still so thankful for you. You are the reason that these games are getting better and things are getting fixed. Please keep the feedback coming!
All the best, -Jaime
Happy Tanksgiving updates and language support for 6 languages
Hey there!
Hope you've been well!
First on my list to talk about is the updates to Happy Tanksgiving. I'm slowly getting Happy Tanksgiving's UI and features synced up with the other games, and some of the changes that you'll notice are:
Crowns now stack when a player wins multiple times (across any game)
The endgame stats and awards screen has been completely updated so it doesn't look completely horrible
A few awards had minor problems in certain situations, which are all fixed now
Lots of fixes to the codebase to make future updates faster and easier
The other thing to talk about is language support for the Party Pack. International support has been strong, so I've made it a priority to add translations for countries that have purchased the most copies. The languages that this game now supports are...
English
French
Korean
Spanish
German
Greek
I can't tell you what a painstaking process this is as someone who can only speak the tiniest bit of French, Italian, Spanish, and Korean, but all the main games are fully translated and hopefully I haven't made too many mistakes.
That's all I've got for now, and thank you again so much for your excellent feedback and input as I've been making these games better. I wish you all the best!
-Jaime
Happy Tanksgiving is improved, and the unlock system has been adjusted
Hey there!
Hope you're doing well!
I had a good day today at the Boston Festival of Indie Games, and in my downtime I finished some updates that were long overdue.
Most of them are related to Happy Tanksgiving. The tank collision detection system has been a problem for so long, and since you're fighting against hovertanks that can, uhh, hover... I figure you should be able to drive under them. So no more getting pinned in place by a viewer. Accuracy of the tank cannon has also been improved for the streamer's super tank, so bullets don't veer off in a ridiculous direction. I think the accuracy can be off by only 8 degrees in an extreme case now, and it'll be perfectly accurate 25% of the time.
The system to unlock games has also changed!
Since Splat Chat is the simplest game, it will now function as a tutorial game, and it'll be the only one you can play at first. Once you complete a single game with any number of players, Minesweeper Extreme: 100 will be unlocked. From there, if 25 people play Minesweeper Extreme: 100, Happy Tanksgiving will unlock. And if 50 people play Happy Tanksgiving, you'll get access to the very experimental Bombertown.
The only other change in this version is more translation support for other languages. I'm making good progress here, but I still have more work to get done before I can update the Steam page.
Again, to everyone that has invited me into their stream, or taken the time to play and provide feedback, I am so thankful for you, and it's because of you that these games are getting better and things are getting fixed. Please keep the feedback coming!
All the best, -Jaime
Happy Tanksgiving UI cleanup, language translation work, price increase coming
Hey there!
A small update for you today, mostly dealing with Happy Tanksgiving.
This game was originally based on a concept called Tank Tactics by Luke Muscat (here's the incredible GDC video talking about it), and in my version, your tank has batteries that it can spend on movement or firing.
Well, this system is hardly ever used, and it makes no sense to keep batteries in the game, so everything related to the battery system is gone. Viewers can now fire and move freely, and the UI is slightly cleaner. Note that as a streamer, you still have a 4-second charge time on firing your cannon to balance things out.
Other than that, translations for some things in Happy Tanksgiving have been added for French, Korean, Spanish, German, and Greek speakers. That should be done by next week.
Price increase coming
Also, the game will be getting a price update sometime this month. People with a small audience keep buying the pack, which is tough because these games are not designed for a small audience.
In fact, they get less fun the fewer people you have in the chat.
I have like 5 warnings about this as you try to buy the game, so a price increase seems like the last option I have left to drive people away. I might end up releasing Splat Chat and Minesweeper Extreme: 100 at a lower price point since they work decently with a smaller audience, but we'll see what happens.
As always, I love to get feedback. Let me know how I can make the game better for your stream and I'll do my best!
