Who am I?

My name is Cheese, and I wear many hats. The ones that are relevant today are:

Game developer
Community organiser/manager

You can find me on Twitter as @ValiantCheese or on irc.freenode.net as Cheeseness.

Today we'll be talking about Hive Time

Hive Time is a bee-themed management sim/base builder. You might like it.

A disclaimer

As always, every developer and every project has its own context and identity.

What's discussed here is not advice, but perspectives shared in the hopes that it can help you discover or navigate the best fit for your own work.

Chat integration in Hive Time

Today we'll be looking at the following aspects of "chat integration" and how it relates to Hive Time:

Inspirations
Chat engagement
Implementation goals
Protocols
Implementation
Cutting room floor

Inspirations

Hive Time's chat integration draws inspiration from the following games:

Hand of Fate 2 (2017) - Defiant Development
Overland (2019) - Finji

Inspirations - Hand of Fate 2

Hand of Fate 2's integration options focus on choice/outcome voting, but also allow endless mode bosses to be named after active chat users.

Encounter choice voting
Chance gambit voting
Periodic gift voting
Endless adventure voting
Endless Boss names
Dev commands

Inspirations - Overland

Overland's integration options focus primarily on presenting chat participants as survivors, but also allows voting on destinations.

Survivor names
Survivor dialogue
Destination voting

Chat engagement

These features can be mapped along two axes.

Features that increase the viewer's sense of ownership over the player's experience of playing
Features that increase the viewer's sense of ownership over their own experience of viewing

Implementation goals

For Hive Time, I wanted to have a mix of features that could provide value along both axes.

Event choice voting
Periodic gift voting
Special bee names
Special bee dialogue
Special bee commands
Dev commands

Implementation goals - visualisation

Chat bees decrease the passiveness of viewing. Event and gift voting affect gameplay, but an individual vote feels less impactful than a bee.

Implementation goals - further concerns

There were a few extra things I wanted to keep in mind for giving the best experiences for players and viewers.

Allow all chat features to be toggled individually
Provide optional whitelist to limit interaction to specific chat users
Provide optional blacklist to limit interaction from specific chat users
Ignore inactive chat users
Give visual feedback on votes/interaction
Commands/voting outcomes shouldn't interrupt events

Protocols

Most streaming platforms offer their own APIs. As a solo developer who doesn't want to be tied to one platform, an open standard makes more sense.

There is no standardised common streaming platform chat API
Not all streaming platforms have a chat API
Not all streaming platforms have chat
Open standards make more sense for me as a solo developer who doesn't want to be tied to a platform

Protocols - IRC

IRC is an older protocol with a few advantages. The client protocol is defined in RFC 1459, and updated in RFC 2812.

Established/mature
Widely available infrastructure
Can be self-hosted
Is fairly simple
Twitch exposes an IRC-compatible interface

Implementation

Hive Time's chat handler implements a partially functional IRC client, implementing 8 commands out of around 60.

NICK
JOIN
PART
USER
QUIT
PRIVMSG
PING/PONG
Nickname is already in use/Nickname collision KILL

It is also read only (so as to not need to bother with authentication).

Implementation - voting

Gift options use numeric identifiers while event choices use alphabetical identifiers in case they happen concurrently.

#2 (votes for second gift voting option)
#B (votes for right event choice)

Voting uses a # prefix so as to not be confused with commands (which use !).

Implementation - bee commands

Once a chat participant is assigned a bee, they may issue commands to adjust the size, shape, role, and hat of their bee.

!eat_me
!next_hat
!next_role
!drink_me
!prev_hat
!prev_role
!thicker
!die
!help
!slimmer

Their non-command messages are automatically relayed in-game via speech bubbles coming from their bee.

Implementation - dev commands

A number of developer-only commands expose options for adjusting player population or resources, as well as triggering any event or effect content within the game.

!give 50 wax
!take 50 wax
!event bear attack
!spawn beesitter 50
!kill beesitter 50
!effect big_fireworks
!spawn me
!say_bee me hello
!say Big hello
! Quick hello
!music YamParty
!queen Wave1
!gift_vote
!upside_down

Implementation - command definitions

To keep things scalable and easy to integrate, I wrote a structure for declaring commands that defines the expected format and function to be called.

!eat_me chat bee command definition:

	"eat_me": {"func": "resize_bee", "format": [], "default_values": [1.5], "pass_user": true}

!give dev command definition:

	"give": {"func": "give_resource", "format": [TYPE_INT, TYPE_STRING]}

Implementation - dev bees

As something special for my collaborators, I added unique bees, which will be used when the !spawn me command is invoked by a known dev.

Cutting room floor

There were a number of additional features/functionality I considered, but wasn't happy with or didn't have time for:

Conga bee command
Sleep bee command
Animate bee command
Meta-aware events
Word filters
Fully complient IRC client
Customisable vote/command prefixes
Moderator commands/lists
Send IRC message when voting starts
Better feedback on connection state

Implementing chat integration in Hive Time