Inspiration
In the past, concepts such as "Twitch Plays Pokémon" have become rather popular, and so I decided to try to make my own version of a "Twitch Plays" game.
What it does
Players type commands such as "l" and "r" in to chat, and those directly control the game of Tetris shown on the stream. The game is also controllable via the arrow keys and the "c" key, if the game is opened directly in a browser.
How I built it
An Azure VM runs two scripts, one of which connects to the Twitch Chat via IRC, and the other runs a websocket server. When a valid command is entered into Twitch Chat, it is forwarded on to the websocket server. The websocket server simply broadcasts any message it receives to everything it is connected to. Then, the game (running locally on the user's computer) connects to the websocket server and listens for commands. Otherwise, the game runs as a normal(ish) game of Tetris.
Challenges I ran into
My university's network blocked the ports required to interface with the IRC server, so I decided to host the IRC script and the websocket server on an Azure VM. Otherwise, there were difficulties trying to make the pieces properly render and collide with obstacles.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I'm proud that I was able to write a functioning game of Tetris in Javascript within the time limit.
What I learned
Games are fun to play, but difficult to write!
What's next for Twitch Plays Tetris
It would be possible to expand this system to work with other games, and potentially with ones that already run in a browser (via imitating key presses?)
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