Party 32: Version 1

Party 32 is a 32-player Mario Party-like - check out party32.com for a full sales pitch!

This is "Version 1" because while it's fully playable, it's rougher than I'd like it to be and might need a big overhaul. But I've been working on it too long to not "release" it 😅 Longer backstory further below!

I wouldn't suggest actually playing it with a real crowd of 32 players right now because I'm afraid it won't be stable/entertaining enough 😅 but everything in the game has been most playtested with 32 computer players, so I'd suggest adding them in using L and R buttons on the setup screen, and avoid creating uneven teams.

Controllers

There are no keyboard controls - sorry! Might add it but no promises 🤷

This game only uses (equivalents of) A, B, L, R, Start, and an analog stick or directional buttons.

This game is an HTML game, so controller support differs by web browser. It's complicated across Chrome/Firefox/etc. and Windows/Mac/etc. Most browsers have a fixed limit of 4 controllers - and while Firefox does not have a limit, it uses Xbox's XInput and so has a limit of 4 Xbox-like controllers.

Also, Firefox has some other weird limits - on Mac it has a polling limitation that gets worse with the more controllers you connect - causing input lag/dropped inputs. And on Windows, for some reason you need to connect Xbox controllers first, before any additional controllers, or else it won't notice them. It also can't fully detect some controllers as good as Chrome, so uhh, on a Switch Pro Controller for example, the analog sticks are non-functional, you use the face buttons to move, and the bumpers as A/B.

I've been looking into if I can package the game as an Electron app and hack the Chromium source code to remove controller limits, but that's a work-in-progress.

Overall, Firefox on Windows is the most flexible and "recommended" platform if you want to play with more than 4 human players right now, I guess.

If the game crashes

The game saves after every team's turn automatically, so if something crashes or soft-locks, you should be able to refresh and restart the turn and hopefully avoid problems. You can clear those saves in the pause menu, and if you're familiar with the web browser dev tools there's some instructions in the logs there to further modify saves and fiddle with debug flags.

What might still be updated in this "Version 1"

• I want to update some visuals to have better contrast, support colourblind people, and generally make things more readable. I know the clean borderless look is not great in spots.
• I should probably make it easier to connect and map unknown controller buttons. I want to support anything I can really - most Xbox/PlayStation/Nintendo controllers are mapped up even if the layout isn't ideal.
• I won't be adding more boards, but I'll probably want to tweak the 3 in the game for balancing. I kind of laid them out haphazardly and haven't done much playtesting.

What won't be updated in this "Version 1"

• I definitely won't be finishing some goofy placeholder items I left in the game as a teaser, but maybe I'd add simple ones if I feel like it.
• I won't be adding more minigames than the 10 in already, probably.
• Pretty much, I won't be adding more "content", just fixes and tweaks.
• I probably can't fix its performance issues - I have an idea of where some obvious inefficiencies are in my "engine", but doing some kind of deep overhaul is a "Version 2" thing.

Unnecessary History

I'm a professional web dev - after practicing creating a 32-player Light Cycle game in HTML canvas, I started developing this game in early 2018. Against popular advice, I decided to go for my "dream game" as my second ever project, but I thought, smartly, with limited scope (lol). I had no patience to learn a game engine (lol), so I just dove head first into it with TypeScript alone and the idea to use Matter.js as a physics library.

Working on this during COVID gave me a lot of purpose during that time and a lot got done, but things lagged as I fell into that classic trap where the first 90% is 90% of the development time, and the remaining 10% takes another 90% of the development time 🙃

Eventually, I did concede to use a tool called PixiJS for drawing things on the screen - but still, this project doesn't use a game engine haha. I don't think you can call my hacked together state machine logic an engine, but in some ways it's nice I can understand it end-to-end - the external tools honestly cause most of my grief, which is why I'm not really sure what to do with this project next.

I waffle on if I should re-write it using an engine, or take a long break from coding and overhaul the art. And I'm not a musician - hiring composers has been tough, so what audio is in the game is pretty much the bare minimum quantity (but imo is very impressive quality - the art just doesn't live up to it 😅).

But, I'm releasing this now by the end of 2024 as a kind of "checkpoint", labeled "Version 1", because while it feels like I've endlessly polished this "MVP" for the last year or two or three, it is playable. The performance is pretty shoddy for such a simple game, but it works on a decent computer. And while the art is basic that I think I could do a better job with, I think the clean "look" of the game is eye-catching in its own way. So, I thought it'd be nice to capture that all now and let a "Version 2" overhaul be its own thing that might take another 6, 10, 20, 100 years. lol.

Credits

The in-game pause menu features a pretty comprehensive breakdown of people who helped and tools used, but shoutout to the composers Zach "Blackjack" Jackson and Tori Roberts.