Build a party game

Grumbar Party is a map. Every one of its minigames is a definition in the map file, built from parts anyone can use: hazards that fall from the sky, saws that run round a track, a share market, a word to type, a hidden clock, a floor that drops away. A map that sets rules.party is a party: the hall, the pick, each game's title card and practice, the countdown, the results and the podium all come with it.

Start from Grumbar Party#

Open the Forge's Party panel (Players, beside Rules) and switch it on: it lays the hall and a handful of games on a grid of plots, 40 tiles square each, from the map's north-west corner, and tells you how many fit your map. Or open a ready-made eight-game party, /maps/party-starter.play.json, with File, Import Map JSON, and change it from there.

The panel edits the party's name, its rounds, how each game is picked (Grumbar's wheel, a vote walked in the hall, the last-placed guest's pick, a playlist, free play), the AI guests, the big top, the host's show, the games in the pool and where each arena stands (plots, and the hall), the characters on offer (roster), and your own games as JSON (games).

A game is data#

{
  "id": "bridge_of_saws",
  "name": "Bridge of Saws",
  "goal": "Run three laps as a goat. Hop the saws. First home wins.",
  "blurb": "Round and round the island while the saws come the other way.",
  "quip": "Mind your horns.",
  "controls": { "move": "Run", "a": "Hop" },
  "format": "ffa",
  "win": "goal",
  "seconds": 100,
  "arena": { "shape": "circle", "w": 21, "edge": "wall", "floor": "grass", "dressing": "farm", "start": "bases" },
  "avatar": { "costume": "critter_goat", "speed": 4.3, "a": { "kind": "jump" } },
  "parts": [{ "kind": "laps", "laps": 3, "inner": 3.6, "saws": 5, "speed": [3.2, 6.8], "cross": 2 }]
}

• format: ffa, teams or one_vs_all. win: survive (last standing), goal (first over the line, or round the laps) or score (most points, with an optional target and lowWins).
• arena: a circle or a rect of 6 to 40 tiles; past its edge a wall, water or lava; a floor (grass, dirt, stone, ice which slides, sand, snow, ash, wood, or open water for ships); a dressing kit round it; how the guests start; obstacles; a maze; night; a set piece of props (within each prop's own scale range); sunken (the floor one or two cliff levels below the ground round it, the cliff its wall); venue; biome.
• avatar: a costume every guest becomes (a sheep, a ship, a trebuchet: any unit), scale, speed, accel, radius, lives, ghost, and two buttons, a (Space) and b (E).

Buttons#

Parts#

A game is a list of parts. Every part plays with two guests or eight, and the AI guests know how to play every one.

Hook and Haul is a pit and a hook:

{
  "avatar": { "a": { "kind": "shoot", "look": "hook", "speed": 15, "life": 0.7, "cooldown": 1.6, "effect": "hook", "radius": 0.5 } },
  "parts": [{ "kind": "pit", "r": 2.8, "look": "lava" }]
}

The JSON Schema for every field is in the API reference.

The big top and the biomes#

Every arena stands in a big top unless it says "venue": "open" (or the rules do, for the whole party): a striped tent round the arena, bunting, lanterns and a crowd in the stands. And each arena is drawn in its own biome, a winter arena in snow and a volcano in ash, on the one map: the party fades through black and swaps the ground, the grass, the cliffs, the water and the light as it moves there. Leave biome out and the dressing chooses (winter is winter and a swamp is swamp; the rest keep the map's own biome, which reads best under the tent).

{ "arena": { "shape": "circle", "w": 18, "edge": "wall", "floor": "snow", "dressing": "winter", "biome": "winter", "venue": "open" } }

Your party's front door#

Publish the map and its Play button in Custom Games opens your party on its setup in the hall, inside the map itself: every guest picks who they come as from your roster, and the party's host picks how long it runs, how each game is chosen, the AI guests and which of your games are in, then throws the party. Alone and online it is the same screen. A link does the same: /play?party=setup&map=/maps/party-starter.play.json (a shipped map) or &map=community:<id> (a published one). To open with that setup every time, whoever starts the map and however, set "hallSetup": true. Give the setup a title and a tagline with menu, or set "menu": false to launch the map as written, with no setup in the hall.

{ "menu": { "title": "Gnomish Games", "tagline": "Six games, no gnomes" } }

The camera, the controls and the pick#

• camera: a game can look its own way: pitch (radians from straight down; about 0.8 is the party's own, 1.2 looks down a street), dist (tiles back) and y (tiles south of the middle to look at). The Shooting Gallery uses it for its view down the town street.
• controls: the title card's legend for moving, A and B, and type for a game played at the keyboard (a typing game). On a computer the mouse aims: a click on the game is a press of A (right click, B) at the spot it lands, for a shoot, a lob, a dash, a horde swat or a gallery shot.
• pickPads: by default the guests walk onto a drum in the hall to vote for the next game (or the last-placed guest picks); set "pickPads": false in the rules to keep the cards only.