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!fill bug fixes & updates

18 Apr, 2014 @ 10:21pm - Yarr! goosmurf
Thanks to everyone who has joined the group and is trying out the !fill command so far. Keep bashing on it as I am monitoring & fixing bugs.

Here's how it's supposed to work (so you know when to report that something isn't working right):

When someone types !fill in smurfy #1 or #2 the bot should post an announcement to the group. Whilst this is going on it should say so in the in-game chat, and it should also post a confirmation or failure message when it's done with the announcement.

If the player who attempted to call !fill is not a group member the bot will instead suggest that the player join the group... although obviously you guys won't see this message ;)

One of the bugs fixed today is the chat messaging -- this was previously unreliable, making it difficult to tell if the announcement was successful or not.

Note that announcements are automatically deleted 15-20 minutes after they're posted. This is to avoid filling your Friend Activity feeds with crap.

Also, this whole setup only works if we can get enough people to actually join servers when an announcement is sent out.

Please encourage other server starters to join the group -- i.e. people you already see seeding the servers; they're the type of players who will most likely respond to announcements, and would also benefit from using !fill.

Finally, gsan has been hacking at ways to send direct game invites to players. The big benefit is that you'll receive a regular Steam message that you can click to join the server immediately, instead of having to bring up the server browser after seeing an announcement today. No promises on when that will be live though :]
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4 Comments
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gsan 20 Apr, 2014 @ 4:49am 
The bot can check the online status, e.g. will not message if Away, or already in some other game. Can even check if player is on another tf2 server, and then may be msg that user to join smurfy instead. Logic like not message the same person more than once per day is also possible.
ylv 19 Apr, 2014 @ 12:55am 
Ahkay. That actually would work quite well. I am personally not pleased by the prospect of being randomly sent game invites by the smurfy bot. It would startle me :S

But I quite like the announcement system. It's been set up well.
Yarr! goosmurf 18 Apr, 2014 @ 11:40pm 
Yeah it would be a friends list thing so people would have to add a Smurfy bot as a friend.

We have some ideas about how to reduce the spamminess. e.g. opting in/out, obviously if you don't add the Smurfy bot as a friend it can't spam you directly, and you can always unfriend it, but still remain a member of the group if the announcements are what you want.

On top of that we know when every player plays, and we can look at things like Away/Busy status, people already in-game etc so there are lots of clues to help us not spam people who wouldn't be available, and of those available there's no need to spam everyone -- we only need 10-12 people to join a server so you try to contact the minimum number based on expected response.

Other suggestions welcome of course :] We want to make it easy for Smurfy players to get servers going but not be arsehole spammers.
ylv 18 Apr, 2014 @ 10:26pm 
How would you send direct game invites to players? If it was through a friends list kind of system, then being spammed with invites might get a little annoying after a while.
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