TwitchPlaysPokemon - How does it work?
reddit / irc

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ShitfaceTom · 2014-02-17 21:22

The whole concept is interesting. How does it work? What's the behind
the scenes stuff?

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[deleted] · 2014-02-17 21:29

[deleted]

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Nascimentos · 2014-02-17 21:29

"The broadcaster chooses to remain anonymous, but he did share how the
channel works. "I wrote a script in Python that listens for buttons
said in chat and simulates a keypress for the corresponding button in
the emulator. The script also outputs button presses to a locally-
hosted website which provides the overlay. I use Open Broadcaster
Software to merge the website and emulator output into a video feed
that gets sent off to Twitch."

[Source](http://www.gamespot.com/articles/over-60k-people-watching-
twitch-play-pokemon-update/1100-6417762/)

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shadowh511 · 2014-02-19 00:29

Pretty much: Twitch chat exposes an IRC-like interface

I wrote something similar in python as programming challenge and would
be happy to explain it.
https://github.com/lyska/StreamControl/blob/master/main.py

The part that you would care about is here:
https://github.com/lyska/StreamControl/blob/master/main.py#L33-L51

        elif message.verb == "PRIVMSG":

`PRIVMSG` is the verb from the server that means a channel or private
message is being directed toward the bot.

                key = message.args[-1].lower()

With the IRC line parsing code I use, `message.args` is an array of
all the arguments to the verb.

                if key == "a":
                        pressKey("z")
                elif key == "b":
                        pressKey("x")
                elif key == "down":
                        pressKey("j")
                elif key == "up":
                        pressKey("k")
                elif key == "left":
                        pressKey("h")
                elif key == "right":
                        pressKey("l")
                elif key == "start":
                        pressKey(";")
                elif key == "select":
                        pressKey("p")

If you have any more questions about how my simple example works,
please let me know and I will explain it further to the best of my
ability.

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ShitfaceTom · 2014-02-19 09:04

Really interesting and would love if you'd explain it more!

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[deleted] · 2014-02-24 23:05

what language are you using? wouldn't a switch statement be more
efficient?

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sprocklem · 2014-03-11 01:03

That looks to be Python which doesn't have a switch statement.