The presence of modding infrastructure in the game, as is the case with Cities Skylines, simplifies this type of integration a lot.
However, it is also more code-intensive and requires one to learn enough about the game engine to integrate your own code with it. This is significantly more powerful as you are no longer limited to slightly tweaking the existing functionality of the original game you can actually add new ones.
The other side of the spectrum is an internal integration where you reprogram or otherwise augment the game itself, effectively writing a mod that triggers the desired effects on command. Additionally, you are fundamentally limited to doing things that the game’s engine already supports. This is simultaneously the simpler and more difficult way it’s conceptually simple to change memory address X to value Y, but finding which address to set to what value to have the desired outcome is the technically challenging part. This can be thought of as a sort of viewer-controlled Gameshark or Cheat Engine. A lot of the effect packs for retro console games do this they alter select parts of the game’s memory as it’s running to change how it behaves.
The two extremes of this spectrum are what I think of as external and internal integrations.Īn external integration is one where the effect pack is separate from the game, manipulating it from the outside. Roughly speaking, the way a given Crowd Control effect pack works falls on a spectrum. Knowing that Cities Skylines had an official modding API, surely I could build my own effect pack, right? Getting Started Seeing as this charity stream was a success, there clearly existed some largely untapped fling virtual meteors at someone else’s virtual city niche. I realized that this process, which in this case was manual, could be automated using Crowd Control. The gimmick was that the player was trying to build a city, but also promised that he would cause a meteor strike for every $1000 raised. This past September, I was watching a YouTube video from a charity stream of Cities Skylines.
Since (most) games aren’t designed for this type of audience participation, each game needs its own effect pack, a bespoke piece of software that can talk to Crowd Control, inform it what effects are available, accept incoming effect requests, and provide feedback about whether it was successful. Regardless of the game and its exact effects, knowing the Chaotic Evil alignment of the internet as a collective, whatever the malevolent side of the equation manifests as per game is typically the more prevalent one. Since all games are different, the set of possible effects is game-specific. These effects range from being helpful (such as extra health or improved items) to malevolent (such as spawning additional enemies or impeding movement) or just silly-but-harmless. This is done by letting the viewers purchase “coins” that can then be used to trigger specific effects in the game being played by the streamer. It’s an extension for the Twitch live streaming platform that allows viewers to influence the gameplay they are watching. I’m a fan of Crowd Control, a service provided by Warp World.