Available Bot Games

Here is the list of bot games available for RookChat at the present time. All of these are available in the basic RookChat install package.

• AcroBot - Make up what randomly generated acronyms stand for, then vote on the cleverest or craziest submissions from the other players.
• BibleBot - Test your knowledge of the Holy Bible with this quiz bot, which can be played in group or solo settings.
• BingoBot - Each player gets a different card of letters and/or numbers. Then letters and numbers are called by the bot...VERY QUICKLY. Say Bingo! when your entire card has been called, and if you're among the first players to do so, you score.
• BlankBot - First, one player fills in a blank to form a common expression or compound word. Then the other players try to guess how the blank was filled. Even if you're wrong, your answer might be voted the best.
• BlitzBot - Be the first to name items in a given category (e.g., "things with wheels") and get a point for each one you get first. This is a great party game and allows a chance for people to come up with creative and funny answers.
• BuzzBot - Players take turns trying to get the other players to say a secret buzzword. But the player with the buzzword cannot say the buzzword, nor anything in a short list of forbidden words.
• ChainBot - Players take turn continuing a "chain" of words by submitting a new word that is only one letter different from the previous word. Lots of options are available to customize the rules.
• CountBot - You're given a list of numbers. Players try to form creative or funny sentences using words of the given lengths. This is another game in the vein of AcroBot and LetterBot.
• CountryBot - Race to answer questions about national capitals, bordering countries and oceans, languages, and more. You can even try to identify flags as they are displayed to you. There are seven question types, and you can pick which types of questions are asked. You can also pick which area(s) of the world you want to be asked questions about.
• CrackBot - Players submit answers to personal or funny questions (as in WhoBot) and then vote on their favorite answers.
• KickMoleBot - Like MoleBot, but chatters get kicked out of the room when they get hit and have to re-enter. This makes the game that much faster paced and provides added incentive to defend yourself.
• JumbleBot - A grid of letters is provided. How many words can you form, using one letter from each column?
• LetterBot - Make up silly sentences using only a restricted set of letters. Players vote on the cleverest or craziest submissions from the other players.
• LineBot - Make up silly sentences containing randomly selected words from a dictionary. Players vote on the cleverest or craziest submissions from the other players.
• MatchBot - Compete with other players to match the best noun with a randomly chosen adjective, then vote on the best or funniest match from the other players.
• MathBot - Crunch numbers, reduce fractions, factor numbers into primes, solve algebraic equations, and more. Like WordBot, there are seven question types, and you can pick which question types are asked. Because questions are generated randomly, there is essentially no limit to the possible questions it might ask.
• MoleBot - A version of Whack-A-Mole. Race to whack other chatters over the head with assorted bizarre weapons.
• MovieBot - Clues about a movie are gradually supplied, one every few seconds. The first person to guess the movie being described wins a point. There is also a solitaire mode available.
• PokerBot - Play limit poker, any of 21 different variations, including Texas Hold'Em, Omaha 8, 7-Card Stud, Five Card Draw, and more.
• SnagBot - A list of items with point values are presented, and players race to grab the high scoring items and pawn the negative scoring items off on others.
• StackBot - Build stacks of words without reusing letters in any of the columns. Four different modes of play.
• StateBot - Like CountryBot, but it asks questions about U.S. states: capitals, largest cities, state birds, state flowers, bordering states, mottos, postal abbreviations, and more. There are twelve question types, and you can pick which question types are asked.
• StoryBot - Players collaborate on writing a story by taking turns writing a few words at a time. Results can be hilarious and surprising.
• WhoBot - How well do you know your opponents? The bot asks a personal question. Players submit answers secretly, then try to guess who said which answer.
• WordBot - Make words from letters, words from other words, unscramble words, etc. There are seven question types in total, and you can pick which question types are asked. Because questions are generated randomly from an internal dictionary, there is essentially no limit to the possible questions it might ask. Play this one by yourself, or competitively with other users.

Other EntertainmentBots

• BotBot - Overwhelmed by the number of bot games? BotBot helps players decide what to play during any given bot game session. Additionally, they can rate the other bots on a scale of 1-5, and BotBot will catalogue the averages and report the favorites.
• WhizKid - The bot that plays bot games. WhizKid will play other bot games, such as MatchBot and AcroBot, automatically. Plus, randomized sentence construction lets you hold bizarre sorts of conversations with it outside of the games.
• WhizGirl - Like WhizKid, but with different initial settings. Sometimes it's nice to have two bot players. See if you can get WhizKid and WhizGirl to talk to each other.

Additional Bots

Besides the above bot games, the following bots are available which can be useful tools for room moderators.

• HostBot - This bot repeats anything its owner says to it privately. Because it says things in red text, it can be helpful for room moderators to conduct an organized, hosted chat or gaming session.
• EchoBot - This bot repeats anything anybody says to it privately. The results can be chaotically amusing, as it suddenly provides users with a way to say things anonymously. Use with care!

Bot Game Development

Want to write your own bot? A bot development toolkit is provided for developers who wish to write their own bots. This toolkit is but a single Python module with most of the functions bots will generally ever need, so making your own bot is normally only a matter of writing a single module that makes use of the toolkit.

Programming a bot is not simple, but nor should it prove to be overly difficult for those with a reasonable level of programming experience. How much is "a reasonable level"? Well, it depends on what you want the bot to do. The good news is that, since there are so many bots already available, it may be that all you need to do is copy the bot that is most structurally similar to what you want to do, then just change what needs changing. For example, to write a bot that asks timed questions and keeps score, just take take MathBot or BlitzBot, rip out the question generation routines, and replace them with your own.

If you want to do a bot that does something fundamentally different than any existing bot, that will take more effort and programming experience, again depending on what it is you'd like to do.

Note that RookChat and its bot system are open source projects, released under the GNU Public License. The source code for new or modified bots should be made publicly available. The simplest way to do this, of course, is to provide a link to it on your web site. Releasing it under the GNU public license allows you to distribute the source code while retaining copyright.

If you do write a new bot, or significantly enhance an existing one, I would love to see it! Please contact me at sam@rinkworks.com and let me know about your bot! In some cases (though I won't do this without permission), I may even want to include your bot in the main distribution. If enough people write new bots that I can't include in the main distribution, I'll open up a bots page here and link to the bots that other people have written, so it's important that you let me know about any new bots you have created.