announcements

Congrats to Esvrainzas [361] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the September 2025 clan competition and securing a 19th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [361]		8,078,491	(x18.98)
2		<Mount Wario>	Starbot [145]		4,283,034	(x11.40)
3		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		4,277,627	(x10.20)
4		<The Gunners>	Bilberry [271]		3,242,364	(x8.22)
5		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [76]		1,595,669	(x3.69)
6		<Tarnished>	SinGinOPASF [34]		1,404,241	(x3.51)
7		<ZalIsAlwaysRight>	MrZal2 [100]		1,273,529	(x2.95)
8		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [274]		941,075	(x2.27)
9		<dogs>	elf9 [32]		898,226	(x2.17)
10		<Black Clover>	Asta [75]		760,919	(x1.76)

Also see:

• September 2025 clan rankings
• September 2025 bot rankings

Hello everyone! As we head into the final few days of the September clan race, here's a 3-part announcement about what's been going on and what to expect in the coming months.

June-September 2025 patch notes

Features:

• Bot energy history chart: Extended the clan energy history chart to a bot version of the chart, now available on the Hall of Fame page.
• Showroom orders: Showroom filtering/sorting workshop settings now apply to the item order page (from suggestion).
• New player experience: Revamped the "new player" box that appears on the homepage until level 20 with a bit more info.

Bug fixes:

• Stars: Fixed/modernized the automated PayPal integration. Star purchasers no longer need to wait for me to manually hand out stars.
• Battle again links: Fixed bug where "battle again" links weren't working in the "your bot is still battling" case (from bug).
• Bot energy history chart: Fixed rendering issue caused by sparse data (from bug).
• Deleted threads and pagination: Thread deletion is now taken into account in forum thread pagination (from bug).

Misc:

• Policy docs: Published updated player guidance on some key topics, see Code of Conduct and Cheating and unfair play policy.
• Muted players and bmail: Lifted restriction on muted players being able to send bmail, which was an unintentional holdover from a spam issue from a long time ago that's since been solved in a different way.
• Anti-cheat: Various other smaller anti-cheat improvements, continuing with past increased focus after November 2024 cheating.
• Non-destructive bot locking: Replaced the destructive bot lock/reset process with a simple bot lock on/off switch. More on this below.

Past patch notes:

• December 2024 - June 2025
• August - December 2024
• June 2024

Non-destructive bot locking

tl;dr: Mostly backend-only change to how bots get locked.

I want to go into a bit more detail about what this part of the patch notes refers to. Although it should be 99% invisible to players, I still wanted to call it out for a few reasons:

• It's not 100% invisible. I'll talk about the 1% visible below.
• This change was quite significant and invasive, and thus has a higher chance of bugs.
• This is where pretty much all of my development time has gone over the past month.

First, some quick background on the old system that this new one replaces. Previously, as detailed in the Cheating and unfair play policy, when a player is caught cheating, they lose their bots. Previously, this was a "destructive" lock/reset process. It was destructive in the sense that it made irreversible[*] changes to the player's bots by setting them to level 1, clearing out their wins, losses, energy, trophies, equipment, and so on.

[*] Not truly irreversible, but it would be really annoying and error-prone to have to do. There are daily database backups, but it would be quite tedious to restore individual bots, which I've thankfully never had to do.

This meant I had to be extremely conservative about locking bots - not so much the evidence of cheating that I take action on (this remains unchanged), but rather the threshold for bot association. One of the hardest things to deal with when someone is caught cheating is identifying their pool of bots. Since bots are regularly shared with others, it's often challenging to sift through sometimes hundreds of bots to figure out who owns what, whether the cheater logged into someone else's bots just briefly or played more substantially, and so on. For this part of the lock/reset process, I often erred on the side of caution and preferred false negatives (i.e. letting a few of the cheater's bots potentially slip through in cases where there wasn't as clear of a link).

Fast forward to now. Now, instead of making all those actual changes to the bot, there's a single on/off switch for each bot saying whether it's locked. If that switch is flipped, the intention is for it to appear to all players the same as if the destructive actions had been taken. They won't appear in the hall of fame, fight lists, clan membership, clan tax, be considered for clan rankings, gain EPH, trophy leaderboard, receive end-of-month trophies, and so on. However, in the off-chance I made a mistake and need to reverse a locking, it's now very easy. The cost of all this is more logic everywhere for checking for locked bots, which is (a) why this update took so much time to finish and (b) why there's an increased possibility of bugs with a major update like this.

Now for the 1% visible part. Clans can now go ownerless (and a major one just did) if the owner is locked. I haven't yet decided whether to create some process for a highest-ranking non-owner to claim ownership of an ownerless clan, so I'm open to hearing community opinions - please share your thoughts on that here in this thread if you any.

And if you notice any issues with locked bots appearing in ways they shouldn't, of course please start a thread in the Bugs sub-forum.

Dev update

tl;dr: Spent a bunch of time on anti-cheat, going to start paid marketing next, then (probably) return to clan race updates.

Although often invisible, game integrity is one of the most important "features" of the game. As I've referenced in this patch notes post and past ones, anti-cheat continues to be a major area of investment for me after the November 2024 cheating. As a result, there have been a string of players caught cheating over the past several months (see recent posts in the Hall of Shame). Although detection has been scaling up well, taking action has not been scaling up well, mostly for the reasons described above with the problems with the old destructive bot lock/reset process. So pausing "core" development work was necessary to devote time/attention to getting that finished up. The good news is that it will now be much more efficient to deal with future cases of cheating. Anti-cheat will continue to be a focus of course, but in the coming months I expect to be able to focus substantially more time on parts of the game that are more immediately visible to players.

My next order of business is to start up a fairly significant daily paid marketing budget for the game. I'd already made some progress on this before having to switch to anti-cheat work, so I'll be dusting this off next and returning to it. I've talked a lot in various forum threads about wanting to grow the game, and have come to the conclusion that in addition to making game improvements to retain existing players, I need to do a better job of attracting new players. Whether there's a market for a mostly-text-based link-clicking/robot-fighting game in 2025...we'll find out. But between the generosity of players that have purchased stars (thank you!), and combined with my own "real job" income that I'll start putting towards this budget, I want to get this up and running and on auto-pilot while I continue to refine the game experience for everyone that's already here now (or finds their way back!). The work required to make this happen before I actually start spending money is (likely) setting up a Discord server for the game (typical expected community platform of new players in 2025), better/modernized Google Analytics integration (to ensure marketing spend is effective and figure out where drop-off is happening), creating a dedicated landing page for the ad campaign (the current homepage is not a very useful landing page), streamlining the bot registration process, and learning some basics about how to run and optimize an ad campaign.

Once that's up and running, with the usual disclaimer that my plans may change because it's really difficult to forecast out what I'll be working on with high certainty, I'll likely (finally) be returning to some of the clan race improvement ideas that have been discussed in many forum threads (the Clan competition changes for June + looking ahead thread has a decent summary, if potentially slightly stale). It'll have been some time since I've delved into all the possibilities, so when I get to this point, I'll likely take a fresh pass over everything, evaluate implementation costs and expected benefit, and then come up with some sort of roadmap that I can share to give you an updated look at what you can expect to see.

As always, thanks for playing, and thank you for putting up with my often-slower-than-expected pace of updates. I'm particularly excited to get the marketing budget up and running, and cautiously optimistic that we may start to see more new faces around here.

Congrats to Esvrainzas [360] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the August 2025 clan competition and securing a 18th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [360]		10,143,626	(x24.97)
2		<Mount Wario>	Busbot [244]		9,082,250	(x21.82)
3		<Real Fighters>	NiK [105]		4,418,717	(x10.51)
4		<The Gunners>	Dewsberry [345]		3,653,697	(x8.27)
5		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		1,226,136	(x2.91)
6		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [140]		1,098,727	(x2.46)
7		<Tarnished>	SinGinOPASF [33]		1,032,574	(x2.78)
8		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,025,026	(x2.32)
9		<Silence is Golden>	Felix Argyle [221]		953,112	(x2.21)
10		<The Tarago>	MAPASUA [150]		678,235	(x4.32)

Also see:

• August 2025 clan rankings
• August 2025 bot rankings

Congrats to Fishwick [135] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the July 2025 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Fishwick [135]		8,707,533	(x20.59)
2		<Mount Wario>	Starbot [145]		4,758,229	(x14.22)
3		<The Gunners>	Dewsberry [345]		2,933,470	(x7.32)
4		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [140]		2,803,141	(x6.44)
5		<Tarnished>	God Malachorn [30]		2,490,626	(x5.92)
6		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		2,335,916	(x6.20)
7		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		980,091	(x2.34)
8		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [261]		930,374	(x2.21)
9		<Apex>	Guardian Angel [75]		675,409	(x1.52)
10		<Real Fighters>	NiK [105]		600,716	(x1.35)

Also see:

• July 2025 clan rankings
• July 2025 bot rankings

Hey everyone, in light of some recent events, I'd like to provide some clarity on the game's policy regarding cheating and be transparent with how I've handled both past and recent situations. My primary responsibility is to protect the integrity of the game for everyone who plays fairly, and the inconsistency with recent enforcement has created confusion. I want to own that, explain the history, and outline the clear, formal policy that will be in effect from this point onward.

Let's start with the elephant in the room. Last week, the player known as Osh was caught using an autoclicker, which was impacting the July clan race with his clan clearly dominating the month. As a result, 857 of his bots were locked/reset. Shortly after, he began playing again on new bots. This understandably caused confusion and concern within the community.

To set things straight: Osh's additional bots have now been locked/reset, and he is now permanently banned from the game.

How we got here and the corner I painted myself into

My long-standing, though implicit, policy has been that players caught cheating are permanently banned. As seen in the Hall of Shame, there are currently 6 instances of "Banned player". While not all cheaters have attempted to return, those who did were typically discovered and had their new bots locked/reset again.

This is where my own actions created a difficult precedent. A couple years ago, the long-banned player Alan reached out to me. After multiple failed attempts to return in the past, he sent a sincere apology, explaining that was younger when he cheated and had matured since. I made a judgment call to allow him back. My error was not necessarily in accepting his story, but in making a private exception that undermined the implicit policy and created an inconsistency I never properly addressed.

This brings us to Osh. After he was caught, he was cooperative, admitted to his actions, and even provided his script to help me improve the game's detection systems. In light of this, and thinking of the precedent I'd set with Alan, I tentatively told Osh he could start fresh, but that I reserved the right to rescind the offer after further consideration.

After seeing the community's reaction and reflecting on the situation, I realized that was the wrong call. The impact of Osh's cheating was immediate and fresh in everyone's minds, directly corrupting the game's primary competitive event. Allowing him to return just days later sends the complete wrong message about the importance of game integrity.

The path forward: A clear policy for everyone

After a lot of thought, I've decided on a path that I believe respects past decisions while establishing the firm foundation we need for the future:

• Decision on Osh: As stated above, I have reversed my tentative offer. The harm from his recent cheating is too significant to overlook. He is permanently banned.


• Decision on Alan: Alan was reinstated years ago under very different circumstances. He has been an active player since his return. I feel it would be unfair to retroactively apply this new formalization to him. He will be "grandfathered in" and is welcome to continue playing.


• Clarification on Ville: It's important to differentiate between bans for in-game cheating and bans for more severe, community-damaging actions. Ville was banned not just for cheating, but also for actions that included real-money scamming of other players. The "grandfather clause" will not apply in his case. While I have heard some occasional rumors of his return, I've not yet seen definitive evidence of this myself. If he surfaces, the permanent ban will be enforced.


• New formal policy: To eliminate all ambiguity from this day forward, I have posted a new, official policy thread outlining what constitutes cheating and its consequences. You can read it here: Cheating and unfair play policy.

The core takeaway is now simple: Players caught cheating will be permanently banned.

My goal is to provide a fair and competitive environment. This clear and consistent policy is a crucial step in upholding that commitment. Thank you for your understanding as I work to correct my past inconsistencies and formalize these important rules.

Congrats to Esvrainzas [359] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the June 2025 clan competition and securing a 17th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [359]		11,890,080	(x28.05)
2		<Mount Wario>	Starbot [145]		8,552,511	(x24.55)
3		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [140]		3,147,269	(x8.34)
4		<FUNNY FARM>	TheRealFlaxShady [148]		1,676,253	(x4.42)
5		<The Gunners>	Dewsberry [342]		1,595,099	(x5.02)
6		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		1,383,466	(x3.69)
7		<DOOM>	DrEvilZal [100]		1,305,790	(x3.11)
8		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,226,815	(x2.86)
9		<Apex>	Guardian Angel [75]		1,193,839	(x2.77)
10		<Tarnished>	Brainstorm [174]		1,069,649	(x3.55)

Also see:

• June 2025 clan rankings
• June 2025 bot rankings

I've just posted the game's new Code of Conduct. This more comprehensive set of guidelines is now the definitive guide for community standards and replaces the previous shorter Player communication rules. The new CoC thread is locked to serve as a stable reference, and this announcement will be the official channel for feedback and discussion about it.

For many years, the game operated with a very loose "be civil" approach to moderation. While that worked for a time, I believe our community has reached a point where more explicit guidelines are necessary to achieve the primary goal: making bots4 a more positive, respectful, and welcoming environment for everyone, both our dedicated veterans and any newcomers who join us.

Many of you may have noticed an increase in moderation activity over the past couple of months. This wasn't arbitrary; it was the first step in a deliberate effort to curb the toxicity that can sometimes make our forums an intimidating or unpleasant place to be. This new Code of Conduct is the next step in that process. The goal isn't to be heavy-handed, but to be consistent and transparent, providing a clear foundation so everyone knows what is expected.

To be perfectly clear: This is not an attempt to eliminate conflict, rivalry, or "spicy" discussion. bots4 is a competitive game, and the rivalries that form are a core part of its history and fun.

The Code of Conduct explicitly outlines the difference between acceptable, game-focused trash talk and unacceptable personal attacks or hostile goading. My aim, and the aim of these rules, is to moderate toxic behavior, not to stifle competition. You can still work to defeat your rivals, but you must treat them with a baseline of respect as fellow players when you communicate.

I believe these rules are a vital step towards ensuring the long-term health and enjoyability of our community, and I am committed to upholding these principles.

That said, this thread is an open channel for you to share your thoughts and feedback on this new direction. I am interested to hear if you are supportive of this renewed focus on a more respectful environment and any constructive thoughts you have on how we, as a community, can best uphold these standards together. While the core principles of respect and civility are non-negotiable, your feedback on the application and clarity of these rules is valued.

Thank you for taking the time to read the new Code of Conduct. I look forward to your constructive feedback and to working with all of you to build a better bots4 community.

It's been close to 6 months since my last patch notes post, so it's time to go through my code commits and collect the list of player-facing changes. If you have feedback on the format of this type of update, please let me know. Going forward, I plan to use announcements threads like this for both (a) comprehensive patch notes posts every so often that exhaustively list everything that's changed from a player-facing perspective (the idea being that going through these can fully catch you up) and (b) one-off threads for bigger or more important changes that would benefit from more immediate feedback. I think this balance lets me make small tweaks and fixes on the fly without having to spam everyone with announcements for every little thing. With that said, on to the details...

Features:

• Stash reordering: Items in stash can now be re-ordered. Click/drag on desktop. Long-hold/drag on mobile (see announcement).
• Buy unequippable items: All items can now be bought to make upcoming upgrades a bit smoother (see announcement).
• Overflow stash items: Stars are no longer needed to see inaccessible stash items (see announcement).
• Monthly Crescendo: To keep competition relevant throughout the entire month, energy exchanged per battle will increase steadily throughout the month. This is currently set to 5% per day in June (down from 10% per day in May) based on player feedback. See the May announcement thread, May feedback thread, and June annoucncement thread for plenty of discussion.
• 10 member clans: The ranking clan member cap was reduced from 20 to 10. This was done to lower the barrier for a clan to effectively compete and make the top spots more attainable for smaller, focused teams. See the links in the previous bullet for discussion on this as well.
• Click-to-pause buffs: Click/tap buff icons to pause/unpause. A small QoL change to make it easier to quickly stop/start buffs (from suggestion).
• Clan energy history: Added an energy history chart for the top 10 clans to the clans homepage (see discussion).
• Cancel showroom orders: Arrived orders can now be canceled, just like unarrived orders (from suggestion).

Bug fixes:

• Buff purchase: Fixed a bug where a global buff being active would prevent you from buying its regular version (from bug).
• Mobile stash: Fixed a bug making opening the details popup for stash items on mobile unreliable, which was caused by the stash reordering feature (from bug).
• Emoji bar: Fixed a bizarre and oddly-specific (Firefox-only + only when logged out) rendering issue with this (from bug).
• Historical clan rankings: Fixed a small rounding error that could lead to the wrong level being displayed on the clan history page in a very narrow set of edge cases.
• Unread post count: Forum posts from deleted threads will no longer contribute to your unread post count.
• Buff sort order: This broke when adding global buffs in December. It is now fixed (from bug).
• Start-of-month energy: Fixed a bug that caused energy to not enter the game until 1am instead of midnight on June 1 (from bug).

Misc:

• Text input font: Changed in places like forum post entry boxes from fixed-width to the same font as the game (from suggestion).
• Anti-cheat: Invested further into the system, continuing with past increased focus after November 2024 cheating.
• Deleted forum posts: Rather than be totally hidden, deleted posts now have a "removed by moderator" stub to (a) give transparency on forum moderation actions, (b) give a signal that the forum is actively moderated, and (c) give a hint of when a thread may be confusing because of context that was formerly present and possibly replied to but now removed.
• Forum moderation: In an effort to make the forum a more welcoming environment for new players and veterans alike, player communication rules are being more regularly enforced.
• Ranking clan members: On clan profile pages, the rank column now has a yellow background for rows where that bot is contributing to ranking.
• Unequippable items in stash: Just like in the showroom stock, unequippable items in your stash now have a red background.
• Mobile stash: Added light haptic/vibration feedback when starting/ending drag.
• Global buffs: Global buffs are now visually distinct from regular buffs. They have a 2 pixel gold outline. This may change (see post.
• Daily energy exchange increase: The daily rate is now visible to players as a global buff named Monthly Crescendo, rather than being a hidden system detail (see post).

As for what's next: I'll mostly be continuing to focus on the clan competition aspect of the game. The Clan competition changes for June + looking ahead thread has a list of specifically what to look out for (but note that the list is tentative and may change). I'll continue making smaller QoL updates and bug fixes in parallel with these larger changes. Some additional items to look out for at some point (no timelines just yet) are better player analytics to understand engagement/retention (I talked about this a bit in my last patch notes post), Discord server setup (see post), and introducing a comprehensive player code of conduct that will likely replace the existing player communication rules in the interest of making the game and community aspect a more welcoming place for all players.

Past patch notes (I'm going to start including this list in all patch notes announcements):

• August - December 2024
• June 2024

Hi everyone, as we kick off the June clan race, I want to thank you all for the fantastic amount of detailed feedback and thoughtful discussion over the past month regarding the May experiment and future ideas for the clan race. I've been reading through all of it - in the official May feedback thread, the All Bots Gain Monthly Energy discussion, and more. It's clear how passionate everyone is about this core aspect of the game, and I truly appreciate you sharing your insights.

This post will outline changes for June, as well as my current thinking on longer-term directions based on that feedback and ongoing observation. First though, a note on future plans: The ideas below for "later in June" and beyond are currently in various stages of planning or early consideration. Game development, especially for a solo developer, can have unpredictable timelines, and details may evolve as I work through implementation, balance, or based on further feedback and testing. Please consider these as directions I'm actively exploring, not firm promises with fixed ETAs. I always reserve the right to adjust plans to best serve the game's overall health.

Live now (effective June 1)

Daily energy exchange growth reduced from 10% to 5%

• Based on a lot of feedback from the May experiment, the daily energy exchange increase has been reduced from 10% to 5% per day. The spreadsheet I'd shared before has been updated to reflect this.
• Reasoning: While the 10% scaling aimed to keep the end-of-month competitive, many of you felt it was a bit too extreme, potentially devaluing early month effort more than intended and raising valid concerns about the rapid drain of system-wide "loose energy." Although the math showed the first half of the month still carried significant weight (~1/3 of total impact), perception and feel are very important. The new 5% daily increase will still provide a significant end-of-month multiplier (around 2.5x the base rate on the final day), aiming to keep things interesting and comebacks feasible, but in a way that should feel more balanced throughout the entire month.
• Regarding "total energy inflation" caused by scaling - I'm less concerned about this for the "total energy" stat itself in the long run, as I plan to re-evaluate its meaning and how we track long-term achievement (more on that below).

Ranking clan member cap remains at 10

• The reduction from 20 to 10 members for clan ranking and end-of-month clan trophies will remain in place for June.
• Reasoning: The primary goal here was to lower the barrier to entry for more clans to compete effectively. While May's race still saw a significant lead at the very top (often a reflection of concentrated resources or exceptional individual performance, as some of you noted, rather than just raw numbers of scorers), the top 10 change is a step I believe is in the right direction. I'll continue to monitor its impact on clan formation and competitive dynamics, and I'm mindful of balancing this with the experience of players in larger clans (like high-level training bots) and their opportunities for recognition.

Targeting later in June

Visible global buff for daily energy scaling

• To make the daily energy exchange scaling more transparent and easier for everyone to track, I'll be working to display it as a visible global buff that clearly shows the current day's energy exchange multiplier. This will remove any guesswork.

Fight list page revamp

• A significant quality-of-life improvement I'm aiming to get out later this month is a revamp of the fight list page. The goal is to drastically improve the process for identifying viable targets. My tentative plan is to move towards a single, paginated table (as opposed to level-specific tables/pages) that is sortable by various columns (like level, energy, ratio) and also filterable. I'm also looking to add new information/features, such as how recently you've attacked a bot and the ability to apply custom labels or notes to bots (e.g. "favorite", "easy", "hard", etc.).

Targeting July or later (requires more design and development)

"All bots gain energy" (conceptual exploration)

• There's clearly a lot of community interest in making energy more broadly accessible. I'm strongly considering and actively exploring concepts where a wider base of bots (i.e. unclanned) generate some baseline EPH.
• Reasoning: This could create a more ambient level of energy, provide more targets, and further lower the barrier to entry for new players and clans, while still ensuring that focused strategy and investment (like well-built dumpers or active clanned play) remain valuable.
• Key considerations would be limiting this to recently-active bots, providing an opt-out mechanism, and setting the EPH rate lower than dedicated clanned bots. This is a complex change with many potential effects, so tuning details are very much TBD and will require careful thought.

Ranked clan qualification

• To make the clan rankings better reflect active, competitive entities, I'm exploring ideas for qualification.
• Reasoning: The goal is to reduce the number of "fluff" or placeholder clans in the rankings. One tentative idea is requiring a clan to have a minimum energy ratio (say, x2) to be formally "ranked". Unranked clans would still be listed, though likely in a separate, collapsed-by-default section.

Differentiated rewards for clan ranks 2-10

• To further incentivize the fight for every spot in the top 10, I plan to introduce more differentiated rewards.
• Reasoning: The current drop-off in reward value after 1st place is significant. I'm tentatively looking at using the F1 scoring system already used elsewhere in the game to scale the value of rewards for ranks 2 through 10. This would give more meaning to finishing 2nd vs. 3rd, 3rd vs. 4th, etc.

"Total energy" rethink

• The "total energy kept when leaving clans" feature is still a high priority. However, as many of you observed, and as the May scaling experiment highlighted, dramatic month-to-month variations in energy generation can make a single, cumulative "total energy" number less meaningful for comparing achievements across different months/mechanics.
• Reasoning: My goal is to reward longevity and a bot's historical achievements without being anchored to a single stat that might become inflated or less comparable over time. This gives us more freedom to experiment with core race mechanics. I'm exploring alternatives, possibly using a system that scores or ranks historical monthly performances (again, F1-style points for past monthly energy results could be one avenue) rather than a simple sum. More details on this once the path is clearer.

Maybe sometime in the future (speculative ideas)

Energy from trainers (PvE)

• Further down the line, I'm open to exploring how PvE activity, like battling trainers, could contribute some energy. It would need very careful tuning to ensure it's less efficient than dedicated PvP or energy-focused strategies but could offer a first step towards a more fleshed-out PvE mode. One idea is to have dynamic scaling for energy received based on attacker level vs. lowest level to beat that trainer in past X hours.

New clan-based game mode

• I'm also in the very early conceptual stages for an entirely new clan-based game mode. This would be designed to complement (definitely not replace!) the core battle loop and clan race, offering a different avenue for clans to work together on shared objectives and progression, adding another dimension to clan identity and teamwork. This is still extremely early thinking and I'm being intentionally vague about details, but it's a direction I'm interested in.

The May experiment was very informative. Please continue to share your constructive thoughts and suggestions - your feedback is invaluable as we work together to make the game more engaging for everyone!

Congrats to Myriad [431] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the May 2025 clan competition and securing a 11th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Myriad [431]		20,271,770	(x45.41)
2		<Mount Wario>	Starbot [145]		5,910,514	(x18.21)
3		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		5,881,783	(x13.90)
4		<Apex>	Guardian Angel [75]		3,699,457	(x8.73)
5		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [140]		2,122,006	(x5.03)
6		<DOOM>	DrEvilZal [100]		1,708,384	(x12.25)
7		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,521,786	(x3.58)
8		<The Gunners>	PeeT2 [387]		1,504,496	(x7.84)
9		<Tarnished>	God Malachorn [30]		1,339,318	(x3.30)
10		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		1,226,004	(x2.75)

Also see:

• May 2025 clan rankings
• May 2025 bot rankings

Hi everyone, as we head into the home stretch of the May clan race, I wanted to start a dedicated thread to gather your feedback on the experimental changes we trialed this month (the daily scaling energy exchange and reducing ranking member cap from 20 to 10).

Now that you've had a chance to experience most of the month with these mechanics, I'd love to hear your thoughts:

• How has the daily energy scaling felt? Has it kept the race more competitive or engaging deeper into the month? How did it affect your strategy, activity levels, or perception of early vs. late-month effort?
• What are your impressions of the ranking member cap reduction from 20 to 10? Has it noticeably impacted competition, or the ability for more clans to contest top spots? Could going even lower, at least for a time, be fun?
• Overall, what worked well, and what didn't, with this May experiment?

I've noticed this month's race is still quite lopsided at the top (with first place having more than double the energy of second place currently). This might suggest that one month isn't enough to fully gauge the impact, that different player strategies are still adapting, or that further tweaks might be needed to achieve the goal of broader, sustained competition. All constructive feedback on this is very welcome.

Looking ahead: Ideas for June and beyond

Beyond just feedback on the May changes, I'm also keen to hear your broader ideas for June and future clan race iterations. There's already some great discussion happening in other threads, like the one suggesting All Bots Gain Monthly Energy, which I'm following with interest (and have just replied to with my initial thoughts).

• What other changes could make the clan race more engaging for more people?
• Are there tweaks to the current May experiment you'd suggest?
• Do you have ideas for new energy sources, ways to spend energy, or different clan incentive structures?

Please share your suggestions here! A quick note on timing: Implementing entirely new, complex systems for the June race is likely unrealistic unless they are very simple adjustments. More significant changes will take more design and development time, but gathering your ideas now is crucial for effective future planning.

A note on "Total energy kept when leaving clans"

Separately, regarding the planned "total energy preserved when leaving clans" change: The energy inflation we've seen from May's scaling experiment has made it clear that the meaning and comparability of a single "total energy" stat across different months or eras of the game is becoming less straightforward.

To ensure we have the flexibility to continue experimenting with race mechanics that might affect monthly energy generation, I'm currently re-evaluating the best way to represent a bot's long-term clan-related achievements. The goal is still to allow players to retain a sense of their bot's history without being penalized for changing clans, but I want to do it in a way that doesn't "lock us down" by making a single, ever-inflating stat (i.e. total energy) the only measure of this, especially when its perceived value can change drastically based on changing month-to-month mechanics. We might need to explore alternative ways to track or display historical progress. This feature is still a high priority, but I want to ensure it’s implemented thoughtfully in a way that supports the game's continued evolution. More on this when I have a clearer path.

Thanks for participating in these experiments and for helping to shape the future of the clan race. I look forward to your constructive thoughts and suggestions!

Congrats to Supernaut [250] for leading <Mount Wario> to victory in the April 2025 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Mount Wario>	Supernaut [250]		9,150,734	(x11.15)
2		<Valhalla>	Nosferatu [364]		3,539,253	(x4.34)
3		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [359]		3,073,745	(x3.67)
4		<Apex>	Zach01 [382]		1,224,039	(x1.44)
5		<House of Batiatus>	Seppius [162]		1,120,902	(x1.32)
6		<Laser Kiwis>	koduck [159]		1,119,555	(x1.32)
7		<Silence is Golden>	Michelle Yeoh [130]		1,074,495	(x1.35)
8		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,065,858	(x1.29)
9		<Tarnished>	Hellboy [34]		1,045,870	(x1.24)
10		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		1,032,643	(x1.22)

Also see:

• April 2025 clan rankings
• April 2025 bot rankings

With the May clan race just around the corner, I wanted to announce some experimental changes we'll be trying out for the month. The primary goal behind these adjustments is to increase competition, lower the barrier for more clans to meaningfully participate, and address some of the feedback regarding long-term clan race stagnation.

Here are the changes:

• 10% daily energy exchange increase (effective May 1): To keep the competition relevant throughout the month (i.e. reduce the possibility of the race feeling "over" mid-month), energy exchanged during battles will now scale upwards as the month progresses. It will start at the normal rate on day 1 and increase by 10% per day (approximately - energy gets rounded), meaning battles near the end of the month will have significantly more impact (reaching 4x the base rate on the final day). This should still reward sustained effort all month long (the first 1/2 of the month still counts for 1/3 of the effort) while making end-of-month comebacks more feasible. See this spreadsheet for the exact math and how the total weight will change for each day of the month.


• Ranking member cap decreased from 20 to 10 (effective May 1): To lower the barrier for a clan to effectively compete and make the top spots more attainable for smaller, focused teams, a clan's monthly rank will now be determined by the sum of the monthly energy of its top 10 members (down from 20). Correspondingly, end-of-month clan trophies will be awarded to top 10 members instead of 20. Individual energy trophies are unaffected and awarded based on individual performance as usual.


• Total energy kept when leaving clans (coming soon^TM): As a (mostly) quality-of-life change, your total energy will no longer be reset when you leave a clan. This is mostly a vanity stat, but it does affect some monthly trophies. The intention of this is to reduce the "pain" of leaving a clan, thus encouraging more competition. I will make a separate announcement post when this is live - I want to do some work to backfill historical total energy (as much as is possible - using end-of-month stats), which is taking some time. So while this change is related to encouraging competition, this change will launch separately once the historical data work is complete. Stay tuned.

Finally, keep in mind that this is an experiment! I want to be clear that these changes (the energy scaling and 10 member changes specifically) are being introduced in May on a trial basis. I'll be monitoring how these changes affect race dynamics, participation, and competitiveness. All of this is subject to change.

Your feedback is crucial for evaluating this experiment. Initial thoughts are of course welcome, but what will be most helpful is constructive feedback based on your actual gameplay experience throughout May. How does the scaling feel in practice? Does the 10 member change make the race feel more fresh and possible to get your foot in the door? I'm particularly interested in hearing your thoughts later in May or early June, once everyone has had a chance to see how these changes play out over the course of a full month.

My hope is that these adjustments lead to a more exciting and engaging monthly clan race. Thanks for your understanding, participation, and feedback!

A few small improvements have been made to the showroom:

• Stash reordering: If you have more than one item in your stash, you will now be able to drag rows up and down to re-order them. They had previously been ordered by item age, i.e. when they were bought from the showroom. This should also work on mobile. Credit to Myriad for the suggestion.
• Buy unequipable items: Previously, you could only buy items that you had the STR/DEX in that moment to equip. This means you couldn't grab an item you could equip in a level or two until actually leveling up and spending stat points. This also raised the barrier for "freaking" a little higher. Now, you can buy unequippable items. Credit to Lemkinator for the suggestion.
• See stash overflow: When you add stars to your bot, make use of the extra stash space, and then remove stars, the stashed items are still there, but hidden. They'd "fall" down into your stash as you made room for them, but other than adding stars back to your bot, there was no way to see what was hidden in the overflow. Now, if you have overflow stash items, a grayed out extra stash area will appear showing them. You can't interact with (i.e. move/equip/sell) them, just see them. Credit to...me! I thought of this one myself while working on the other two improvements.

This is a relatively minor update, but I wanted to put it on everyone's radar rather than wait to bundle it into something like my last patch notes post because of the higher-than-normal possibility of bugs. The showroom code is some of the oldest in the game and it is quite...bad. The ability to re-order stash items in particular was quite invasive (new database column for per-bot orderings, one-time backfill, updates to every showroom workflow that can affect a stashed item).

So as always, but especially after this update, be on the lookout for anything unusual and please report bugs.

Congrats to Laurence [82] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the March 2025 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Laurence [82]		5,887,937	(x7.02)
2		<Valhalla>	ziaodix [301]		3,651,748	(x4.56)
3		<The Banished>	Juv0 [134]		2,511,844	(x2.97)
4		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [300]		1,697,409	(x1.90)
5		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [227]		1,405,141	(x1.59)
6		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [372]		1,181,252	(x1.32)
7		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,179,514	(x1.32)
8		<Tarnished>	ZalTheTarnished [51]		1,113,425	(x1.36)
9		<Apex>	Zach01 [382]		1,077,661	(x1.21)
10		<The North>	Oxyk [79]		1,023,103	(x1.19)

Also see:

• March 2025 clan rankings
• March 2025 bot rankings

Congrats to Esvrainzas [354] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the February 2025 clan competition and securing a 16th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [354]		10,663,955	(x13.47)
2		<Tarnished>	Silencio [40]		8,026,604	(x9.99)
3		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [372]		1,995,798	(x2.48)
4		<Valhalla>	ziaodix [280]		1,893,323	(x3.74)
5		<The Fun House>	Juv0 [134]		1,535,533	(x1.96)
6		<Real Fighters>	NiK [105]		1,315,144	(x8.21)
7		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,079,032	(x1.37)
8		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,020,799	(x1.27)
9		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,004,066	(x1.28)
10		<Apex>	Zach01 [382]		959,116	(x1.21)

Also see:

• February 2025 clan rankings
• February 2025 bot rankings

Congrats to Esvrainzas [352] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the January 2025 clan competition and securing a 15th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [352]		8,208,859	(x9.30)
2		<Tarnished>	God Malachorn [29]		3,959,640	(x5.45)
3		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		2,707,473	(x3.17)
4		<Black Bulls>	Asta [75]		2,318,814	(x2.68)
5		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [370]		1,956,964	(x2.27)
6		<Solo Act>	Malachi [150]		1,871,718	(x2.10)
7		<In Sequence>	ziaodix [299]		1,700,623	(x2.74)
8		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		1,322,802	(x1.50)
9		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,237,013	(x1.39)
10		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,165,454	(x1.41)

Also see:

• January 2025 clan rankings
• January 2025 bot rankings

Congrats to Esvrainzas [346] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the December 2024 clan competition and securing a 14th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [346]		6,493,419	(x7.39)
2		<Tarnished>	Lord Malachorn [20]		4,059,755	(x5.17)
3		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		3,679,192	(x4.12)
4		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [368]		2,131,922	(x2.44)
5		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [139]		1,772,813	(x2.03)
6		<Solo Act>	Malachi [150]		1,718,839	(x1.93)
7		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,620,368	(x2.02)
8		<Murloc Cartel>	Smeagol [403]		1,452,612	(x2.55)
9		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,299,873	(x1.54)
10		<Sin>	Singin [69]		1,260,848	(x2.09)

Also see:

• December 2024 clan rankings
• December 2024 bot rankings

It's been exactly 6 months since my last patch notes post, so I figured it's about time for me to comb through my code commits to the game's repository and piece together a collection of the player-facing changes.

Features:

• [August] Remaining energy in battle log: The remaining energy of the bot that lost energy is now shown in the battle log (from suggestion).
• [October] Expanded showroom settings: There are now 3 showroom filtering options instead of 1: (a) Hide "too strong" (renamed from "Show only equippable"), (b) Hide "too weak", and (c) Always show uniques (from suggestion).
• [November] Tarnished label: Introduced the tarnished label, which is retroactively applied to a clan's win if it's later discovered that a significant portion of that clan's energy was gained through cheating (see details and discussion).
• [December] Emoji reactions: Added emoji reactions to the forum (from suggestion).
• [December] Global buffs: Introduced a global buff system. These are time-based (as opposed to the existing quantity-based) buffs affecting all bots. To kick things off, I've enabled global double exp through New Year's Day (you can disable it like a regular buff if you want to minimize exp gain). After that, there will be a rotating global buff every weekend.

Bugs:

• [December] NaN ratio sorting: Fixed an issue that caused incorrect ordering when sorting clan profiles by ratio when there are NaN bots.

Misc:

• [August] Trophy display order: Trophies awarded at the same time now tie-break sort order in a more intelligent and visually appealing way (from suggestion in IRC, I think).
• [October] Unicode support: Emojis, etc. are now supported in forum/clan posts, bmails, and bot/clan profiles 💃 (from bug).
• [November] Buff bar order: This now matches the shop order. Buffs that can't be bought are placed first (from suggestion).
• [November] Buff colors: Names of buffs are now colored based on "rarity".
• [November] Already-owned buffs: The purchase button is disabled for buffs you already own (from suggestion).
• [November] Workshop save button: Moved the save button on the workshop page (and clan ranks page) to the left (from suggestion).
• [November] Improved simultaneous page request performance: I eliminated a long-standing problem known as session blocking. This was particularly noticeable if you triggered a long-running page request like a documentation page load that triggers a cache refresh; while that request is running, your other windows would get stuck.
• [November] Anti-cheat: Invested substantially into the game's anti-cheat system as a result of the November cheating in order to keep competitive aspects of the game fair.
• [November] Locked/reset bots in HoF: After having removed these bots from the HoF in 2018 (context), they're now back (context).
• [November] Bad word filter: To help keep the game fun, friendly, and welcoming for new players, there is now a "bad word" filter (it's fairly light, see motivation).
• [December] HTTPS: The game now runs on HTTPS instead of HTTP (see discussion).
• [December] Headings in bot/clan profiles: These are now allowed in formatting (from suggestion).
• [December] Forum post links: Individual forum posts can now be linked to. Use the link icon next to the post timestamp to get the link for that post.

Finally, there was a request last month for me to share more about what's coming up. I typically don't do this because I start and stop a lot of ideas depending on how complicated they turn out to be, time, motivation, and so on, so this helps me avoid making commitments that I can't keep to. That said, as an online game player myself, I understand it's fun to get glimpses into what might be coming next. My request is to treat all of this as directional ideas, rather than committed features. I may not end up exploring them further anytime soon for many reasons. In no particular order:

• Counting you!: It occurred to me recently that I have very poor analytics on how the game is doing day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month, retention, and so on. The online history page takes a stab at that, but in general is kind of useless given how many players often create and play and share many bots. This is still preliminary, but I did some work on clustering bots to try to get a sense of how many actual "people" are playing the game each day. I ultimately want to be able to set specific metric goals for myself to grow the game. Depending on how this turns out, I'll probably end up sharing this data and using it to get a sense of how the game is trending, growing, reacting to updates, and so on.
• New player experience: I've talked about this one for awhile in various places, but I'd like to make the game more welcoming for new players. This covers a lot of topics, e.g. I've seen "still on HTTP" mentioned as something that was potentially scaring off new players. Other aspects include reducing barriers for entry like the need to create an account before playing (imagine a "play as guest" option). Analyzing dropoff of new players could be interesting to explore too. After improving all this, I plan to look into ways to promote the game, both paid and unpaid, with the ultimate goal of growing the size of the game's playerbase.
• Bot management: Earlier this month, I began soliciting feedback on managing many bots. Many players have more than one bot, with some players having many, many bots. See that thread for all the fun details, but I ultimately want to make your game account here more like an MMO account from which you can manage many bots (rather than each bot having its own separate login). This would unlock a bunch of fun possibilities, but is made complicated by (a) needing to do some sort of migration from the existing system and (b) the many bot sharing use cases that don't exist for something like an MMO account. I'm thinking of this project as "big risk, big reward" - if you have ideas or feedback, please share on the thread I linked.
• Discord server: IRC is super outdated and it's time to move to Discord. I have a basic server setup, but I've been holding off on opening it up to everyone until I (a) port over the Jane functionality to a Discord bot instead of IRC bot (need a carrot!) and (b) decide whether to block this on the bot management stuff mentioned above. I'd like the Discord server to have a deep integration with the game where you can link your bot (hopefully "account") with your Discord account. If the game's account structure is going to change, I should probably get that done first. But if that's going to take awhile, then maybe it's not worth waiting for. This is what I'm figuring out.
• High-level content: A couple aspects about high-level bots have been discussed on the forums recently. I believe the main ones were (a) new exp drop(s) which would retroactively apply to bots above a certain level and (b) new equipment. Both of these require carefully running a bunch of numbers to ensure balance, so it's a bit of a slow process. It's a bit of a niche feature since most players are lower level, but I still think having high-level content is important and fun (I did, after all, build Project X in the bots2 days). This is something I'll keep poking at.
• Clan competition: I've noticed the game is at it's best and most active when the clan competition heats up. I want to help facilitate more ways to make this happen, whether that's lowering the barriers to compete, having more ways to compete, or making competitions more interesting or even rewarding (being careful with balance to avoid a cycle where the top clan can too easily hold its position). I have some rough ideas for this that I need to kick around more, but for now I just wanted to share that this is something I'm thinking about and recognize it as something that's important for the lifeblood of the game.

Finally, if you have ideas for the game, there's never been a better time than today to post about them in the suggestions sub-forum. I read every post there (though I may not reply, see my recent post about what to expect when posting a suggestion). Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Congrats to Myriad [428] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the November 2024 clan competition and securing a 10th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Myriad [428]		12,975,159	(x15.76)
2		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		12,357,771	(x14.74)
3		<The Third Way>	The Third Way [99]		1,824,892	(x3.00)
4		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,735,770	(x2.13)
5		<Solo Act>	Malachi [150]		1,633,531	(x1.91)
6		<Taekwondo>	TkD00 [100]		1,007,976	(x1.22)
7		<House of Batiatus>	Seppius [162]		1,007,324	(x1.18)
8		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		965,327	(x1.13)
9		<The drunken Clam>	PeeT2 [358]		955,773	(x2.54)
10		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		950,253	(x1.10)

Also see:

• November 2024 clan rankings
• November 2024 bot rankings

Update: This win is TARNISHED (see details).

Congrats to Storm of Memories [150] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the October 2024 clan competition and securing a 2nd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Storm of Memories [150]		17,477,342	(x21.87)
2		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		2,587,222	(x3.67)
3		<Apex>	Gpof [100]		2,432,225	(x2.81)
4		<Taekwondo>	TkD00 [100]		1,040,692	(x1.17)
5		<Msps 02>	msp00 [125]		1,028,217	(x1.15)
6		<House of Batiatus>	Seppius [162]		1,025,871	(x1.15)
7		<The Third Way>	The Third Way [55]		1,005,600	(x9.75)
8		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		1,004,800	(x1.13)
9		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		990,287	(x1.22)
10		<The North>	Oxyk [78]		978,066	(x1.15)

Also see:

• October 2024 clan rankings
• October 2024 bot rankings

Update: This win is TARNISHED (see details).

Congrats to Gpof [100] for leading <Apex> to victory in the September 2024 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Gpof [100]		15,206,586	(x18.23)
2		<Lusitania>	Storm of Memories [150]		7,590,139	(x8.85)
3		<The North>	Oxyk [78]		1,174,846	(x1.43)
4		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [296]		1,164,159	(x1.41)
5		<Taekwondo>	TkD00 [100]		1,057,225	(x1.27)
6		<Solo Act>	Malachi [150]		978,345	(x1.13)
7		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		973,728	(x1.16)
8		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		971,848	(x1.12)
9		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		955,591	(x1.11)
10		<Keysmash>	asdf01 [111]		897,871	(x1.04)

Also see:

• September 2024 clan rankings
• September 2024 bot rankings

Congrats to Scabara [80] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the August 2024 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Scabara [80]		13,247,739	(x15.66)
2		<Apex>	Zach01 [382]		10,443,754	(x11.96)
3		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		1,246,955	(x1.40)
4		<Solo Act>	Nosferatu [337]		1,073,194	(x1.20)
5		<Insane inda Membrane>	winmau15 [110]		1,061,839	(x1.19)
6		<The North>	Oxyk [77]		1,044,168	(x1.24)
7		<Alternate History>	Grave [61]		1,017,764	(x1.14)
8		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,010,614	(x1.14)
9		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [290]		988,505	(x1.11)
10		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		980,888	(x1.20)

Also see:

• August 2024 clan rankings
• August 2024 bot rankings

Congrats to Mojo [130] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the July 2024 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Mojo [130]		8,573,375	(x10.63)
2		<Apex>	Off [41]		6,186,400	(x7.17)
3		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		1,500,597	(x1.68)
4		<Sin>	slater2 [121]		1,202,824	(x2.19)
5		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [288]		1,136,446	(x1.27)
6		<Solo Act>	Nosferatu [332]		1,101,355	(x1.23)
7		<The North>	Oxyk [77]		1,083,824	(x1.29)
8		<Periodic Table>	Evaporating [32]		1,073,593	(x1.20)
9		<Vulpes>	Vulpes [32]		1,071,716	(x1.20)
10		<Alternate History>	Judgement [34]		1,059,203	(x1.20)

Also see:

• July 2024 clan rankings
• July 2024 bot rankings

Congrats to Off [41] for leading <Apex> to victory in the June 2024 clan competition and securing a 4th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Off [41]		9,370,091	(x11.39)
2		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [301]		5,152,326	(x6.29)
3		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		1,481,492	(x1.73)
4		<Modern Family>	MF20 [100]		1,198,197	(x1.39)
5		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [280]		1,127,517	(x1.30)
6		<Manchester Orchestra>	Simple Math [28]		1,106,289	(x2.81)
7		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		965,853	(x1.12)
8		<Endone>	Endone22 [100]		947,199	(x1.10)
9		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		893,672	(x1.03)
10		<Solo Act>	Nosferatu [326]		889,492	(x1.03)

Also see:

• June 2024 clan rankings
• June 2024 bot rankings

If you've been reading the Bugs subforum over the past couple weeks, you're probably already aware of a good number of these changes. Here's a complete list of everything that's changed since June 14:

Quality-of-life improvements:

• Fight list loading speed: The number of bots shown on the fight list page is now capped to improve loading times. For a given level, the 500 most recently-active bots are shown, as well as any clanned bot. Long-term, I'd like to eventually bring back the full list, but with proper filtering and searching (and perhaps pagination) so that the list size is always manageable.
• Workshop stat bulk spend: To make it faster to spend higher numbers of stat points in the workshop, +5 and +10 buttons now appear in the workshop if you have at least that many unspent points.
• Header card stat freshness: Stats in the header card (level, exp, kudos, wins, losses, monthly energy) now reflect the outcome of the current battle, rather than needing to go to another page to see updates.

Bug fixes:

• Clan name already taken: When trying to create a clan with a name that's already in use, a proper error is now shown (thread).
• Bot still battling: Fixed an edge case where the game would sometimes mistakenly think your bot is still battling when using speed buffs (Hastened Adventure in particular) (thread).
• Showroom countdown accuracy: The showroom countdown timer should be more accurate now. Instead of decreasing by 1 every second, it now continuously recalculates the remaining time, which will be accurate even if Javascript execution gets delayed (this was reported to be happening in Safari sometimes).
• Email links: Email links for email verification, email cancelation, and viewing all bots associated with an email now require a second click on the game website to trigger their action. This is to avoid cases where the action was accidentally being triggered by something else, e.g. Outlook has a preview feature that does this.
• 136 year club: Bots should no longer end up with a played time of 136+ years (thread).
• Global played time: The global played time on the documentation page is fixed (thread).

Minor tweaks:

• Old HoF pages: A warning is now shown on very old (August 2011 and earlier) Hall of Fame pages about bots being capped at level 114 (thread).
• Header card alignment: The exp and kudos bars in the header are now centered when the header card grows to show more buffs than fit by default (thread).
• Insurance text: Updated the insurance salesman text slightly. The text no longer implies a question of buying a policy if there are none you can afford.
• Infinite kudos glitch: Bots will no longer give 1 kudos to the winner when they actually have 0 (thread).

Bots Unauthorized:

• Safari build calc support: The build calculator should now work properly in Safari (previously, equiping an item in one slot would sometimes mistakenly equip in a different slot).

Congrats to Esvrainzas [300] for leading <Lusitania> to victory in the May 2024 clan competition and securing a 13th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [300]		22,222,221	(x25.12)
2		<Apex>	Tucks I [132]		8,740,228	(x10.17)
3		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,088,099	(x1.22)
4		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [227]		961,908	(x1.11)
5		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		946,750	(x1.07)
6		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		926,512	(x1.04)
7		<The North>	Oxyk [76]		925,551	(x1.10)
8		<Ophidian>	Oph1 [100]		906,854	(x1.02)
9		<Zals Castle>	MrZal2 [100]		905,186	(x1.01)
10		<OP Bots4>	Luthrinator [130]		905,125	(x1.01)

Also see:

• May 2024 clan rankings
• May 2024 bot rankings

Update: This win is TARNISHED (see details).

Congrats to Zach01 [382] for leading <Apex> to victory in the April 2024 clan competition and securing a 5th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Zach01 [382]		20,215,259	(x23.49)
2		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [300]		15,317,472	(x17.85)
3		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,436,371	(x1.68)
4		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,177,601	(x1.38)
5		<Zals Castle>	MrZal2 [100]		1,002,027	(x1.17)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [227]		945,984	(x1.12)
7		<Liliana>	Liliana1 [56]		924,329	(x1.07)
8		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		907,898	(x1.05)
9		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [350]		900,641	(x1.04)
10		<Bacteria>	Bac1 [100]		870,077	(x1.01)

Also see:

• April 2024 clan rankings
• April 2024 bot rankings

Congrats to Off [37] for leading <Apex> to victory in the March 2024 clan competition and securing a 3rd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Off [37]		7,015,891	(x8.89)
2		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [300]		3,942,217	(x4.81)
3		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,880,832	(x2.15)
4		<OP Bots4>	Luthrin [43]		1,605,666	(x1.80)
5		<Manchester Orchestra>	Simple Math [28]		1,543,882	(x2.53)
6		<Anor Londo>	Pontiff Sulyvahn [62]		1,516,361	(x2.08)
7		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,310,670	(x1.48)
8		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [364]		1,296,807	(x1.51)
9		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [227]		1,147,412	(x1.32)
10		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,072,974	(x1.22)

Also see:

• March 2024 clan rankings
• March 2024 bot rankings

Congrats to Bitch Pudding [45] for leading <Apex> to victory in the February 2024 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Bitch Pudding [45]		7,920,093	(x9.81)
2		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [300]		4,212,510	(x5.12)
3		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		4,030,119	(x5.06)
4		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [200]		1,074,804	(x1.30)
5		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		970,473	(x1.19)
6		<OP Bots4>	Luthrin [41]		959,686	(x1.20)
7		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [227]		941,799	(x1.14)
8		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		922,709	(x1.10)
9		<Sosaria>	UO21 [115]		882,865	(x1.06)
10		<Solo Act>	Nosferatu [296]		874,475	(x1.05)

Also see:

• February 2024 clan rankings
• February 2024 bot rankings

tl;dr: Custom logo uploads are now fixed. If you have 9+ stars, head to workshop settings where you can upload. Read on for technical details if you're curious, as well as an opportunity to earn free stars.

Until today, the way custom logo uploads worked is that you had to upload them to Imgur, then share the Imgur URL with the game. At that point, the game server would then download the logo from Imgur, save it on the game server, and associate it with your bot. The main reason for this convoluted workflow was security. Allowing file uploads to a server comes with a lot of potential problems, as outlined in this article about Unrestricted File Upload. Steps must be taken to ensure that what gets uploaded doesn't result in a malicious actor being able to do something they shouldn't be able to do. To get the benefit of a major platform's built-in security mechanisms instead of rollling my own, I made the decision back in April 2011 when I added profile photos[*] to outsource upload security to Imgur. This was a bit of a hack, but it worked for awhile.

Fast forward to 2023. For some reason, last year Imgur blocked the game server, so the "game server would then download the logo from Imgur" step described above stopped working. In researching this, my best guess is that this is related to policy changes by Imgur in the kinds of content they allow on their platform. As a result of that announcement, people started building scrapers to save the Imgur content that was soon going to be deleted. And in response to this, Imgur seems to have wholesale blocked entire VPS providers (like Linode, which is what I use) which people would use to host the scrapers. In other words, our tiny use case of downloading a few kilobytes a ~week got mixed into the bigger problem.

To fix this, I decided to make the jump and finally allow direct file uploads for the first time ever in the game's existence. I've put in protections to make this safe, but web security is notoriously tricky, so here is where the bug bounty comes in. Please try to discover vulnerabilities. In accordance with the game's responsible disclosure policy, I will award stars to reporters based on issue severity. If you're reading this and happen to be someone very knowledgable of pentesting but that doesn't have access to a bot with 9+ stars for testing, bmail me your credentials or LinkedIn or something and I'll temp some of my stars to you. And of course, if you do discover a problem, please don't take advantage of it or cause problems for other players. I hope no one finds anything, but I (and I'm sure others) will be very grateful if you do. Happy hunting!

[*] You might notice that bot/clan profile photos still go through an Imgur workflow. It's always been slightly different than the custom logo workflow though in that the file doesn't get downloaded to the game server, it gets read live from Imgur everytime you visit a bot/clan profile (well, not counting browser caching). I did logos differently because there'd be potentially many of them rendering on a single page and I didn't want that many requests from players going to Imgur in case it led to problems. Whether that was a real issue to be worried about or not is unclear, but that's why it is the way it is. Now that custom logo direct uploads are supported, I plan to eventually do the same with bot/clan profile photos, but that will be more work because I'll need to do a one-time download of a bunch of all the existing Imgur files the game points at, so it's low priority.

Congrats to PeeT [150] for leading <Apex> to victory in the January 2024 clan competition and securing a 8th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		11,556,724	(x13.25)
2		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [300]		8,724,888	(x10.07)
3		<OP Bots4>	Luthrin [41]		1,224,472	(x1.38)
4		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [270]		1,186,124	(x1.37)
5		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,173,789	(x1.32)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Silence is Golden [44]		1,115,485	(x1.29)
7		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,048,201	(x1.17)
8		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		1,003,960	(x1.12)
9		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		991,902	(x1.23)
10		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [349]		966,233	(x1.10)

Also see:

• January 2024 clan rankings
• January 2024 bot rankings

Congrats to NBA XXVII [133] for leading <Apex> to victory in the December 2023 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	NBA XXVII [133]		7,951,833	(x9.61)
2		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		2,088,081	(x2.37)
3		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [270]		2,058,669	(x2.34)
4		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [355]		1,465,977	(x1.66)
5		<Lusitania>	Esvrainzas [300]		1,418,627	(x1.68)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Silence is Golden [44]		1,223,612	(x1.41)
7		<OP Bots4>	Luthrin [41]		1,172,651	(x1.31)
8		<Manchester Orchestra>	Simple Math [26]		1,119,644	(x2.89)
9		<Torment>	Samulii [38]		1,097,430	(x1.41)
10		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,059,016	(x1.19)

Also see:

• December 2023 clan rankings
• December 2023 bot rankings

A small quality-of-life improvement to close out 2023: When viewing the fight list page, if the bot is at its attack limit for the day, then its row will have a red background. The fight links are also removed for these rows. This is effectively the same way bots in your own clan get treated (except this is red instead of green).

Various flavors of this idea have been suggested over the years (and it came up in the big What do you want to see done for the game? thread earlier this year), but often as part of a larger change to the overall page that would add more robust sorting/filtering options for the table (which is still on the list for the future - I know that page has gotten unwieldy for some levels). Thanks to Asmodeus for the latest and simplest flavor of this suggestion.

Happy new year and see you in 2024!

Hey everyone, I'll be taking off to travel for most of December in a couple days, so I wanted to give an update on game stuff before I head out. I'll still have my laptop in case the server catches fire. :)

I've chatted with some of you on IRC (soon^TM to be Discord) about this, but game activity has spiked way up starting in October and then really taking off in November. Depending on how you measure things (online bots, 1-day actives, pageviews, etc.), I'd estimate the game is anywhere from 4-10x more active in the past couple months than earlier this year. This is really cool to see!

To celebrate the increase activity and the holiday season, I've just enabled 2 things:

• 500 Hastened Adventure buff - All bots that have been logged into since the start of November have been granted 500 battles worth of the Hastened Adventure buff, which grants 10,000% battle speed.
• Double showroom chances - The probability of all items appearing has been temporary doubled. So if something had a 25% chance of showing up, it now has a 50% chance each showroom restock. I'll revert this in a month or so.

I also wanted to mention a few things that are on my radar:

• Custom logo upload bug - I've seen some reports that the Imgur workflow for uploading custom logos isn't working in some cases. I'll dig into this when I'm back.
• Email verification bug - I've seen some reports that various email-related functions (verification, view all bots, etc.) are sometimes not working. I'll dig into this when I'm back.
• Bmail backlog - I'm still pretty behind on my inbox. For those of you still waiting for replies, I'm sorry and will try to catch up when I'm back.

Lastly, I wanted to share a brief development update. Earlier this year I asked everyone: What do you want to see done for the game? In typical Ender fashion, progress has been slower than I'm sure anyone has wanted, but I wanted to share that there has been stuff going on behind the scenes. Below is a chart showing the number of "commits" to the game's codebase per month for every month I've worked on the game since I started in August 2010, over 13 years ago. A "commit" isn't a great way of measuring progress (e.g. the original tournament update was a single massive commit), but it does give some indication of general activity. So the part I want to highlight is mid-2023 where I returned to 2010-2015 levels of activity for the first time since then. Not much of this work has been visible to players, but it has modernized some really old stuff and laid the groundwork for what I hope are fun updates in 2024.

Until then, good luck to everyone in the December clan race and happy holidays!

(click chart to expand)

Update: This win is TARNISHED (see details).

Congrats to Zach01 [354] for leading <Apex> to victory in the November 2023 clan competition and securing a 4th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Zach01 [354]		10,035,930	(x12.44)
2		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [352]		7,523,647	(x8.84)
3		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [270]		1,391,333	(x1.61)
4		<The Avengers>	Esvrainzas [300]		1,307,786	(x1.51)
5		<Silence is Golden>	Silence is Golden [44]		1,028,280	(x1.26)
6		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		982,428	(x1.23)
7		<Halo>	Juv0 [130]		964,679	(x1.13)
8		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		938,456	(x1.12)
9		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		936,034	(x1.08)
10		<Endone>	Endone21 [100]		924,190	(x1.07)

Also see:

• November 2023 clan rankings
• November 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Zach01 [315] for leading <Apex> to victory in the October 2023 clan competition and securing a 3rd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Zach01 [315]		5,829,127	(x7.43)
2		<Chainsaw Man>	Silencio [28]		3,418,758	(x3.92)
3		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [267]		1,618,809	(x1.88)
4		<Halo>	Juv0 [130]		1,399,229	(x1.63)
5		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,003,731	(x1.12)
6		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		963,261	(x1.08)
7		<Silence is Golden>	Maleficent [227]		955,335	(x1.10)
8		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		953,221	(x1.12)
9		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [130]		944,532	(x1.06)
10		<The North>	Oxyk [76]		913,412	(x1.02)

Also see:

• October 2023 clan rankings
• October 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Off [30] for leading <Apex> to victory in the September 2023 clan competition and securing a 2nd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Off [30]		3,048,853	(x3.66)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [266]		1,584,690	(x1.84)
3		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,522,193	(x3.56)
4		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,263,741	(x1.52)
5		<The North>	Oxyk [76]		1,238,086	(x1.45)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Avrelivs Caesar [44]		1,161,100	(x1.42)
7		<Halo>	Juv0 [115]		1,026,858	(x1.19)
8		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		922,100	(x1.07)
9		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [130]		916,429	(x1.06)
10		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [345]		898,524	(x1.04)

Also see:

• September 2023 clan rankings
• September 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Anna Villani [34] for leading <Apex> to victory in the August 2023 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Anna Villani [34]		2,830,145	(x3.34)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [265]		1,360,701	(x1.61)
3		<The North>	Oxyk [75]		1,182,287	(x1.37)
4		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,050,387	(x1.18)
5		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [130]		1,037,364	(x1.16)
6		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,001,817	(x1.15)
7		<Calibration>	Bandit [203]		928,175	(x1.05)
8		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		922,893	(x1.03)
9		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [345]		911,265	(x1.02)
10		<Silence is Golden>	Grotteska [243]		909,167	(x1.07)

Also see:

• August 2023 clan rankings
• August 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Zizu [382] for leading <Apex> to victory in the July 2023 clan competition and securing a 6th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Zizu [382]		3,341,205	(x4.12)
2		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [130]		2,736,987	(x4.20)
3		<Mount Wario>	Mr Poo [90]		1,924,145	(x2.31)
4		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,838,895	(x2.08)
5		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		984,790	(x1.11)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Grotteska [243]		944,051	(x1.10)
7		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [350]		907,910	(x1.02)
8		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [344]		892,561	(x1.01)
9		<Hotty8>	Lily01 [100]		891,607	(x1.00)
10		<Hotty6>	Emily01 [115]		891,600	(x1.00)

Also see:

• July 2023 clan rankings
• July 2023 bot rankings

At long last, clan rank colors can be customized!

There's not much more to say about this one. The same picker that appears in the workshop now appears on the clan permission matrix page, which clan owners can use to modify clan rank colors.

"Fun" fact: This has been a TODO ever since clans first launched during closed beta. Looking back at the legacy announcements page, that was 2011-02-25. Better 4,520 days late than never...? :\

In addition to the main change, a few other small things changed:

• Color picker upgrade: The buttons for changing colors are bigger and easier to see, as is the selected color. Buttons get disabled when you reach the top/bottom ends of allowed colors. Rapid clicking will no longer trigger double-click browser text selection. This applies to both the workshop color picker and clan ranks color pickers.
• Clan owner permission clarity: It's always been the case that the permission matrix row for the clan owner rank cannot be modified (other than the name, and now the color). For instance, you couldn't remove "kick" permission for the clan owner. However, the form didn't make this clear - the fields were modifiable (which maybe even looked a little scary). These checkboxes are now disabled on the clientside to match the serverside behavior.
• Clan non-owner permission clarity: Non-owner clan members now see a warning popup on the permission matrix page informing them they have read-only access, just to make things a little more clear.
• Allowed colors bugfix: Speaking of serverside and clientside differences, I noticed while working on these changes that the serverside was more permissive (allows down to #222222) than clientside (allows down to #444444). This means that a clever player could actually get their username to basically disappear if they were to bypass the clientside check. I didn't query the database to determine whether anyone has actually done this, but in any case, #444444 is now enforced serverside too.
• Default clan rank color changes: I debated whether to even include this one, but in the interest of being complete, I changed the default clan rank colors to be within the color pickers bounds (i.e. greater than #444444). In practice, the changes are impercetible (e.g. #00ff00 -> #44ff44 ...see? you can't tell!)

P.S. Repeating disclaimer: There are more updates to come, so if this one doesn't excite you, hang tight. I know a bunch of different ideas have been brought up in the What do you want to see done for the game? thread (if you haven't shared your own perspective there yet and want to help shape the game's future, go ahead and do so!) and I know that everyone has different opinions on what order they should be worked on in. Rather than try to bundle up changes into larger updates, I'm currently planning to post user-facing ones as they're completed so that new stuff goes out sooner.

Previously, automatic clan treasury donations only activated if your bot had explicitly enabled a >0% donation percentage in the workshop.

Now, regardless of this setting, any excess kudos (i.e. kudos beyond the game cap of 5,000,000) will be automatically donated to your clan if you are in one and there is room in the treasury for more kudos.

Note that just like before, this calculation all happens before auto-repairs. Let me know if this now results in any oddities or even just annoyances that come up as a result of this. I think ideally auto-repairs should have come before automatic clan donations, but this is slightly non-trivial to rework and I'd rather punt on this for now if it's not a major issue.

Thanks to Myriad for the original suggestion way back when, as well as for bringing it up again last month.

P.S. Disclaimer: There are more updates to come, so if this one doesn't excite you, hang tight. I know a bunch of different ideas have been brought up in the What do you want to see done for the game? thread (if you haven't shared your own perspective there yet and want to help shape the game's future, go ahead and do so!) and I know that everyone has different opinions on what order they should be worked on in. Rather than try to bundle up changes into larger updates, I'm currently planning to post user-facing ones as they're completed so that new stuff goes out sooner.

Congrats to PeeT [150] for leading <Apex> to victory in the June 2023 clan competition and securing a 7th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		2,521,970	(x2.98)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [264]		2,315,868	(x2.68)
3		<Silence is Golden>	Grotteska [243]		1,609,711	(x1.96)
4		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,440,821	(x1.73)
5		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,176,982	(x1.36)
6		<Halo>	Juv0 [115]		945,203	(x1.09)
7		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [349]		903,261	(x1.05)
8		<No Clan>	Dragon Summoner [130]		898,151	(x1.08)
9		<Escapism>	Myriad [424]		896,928	(x1.04)
10		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [342]		870,237	(x1.01)

Also see:

• June 2023 clan rankings
• June 2023 bot rankings

tl;dr: Give me ideas to work on!

Hello! As some of you may have noticed, I've been around a bit these past few weeks, chatting with some of you on IRC, etc. That's a result of me having (finally) taken care of a few small problems that were preventing me from working on the game.

In case you're curious/interested about the background: It started when I relocated for ~8 months during Covid. I didn't bring my desktop, but I bought a cheap laptop and did some small game development things on that. Not a lot though (obviously). Then I returned home, but I was still working remotely and got tired of swapping cables to switch between my work computer and personal desktop, so my desktop (which is my main development machine) stayed offline for a long time. Fast forward to a month or two ago. I bought a KVM (these devices are amazing if you have multiple computers), dusted off my desktop, applied new thermal paste to its CPU, updated its very-outdated operating system, and started finally poking at the game again. My first order of business was to do various infrastructure upgrades. We're now on PHP 8.2 and many of the various libraries/utilities that the game depends on have been upgraded to latest versions as well so that the game remains stable and fast (brag: I find the speed of everything in the game remarkable compared to the sluggish bloat I feel on many other more "modern" sites). The upshot is that all this behind-the-scenes modernization makes it much easier to do future development work.

That brings us to today. Now for the fun part! I'm looking to get back into actual feature development a bit. My track record isn't great and I know things have been slower in recent years, so I'm hesitant to make any big promises, but...hear me out:

What do you want done? I have some time off from work next week and want to spend a chunk of it on the game. I don't play this game and am not plugged into the day-to-day anymore, so I want to hear from all of you. Feel free to suggest stuff or +1 other people's ideas. You're the best people to know what's going to make you enjoy the game more, what you find annoying, what you always wish had been done, etc. And don't worry too much about whether something is going to be hard to build - I'd like to understand what people really want first. After that, I can think about the cost tradeoffs of building stuff. Of course though, smaller stuff is more likely to get done sooner.

I'll kick this thread off with my own ideas, but treat these as just a starting point for you to suggest your own:

• Move the game onto HTTPS so that you stop getting browser warnings
• Fix PayPal integration so that you don't have to wait for me to give purchased stars
• Revamp the designed-in-2010 UI to take advantage of typical monitor resolutions in 2023 (probably wider UI + bigger font...I find myself using 125% browser zoom on here)
• Move chat from IRC to Discord
• Change account structure so that you can manage a fleet of bots from a single login
• Daily quests, weekly events, etc.
• Promote the game more and optimize for new player stickiness/retention
• Train an LLM (a la ChatGPT/Bard) using forum data and do something fun with it
• Anything that was never implemented that you'd like done?
• Anything that's broken that you'd like fixed?
• Anything to improve mobile support? (maybe even an app one day?)
• Anything else at all?

Congrats to PeeT [150] for leading <Apex> to victory in the May 2023 clan competition and securing a 6th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		3,132,289	(x3.69)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [253]		1,707,374	(x1.99)
3		<Halo>	Juv0 [115]		1,475,278	(x1.80)
4		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,241,834	(x1.39)
5		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,126,882	(x1.26)
6		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [349]		988,811	(x1.11)
7		<Escapism>	Myriad [423]		910,471	(x1.02)
8		<Silence is Golden>	Kate Beckinsale [49]		903,471	(x1.08)
9		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [341]		902,730	(x1.02)
10		<Berzerker Barbarians>	mrvain [139]		900,658	(x1.01)

Also see:

• May 2023 clan rankings
• May 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Sinister Shadows [392] for leading <Apex> to victory in the April 2023 clan competition and securing a 4th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Sinister Shadows [392]		2,870,420	(x3.36)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [250]		1,263,965	(x1.56)
3		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,223,658	(x1.42)
4		<Halo>	Juv0 [115]		1,083,375	(x1.30)
5		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,042,857	(x1.21)
6		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [349]		974,094	(x1.13)
7		<Berzerker Barbarians>	mrvain [139]		943,157	(x1.09)
8		<Escapism>	Myriad [423]		880,247	(x1.02)
9		<Silence is Golden>	Kaori Momoi [200]		868,959	(x1.01)
10		<Trump World>	Protester [100]		866,280	(x1.00)

Also see:

• April 2023 clan rankings
• April 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Sinister Shadows [392] for leading <Apex> to victory in the March 2023 clan competition and securing a 3rd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Sinister Shadows [392]		3,611,765	(x4.36)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [236]		3,500,015	(x3.98)
3		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,407,802	(x1.58)
4		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [338]		1,370,133	(x1.54)
5		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,349,424	(x1.51)
6		<Real Fighters>	Kyle100 [125]		1,076,942	(x1.79)
7		<Silence is Golden>	Kaori Momoi [200]		912,762	(x1.03)
8		<Trump World>	Protester [100]		911,743	(x1.02)
9		<Escapism>	Myriad [423]		909,057	(x1.02)
10		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [346]		903,476	(x1.01)

Also see:

• March 2023 clan rankings
• March 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to PeeT [150] for leading <Apex> to victory in the February 2023 clan competition and securing a 5th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		2,929,923	(x3.76)
2		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,552,576	(x2.01)
3		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [195]		1,181,975	(x1.47)
4		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,149,141	(x1.43)
5		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [346]		972,147	(x1.21)
6		<Real Fighters>	Kyle100 [125]		852,031	(x3.88)
7		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [335]		833,327	(x1.03)
8		<Best RW Clan>	farmalot3 [65]		830,845	(x1.03)
9		<Escapism>	Myriad [423]		826,234	(x1.02)
10		<Trump World>	Protester [100]		824,346	(x1.02)

Also see:

• February 2023 clan rankings
• February 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Zizu [361] for leading <Apex> to victory in the January 2023 clan competition and securing a 5th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Zizu [361]		3,539,189	(x3.99)
2		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [190]		1,840,740	(x2.28)
3		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [331]		1,543,932	(x1.74)
4		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,309,167	(x1.47)
5		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [345]		1,152,584	(x1.30)
6		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		994,102	(x1.12)
7		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		960,395	(x1.08)
8		<Escapism>	Myriad [423]		904,611	(x1.02)
9		<The Lonely Island>	Nosferatu [281]		893,040	(x1.00)
10		<Silence is Golden>	Kaori Momoi [200]		890,966	(x1.00)

Also see:

• January 2023 clan rankings
• January 2023 bot rankings

Congrats to Sinister Shadows [392] for leading <Apex> to victory in the December 2022 clan competition and securing a 2nd George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Sinister Shadows [392]		3,695,939	(x4.24)
2		<Mount Wario>	RUPENI [50]		2,760,851	(x3.33)
3		<Chainsaw Man>	Chainsaw Man [75]		1,674,418	(x1.89)
4		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [331]		1,449,894	(x1.64)
5		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [342]		1,093,158	(x1.22)
6		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,027,296	(x1.15)
7		<Silence is Golden>	Goddess Ana [20]		932,352	(x1.11)
8		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		932,297	(x1.05)
9		<Escapism>	Myriad [422]		903,252	(x1.01)
10		<Halo>	Juv0 [115]		902,017	(x1.01)

Also see:

• December 2022 clan rankings
• December 2022 bot rankings

Congrats to PeeT [150] for leading <Apex> to victory in the November 2022 clan competition and securing a 4th George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	PeeT [150]		9,236,523	(x10.88)
2		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [325]		2,849,124	(x3.30)
3		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [333]		1,513,007	(x1.75)
4		<Mount Wario>	LOMU [126]		1,227,801	(x2.75)
5		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,208,837	(x1.51)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Joi [175]		1,134,918	(x1.48)
7		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [342]		1,118,984	(x1.29)
8		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		1,071,448	(x1.25)
9		<Escapism>	Myriad [422]		933,807	(x1.08)
10		<Chainsaw Man>	Splatoon1 [75]		920,516	(x1.07)

Also see:

• November 2022 clan rankings
• November 2022 bot rankings

Congrats to Sinister Shadows [391] for leading <Apex> to victory in the October 2022 clan competition and securing a 1st George Washington platinum trophy! Monthly energy has been reset and a new round has begun.

rank		clan	owner		energy month
1		<Apex>	Sinister Shadows [391]		4,833,165	(x5.89)
2		<Pirate Haven>	The Pirate [320]		2,257,832	(x2.55)
3		<Strung Out>	Chriseps [293]		1,991,940	(x2.31)
4		<Halo>	Juv0 [115]		1,264,490	(x1.42)
5		<Rapture>	Satanus Inaximasus [341]		1,209,895	(x1.36)
6		<Silence is Golden>	Kate Beckinsale [48]		1,010,859	(x1.18)
7		<dogs>	Mr Tomato [81]		1,006,632	(x1.19)
8		<The North>	Oxyk [74]		924,063	(x1.04)
9		<Escapism>	Myriad [422]		913,775	(x1.02)
10		<Trump Tower>	Killary Killer [60]		894,618	(x1.00)