This Telegram bot offers a functional game integrated with the gaming platform, It's based on this pen by Matei Copot, and it's very simple: tap somewhere to begin a chain reaction of particles exploding. The more particles destroyed (and the faster the process), the higher the score you get.
The example demostrates how to use Botgram's API for the gaming platform, and the deployment needed for Telegram games in general.
There's a Telegram bot and a webserver working in unison. The webserver needs to be reachable under some public URL so that users can open the game, see below.
This assumes you already have a Telegram bot created, with the corresponding auth token.
First, you should create a game in your bot, by saying /newgame to the BotFather.
You may enter the following details when asked:
Name: Particle Explode
Description: Try to wipe everything by starting a chain reaction
Photo: send photo.png
Short game name: explode
Note that if you supply a short game name other than explode, you need to modify it in server.js too.
The second part is the webserver: when run server.js creates an HTTP server
listening at port 3103. You need to somehow make this accessible from anywhere,
for example by running server.js on a server with a public IP, or opening that
port from your firewall...
At the end you should note the base URL, which in my case was https://jmendeth.com,
meaning that https://jmendeth.com/telegramBot/game.html acessed
http://localhost:3103/telegramBot/game.html, and so on.
Once this is setup, install dependencies as usual:
npm install
And run the server, passing in your auth token and the base URL:
node server <auth token> <base URL>
Then you're ready to play your game.
Interesting things to implement:
- Bot command to query the number of people playing or (global) top score.
- Manually editing the message and calling
getGameHighScoresto build a score table. - Displaying the user's name and realtime (local) score table in the game itself.
- Adding a share button in the game itself.