Gimkit 3.2 is here. What’s new?

Hey everyone! Gimkit 3.2 has arrived, with a large behind the scenes change and many quality of life improvements. Here’s what’s new!

New Game Backend

Gimkit’s game backend manages balances, powerups, upgrades, themes, teams, and more inside of Gimkit behind the scenes. We’re now using a custom-build backend that should improve connection reliability, enhance security, and make it faster to add new features to the game. We’ve also made this open source, so others can use it to create their own games! You can find the code on GitHub here.

So, new backend. What’s the big deal? For one thing, Gimkit will be a lot more reliable, but there are some other adjustments that will make it easier and more fun to use. Let’s dive into what the new game backend means for Gimkit’s teachers and students, starting with the big one….

Connection Reliability

Many of you have reported issues with Gimkit’s connection reliability. Players who were in the game, but not on the leaderboard. Random players being booted out. These types of connection issues can still happen due to any number of variables — browsers, device types and models, connection speeds, firewalls — but they should happen a lot less frequently now!

Jeff and I have been testing for over the last week and we feel good about the reliability, but a lot can happen when you go from testing with two people to thousands. This first week I’ll be monitoring Gimkit and making fixes as needed. Thank you for your support and patience!

Disconnecting

When students get disconnected, they will see a screen which shows they got disconnected instead of being able to continue answering questions. This should help students who thought they were in the game but weren’t.

Reconnecting

If a student gets disconnected, they can now join back in and retain their balance, powerups, themes, and team placement as long as they reconnect within 20 seconds. So, if things do go wrong, they’re still in the game! Note that when a student reconnects, they will rejoin the game automatically (no code needed).

Screen On!

Mobile devices fall asleep after a period of inactivity, and when they go to sleep, they lose connection to any sites they were connected. (Fun fact: The reason I added the drawing feature in the first place was in an attempt to keep devices from falling asleep while students waited for the game to start.) Devices falling asleep was causing connectivity hiccups, but now devices will stay awake!

Assignments

A small, but important quality of life improvement has been made to assignments. Now, students can leave on one device and pick back up exactly where they left off on another. No need to save or anything, just close the window/tab!

Note that this feature requires you to use classes for your assignment.

Game Code

When hosting a Kit, you can now click on the game code to make it larger on your shared screen. Click it again to shrink it. This was a quick fix that can help everyone in the classroom see the code.

KitCollab Improvement

Rejecting a question will now bring a student back to the KitCollab question page with their previous question entered so they can make changes to it instead of having to retype the entire question

New Gift Powerup

We’ve had powerups that hurt others, what about powerups that help others? We now have a brand new Gift powerup which students can give to other students. Giving it to another student will increase their balance by 15%. Let us know what you think!

Well, those are the major changes for 3.2!

There are a lot of other smaller improvements, so I’m leaving the changelog down below. Thanks so much, everyone and have a good one!

- Josh from Gimkit

Changelog

New Engine!

• Game engine was rewritten with a focus on security and stability
• For the first week, we’ll be monitoring the new game engine to look for any issues, specifically around scalability. Lots of more issues can arise when you go from testing with 2 people to thousands. Thanks for your support during this time.

Improvements & Changes

• Connection
• Students that disconnected during a game will be able to rejoin and retain their balance, upgrades, powerups, themes and team placement
• Also works if student accidentally closes the tab
• If student gets disconnected and reconnects, they will rejoin automatically
• Can only rejoin the game if they connect within 20 seconds of disconnecting
• Assignments
• You can now leave and pick back up where you left off on any device
• Only works for assignments using classes
• Progress is deleted after 7 days
• KitCollab
• Rejecting a question will now bring a student back to the KitCollab question page, but with their previous question entered so they can make changes to it instead of having to retype the entire question
• Game Options & Gameplay
• Added a new game option which allows you to ban players from joining in late
• Clicking on the game code on the host’s screen during a game will show a larger version
• Claps renamed to Hearts for Valentine’s Day
• Secondary color for drawing changed from green to pink
• Volume for sound on player’s devices when purchasing an upgrade reduced by 50%
• If the game host leaves in the middle of the game, players will be brought to a screen where they cannot answer any more questions
• Added a new functionality in which mobile devices will not sleep after inactivity (to help devices from disconnecting)
• Icer powerup now makes a sound effect

Powerups

• NEW: Gift
• Increases another player or team’s balance by 15%,
• Costs $200 + 26%’
• Shield now lasts 120 seconds instead of 60 seconds
• Sound effect is now played when a player gets Iced
• Fifty Fifty and Second Chance powerups removed
• When losing money that goes below your handicap value, the money lost will now represent how much you would have lost if the handicap was not there

Themes

• All themes except for Pure Gold drastically reduced in price to encourage players to customize their Gimkit experience

Fixes

• Fixed an issue where a player that answered a question within 0.25s seconds of the game ending would not be brought to the results screen
• Fixed an issue where two or more people purchasing an upgrade in team mode at the same time could purchase the upgrade, but go into the negatives
• Fixed an issue where players could continue answering questions after the game ended by using their browser back/forward buttons
• Fixed a layout issue that impacted devices running iOS 10