ChatBuzz

ChatBuzz is a simple OBS Plugin that displays repeated messages from a Twitch chat.

Setup & Demo (click)

Table of Contents

• Setup & Demo (click)
• URL Parameters
  • Table of Parameters
  • Text-To-Speech Bug
• About
  • Learnings

URL Parameters

I've configured ChatBuzz so that its width and height are the same as the OBS Browser Source's default, 800x600. Because of this, it's as simple as putting in the URL and clicking "OK".

Your OBS Browser Source URL should look like "https://chatbuzz.app/?channel=CHANNEL", with CHANNEL being replaced by your Twitch channel's username (case insensitive). In addition, you can also add how ever many arguments to the end as you need, in any order, in the form '&PARAMETER=ARGUMENT'. For example, you may have "https://chatbuzz.app/?channel=xqc&notts&min=5&dur=10.5&color=red".

Table of Parameters

Parameter	Definition	Data Type	Constraints	Default Value
channel	Channel username	string	-	-
color	Repeat font color	string	pink | red | orange | yellow | green | blue | purple	yellow
fontsize	Repeat font size	float	> 0.0	30.0
emotescale	Emote scale when compared to font size	float	> 0.0	1.3
min	Minimum number of identical messages required to display it. Text-To-Speech also activates when the repeat count is a multiple of this number	int	>= 2	3
dur	Duration (in seconds) until a repeat expires without new identical messages	float	> 0.0	7.0
width	Window width	int	> 0	800
height	Window height	int	> 0	600
vol	Text-To-Speech volume	float	>= 0.0	0.5
rate	Text-To-Speech rate	float	> 0.0	0.8
pitch	Text-To-Speech pitch	float	-	2.0
notts	No Text-To-Speech	bool*	-	false
norepeat	No Text-To-Speech repeating messages after the initial displaying	bool*	-	false
topdown	Top-down instead of bottom-up	bool*	-	false
rightside	Right-side instead of left-side	bool*	-	false
nobttv	Exclude BetterTTV emotes	bool*	-	false
noffz	Exclude FrankerFaceZ emotes	bool*	-	false
no7tv	Exclude 7TV emotes	bool*	-	false
debug	Debug mode	bool*	-	false

* the bool paremeters, notts–7tv, may be false on default, but I've made it so you don't need to provide "true" for it to be true. Simply include it as an argument e.g. "&topdown&notts" rather than "&topdown=true&notts=true".

Text-To-Speech Bug

The voice synthesis used by most web browsers, SpeechSynthesis, has issues with OBS as seen here. Because of this, you have to uncheck the browser source property box "Control audio via OBS" to hear the audio, and unfortunately the audio might play when you're in other scenes. The current workaround is to temporarily add the notts parameter or to delete the ChatBuzz browser source when needed. In the future, I may explore different TTS processes such as an API or a local program.

About

ChatBuzz is the first personal project that I can be genuinely be proud of. The need to create it came about when I wanted to personally use an OBS Plugin with a certain functionality while streaming on Twitch, but I couldn't find any that fit my needs. Specifically, the Twitch streamer Charborg has a similar program that was developed by Cagelight, seen here. I took it upon myself to make a free, open-source, public version.

(There exists a similar, widespread OBS Plugin concept of the "Combo" which is the number of consecutive identical messages. This is differentiated as a "Repeat", and uses a time duration which ignores whether or not messages are consecutive.)

I appreciate any and all feedback! Have you encountered any issues? Do you want new features e.g. emote-only mode, different font options? Any recommendations? Etc. Thanks for reading!

Learnings

• TypeScript (& JavaScript)
• HTML
• CSS
• APIs (tmi.js, teklynk_api_public)
• Webpack
• Node.js
• General Web Development e.g. domain, hosting, favicon
• Git
• Unix shell
• VS Code
• UX (User Experience)
• Project Management
• Documentation
  • Markdown e.g. this (README.md)
• Making a demo video (Setup & Demo (click))
• Published to obsproject.com here