Best Practices

1. Welcome your players

When a player joins a room, Hackbox will display a default welcome screen. It's not very pretty, and that's on purpose — you should replace it! When a player joins your room, it's nice to send them an initial payload to customize the view to fit your game's aesthetic, confirming that they're actually in the right place.

2. Confirm message receipt

When a player submits an answer, Hackbox will usually disable the submit button to confirm that the message was sent, and to prevent duplicate events. However, it's a much nicer experience to confirm that the message was received by sending a new payload to the player. Ideally this payload will include a message confirming that the message was accepted, or a reason for rejection.

Prefer meaningful messages over generic ones:

• ❌ Answer submitted.
• ✅ You answered 42. Stay tuned for the result!
• ❌ Answer rejected.
• ✅ Your answer is too high. Select an answer between 1 and 100.

3. Keep players updated

The more frequently you update your players' UI the better. This reassures them that they are still connected to the game and keeps them engaged. Consider a simple trivia game. Compare the following two flows:

Too simple

1. UI: Player receives a question.
2. Player submits an answer.
3. Repeat.

Recommended

1. UI: Player receives a question.
2. Player submits an answer.
3. UI: Player receives confirmation of their answer being received.
4. UI: Reveal whether or not their answer is correct. Display their new score / ranking.
5. UI: Alert the player to get ready for the next question.
6. Repeat