Battle of the Bits

OHB :: Unlocking Nintendo DS Samples #75

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 14:23:22 -0700

format - remix

4 entries

winner = coda - spork.mp3

Unlocking Nintendo DS Samples #75 results

OHB :: sprite demon 3

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 14:11:29 -0700

format - pixel

3 entries

winner = fortuna0800 - ant guy.gif

sprite demon 3 results

OHB :: kleeder approved battle

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:27:00 -0700

format - allgear

6 entries

winner = Beakl - floating fortress above the fjord.mp3

kleeder approved battle results

OHB :: Surfcroc's Birthday Bashful

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 15:38:24 -0700

format - draw

4 entries

winner = cessna - happy 24th!.png

Surfcroc's Birthday Bashful results

OHB :: Hot Water

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 11:51:51 -0700

format - s3xmodit

4 entries

winner = Filippp - calm_down.it

Hot Water results

OHB :: Exploring the Waveworld ~ Stage 03

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 18:04:54 -0700

format - s3xmodit

3 entries

winner = 02FD - disciples of damifortune.it

Exploring the Waveworld ~ Stage 03 results

OHB :: getting some play

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 11:41:53 -0700

format - liveplay

0 entries

winner =

getting some play results

OHB :: The Pinephone

Thu, 9 Apr 2026 19:45:19 -0700

format - allgear

2 entries

winner = Kipallo - Phold the Hone.mp3

The Pinephone results

OHB :: Bloom

Tue, 7 Apr 2026 13:38:27 -0700

format - draw

7 entries

winner = cessna - yard.png

Bloom results

OHB :: Around the world ⛰️

Mon, 6 Apr 2026 15:46:35 -0700

format - pixel

3 entries

winner = Ogladian - Lago Jeinemeni, Chile.png

Around the world ⛰️ results

BotB is 20 Years Old

Sun, 11 May 2025 12:30:33 -0700

It's official! Twenty years ago today I launched this website. You could create an account and comment on the only thread. Quickly followed by submitting samples, commenting on content, voting on samples, generated a .zip of the 25 best samples, submitting entries, voting on entries, tallying the results of said entries. All these features created just in time for the schedule of the live Detroit I event.

...but then twenty years happened...

A few more features were implemented in that time! ;D

Decadent Decade II was supposed to launch today, but looks like we'll have to wait a bit longer since I'm not ready. I thought I had a bunch of commented out code from a decade ago, but apparently I do not. Maybe I can spend some time with my parents since its Mother's Day.

While you wait maybe you'd like to watch a short 20 minute documentary about the Ann Arbor electronic scene
released last year (but mostly about the scene 20+ years ago). Blank and myself were including so we could speak on our memories, experience, and Battle of the Bits itself!

Also, the taxman took 20% of your boons. :sad:

It's been a long strange road!
Thank you all for being a part of Battle of the Bits.

new BotB system email

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 19:29:56 -0700

Some folks were not receiving their signup or lost password emails starting a couple days ago. I'm not 100% sure what happened. Tbh, we've been sending via gmail smtp for 15+ years. My best guess is that it's about the one year anniversary of losing our .org domain and some external recaching occurred that invalidated email from the old domain.

The email system should be sending again.

Please let me know if there are any further email issues. Thanks!

Blocking scrapers, bots, and AI

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 12:24:21 -0700

Hey, folks, anyone remember last Wednesday when ChatGPT basically DDOSed this website? Yeah, BotB wouldn't load for about an hour and I had to get help from Dreamhost to get it running again. The technician that helped me, Nick, pointed out we were getting obscene traffic from some bots.

So what I've been doing since then is looking for groups of self-similar IP addresses loading pages from the site. Using https://viewdns.info I can get some semblance of where the requests are coming from. A lot of these IP clusters are coming from web host IP ranges so what I've been doing is blocking their entire IP range in kind.

List of Hosts now Blocked:
Alibaba/Aliexpress Cloud
Anexia.at
AWS (but not the IP where BotB Bot lives)
ChatGPT
DZCRD
ethr.net
Global Connections Network
Huawei Cloud
ImageSift
NetCup
RIPE (which may or might not be some positive european google initiave)
Semrush
Tesonet
Web2Objects

I have not been blocking potential search engine web spiders like Google and Microsoft. I've had 5 of these "whack a mole" sessions since "the attack". I'm sure there are more to come.

Potential Issues:
It is absolutely possible that I am blocking folks that have nothing to do with scummy bots. If this is the case then they are being denied access to BotB. If you or anyone you know (that isn't banned from BotB) has had this experience please let me know and I will unblock them! You can find out what your IP address is by using this: https://whatismyipaddress.com/

Sorry it didn't occur to me sooner to do this. So far it seems to be helping quite a bit with page load times. Thanks, everyone!

BotB is 19 years old!

Sun, 12 May 2024 09:11:40 -0700

...and the tax man took 19% of your boons :sobglasses:

The Bleepler Kickstarter

Wed, 1 May 2024 18:20:54 -0700

Hey, folks, I have a Bleepler kickstarter campaign
raging right now! Well, its not exactly raging. I accidentally started it 3 weeks early and I am starting to ramp up on promotion.

I plan on adding a banner to the top of the homebunk page. Not sure if that's tacky, kind of don't care... its a rather obvious place for me to promote. I don't want to imply that BotB revolves around me, but the ongoing success of my business LoBlast
keeps me from having to work fulltime for somebody else. This is a healthier scenario for BotB's ongoing maintenance and feature work.

For those of you who already own Bleepler(s) now would be a supportive time to post videos of Bleepler playing/performing/fidgeting/etc... on social media outlets and platforms. Typically social media algorithms bury posts with external links. Butt, if you could mention its a Bleepler and it has a Kickstarter that would be very helpful! <3

No, BotB, you don't have to adult yet!

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 18:22:36 -0700

Battle of the Bits turned 18 years old last May. Instead of having feral offspring, I created this website. It has taught me how to code, cooperate with others, and even gave me tech biz opportunities I'd otherwise not have. What a wild journey it has been!

Coincidentally, we lost our beloved .org around the same time "Death of the Internet" was hitting the headlines. I had a lot of mixed feelings about putting in a bid for our classic domain name, but wish I had. The auction could have been much less than the $1700 we were being told we owed to get it back. Now we'll never know. I have absolute control over our .com however, and this most assuredly will not happen again.

It has never been my intention to make BotB an actual business. I built this site because I like to compo. I did start a business
tho. I'm still confused on how everything works, but I'm told all my income is LoBlast income which includes BotB donations. Truth be told, w/o that money my business would have failed already. I wanted to share this for transparency's sake.

Right now my store has dropshipped BotB stuff
. That means orders are handled by another company, Printful, and they have multiple fulfillment centers in Europe and North America
. This should help a lot with shipping costs plus I don't have to hold an insane inventory hoping folks will buy. I will be adding the 7" Winter Chip I vinyl record and stickers soon which I will be fulfilling myself (and is a separate shipping fee from Printful shipping).

The reason for this post is simply feeling embarrassed that I'm adding an ad banner on the home page that points to BotB gear on the LoBlast store when social networks are deciding to be more profitable and enacting controversial changes. I have no plans to change this place other than feature enhancements. There will be no paywall. Let's do another 18 years! ₍₍(ง◠‿◠)ว⁾⁾ (◠‿◠ و)♪

Thank you all for your support.

Fromat Updates plus a New Class ༼⁰o⁰；༽

Sun, 5 Feb 2023 23:26:09 -0700

Hey folks!

Did you know change is the only constant? Tired of waiting for this truth to rear its ugly head? What about the fiasco of yesteryear's antediluvian cultists warring over social scraps? Well apprehensively be pensive no longer! The future is now and, yet, still tomorrow!

The return of both Draw and Pixel! We'll never fully settle whats the difference, but WHATS TEH DIFFERENCE??!?! with new shiny rules like a Draw minimum resolution of 600x400 pixels or a Pixel 256 color maximum -- well we're really doodling with gas now!

FakeBit also has a infamous return to the spotlight. Try your best or do your worst to whatever you feel chiptune is in your heart and brain. No one can argue -- FakeBit is a good thing; Blurring the lines between gatekeeping and gaslighting, FakeBit is here to stay and not a moment too soon!

But what was that in this thread's title? A new class? Does that mean a new point type too? Why, yes, of course. All scribes and literary architects BEHOLD the new Writist class!

But how could we new class without some new fromats for which to earn said class points with? HUZZAR as I present to you, my good n00bs, two new classes: PDF Format & plain text!

As you can plainly see, everything is new and unbelievable as always. You can take comfort in the fact that there is no foundation beneath your feet. What will occur nextly? Thusly, not knowing shall prevail! Be on the lookout for the unexpected.

Have a mighty, mighty day! ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ

BotB is 17 years old today! ♡ ♥💕❤😘💖

Wed, 11 May 2022 13:23:01 -0700

Every year it gets harder to believe this thing is still going! Thank you all for making this an exciting place to be full of growth and learning. If it wasn't for you all, I would have shut this place down a long time ago.

Also, it's tax day.
Sorry not sorry! 🧸😁

Change Your Country (and the PHP 8.1 Upgrade FAIL)

Mon, 28 Mar 2022 19:54:21 -0700

Dreamhost has made PHP v8.1 available. Instead of waiting until the upgrade is forced I went ahead and took care of it. If any pages aren't loading or you're finding any errors please post URLs of those pages here.

AND!

After almost 17 years of having BotBr flags chosen by their IP address, y'all can now designate whatever country you want by going to the "Edit Profile" tab of your Homebunk.

=== EDIT ===
uh.... the upgrade looked fine and then a few hours later some things started going really bad... so I've rolled the site back to php 7.4
there's a chance the entries submitted during this 8.1 time were not saved and that new botbrs might be missing data... i'll be around throughout the day to try and rectify whatever went awry
=== MOAR EDIT ===
entry submission has been tested and seems to be working fine -- found a missing entry file in temp storage and manually moved it
i'll be around!!! x__X

The State of BotB Leadership

Wed, 2 Feb 2022 12:13:14 -0700

It's kind of silly I've been compelled to say this, but members of the BotB admin staff have come to me with concerns regarding disinformation about who's in charge around here. 🤣

Come this May, Battle of the Bits will turn 17 years old. I've been in charge this whole time. If I had anything in my life I could call my own child it is this very website. And this website would not continue to be developed if it was not for the community that populates it. There has always been a chicken-and-egg type scenario here.

I am much indebted to the volunteer BotB Admin team (leftenants on the discord) for not only being eyeballs on site activity but also acting as an insulation barrier between myself and the folly of n00bs. This allows me to focus what energy I have on maintaining the site and working on improvements. Big ups to the discord mods who deal with problematic situations too! <3

That being said, I am the only one with access to the server and source code. No major battles or new formats get created unless I do it. That's just the way its always been. Doesn't mean it will always be that way. This website is a long term hobby and it wouldn't be fair to myself or the community (speaking from experience) to try making it my full time job. My career and future are currently in flux, and I literally can not afford to give much more attention here than I am already. I can't respond to every request or idea. All I can do is my best to keep most of the people happy most of the time. :D

It gives me great joy to see the community continue to thrive. I think all I've ever wanted for Battle of the Bits was to be a relaxed and fun place for people to hang out, make art and influence each other to try new things. Thanks to all who mentor n00bs to be better artists and people!

ALL N00BZ!!!

...your benevolent dictator,
--puke7

BotB update log

Tue, 2 Mar 2021 16:07:33 -0700

sample max size 2.5mb (from 750kb) :: sample xhb has same length as mariopaint

BotB update log

Sat, 26 Oct 2019 12:07:23 -0700

late penalties now visible on entry pages

BotB update log

Sun, 13 Oct 2019 18:51:12 -0700

mod4k format created; mod8k updated to display sequentially

BotB update log

Thu, 14 Jun 2018 00:34:59 -0700

player volume slider defaults to 50% and remembers position via cookie

BotB update log

Wed, 14 Feb 2018 22:50:55 -0700

render ANSI entries with Pigu's ans renderer

BotB update log

Wed, 7 Jun 2017 21:56:35 -0700

Mighty BotBrs with 7+ badges can host any format OHBs

BotB update log

Sat, 6 May 2017 18:48:08 -0700

midi format max file size now 256kb

BotB update log

Sat, 6 May 2017 18:39:11 -0700

botbr can replace mp3 during entry period

BotB update log

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 00:12:48 -0700

cascading object deletion for battles through api

BotB update log

Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:48:07 -0700

favorites alerts list botbrs since last alert check