Combat Pubs Bot

A Discord bot for EchoVRCE that polls the public match status API and posts live embeds showing:

• Combat queue — number of players currently searching for a Combat match
• Active matches — one pinned embed per live Combat game with team rosters, match time, region, and an echo.taxi join link

Embeds are edited in-place across restarts using message IDs persisted to state.json. The bot can also optionally authenticate with Nakama for richer queue details if you provide Nakama credentials.

Requirements

• Node.js v18 or later
• A Discord webhook URL

Setup

1. Install dependencies

npm install

2. Configure environment

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your values:

cp .env.example .env

Variable	Required	Description
DISCORD_WEBHOOK_URL	Yes	Webhook URL for the target channel
DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN	Optional	Bot token — enables automatic message pinning
POLL_INTERVAL_MS	Optional	Poll frequency in ms (default: 10000)
FILTER_GUILD_ID	Optional	Restrict embeds to one guild/group ID
NAKAMA_URL	Optional	Nakama base URL (no trailing slash, no /v2)
NAKAMA_HTTP_KEY	Optional	Nakama runtime http key for account RPCs
NAKAMA_USERNAME	Optional	Bot account username for Nakama auth
NAKAMA_PASSWORD	Optional	Bot account password for Nakama auth

When all four Nakama values are set, the bot authenticates with Nakama and uses the authenticated API path. If auth fails, it automatically falls back to the public endpoint.

Creating a Discord webhook

In your Discord channel: Settings → Integrations → Webhooks → New Webhook → copy the URL.

Enabling auto-pinning (optional)

Create a bot at discord.com/developers/applications, invite it to your server with the Manage Messages permission, and set DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN.

3. Run the bot

node bot.js

Or on Windows, double-click start-bot.bat.

4. Run with Docker

docker compose up -d

This uses the local Dockerfile and mounts ./data for persistent state.json.

Deploying to Render

The repo includes a render.yaml for one-click deployment as a Background Worker:

1. Push the repo to GitHub
2. Go to render.com → New → Blueprint → connect your repo
3. Set the required env vars in the Render dashboard

Free tier Background Workers run 24/7 with no sleep.

How it works

Every POLL_INTERVAL_MS the bot fetches https://g.echovrce.com/status/matches (public, no auth) and:

1. Reads active_matchmaking_counts to get the number of players queuing for Combat
2. Filters labels for active public Combat matches (optionally by FILTER_GUILD_ID)
3. Posts or edits pinned Discord embeds for the queue count and each active match
4. Deletes embeds for matches that have ended

Console output is change-driven — counts are only logged when the queue size or number of active matches changes.