Birthday Boardwalk Archive

September 2026 • An Amb Fam event archive

Closed for
the Season.

Birthday Boardwalk is over for 2026, but I wanted to leave the site up as a record of what we made. A lot happened on stream, and there was also a lot going on behind the scenes to keep the tickets, activities, and attraction unlocks working.

You can look through the attractions, see where we ended up, and get a better idea of how the event worked.

This is a read-only archive. Tickets can’t be earned, claimed, gifted, or spent anymore.
BIRTHDAY BOARDWALK CLOSED FOR THE SEASON

Where we ended up

By the numbers

These numbers come from the final saved event data.

Loading—Community Tickets

What was Birthday Boardwalk?

A birthday event with a boardwalk full of things to do.

The idea

One of the reasons I liked Birthday Boardwalk is because it forced me to celebrate myself while also giving the community some fun activities as a thank you for supporting me.

The Boardwalk was an extension of an event I did a few years ago, The Amb Fam Arcade, with a twist on the “venue” and the use of tickets. This time, the event took place on a nighttime boardwalk where new attractions lit up as the community hit ticket goals.

We ran it across four streams. Most of the Boardwalk started out hidden behind silhouettes, so every unlock gave us something new to do.

Community Tickets

Community Tickets were the big shared number for the event. Bits, subs, eligible Ko-fi support, and eligible Throne gifts added to the total.

They were never spent. Once we reached a goal, another attraction opened.

Personal Tickets

If the site could match the support to a person, they also got Personal Tickets to use on activities around the Boardwalk.

People could sign in with Twitch to find their balance, or use a Boardwalk Pass instead.

Free tickets were part of it too

I didn’t want spending money to be the only way someone could take part. Everyone could claim 250 free Personal Tickets each day during the event.

People could also gift Personal Tickets to someone else if they wanted to help a friend do an activity.

The midway map

The attractions

At the start, most of these were black silhouettes. When we hit the matching Community Ticket goal, the full artwork appeared and that attraction stayed lit for the rest of the event.

Behind the Boardwalk

How it worked

The public site was what everyone saw, but I was using a second set of tools behind it to keep the event moving.

01

Lighting up the Boardwalk

Community Tickets updated the shared total. When we hit a goal, the matching silhouette changed to the full-color attraction artwork and stayed that way.

02

Getting tickets into the site

Twitch, Ko-fi, and Throne were connected to the ticket system so eligible support could add tickets automatically. I also had correction tools for the times automation did something weird, because of course it did.

03

Finding your tickets later

If Twitch could identify the person supporting the stream, their Personal Tickets were attached to a wallet. That meant someone could cheer Bits first, log in later, and still find the tickets they had already earned.

04

Running the event

I handled most of the event from a private admin page. That is where I could see pending activities, make ticket corrections, update Midway scores, run the snack bracket, and preview the Group Photo.

05

What showed up on stream

The OBS overlay showed the latest attraction we unlocked, how many tickets were left until the next goal, and what was coming next. Later surprises stayed hidden until it was time to show them.

06

Keeping the totals after updates

During testing, I learned that storing the live data inside the app was a bad idea. I moved the event state into MySQL so wallets, totals, redemptions, gifts, and event history stayed put when I deployed a new version of the site.

07

Testing without breaking the live event

There was a separate Test Mode where I could try unlocks and redemptions without changing the real totals. I also kept backups. I had learned my lesson by then.

08

Fixing things once people used it

The first stream showed me a few things I could not really catch in testing. We fixed duplicate ticket credit on restarted Twitch subs, added the Group Photo preview to Admin, and corrected text that became hard to read after an attraction lit up.

Archive note

I kept the event. I left the private stuff out.

I want this site to show what we built and where the event ended. I do not want it to become a public record of who spent what.

The archive keeps things like the final totals, attraction artwork, and how the site worked. It does not show individual wallet balances, contribution histories, Boardwalk Passes, giveaway entries, shipping information, or the Group Photo participant list.