I’m having trouble with a Discord bot game I created in Python. The main issue is that the while loop doesn’t seem to be working as expected. I want to understand what’s going wrong and explore better ways to implement this feature.
def luck_game(player, msg):
is_running = True
bot.send_message(msg.channel, "Luck Game begins! 6 slots available, 1 is dangerous.\nUse !roll to randomize.\nUse !test to check your luck.")
while is_running:
if msg.content.startswith('!roll'):
slot_number = randint(1,6)
bot.send_message(msg.channel, "%s rolls the dice." % player)
if msg.content.startswith('!test'):
if slot_number == 1:
bot.send_message(msg.channel, "%s tested their luck and failed. Game over!" % player)
is_running = False
else:
bot.send_message(msg.channel, "%s tested their luck and survived." % player)
Can someone help me figure out why this isn’t working and suggest alternative approaches to handle this type of interactive game logic?
Had this exact headache building internal tools for server deployments. Blocking loops kill responsiveness completely.
You need proper event handling and state management. But managing game state logic, message routing, and command processing gets messy fast when you’re doing it manually in Discord.py.
I moved all my interactive bot workflows to automation. Much cleaner. You can set up event triggers, state persistence, and conditional logic without wrestling with async/await patterns or maintaining dictionaries of active games.
Automation handles message parsing, stores game states automatically, and processes roll/test commands through proper workflows. No more blocking loops or complex state tracking code.
You also get built-in error handling and can easily add timeouts, multiple concurrent games, or game history without rewriting your bot logic.
Check out how smooth this becomes with proper workflow automation: https://latenode.com
totally agree! that loop checks msg.content only once, so it never updates. try using @bot.command() decorators instead - they process inputs as they come. way simpler and works way better.
The problem is Discord bots are event-driven, not procedural. Your while loop blocks everything and stops the bot from receiving new messages, so msg.content gets stuck on whatever first triggered the function.
I hit this same issue building a trivia bot. The fix is working with Discord.py’s async design instead of against it. Use a global dictionary or class attribute to store game states - something like active_games = {} to track each player’s slot number and game status.
When someone types !startgame, create their entry in the dictionary. Then !roll and !test commands just check if the user has an active game and update their state. This way Discord.py handles messages normally while your game stays responsive.
Your while loop is blocking everything and creating an infinite loop. Once you’re stuck in there, msg.content never changes - it’s still pointing to the original message that started the whole thing.
I hit this same wall building my first Discord game bot. Here’s what worked: ditch the loop and use a state system instead. Keep a dictionary with user IDs as keys to track who’s playing what. Then handle !roll and !test through separate event handlers that check if someone has an active game.
This way Discord.py processes messages normally and your game just responds to the right commands. Way cleaner than jamming synchronous loops into async code.
yeah, that loop is a problem. it freezes since msg doesn’t change. better to store slot_number in a dict or just make it global, and handle !roll and !test as separate commands instead of keeping them in a loop.