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Auction

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Installed separately, as part of the Auction bundle: this module does not come with the app installer. Open Module Catalog → Add-ons and press Install on the Auction card, and the bundle installs all of its modules at once.

What this page is

Auction collects viewer donations and channel point redemptions into lots and then draws the winner. In the side menu it takes three items of the Auction section: Auction → Auction with the lots, the timer and the bids, Auction → Wheel where the winner is drawn, and Auction → Settings. There are no tabs inside the page. The header shows the auction's name on Auction → Auction and Auction → Wheel and the word "Auction" on Auction → Settings, next to a badge showing the engine link: Connecting…, Engine connected or Reconnecting….

How to set it up

Auction → Auction: lots and bids

  1. In the Auction card fill Auction name and the field below it, "Rules or conditions — shown on the lots overlay". Its hint reads "Shown on the lots overlay and saved with the template." Both are stored when you leave the field — they have no separate button.
  2. In Lots type into New lot name, add an Amount if the lot starts with one, and press Add.
  3. A lot row shows its number, its name and its total — all three editable in place — the + field with Add amount to raise the total by hand, the lot's share as a percentage, and ⋯ (More). Everything else is behind that button: the Description field, Bids (how many bids landed on this lot), Disable / Enable, and ✕ (Delete).
  4. Above the list are the search box Search lots…, the filters All, Active, Disabled, and two orders: By total — "Live table by total. Dragging a row merges lots." — and Manual order — "Order sets the lot numbers. Dragging a row changes the order." The line under the list counts "{n} lots · {a} active". After a merge, a line naming both lots with an Undo button stays above the list for 10 seconds, and in the Auction: Lots tile too. Undo puts the merged lot back in its place and takes from the other lot exactly what moved over; a donation that came in for it during those seconds stays with it.
  5. The timer card on the right holds ▶ (Start accepting bids), ■ (Pause accepting bids), −1 (Remove a minute) and +1 (Add a minute). Under the clock a line answers the question that matters mid-stream: Bids are open, Bids are stopped, or Drawing during a draw. With the Timer switch off the clock reads No deadline, the −1 and +1 buttons disappear altogether, and bids are collected until you press stop.
  6. When the timer reaches zero, bidding closes by itself and the line reads Bids are stopped. The wheel does not spin on its own: the draw always starts with Spin. Pressing ▶ after the time has run out starts the countdown again from Duration, sec in the settings.
  7. Accept channel points below it is the master switch for point bids. The line under it reports the state: Channel point bids are accepted, Bidding is stopped — channel points are on hold too, Channel points are off: no bids are accepted for them, or No reward is checked — channel points are not accepted.
  8. The counters Total, Bids and Pending stand over the Recent bids feed. The hint above the feed says either "{n} unmatched — drag a bid onto a lot or open «⋯»" or "Every bid is matched to a lot". Why bids collect in Pending is explained in its own section below.
  9. To sort out an unmatched bid, drag it onto a lot row, or open its ⋯ (More) and press To lot or Reject. The same panel holds the Change reason field with Move, Adjust weight, Void and ✕ (Delete).
  10. Templates: type a Template name and press Save current. A saved template offers Apply, JSON and ✕. Import JSON loads a template file, Export session saves the current auction. Save current always saves a new template, never overwrites one. Saving under a name you already used leaves you with two entries of that name; the list keeps the 50 most recent. To replace one, delete the old entry with ✕ first. Apply is greyed out while bids are open ("Not available while the auction is running"). It creates the lots anew with zero totals, and bids already made are left without a lot, so save the auction to history first if you need the result.
  11. At the end of the stream press Save to history, which writes the auction into the History log. Clear bids opens a confirmation of the same name: "Lots stay where they are, but their totals reset to zero. Bids, the pending queue, the draw result and any running series are wiped. Settings, templates and history are kept." It carries the switch Save the auction to history first, plus Cancel and Clear. Both buttons are greyed out while bids are open, and the hint on them says "Stop taking bids first — this way the money is not wiped by a stray click on air". Press ■ first.
  12. The card at the bottom has three tabs: History, Audit log and Currency.

Auction → Wheel: the draw

  1. Lots in the draw lists the participants with the summary "{n} participants · {pool} total" and a chance beside each lot — "{chance}% chance", or "{pool}% pool · {chance}% elimination risk" in elimination.
  2. Pick a mode: Normal — "Sector and chance are proportional to the lot total"; Elimination — "A larger total shrinks the sector and elimination risk"; Tournament — "Pairwise matches, the winner takes the pot".
  3. Split large sectors is a checkbox next to the button. In Tournament the Lots per match list appears with the values 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 10.
  4. Spin time beside them sets how long the wheel turns: whole seconds from 1 to 60, 5 by default. Tick Random and the field turns into from and to (10 and 20 to begin with): every spin then lasts its own random time within that range. The board, the bracket and the tiles reveal the result at the moment the wheel stops, so a long spin does not give the winner away early. The same setting sits on the Auction: Control tile.
  5. Press Spin. Until then the result line reads "Choose a mode and press Spin"; during the spin it shows "The wheel is spinning…" and "Engine is selecting…".
  6. In a series the button becomes Spin again, and in a tournament Next up — "The wheel is holding the result. Next up — build the wheel for the next match." Restart appears when the auction is decided.
  7. In Tournament the Tournament bracket block opens under the wheel: "Drag to pan, scroll to zoom." Beside it are Auto focus, − (Zoom out), ⤢ (Fit to block), + (Zoom in) and the count "{done} of {total} matches played".

Auction → Settings

  1. Auction settings holds four numbers. Donation multiplier (1 by default): a donation is converted into your base currency and multiplied by it, so at 1 a donation of 5 adds 5 to its lot. Points multiplier (0.01 by default) does the same with the cost of a channel point reward: a 1,000-point reward adds 10. Min. donation (1, in your base currency) and Min. points (1) skip anything smaller; the Diagnostics list then says "below the minimum amount".
  2. Channel point rewards — "Only checked rewards raise a lot. Nothing checked means channel points do not take part in the auction." The rewards themselves are created on Automation → Channel Rewards; the hint on an empty list calls it "the Channel Points page", which is the same place. A reward may be marked no text field, no refunds, disabled or not in the channel list. On a reward with no text field viewers cannot type a lot name, so such a bid lands in Pending unless Accept everything is on.
  3. Refund points on reject (on by default) gives the points back when a channel point bid is rejected, one at a time or all at once. It works only for a reward made in strAImer on Automation → Channel Rewards, and only when Skip request queue (auto-approve) is unticked on that reward: Twitch does not let anyone cancel a redemption that was approved on the spot. That box comes ticked on a new reward, so untick it when you create the auction reward. The no refunds mark appears on a reward with that box ticked. A reward made outside strAImer, on the Twitch site for example, cannot refund either, but carries no mark.
  4. Accept everything — "A donation that matches no lot creates a new one. With no text the lot is named after the viewer."
  5. The Timer block warns that "The timer itself is switched on the Auction page. When off, bids are collected with no deadline and these settings do nothing." Set Duration, sec (15 minutes by default) and Extend on bids: Do not extend, Fixed per bid (adds Seconds per bid) or By donation amount (adds Add seconds and Per each (base currency)). A line under them spells the result out in words.
  6. Anti-snipe below it is a switch, and it is on from the start: a bid in the last 30 seconds rewinds the timer by 30 seconds, so a timer that keeps gaining time near the end is doing exactly this. Switched off, it says what you are choosing — "A last-second bid ends the auction — nobody can answer." — and its two fields are not on screen at all. On, Treat as ending, last sec and Rewind the timer by, sec explain themselves the same way: "A bid {window} sec before the end rewinds the timer by {extension} sec."
  7. Count donations from — "An unchecked source does not raise a lot. New sources are counted automatically."
  8. Test & diagnostics sends a fake bid: Source (Donation or Twitch Points), Amount, Viewer, Message, then Send a test bid. The Diagnostics list below shows how the last bids were read and why: "went into a lot", "bidding is stopped — waiting to be sorted out", "no lot matched — waiting to be sorted out" and so on.
  9. Press Save settings in the page header. It stores everything above it — the multipliers, the minimums, the rewards, the timer and anti-snipe, Accept everything and Refund points on reject. Count donations from is the exception: its checkboxes apply the moment you click them, with no button involved.

Turning the module off for a day

The Auction: Control tile has a power button, Turn off / Turn on. Switched off, bids are not accepted, neither by donation nor by channel points, and they do not pile up in the queue waiting to be sorted. Every OBS overlay of the set goes dark: the board, the wheel and the bracket stay empty from the moment a scene loads, without showing up for a moment first. What has already accumulated stays where it is: switching off and resetting are separate actions, and the reset buttons are unchanged.

This power button stops the whole auction. The On air switch in a row of the board, wheel or bracket list is something else: it takes only that one screen off the stream, while bids, money, the timer and the draw go on. How each screen behaves is in the guides "Auction board", "Auction wheel" and "Bracket overlay".

This is not the same as removing the module in the catalogue. Removing unloads the whole set at once and lives in the catalogue, not at hand during a stream; the power button is in the tile you already keep on your control panel, and it survives restarting the app.

Why every donation lands in Pending

A bid goes into a lot only while bidding is open: between ▶ and ■, or until the timer runs out. At any other moment, before the first start, after a stop and after the time is up, a bid goes straight to Pending without its text being read. That holds for every donation and point bid the module lets in. The ones it drops earlier never reach the queue: everything while the module is switched off, a donation from a source unticked in Count donations from or below Min. donation, and a point bid while Accept channel points is off, for a reward not ticked in Channel point rewards, or below Min. points. The totals are frozen on purpose, so that the wheel and the viewers see the same numbers. The module is on from the moment it is installed, so on a stream with no auction the evening's donations collect there. Diagnostics on Auction → Settings marks such a bid "bidding is stopped — waiting to be sorted out".

How a bid finds its lot

This is the part viewers have to be told, because it decides what they write.

While bidding is open, the app reads the message and tries three things in order:

  1. The whole message equal to a lot's name.
  2. A lot's name in the message. The name has to start a word; after it the word may end or carry a short ending of up to three letters, so "stalkers" still finds the lot "Stalker". A name of one or two letters, such as "A" or "B", counts only as a word of its own: "make it b" goes to "B", not to "A" because of the letter inside "make". With several names in the message the longest wins, and two different names of the same length send the bid to Pending instead of to the upper lot.
  3. A number on its own — one to three digits, with or without a # — when no lot's name is in the message. "5" and "#5" and "I'm in for 5" all land on lot number 5. That is the number printed in the lot's row — and it counts enabled lots only, so disabling a lot renumbers the ones below it. A name comes first, so "Stalker 2" lands on the lot "Stalker 2", not on lot number 2.

A bid that matches nothing goes to the Pending queue for you to sort by hand — unless Accept everything is on, in which case it becomes a new lot. A bid that names two lots of the same length, or has a lot's name only inside another word ("nooo" with a lot "No"), goes to Pending even then, so that it does not split the votes for one option between two lots.

Auction tiles on the Control Panel

The set also brings five tiles that run the auction from the Control Panel without opening this page: Auction: Control, Auction: Disputed bids, Auction: Lots, Auction: Wheel and Auction: Bracket. They are described in the guide "Auction tiles on the Control Panel".

What it cannot do