TiaBot

TiaBot is a long-running Discord chatbot that started life as a TeamSpeak companion before following my communities through Skype and ultimately Discord. It mixes Java services, lightweight Python utilities, and a SQLite knowledge base to keep servers engaged, informed, and entertained.

Highlights

• Automates routine community management, voting, and information sharing
• Bridges multiple external APIs to surface data in conversational form
• Provides a flexible plugin system so new features can be prototyped rapidly
• Maintains a history of interactions for lightweight analytics and follow-up

Functionality Overview

• Chat Responses & Custom Echoes — Sends scheduled announcements, repeats moderator-defined trigger phrases, and can even drop playful easter-egg replies when certain keywords or anime references appear.
• Audio & Voice Tools — Plays soundboard clips, converts typed messages into spoken audio, and supports simple language tags to generate instant TTS snippets. It can also stream Cleverbot replies through voice chat for fun (this was before the modern AI/LLM era).
• FFXIV Character & Gear Lookups — Pulls character portraits straight from the Lodestone, links Best-in-Slot gear sets, and provides easy stat breakdowns so players don’t have to dig through external websites.
• Crafting & Recipe Search — Fetches crafting recipes from XIVDB, listing ingredients and stats in tidy embeds. Great for crafters who want quick info without leaving Discord.
• Stat Calculators & Weight Guides — Computes important combat breakpoints (crit, speed, determination, etc.) and provides ready-made stat-weight lists used by most level-70 jobs, all formatted for quick decision-making.
• Timelines & Raid Prep — Sends timeline images for raid encounters to help groups plan pulls, cooldown rotations, and mechanic timings.
• Downloads & Utilities — Hosts small downloadable helper tools (like log scanners), delivering them directly via DM on request.
• Gameplay Awareness & Alerts — Announces boss mechanics, cooldown timers, and match-ready states so groups can coordinate without juggling multiple apps.
• Mini-Games & Social Features — Runs trivia nights, emoji-driven reaction polls, and even a chaotic Numberwang score game that rewards random chat behavior. Scores persist between sessions.
• Cleverbot Conversations — Lets users chat with Cleverbot directly in Discord—either in public channels or privately—for quick entertainment during downtime.
• Chimes & Personal Auto-Replies — Users can schedule a one-time personal reply that triggers automatically the next time they speak in chat.
• Data Integrations for Players — Pulls gear stats, crafting data, FFXIV portraits, and other API-based info right into chat, keeping everything one step away.
• Performance Insights — Generates DPS graphs and summaries to help players understand how their group performed in recent encounters.

Evolution

The project began as a Java TeamSpeak soundboard that reacted to packets sniffed from my local network. As the community moved platforms, the bot gained new interfaces, several rewrites in Python for quick prototypes, and a SQLite-backed configuration store so I could redeploy features without downtime.

When Discord became the permanent home, I consolidated the tooling into a modular service: persistent queues run scheduled tasks, a command router delegates to feature modules, and the analytics database tracks usage to highlight popular interactions. At its peak, TiaBot served roughly 250 users across five servers, running continuously from cloud hosts for reliability.

Target Platforms

• Containerized and deployed in the cloud for 24/7 uptime (AWS EC2).
• Discord text and voice chat.