v1.5 — lobby seats for players 5-8, and a head-on jumbotron view in Chisel Gauntlet for everyone

Mod release v1.5, for game v2.1.2. In game it identifies as v2.1.2-8P-v1.5.

Everyone in a 5-8 player lobby must be on this same release — v1.4 and v1.5 refuse each other cleanly. Update together.

Changed since v1.4

• #14 — Steam lobby with 5-8 players: seats 2-4 piled onto seat 1's chair. Once a fifth player joined, the lobby's character previews for players 2-4 slid onto the first chair and player 5 sat alone (first real 5-player Steam lobby, reported with a screenshot). The room has exactly four chairs, so players 5-8 now sit on the laps of players 1-4 — placed by hand in the running game. Lobbies of 1-4 are untouched.
• Chisel Gauntlet: a head-on view of the jumbotron for everyone in a 5-8 lobby. Playtesters found the minigame harder from the four added seats: they face a corner of the jumbotron and read its four screens at an angle (53° instead of head-on). During the memorise phase every player in a 5-8 lobby now sees a full-screen head-on view of the monitor — the same picture seat 1 gets, rendered by the game's own couch-mode camera — which fades in when the camera looks up at the jumbotron and out when it drops back to the desk. Nothing was added to the level and 1-4 player games are unchanged.

Install

Unzip and run WindowsInstall.bat (Windows) / install.sh (Linux, macOS), or python3 install.py on any platform. See README.txt in the zip. Verify with the main-menu version string (v2.1.2-8P-v1.5); uninstall with Steam's "Verify integrity of game files". The installer keeps no backup and refuses to patch a non-pristine pck — if a game update has reverted the mod, just run it again.

Installer updated 2026-08-18. The mod itself is unchanged — the patched game is byte-identical, so there is nothing to redo if you already installed v1.5. Only the installer changed:

• Windows no longer needs Python installed — the zip bundles its own runtime (~31 MB instead of ~21 MB).
• Steam is found when it isn't in Program Files. A client installed on another drive or in a custom folder used to give "could not find Machine Party automatically" even with the game installed.
• Double-clicking install.sh works on Linux — it opens a terminal itself instead of failing silently when the file manager gives it none.