A Proper Introduction & Our Plans
Jacob 
Hello again! For those who don’t know me, my name is Jacob and I used to work alongside Brant on BrantSteele roughly from 2012 until my departure in 2017. In this post I’ll be recounting my work during that period, why I’ve come back, and where my knowledge currently lies in regards to the website and related information. I will also be lightly talking about how we plan to move forward for, at least, the next six months. So, if you’re mainly interested in what’s coming up, scroll down and look for the relevant header.
For those who do remember me, hi! It’s been upwards of four years and, understandably, a lot has changed. I may not remember everybody, and even for those I do recognize I may not have the best memory of our interactions, but it’s been great to see familiar users on Discord.
Speaking of, if anybody wants to chat or ask me anything (within reason), I recently joined the BrantSteele Discord server! If you decide to join, please make sure you respect the rules and be friendly. I’m also planning on popping into our subreddit soon.
With that, let’s jump in!
My Previous Work
Back in 2013, I discovered BrantSteele when a user of another website shared a link to the Big Brother 10 simulator. At the time, that was the only simulator and it had no logic. The specifics are gone to the wind but, being over-enthusiastic, I started to send Brant email after email about how fun it was and ideas I had to make it better.
Skipping ahead to a more established time, my main focus was on support- creating blog posts, bug-hunting, and so forth. As time went on, I continued to have more involvement with most aspects of the BrantSteele. In no particular order, I created the still current BrantSteele logo, started our subreddit, increased activity on Twitter, and created/ran Community Simulations and the Prediction Game. On top of helping Brant on internal things, I made myself very busy. Eventually, I took more of an interested in the actual creation of the simulators.
While I was always talking with Brant about potential simulators, I found myself starting to plan how certain shows would function myself. I believe the first result of this was The Hunger Games, designed by me, programmed by Brant, and virtually every event made by me. Releasing it on Christmas Day (2014) was an idea we agreed on because, at the time, there was no simulator of this scale and we both felt it would be a cool surprise. I don’t want to derail this post by getting too into the aftermath of THG, but it’s needless to say that it was jaw-dropping (I was still in high school by this point). We later added in several features, specifically to the core loop we added The Feast and Arena Events, prior credits applying.
Other shows I designed since then (including transcription of challenges and other necessary text): Dog Eat Dog, Total Drama Island, The Circle, and The Challenge (The Duel). The automated voting charts, which were introduced in TDI, were conceptualized by me and brought to life by Brant.
That is the extent of my contributions to the point I left, unless I’ve missed something. Now, the question is why did I leave?
I recall making a goodbye post at the time that has since been deleted, but the answer is that life was catching up to me. There were several pressing matters stacking up in my offline life, and on top of pressure I was putting on myself to finish The Duel, I hit a point where anything that wasn’t a top priority had to be put aside. Unfortunately, BrantSteele was one of the few things that wasn’t a necessity. In hindsight, I would have tried to reduce my presence instead of leaving, but it is what it is. I continued to watch shows like Big Brother for a period but, by the end of Episode 2 of Millennials vs. Gen X (Survivor), I decided to to stop. I haven’t seen a single episode of any current reality show since, and until recently had not been on BrantSteele.
It was toward the end of Q3 2020 that I started to consider returning. After seeing a wave of BrantSteele videos, the thought of returning didn’t bring hesitation like it typically did. By November (possibly earlier), I was back in contact.
Our original plan was for me to formerly return on the release a certain simulator I’m working on, but with April approaching, we made a quick decision to pull an April Fools joke.
What’s Next?
We’ve got some fun stuff in the works. The current plan is, while Brant continues to push out updated Survivor seasons, I will be preparing other content. When I finish content on my end, he will come in and create a simulator, so there will be other things to break up the chain of Survivor updates. As well, we recently decided that we will be doing an event in the coming months. There is one simulator on my end that we need to release prior to this, and we ideally want all 40 seasons of Survivor to be complete, but we are ultimately aiming for this event to take place during the summer. It will mainly take place on Discord, but the actual content will be on the website. We’re very excited to see how it shapes up. Beyond that, Brant will likely move to upgrading Big Brother and I will move to my next BrantSteele project.
Hopefully this post has given you an idea of my time with BrantSteele and what we’re aiming to do with the remainder of the 2021. Whether you read everything or just about our plans, thank you for your time!
I Love Money (Season 1) Added & A Brief Hello!
To go with April Fools, Brant and I have put together and released the I Love Money simulator (ILM)!
While I returned to BrantSteele unofficially a few months ago, the idea to create a proper ILM simulator (sim) came about within the last month as a last-minute April Fools joke. Due to the time crunch and difficulty in finding the full season viewable, the simulator is unfortunately missing challenge descriptions and educated guesses had to be made regarding certain details. We plan on revisiting the sim at another time to add the challenges and other improvements. If you know of a legal source for the full season of ILM S1, contact us!
Keep reading to see a summary of how I Love Money works, or skip ahead for a brief introduction from me.
Simulator Summary
- In Episode 1, there are 17 solo contestants who compete in a challenge. First and second place become captains and take turns picking their teammates. The last person to not be picked has their check voided.
- Each team must select a new captain each episode and cannot pick the same contestant back-to-back. This occurs on the first Events page.
- Teams compete in a challenge and the captain of the winning team becomes Paymaster. As Paymaster, one gains the ability to void the check of another contestant. The captain of the losing team does not receive any sort of punishment.
- The losing team must nominate three people for the Bottom 3 during The Vault. This process is very free form in nature, thus it’s difficult to translate in a timely manner which is why not much context is included on this page currently.
- The Power Outing is simply a chance for the Bottom 3 to vouch for themselves to the Paymaster before the Elimination Ceremony and is reminiscent of rewards in other shows like Survivor.
- The Elimination Ceremony has one key feature, which is the Paymaster saving/eliminating the Bottom 3 in whatever order they choose. This is reflected on the Voting Chart as some Episodes show a BTM3 and a BTM2, while others have two BTM3.
- After teams are disbanded, the challenge winner each episode becomes Paymaster (and can be back-to-back). The contestant who places dead-last is automatically placed in the Bottom 3.
- The Paymaster does not participate in The Vault and, with the exception of Episodes 10 & 13, the other contestants must nominate two more people.
- In Episode 10, the dead-last loser has their check voided immediately and, as a result, three people need to be nominated during The Vault. In Episode 13, there are only three contestants that can be nominated and so there is no dead-last loser or vault.
- Also in Episode 13, immediately following the check being voided, it is revealed that there is a jury who will eliminate one of the remaining contestants. Now, because a contestant quit before the jury could do anything on the actual show, we don’t know exactly how jury was meant to function. We came to the conclusion that they would likely act in a similar fashion to every other group decision in the game- naming a single contestant as a group.
- The final 2 is a challenge in similar fashion to The Final Challenge in The Duel.
The voting chart is relatively self-explanatory, but here is a key for the less obvious elements.
- bold text – Team Captain
- italic text – Dead-Last Loser
- Dark Red Cell – Voided Via Challenge
- BTM3 – Was either saved first or the first person called up had their check voided.
- BTM2 – Was either called up second and saved, or the second person called up had their check voided.
Brief Introduction
Hello! This was not part of the April Fools post- I have indeed returned. I was originally going include a lengthy summary of my history on BrantSteele before and currently, as well as current/future plans, but I think for the sake of time I’ll be doing that in the next couple of days. What I will say is that I am excited to be focusing on the simulators again and I can’t wait to see more ideas become a reality. My intention was to officially return on the release of another… project, but the timing of this served itself better. That’s all I’ll say for now.
Thank you for enjoying and supporting BrantSteele for all these years and for the reception of I Love Money, it’s good to be back.
Total Drama Action Added
Ignore the author name.
It’s been a few years since the release of Total Drama Island, and since returning, I have made it a top priority to help bring Total Drama Action to life. From a surprise contestant, to Chef being up to no good and there being a saboteur, we tried to include as much as possible so we could say it is just as impressive as the TDI simulator, if not more. Unfortunately, we struggled to find a way to include the Aftermath episodes, but every other aspect of the actual show is present.
We think you’ll love it as much as I love other things.
Survivor Panama & Cook Islands Upgraded
The Survivor Panama Update and Survivor Cook Islands Update have been released. This involves a lot of new code to handle the unique hidden immunity idol for these seasons.
During the past week, a bug was fixed with Profile attributes sometimes not working properly in the .com simulators. This bug was due to a function that was originally made for Total Drama Island not translating the 5-attribute to the 8-attribute profiles that these other simulators use correctly. This has now been fixed.
Thank you to everyone who has been testing and reporting bugs. I’m also gathering feedback in the following Google Doc. Before the next season upgrade, this feedback will be analyzed, and some quality of life updates may be made to all of the Survivor seasons: Feedback Survey
The Challenge: All-Stars Cast Photos Added
Cast photos for The Challenge: All-Stars have been added to the BrantSteele.com simulators. The season will premiere Thursday, April 1, on Paramount+.
Thank you to Mira for editing these cast photos.
Survivor Palau & Guatemala Upgraded
The Survivor Palau Update and Survivor Guatemala Update have been released.
One of the most requested features in Palau was the ability to use the tribes from the show. Similarly to Thailand, this can now be done through Edit Cast – along with choosing the starting tribes if you’d prefer. There are a few different options for visually and/or functionally excluding Episode 1, Part 1.
Guatemala features one of the most unique tribe swaps in Survivor history and the introduction of the Hidden Immunity Idol. It is also programmed using the newest version of the algorithm. Please leave feedback on whether you prefer the changes – such as the immunity winner listed each tribal council and more realistic quit/medevac probabilities and rock drawing chances – and would like these to be applied to the other seasons.
Thanks to bwburke94 for providing specific details that went into the planning of these simulator and Brandon for testing.
You can also use the Feedback Survey to provide your thoughts on how these early season upgrades are progressing. Thank you.
Big Brother Canada 9 Cast Photos Added
Cast photos for Big Brother Canada 9 have been added to the BrantSteele.com simulators. The season will premiere with a two-night premiere on March 3-4, 2021, on Global.
Survivor Vanuatu Upgraded & Bug Fixes
The Survivor Vanuatu Update has been released.
Along with those bug fixes, the Vote Summary for Jury Vote is also now available on all newly simulated .com Survivor seasons. Thanks to everyone who contributed with detailed reports and save links!
Keep reading for the list of bugs that were corrected.
Survivor Pearl Islands & All-Stars Upgraded
The Survivor Pearl Islands Update and Survivor All-Stars Update have been released.
There were a few scenarios in Pearl Islands that never occurred in the show, so I’m interested in your feedback on how these are handled in the simulator. There is an Episode 2 twist in the simulator that was never shown in the episodes. An option has been added where you can disable it if you’d prefer.
Thanks to bwburke94 for providing specific details that went into the planning of this simulator and also Alyssa Edwards, Desy, and Drake, who volunteered to test at the last minute before release. A pause for the weekly Survivor updates may occur next week to make sure there’s enough time to incorporate some of the planned features, fix some lingering bugs, and make sure other plans are still developing as intended.
You can also use the Feedback Survey to provide your thoughts on how these early season upgrades are progressing. Thank you.
Survivor Amazon Upgraded & Other Bug Fixes
The Survivor Amazon Update has been released with the option to sort each tribe by age.
A feature was added to the bottom of every Votes page called Vote Summary that lists the targets and who voted for each of them.
Bug fixes:
– Since November, the ‘final targets’ math has been partially broken, leading to more one-sided votes.
– There was an alphabetical dependency benefiting those at the start of the alphabet in alliance creation.
– Duplicate alliance formation was possible.
– Player could be involved in events after quitting.
– Tribe events were disabled when you had alliances set to ‘Only use the alliances I create’.
Keep reading to see the season specific bugs that were fixed.
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