How to Plan VIP and SVIP Items for a Live App

Many live-streaming and voice chat apps sell or award membership tiers, usually called VIP and SVIP ("super VIP"), and each tier unlocks things the rest of the room can see. This guide plans those items step by step: the tiers, the items each one shows, where the rules live, how entry effects play and how to test every file before it reaches your users. VoltKit sells the artwork (VIP and SVIP items); your app runs the tiers.

1. Decide how people reach each tier

Write down how a person enters and leaves each tier before anyone designs anything:

• Earned: a level ladder that grows with activity or spending.
• Bought: a membership with an end date.
• Both: a level ladder with a paid membership beside it, which many live apps run.

SVIP usually sits above VIP. Decide what happens when a membership lapses: which items disappear, and whether earned items stay. Prices and durations are your product decisions; nothing in the artwork sets them.

2. List what each tier shows

Item	Where it appears	Animated or still	Usual format
Profile frame	Profile, voice-room seat, chat lines, viewer lists	Animated on the profile and the speaker's seat, still in lists	SVGA or animated WebP, plus a still PNG or WebP
Badge	Beside the name in chat and in lists	Still in chat lines, animated on the profile	PNG or WebP; SVGA or animated WebP
Entry effect	Over the room when the member joins	Animated, once per visit	SVGA, often with sound
Seat frame	Around the member's seat in a voice room	Animated while they speak, still otherwise	SVGA or animated WebP, plus a still
Chat bubble	Behind the member's messages	Usually still	A nine-slice image that stretches with the text
Room background	Behind the seats of a room the member owns	Still, or a gentle loop	WebP or PNG for portrait screens

Make the step from tier to tier visible at a glance: a badge for the first tier, then a frame, then an entry effect, with colours or materials that change at each step. Keep the pieces of one tier related, so the frame, the badge and the effect look like a set.

3. Keep the tier on your server

Your server is the source of truth: who holds which tier, until when, and which items it unlocks. Clients ask your server, or a signed list from it, before they show paid-only items.

Do not trust a value a member's own app sends. In VoltKit RTC, participant metadata is display data each client sets for itself (setMetadata; the room hears participantUpdated), so a modified app could claim any tier. Use it for display hints such as a name, and confirm the tier with your server (client SDK).

4. Play entry effects once per visit

VoltKit RTC tells every client in the room when someone joins, with their identity, role and metadata. When a member with an entry effect joins, check their tier and play the effect from a queue, one at a time.

A connection that drops and comes back reaches the room as participantLeft with the reason disconnected, then a new participantJoined. Remember who has had their effect during this visit, so a weak network does not replay it, and give people a setting to turn entry effects off. What are entry effects? covers names, avatars and sound inside the animation.

5. Draw frames, badges and bubbles at every size

• Design frames on a square canvas with the avatar circle's position agreed first, and check them at the smallest size your app draws them (formats for animated frames).
• Badges must read at the height of a line of chat text: a bold outline, few colours, no small lettering.
• Chat bubbles stretch: keep the decoration in the corners and the text area plain, so Android nine-patch images or CSS border-image can grow them with any message.
• Keep a still version of every animated item for long lists and for people who prefer reduced motion.

6. Test every file before release

Open each SVGA file in the free SVGA Player over a screenshot of the screen it plays on, in the Phone 9:16 frame, with the sound on. Check transparent edges on light and dark backgrounds, then test the originals in your app on a lower-end phone during a call. The gift animation checklist covers memory, queues and fallbacks.

Test your VIP animations in theSVGA Player

7. Get the artwork

The VoltKit gift store has pages for entry effects, profile frames, badges and seat frames, chat bubbles and room backgrounds, and gifts marked Free cost nothing to claim. The gift licence lets you use what you buy or claim in your own apps and business, including inside a paid membership, for any number of users; you may not resell or share the files themselves. For a set drawn around your own tiers, send a custom design enquiry. If you are also building the room, RTC with 3D gifts explains how gift events and playback sit beside VoltKit RTC.