jhcook/game_engine

A game engine supporting http and web sockets

Game Server Engine

This is the game server that is implemented at a basic level. It has wrapper capabilities that will be used to cater to various other plugins. At this time, it is not a plugin framework. Rather, there is one game that is integrated in to the code base.

Language

The server is implemented in Go using HTTP and JSON. To build, checkout the code, navigate to the repo's root and go install. If your Go environment is configured properly, it will work by $GOPATH/bin/game_engine. The process listens on port 3000 by default, but this can be changed in the code.

Games

The only game written at this time is Hangman. A Python cli and web clients are provided. After the man is hanged, the word will be returned. The Cambridge Dictionary API is used to provide a hint. After you build, it will be available locally -- with configured hostname -- at:

http://hangman.example.com/hangman.html

In the example above, websocket is listening on port 8080 and is proxied by mod_proxy_ws in Apache.

Configuration

There are no configuration capabilities at this time.

Protocol

The protocol is RESTful or Websocket over HTTP and uses JSON structures to both send and receive data in a syncronous style.

The flow will look like the following:

Received for a new game {"Cmd":"NEW","Hint":"a hint to the word","Curr":[0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0],"Missed":[],"Game":36,"Cred":"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"}

A guess from the client {"Cmd":"P1T","Play":"r","Gid":36,"Auth":"xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"}

Response from the server {"Cmd":"P1T","Curr":[0,0,0,0,114,0,0,0,0,0,0],"Missed":[],"Game":36}

game_engine's Issues

Game length

Right now games expire too soon -- after a minute with no play or five minutes in total. Perhaps this is too short.

Answer on loss

It would be good to know the word after you have failed.

Word appears in hint

Although functionality exists to remove the word from the hint by blanking it out, or '-----', this needs further enhancement to be case insensitive.

Words with non alphabet characters

Sometimes a word such as delegate_2 comes from Cambridge. This is very rare.

An option to solve in one action

The user and API needs the ability to solve the puzzle in one go (Hangman).

Empty submission starts new word

People may press accidentally, but this starts a new word. This is not ideal.

Further cache checking

Cache checking is only happening with initial lookup and not inflection. If the word does not exist then inflection is used. But, the word returned on inflection is not looked up in the cache.

Client may display out of sequence when final guess is wrong

When a final guess is wrong, the hanged man may be out of sequence. For instance, a leg may show when there are no arms.

Answers with multiple words

If there is a space in the answer, that should be provided in the rune slice sent to the clients in order for the client to display the space.