nodegame / nodegame-client

nodeGame client for the browser and node.js

nodeGame

Fast, scalable JavaScript for large-scale, online, multiplayer, real-time games and experiments.

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The Good parts

• Open source and open standard (HTML5)
• Modular framework (server / client / window / widgets / games)
• Low / medium level of programming required
• Powerful API
• Integrated NDDB Javascript database
• Server can run multiple games at the same time
• Powerful and customizible waiting rooms
• Monitor interface
• Works on mobile devices and tablets
• Bots (for playing) and Phantoms (for testing)
• Installation is required only for the server, clients just need their browser windows
• Integrates smoothly with other libraries (e.g. jQuery, D3.js, etc.) and web services, such as Amazon Mechanical Turk

Quick Start

nodeGame comes with a default game taken from the academic literature of game theory. It is called the Ultimatum game. To play it follows the steps:

1. Download the latest version of node.js for your platform
2. Download the latest version of git for your platform
3. Download installer, and install nodegame: node nodegame-installer
4. Enter installation directory.
5. Start the server with the command: node launcher.js
6. Open one tab pointing to localhost:8080
7. Select Ultimatum game
8. Open more tabs, or start a bot through the waiting room interface
9. Check the monitor interface at localhost:8080/ultimatum/monitor

Documentation

Complete documentation is available in the nodeGame wiki.

License

MIT

nodegame-client's Issues

Save all state updates messages in separate DB with their timing

At the moment the incoming listener

node.on( IN + set + 'STATE', function (msg) {
    node.game.memory.add(msg.text, msg.data, msg.from);
});

is ignored because notified STATE messages are send as 'say' messages.

incoming IN + set + 'DATA' messages should keep the state of the original sender in the DB

At the moment messages are saved in the DB with the local state, while it is more correct to save them under the state contained in the message itself.

It could be for example that the local state is updated in between of two messages received by two clients, and although created in the same state they would be saved under different ones.

Widget step on done getValues throws error if not implemented.

Change code in Game.prototype.execStep or adjust default getValues method in Widget.

Matcher.replaceId

At the moment there is no easy way of replacing the ID of a disconnected client with that of, for example, a newly connected bot. It should be easy to replace it.

GameLoop should have a better way to specify states

something like loop.add(state, other_param)
something like loop.remove(state, other_param)

this would make easier to refactor GameLoops

make a faster and more flexible event emitter class

Inspired by https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/master/lib/events.js

Test issue 1

Introduce a mysql connection side by side with the game.memory object

as title

Introduce a global error handler

All functions included in gameloop should be put inside a try and catch block with some specific options about how to recover from the error.

Server-Client synchronization

If there is a time delay between node.connect and node.play on a client, the server can try to start the game, while the game is not actually ready to be started, at least in all the clients.

The clients that are ready will step, and the late ones will treat the step message as an invalid game state.

Maybe STATE messages should be cached if no game is found.