zigster64 / zig-zag-zoe

Multiplayer TicTacToe - in Zig - using HTMX for that zero-javascript experience

𒀳 Scribe of the Ziggurat 𒅆𒂍𒉪

🔭 Here is a list of (public) Zig projects Im working on for 2024

• ⚡ datastor.zig Very prototype Zig lib for a concept Data Persistence layer suitable for games / IoT

🔭 Here is a list of Zig projects I have completed (2023)

• ⚡ ZTS comptime text templating system, specifically for use in web servers
• ⚡ zig-zag-zoe multi-player web based game, using HTMX and SSE
• ⚡ zchat Unique chat application, using cuniform over HTTP

👯 Other Zig projects Im actively using / collaborating on (2023 - 2024)

karlseguin - local forks for development / PRs

• ⚡ http.zig HTTP 1.1 server
• ⚡ websocket.zig Websocket server
• ⚡ zuckdb.zig DuckDB library
• ⚡ pg.zig Zig native Postgresql client library

Working on libUI-ng stuff for Native UI development

• ⚡ Zig libui-ng Zig bindings to libUI-ng
• C libui-ng Underlying C library that provides a common UI wrapper over native elements (Win32 / GTK / Obj-C Mac)

Others

• ⚡ Capy UI Zig native GUI library
• ⚡ ZLS ZLS Language Server
• ⚡ Zig Language Zig language and compiler

Configs

• https://github.com/zigster64/lunavim.config my LunaVim config

zig-zag-zoe's Issues

documentation

• readmes
• events.md
• doc comments on all functions .. many are not right

sound effects

add soundeffects to the app

• ping when its your turn
• special tone when its your turn and you hold the flipper
• explosion sounds
• victory trumpet vs durge for losers

sometimes login fails

sometimes a login doesnt set the player ID ??

or maybe its just the client i was using was caching an old version - dont know

keep an eye out for it happening again

Get network address on boot and present this

Like when node serve prints the available addresses for the current app, need to get this and print it on boot

kill stale event loops

Need a way of signalling all existing event handlers to be terminated

.. i think anyway, might need to check whether this is happening automatically when the client end goes away

Use dispatcher for logging all

Apply a custom dispatcher to automate all request logging

teams

be able to group players into teams, so they can collaborate against an enemy team to win

Make it so there are between 0 and 3 teams max

default is 0

If teams is between 1-3, then on choosing a login, choose a team as well

When playing in Team Mode, then denote the boxes with the team color rather than the player color

inactive timeout

Make the game clear itself and restart after an idle timeout

If no incoming traffic with valid X-SESSION ids have been seen for some duration, then kill the game and reset it

card deck

Generate a deck of cards, shuffle them, and hand them out to users

Each user has a hand of cards that are displayed on their console.
When its their turn, they can select to play a card - this removes the card from their hand for the rest of thegame

cards could be things like -

• uno reverso
• make next player skip turn
• get double turn
• flipper (?) .. this should be very rare, as its a bit overpowered

landmines

some squares can randomly contain landmines that explode when entered

• effectively skips a turn
• the resulting explosion may destroy adjacent squares as well

runs fine for a while, then pegs the cpu to 100

CPU spike
Looks like a slow memory leak as well

Investigate

uno reverso

Add special ability to reverse the flow of play

useless in a 2 player game, but useful in 3 or more players

memory leaks

There remains 1 teeny memory leak, which I think is related to having the resReqPool growing when the pool is full.

It does correctly free the resources at the end - but maxis remains bumped. Unless there is something else being allocated inside a response or request that is not being freed ? Hard to tell

Running an experiment now with the pool-overflow branch of http.zig, set the pool size to 32, and shrink the audio files down so that the response buffers can be shrunk as well

Experimenting on local, this gives me a build that has zero allocations - even during DOS attack, so lets run this up on AWS for a week and see how it copes

vblog

Do a video blog walkthrough of the code

• intro to htmx
• intro to http.zig
• components .. associates handlers with objects
• templating using plain old std.fmt.print
• the magic wand of htmx + SSE
• thread signals and wait conditions
• future directions .. maybe pull out the good bits and look at a zone framework or something

thread.detach == resource leak ?

Memory usage is a LOT better, but its still growing at a slow but steady rate.

See https://github.com/zigster64/pthread-test for a deeper dive into getting memory stats based on pthread usage

Audio borked

On iOS, still getting some audio issues

main screen ting notifications work fine, but zero wing, bomb and victory audio is not playing

more victory conditions

Allow shapes other than simple straight lines to be victorious, as options

• solid 2x2 block (4 squares)
• 3x3 hollow square
• 3x3 solid triangle
• 5 square X formation
• 9 square X formation

security

Its a bit lame having a plaintext player_id embedded in the HTML to get the player ID on PUT requests

Change this so that the HTML only stores a single thing - being a UUID generated by the backend

Call this X-SESSION, and include it in all the post headers

Then on the backend, have a hashtable that associates these UUIDs with session details - including the player id, some TTL duration / expiry date, etc

When the game state returns to init, then invalidate all the sessions

That way, a user cant simply replay an old UUID, or try to guess a new valid UUID

Also means that a bunch of state can be attached to the UUID, and only stored at the backend, not placed on the frontend where it can be easily hacked.