Terminology

THIS PAGE IS OUTDATED BRAINSTORMING; IT HAS NOT YET BEEN UPDATED TO CURRENT THINKING

Because putting Things in CapitalLetters and CamelCase makes them Official.

• • A Game is a contest between n specific Players.
• • A Game has a current State.

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• • The GameServer knows about many different GameTypes.

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• • A GameType has a nice name.
• A GameType has a unique identifier (string, for identifying).
• A GameType specifies how many players are allowed in a Game.
• A GameType knows how to serialize the State of a Game.
  • The State of a Game includes not only things like board state, but also score and stats.
• A GameType knows how to serialize the Public State of a Game.
  • • This is the subset of State information sent to Players.
• A GameType knows how to determine which Player gets the next Move in a Game.
  • • Some games/rules might have a player skip a turn.
• A GameType knows how to deserialize a Move.
• A GameType knows how to validate a Move for legality.
• A GameType knows how to mutate the State of a Game based on a Move.
• A GameType knows how to determine if a Game is finished.
• A GameType knows how to provide a final Score for each Player in a Game.

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• The GameServer keeps track of multiple concurrent Games.
• The GameServer is responsible for storing and retrieving Game States.
  • A Player should be able to break the connection to the server and then rejoin an existing game.
• The GameServer accepts a Turn from a Player.
• The GameServer is responsible for communicating between Players and a GameType about a Game.
  • Or more likely, a GameType is a class and a Game is an instance of that class, and so communication is made directly with a game instance.
• A Turn combines a Game Move with Game and Player identifiers.
• The GameServer is responsible for verifying that a Turn made by a Player was actually sent by that Player, and the Player is part of the described Game.
• The GameServer is responsible for feeding Moves by Players to the GameType in the order it requests them.

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• The GameServer is eventually responsible for clearing out old games.
• The GameServer keeps track of player and game statistics.

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• The client API knows how to talk to the GameServer for a Player.
  • (e.g. communicating with whatever unique identifiers and security are required for verification)
• The client API facilitates in parsing GameServer responses (e.g. raising errors based on JSON).
• The client API helps set up a Game (e.g. callbacks for when the game is on, when its your turn, asking for the game state)