Syncem

This is a realtime network multiplayer demo using Node.js and Websocket.

Live Demo

To see this example running, go to http://wivlaro.com:3001

The demo game is a multiplayer territory game. There are three teams, you click to move, the idea is to dominate the play area with your colour, red, green, or blue.

Quick start

Make sure you have http://nodejs.org/ installed

  git clone https://github.com/wivlaro/syncem.git
  cd syncem
  npm install
  npm start

Navigate to http://localhost:3001

Directory structure

If you want to play around with it, the most interesting bits to change are in bold:

• public - static files served up
• src - split into three categories, server and client, and common, which is code to run on both server and client
• src/client/main.js - File that kicks off the whole process for the client. Hacking around with the function renderScene() is probably most interesting
• src/common/mygame.js - The core game logic - to be changed depending on the game
• src/common/player.js - Contains the player class, also game dependent
• src/common/bserializer.js - The binary serialization/deserialization component
• src/common/syncem.js - The main engine for the network synchronization
• src/common/bserializer_expansions.js - Automatically generated on the server dependent on registered classes - don't edit this, as it gets rewritten by the server on startup
• src/common/bserializer-cannon.js - bindings for the http://cannonjs.org/ physics library so you can include it in your world state
• src/server/main.js - Hopefully self-explanatory
• src/server/gameserver.js - Server-side plumbing for syncem for a game, user management
• src/server/client.js - Server's model of a user, as connected to it

In theory you can hack around with main.js renderScene() and src/common/mygame.js and be able to make something. After rewriting common code, you will need to restart your server before reconnecting (or you will get out of sync problems).

If the bottom status line says "Out of Sync" it could mean one of these things

• the game logic is not deterministic
• the game state is not completely/properly serialized
• the client/server are not running the same version of the code (maybe restart the server and reconnect)

License

It is available under the permissive MIT license, so please feel free to take anything you like, but a credit for substantial portions of code is appreciated. Moreover, it's nice to hear of it being used! :)

To-Do

• More documentation on the core systems: syncem.js and bserializer.js
• Rename _expansions to _generated so it makes more sense
• More commentry in the code documenting what is happening!
• Abstract out the more boring stuff into more of a library
• Make a convenience wrapper for declaring classes and bserializer.registerClass

Enjoy!

-Bill