Simple Socket Server

This is a simple WebSocket server that supports games between two players.

The server only echoes WebSocket events so the game logic should be delegated to the client.

You have to run npm install and node server.js to start it.

In order to have the server running for both players, one of you has to start the server with node server.js and then, find out his IP in the local network:

$ ifconfig

For example, if your IP is 192.168.1.17 - this will be the location of the server.

In the client, both players shoud have to point to the IP adress, instead of localhost:

var socket = new io("http://192.168.1.17:3000");

Like this, the server will be shared between the clients.

HTTP API

The serves exposes the following HTTP methods:

POST /createGame

The request payload should be in JSON:

{
    "playerName": "RadoRado",
    "socketId": "the_socket_id_here"
}

The server responds with JSON with the gameId. This id is important!

Response:

{
    "gameId" : "the_game_id_here"
}

POST /joinGame

Once there is a hosted game, the other player can join it.

The player that joins the game should provide the gameId!

The request payload is:

{
    "playerName": "RadoRado",
    "socketId": "the_socket_id_here",
    "gameId": "the_game_id_here"
}

Once a player joins a hosted game, socket event "start" is emitted to both players.

GET /games

This is a very simple way to check the current games that are being played right now.

The result is JSON of all games.

Socket Events

The server emits the following socket events:

start

Once there is a hosted game and a player joins it, a start event is emiited with the following payload:

{
    "player1": "Player 1 name here",
    "player2": "Player 2 name here"
}

To listen for this event on the client, you can do:

socket.on("start", function(data) {
    // data is the payload from the server
});

game_disconnected

If the game has started and one of the players closes his browser, the serves destroys the current game and sends to the ohter player a "game_disconnected" message.

This is a handy way not the crash the server or the UI.

render

The server emits a render event with the data, that pass passed from one of the clients with the move event.

render is simply an echo to the players in the given game with the data from move

The server accepts the following events (Emited by the client):

move

The clients emits a move event.

The data is not specified and it is up to you to decide what kind of data you should transmit to the server.

The idea behind the move event is to send the server your coordinates in order to update the game for the other player.

In the move event, the client must provide the gameId!

When a move event is fired, both clients receive render from the server with the data, that was passed to the move event.

You have to decide the format of the data.

For example:

// from player1
socket.emit("move" {
    player1Snake: snake.getSections()
})l

Host vs. Partner

Since the server has no game logic in it, to avoid desynchronization between the clients, they should play different roles!

One of the clients should be host - he does all the game logic and calculations and has a game loop.

The partner only listens to socket events and draws the things accordingly.

This will make you think more about the client's code architecture and design!