Setup Instructions
- Start apache
sudo service apache2 restart
// Goto the browser and use the following URL:
localhost/arcade
To review the multi-player aspect of this game, you will need to create at least two profiles within a browser in order to maintain different session variables.
Side Notes
For server setup:
- For Securimage Captcha, please make sure php is compiled with the gd library.
- Be sure to allow outgoing SMTP send requests.
For application logic, the following assumptions were made:
- A user can only be involved in 1 match at a time
- Once a match starts, it will continue until it finishes
- An invitation will be answered eventually
Browser Details
Please use Google Chrome or Firefox
How It Works
Controllers
Arcade Controller:
This controller acts as the game lobby. From this controller, there are various actions relating to sending, accepting, declining and checking invitations from other users.
The way these methods are called is from within the mainPage.php and availableUsers.php via AJAX requests (in order to prevent refreshing and redirecting). When a user accepts an invitation, a new Match object is created and the empty game board is instatiated. Once the game has started, the controller changes the status of both playing users to "PLAYING" so that future invitations for games cannot be accepted.
Account Controller:
This controller allows users to register to the game site. Users are considered "logged in" by being stored in a session variable. With regards to registered users, this controller also handles the integration of the SecurImage library, which requires users to input a correct captcha in order to create accounts on the website.
In addition to the typical session-handling functions which allow for logout and login, as well as those which allow users to be created, this controller also contains the actions for handling the forgot password, and password update update views.
Board Controller:
This controller provides two main functionalities: 1) connect4 game functionality to both players. 2) chat functionality between both players during the game.
1) Game Functionality
The board is represented as a two dimensional PHP matrix. On the game board, an empty tile is represented as a 0, and an occupied tile is represented by the playing user's ID for that tile in the matrix. This allows us to easily keep track of where each users pieces are, and allows for other functions to easily determine whether a user has one or not.
Winning is determined through one of the following three scenarios: 1) a horizontal connection of 4 identical (same user ID) tiles, which are not 0, 2) a vertical connection of 4 identical tiles, which are not 0, and 3) a diagonal connection of 4 identical tiles, which are not 0.
The matrix representation allows us to easily and efficiently scan the matrix for these game-ending scenarios. It should be noted that for efficiency sake, the functions that check for winning only do so after a player's turn has ended, and before the next player's turn starts. This keeps us from repeatedly sending requests to the server to check for game ending scenarios.
Determining which player's turn it is also occurs within this controller in order to keep the integrity of the game safe from malicious players. Turns occur in transactions in order to ensure that players cannot send multiple requests to place a piece on the board. Turns are determined based on how many pieces are on the board at the beginning of a turn. If there is an odd even (or none) pieces, it is the inviting player's turn. If there is an odd number of pieces placed on the board, then it is the invitee's turn to place a piece.
2) Chat Functionality
Chat is implemented via AJAX requests checking for user form submissions (sent chat messages). The AJAX requests poll the server every 2 seconds for new sent chat messages from either player, and appends them to the chat room dom element to allow for seamless viewing of messaging without refreshes to updates the page.
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