thomasballinger / hla-client

Prototype client for receiving events from the ingrid/heylooka server

Motivation

Clients receive events corresponding only to what the server thinks they need to know, instead of every single message.

This has applications for reduced load in MMO's where the n squared communication problem of many clients in a shared world, or preventing untrusted clients information they should not reveal to game players (eg, starcraft 1 map hacks)

Protocol

Clients connect to the server on a tcp port, then receive and send messages about events occuring. These events have the format

ascii digits representing num bytes message takes up, terminated by a space | aforementioned space (doesn't count toward the message length) | | Largest radius at which event is perceivable to a client | | | x-position of event | | | | y-position of event | | | | | Display name of event | | | | | | 18 17 217 23 Big Boom

over a tcp connection. Events are sent to the server using similar format;

12 /nick thomas
7 /move N
16 /event Honk Horn

Running It

python network.py

will run a test that talks to a local erlang "heylooka" server

Install

I used http://twistedpairdevelopment.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/installing-pyglet-in-mac-os-x/ for installation on OSX Lion.