joyceyao / datinggame

Dating Game

Below we have details about

1. Slack Channel
2. Messages being passes to and from the Sockets
3. How to run the server and our clients

Note: You don't need to use our clients

Slack Channel

datedoctors.slack.com

If you notice anything wrong with the code or have any questions, feel free to make an issue on the github repo, or to write to us in the slack channel

Data Passed Around

We are going to be passing around strings into a regular TCP socket

N represents the number of weighted attributes. This number will be given on game day and has a max of 100

If you want to see how I parse and create these strings, you can check out the code in the playerClient, matchMakerClient, and also in the utils file

Player

The player will be communicating with a socket at port 6969

Messages received from server

The player can receive one of two messages.

1. continue
2. gameover

If you receive continue, you will need to send a new Candidate following the game's stipulations.

Messages to send to server

The only message you need to send as a Player is a string with your N weights and a space in between.

This is what I send in my client:

If N = 5 and you replace letters into numbers, you could send a b c d e

Matchmaker

The matchmaker will be comminicating with a socket at port 9696

Messages received from server

The matchmaker can also receive one of three messages based on what turn of the game.

Turn 1

We will be receiving 20 candidates from the server with a score attached at the end. They will look like this

Lets say once again N was 5. You could receive this

1 1 1 1 1 | a

2 2 2 2 2 | b

3 3 3 3 3 | c

. . .

20 20 20 20 20 | t

Note: The numbers represent the weights, then we have | bar and then the score. In the example above, the score is represented by the letter

It will look like this

1 1 1 1 1 | a \n2 2 2 2 2 | b \n...

Tip: Easy way to parse

If you split with regex, you can split on all non Digit chars like this.

message.split(/\D/)

\D means all non Digit characters

If you do this, index 0 to (N-1) will be all the first N candidate weights.

Index (N + 2) will be the score. Index (N + 5) will be the index of the first weight of the next Candidate. You can check the matchMakerClient in function parseMultipleCandidates to see how I do this.

All middle turns

After the first turn you will receive only one candidate with a score like so 1 1 1 1 1 | a \n

The 1's will be replaced with the weights of the last candidate that the Matchmaker sent to the server

The score is the a.

To get the score, you can once again split on \D and grab the element at index (N + 2)

End Turn

If you win, or you have already tried out 20 candidates, you will receive gameover

Messages to send to server

You need to send your candidate's weights with a space in between. It is the exact same messages you sent as the Player

Example:

If N = 5 and you replace letters into numbers, you could send a b c d e

How to run

Run server

$ cd javascripts
$ node server.js

Run Basic Player Client

$ cd javascripts
$ node playerClient.js

Run Basic Matchmaker Client

$ cd javascripts
$ node matchmakerClient.js

Note: If you decide you want to use coffeescript, you can go into the coffeescript directory and change the clients in there. In matchmakerClient and playerClient, I have a makeCandidate() function that returns an array of numbers for a basic candidate. You can place your own logic in there if you want to use that code.

To compile the coffeescript code, just run ./compile.sh in a separate terminal and your code will automatically be compiled into the javascripts directory whenever you save your code

If you want to not use coffeescript, but you do want to use the javascript client, you can just edit the makeCandidate() code directly in the appropriate javascript files

This is obviously not required