steveo16

Thanks man The engagement factor is definitely something I want to work on. I got some feedback to remove the "Place Chip" popover and just place the chip as soon as someone clicks on the board cell. Another thing that's come up is switching from long polling to WebSockets. The 7 second long poll leads to a bit of a lag in single player mode. The AI actually makes its play immediately, but it can take up to ~13 seconds in some cases before the player sees the move. But man, the switch to WebSockets is going to require a pretty big refactor that I'm just not sure I have the energy for right now

I setup some basic socket server encryption in the past using stunnel. It seemed kind of hacky so I was wondering if there's a better way to go about it. I'm a big fan of encrypting all the things, so if I do end up switching from long polling to websockets I'll definitely want some kind of encryption in place.

Howdy folks, I've been working on a browser-based game as sort of a side project / portfolio piece, and it's finally to a point where it seems to be playable from most devices. https://www.pakyra.com/ Pakyra is a turn-based strategy game you can play in your browser. It has single player mode (just click the Play Pakyra button), or you can play against a friend. The first player to score 2 points wins. Players have to place 5 chips in a row (in any direction) to score a point. The catch is, you can only place chips on board cells if you have the cell's card in your hand. 2's are wild, so if you have a 2 in your hand you can place a chip on any open cell. 2's are often reserved to either score a point (get a 5th chip in a row), or to block an opponent's point. I'm afraid I'm not much of an artist / designer, so animations are limited to some simple CSS3 bounce effects. Pakyra currently uses a long polling mechanism to refresh client state, but the goal is to eventually implement some sort of WebSocket solution. The single player AI could still use some work, but it's managed to beat me more than once. Because players' playing options are limited to the cards they draw, there is an aspect of luck involved. Hopefully an official version 1 release will be ready by about mid-summer, but in the meantime, please feel free to take it for a test drive

I guess this would give me a good opportunity to learn NodeJS. My old socket server code is written in PHP and is probably pretty dated by now. Do you happen to have any experience with wss, or secure WebSockets? What's the best way to make sure the WebSocket connection is encrypted and secure?

Darn, I was really hoping to move an item to the backlog but it sounds like WebSockets should be a priority. I have some old socket code from a chat app I can dust off. I'm kind of kicking myself for not using that code in the first place. Thanks for your feedback!

Hey there. I was just curious how many people were using long polling or WebSockets for their online games. I'm working on a turn-based game that feels a bit like a board game in the browser, and for the early prototype I've opted to use long polling because it was easier to setup. At some point I'd like to make the switch to WebSockets, but if enough people seem to be having success with long polling then I'll probably de-prioritize the effort. Currently my game uses a 7 second refresh interval so there's a _bit_ of lag, but most of the time it isn't too noticeable. I was hoping to hear other people's thoughts on the matter. Thanks!