- [x] Get a server to communicate with a process on another port
This week was really about making sure I could get a simple server working
on a different port with BOOST ASIO.
- [x] Get two computers to communicate together
- [x] Parse JSON and output the key:value pair to ensure that it works
- [x] Write a data format for world data, storing snakes and food locations
- [x] Write a data format for configuration, one for client, one for server
- [x] Host the server code on an AWS instance
This week started off debugging a ton of stuff with the AWS server, making
sure I had the security group setup such that I could get the port recieving
inbound connections to the server on port 49145. The biggest issue with the
server and the client mismatch and developing on two entirely different
systems was really getting the same BOOST library setup on both systems.
Using brew gave an outdated version, but using apt-get on Ubuntu gave a
different outdated version. I ended up just installing BOOST and compiling
it myself. The next challenge I faced was really about serializing the JSON
and then passing that through network buffers. This didn't work out the way
I was hoping it too and passing a vector into a buffer didn't seem to pass
through to the callback function. Speaking of callbacks, I gained much
insight this week into how threading, asyncronous tasks and lambda functions
work in c++ and what their actual purpose comes out to be.
Canceled the amazon instance for now to start developing locally because it's easier for about every mean. Debugged the network io_context such that it is now able to do polling which allows the server to not only deal with sending and receiving of the JSON but also the the server logic at the same time which is actually a huge issue for this problem. The real time aspect of this project is the hardest. Because there really is no waiting to make sure the socket is closed or that we don't have garbage data because at that point it is already too late.
Took week off to study calc
Got the networking working perfectly. Able to now encapsulate within the game loop on client side and a timer on the server side, without the connection closing and threads working such that we can send messages and recieve them at the same time while dealing with the server loop.
Got the game actually created with everything generated and the JSON being able to be passed through the network to actually service each individual client. Created many optimizations but didn't have time to look into the syncronization of network sockets which I didn't think was going to be this big of a problem in the final solution.