tableflip

play board games with me

Overview of top level directories

• web/: Vue.js web frontend. Talks with api/.
• api/: Python/Flask REST API. Talks with engine/.
• engine/: Node.js server-side game logic engine.
• games/: Game modules.

How to run everything

Install OS dependencies: Python 3 and Node.js.

Create .env as appropriate.

Install npm/pip dependencies:

./setup.sh

Finally, run everything using ./start.sh:

./start.sh engine
./start.sh api
./start.sh web

Using local PostgreSQL

For development without internet access, it can be useful to have api/ talk to a local PostgreSQL instance.

Install PostgreSQL if you have not:

# Mac:
brew install postgresql
# Ubuntu:
apt install postgresql
systemctl enable postgresql
systemctl start postgresql

Set up the database as follows:

sudo su postgres
psql
create database tableflip;
create user ${YOUR_USERNAME};

# (Possibly optional)
grant all privileges on database tableflip to ${YOUR_USERNAME};

Create the tables and populate them with sample data:

./start.sh shell
from api import models
models.init_db()
models.sample_data()

Replace the DATABASE_URL in .env:

DATABASE_URL="postgresql://localhost/tableflip"

./start.sh api should now talk to the local Postgres.

Games

One of Tableflip's most impressive features is its extensible architecture for creating new games. A game is defined as a set of three data structures:

• game_state: All the information in the game.
• game_view: The information that a particular player can see in the game.
• action: A description of an action taken by a player.

And eight mostly-pure functions:

• initial_state(num_players): game_state
  • Creates an initial game state for p players.
• player_view(game_state, player_id): game_view
  • Gets of a view of the game state for a given player.
• current_players(game_state): [player_id]
  • Gets the list of players who may make actions at the current time.
• has_legal_action(game_view): bool
  • Determines whether a player with the given game_view can make any actions.
• is_action_legal(game_view, action): bool
  • Determines whether the given action is legal with player's the given game_view.
• perform_action(game_state, player_id, action): game_state
  • Applies an action to a game state to produce a new game state.
• is_game_finished(game_state): boolean
  • Determines whether the game is finished.
• winners(game_state): [player_id]
  • Determines a list of winners for the game.