Coming soon to we-dle.com. WIP running at we-dle.fly.dev
The goal for we-dle is to build a massively concurrent and distributed real-time multiplayer version of
a Wordle-like game. Players can play head-to-head with a friend anywhere in the world. The first player
to correctly guess the challenge word wins. Players are updated on their opponent's progress in real-time
with a live Wordle grid.
Three basic game modes are planned:
-
Classic - Both players are challenged to guess today's official Wordle word. This game mode can only be played once per day per browser session.
-
Any Wordle - Each player selects the challenge word for their opponent to guess. Words must be selected from the official complete Wordle word list.
-
Freestyle - Each player selects the challenge word for their opponent to guess. Words can be any length from 3 to 10 letters and can contain any Unicode character.
All player information is non-sensitive and stored in browser cookies. Player information includes statistics, accessibility preferences, and a random unique ID used only to join games.
we-dle is being built with the PETAL stack.
- P - Phoenix
- E - Elixir
- T - Tailwind CSS
- A - Alpine.js
- L - LiveView
The following critical technologies and libraries are also leveraged:
- Erlang/OTP and the BEAM
- PostgreSQL
- libcluster
- horde
- Fly.io
we-dle takes advantage of the concurrency, scalabilty, and fault tolerance of the BEAM, and the
productivity and maintainability of the PETAL stack. Libcluster is used for easy clustering of distributed
Elixir nodes, and Horde is used for its delta-CRDT backed global process registration, allowing game server
processes to be discoverable anywhere in the cluster. Deployment is on Fly.io which provides direct control
over server distribution in over a dozen regions globally, and secure WireGuard networking between the
cluster, which makes it a perfect fit for distributed Elixir/Phoenix/LiveView apps.
Nodes are gracefully shutdown on down-scaling and during deployments, giving game server processes time to save their current state in the Postgres database. State is recovered when the process restarts on the same or a different node. As cluster topology changes the Horde distributed registry syncs among all nodes, making every game process globally discoverable in the cluster, allowing players to connect no matter which server they are load balanced to.
To run this project locally:
- Fork and clone this repo
cd we-dle- Install dependencies with
mix deps.get - Create and migrate your database with
mix ecto.setup - Run the tests
mix test - Start Phoenix endpoint with
mix phx.serveror inside IEx withiex -S mix phx.server
Now you can visit localhost:4000 from your browser.
To contribute:
- Create a feature branch
- Make your changes
- Write tests
- Write documentation and typespecs for "core" modules and functions
- Run tests, formatter, and Credo code linter with
mix we_dle - If all checks pass, push to your repository and create a pull request with a summary of what your changes are and why you've made them
- Please keep PRs small and limited in scope
If you can run a LiveBook server locally you can open the project
notebooks in the ./notebooks/ directory. Connect your server's runtime to the project by using the
"Mix standalone" runtime setting.
This is a free, open-source project made by one creator, hopefully with help from volunteer contributors.
Running a multi-player version of Wordle requires paying for servers positioned around the world, which can
get expensive if a lot of people use it. The cost of running the servers is directly related to how many
people enjoy playing we-dle on a daily basis. If you enjoy playing we-dle or want to see it succeed,
your support helps fund those costs.
https://www.patreon.com/we_dle
Copyright 2022 Matthew Simon Borg
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.