Network Snake

This game a clone of the historic game "Snake" built using a python server and WebSocket clients. It's meant as a fun demo for networking, since it can easily be run in local networks. Your smartphone can most likely be used as a controller if you enter the following address in your browser: http://<host machine ip>:8080/controller.html. There, the game can be viewed and controlled by tapping the arrow buttons. You can also watch the game on the host by visiting http://localhost:8080. Make sure the host allows tcp connections to ports 8080 & 8090.

The project is licensed under the ISC License.

Game

The game is a clone of snake. The mechanics are familiar. When a snake eats a purple-colored food pixel it grows by one pixel. The snakes are "teleported" to the opposing wall instead of crashing. Once a snake collides with itself/another snake, it simply starts over. There is a timeout of about 20 seconds for idle players, since websockets don't always seem to get closed (cleanly).

Architecture

There are four components to the server:

• a simple http server providing the frontend [port 8080]
• a websocket server to handle data transfer (player controls and game state) (1) [port 8090]
• a game state manager that's updating at set times and processing user input
• deprecated: a UDP server to receive packets from WiFi Chips (2) [port 9900]

1. Using Pithikos/python-websocket-server for websockets.

2) UDP

While this project was built starting with a WiFi chip as a controller, it was replaced by websocket clients, as your phone.

Arduino UDP Client

There's a client/client.ino that can be compiled for Arduino-compatible ESP8266-containing chips. Buttons are meant to be attached so a LOW/HIGH signal can be received on pins 0 (left) and 1 (right)

Note: For the NodeMCU board, which the code was made for, the digital pins D0 & D1 correspond to inputs 16 & 5, which are specified in code, which is why it probably won't work as-is on another board. Adjust buttonLeft and buttonRight variables accordingly.

WiFi Network Setup

For the network that the UDP Client connects to, the following properties must be met:

SSID: snake
Password: n3tw0rk!

Executing

To run the program, type

cd server
python3 server.py

The program will use TCP ports 8080 & 8090.

Deploying

The web app automatically changes the http(s) url to a ws(s) one and assumes a websocket from the same host at the path specified int the url_amend variable in server/web/sockets.js. The default value is :8090/, having clients try to connect to ws[s]://<host>:8090/. You can change its value for when running the app behind a reverse proxy, e.g. to /websocket to have clients try to connect to ws[s]://<host>/websocket instead.

This project can be packaged as a Docker image using

docker build -t schokotets/snake:latest .

To run it (http server and websocket):

docker run -p 8080:8080 -p 8090:8090 schokotets/snake:latest