wpfPoker Forum Rss Feed

New Post: Future plans

gils — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 18:34:42 GMT

Hello once again,

I'll start by answering your second question.
Yes, the IsAvailable property will always return true, that is because the socket is a logical connection made by multiple physical connections (routers, switches, and your ethernet/wifi card) so there is no way of telling that the physical connection is broken until you'll try to send/receive something.
Most communicative applications uses time outs to detect loss of logical connections. In most cases there is a timer which checks when was the last active broadcast on the channel and if that time is higher than a defined timeout it declares the connection as lost and initiates the socket shutdown.
In conclusion, your intuition was right. You'll have to have a timer (one is enough) which will test a data structure which maps each socket to the time it was last active. I guess your socket wrapper will have to update that data structure with the last active time.

Regarding your first question, I don't know how you modified the server to support multitables. I can refer to the single table room design.
In the case a connection is lost, the player will be dropped (it should free the player name). I don't think this is implemented prior to a game start, so a solution as described above should be added to monitor the connection and test if some players didn't give up and disconnected from the server.

Hope it helps,

Gil

New Post: Future plans

johnatan17 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 19:36:13 GMT

Hi Gil,

Well I hope to make available the poker client soon, but I'm making some needed changes ..., I'm going to add those libraries (already tested) to manage game server and lobby ...

I like to ask you something: if you were making changes to the server to control dropped connections, How do you try/achieve it? I mean, when the server is weaiting for requiered players they connect at the moment and the server list in his table but before begin somebody can drop its connection later trying to connect again it will receive "name exist".

To start the game I added a delegate timer that check when the minimum players have been connected, wait for more five seconds and start the game if there were more connections.

I was wondering if is good idea to add a delegate timer (is going to check the whole list) that continiously check for valid connections? and if so, How to check that the connection is realy valid? because "isavailable" property from sockets always return true.

If the server recognise when player dropped it can send the list of real connected users or recent dropped connections and in that way refresh the room and add/delete avatars in it.

Regards,

Johnatan ...

New Post: Future plans

gils — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:01:05 GMT

Hi Jhonatan,

Glad to read you made some more progress. When will we be able to see a running version of the game?

To answer your question, sure you can use those libraries to improve the server code to support multitables server.
I understand you want to do it with basic sockets instead of WCF, I think it is a good approach to use an existing library to do so.
Since the server was designed for simplicity you'll need to refactor a little bit to improve it to be asynchronous.

Good luck!

Gil

New Post: Future plans

johnatan17 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:36:24 GMT

Hi gils/Ibondy ...

Here for this place again, as you remember I liked a lot your poker project, in fact thanks for that and suggestions because now I fill more confortable with c# instead of vb.net. (now I'm experimenting a little with c++). Well, On these vacations I like to dedicate more time to put my ideas on the project, in fact I make a new client (windows form) with avatars, and changing that now to XNA (I know I can use WPF but I like XNA). I know you use WCF but I still think will get better performance using raw sockets and that's the road I'll take for this time maybe make some changes to WCF. Now, My questions is; MS has made many improvements on sockets to get high performance on high concurrency over servers, said that, I like to know if is good idea make the lobby based on asynsocket project (http://asyncsocket.codeplex.com/) and change the game server to use nito async library (http://nitoasync.codeplex.com/)?

What do you think?

Why did I say that type of questions? Well, your server code is synchronous, I mean it wait for player answer but in a multitable game I suppose it must act in a different way, I mean wait but for multple answer in different rooms. (Remember, I'm learning new thigs everyday, and that because of you).

Good project, excellent code, brilliant people ...

Thanks,

Johnatan ...

New Post: Future plans

johnatan17 — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:51:16 GMT

Ibondy,
Thanks for your help and your offer, I really appreciate it. I'll waiting for that. Meanwhile, I'll be reading some books about WCF.
Once again, thanks.

Cheers
Johnatan

New Post: Future plans

ibondy — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:56:47 GMT

Johnatan,
I am in the middle of moving to the new house, but I will try, in next few days, to send you my multi-table version using WCF. You may get little better performance using sockets, but you will have hard time scalability and maintainability. WCF is definitely way to go. You can use tcp, http or other supported WCF protocols with no or minimal code changes.

Cheers
Ivan Bondy

New Post: Future plans

johnatan17 — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:21:20 GMT

Hi Gils

Thanks for your advises and your help, I really appreciate that.
On more question, according to your experience, What will I win in WCF version compared with raw sockets? I mean, will be easier to change the code to run multiple rooms? I'll take your advise and learn a little of WCF.

Thanks ...
Johnatan.

New Post: Future plans

gils — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:48:06 GMT

Hi Jonathan,

Glad to see you're making progress. I'm glad to read about it, I'll be happier seeing a running version of your poker.

Regarding your question about the sockets, the current design only hosts a single room in a server. Although this design is simple, it doesn't impose a restriction on changing it to host multiple rooms.
To be more technical, you can open a single server socket to listen to incoming clients. When the room is selected, (either by the player or the server,) you can pass the client socket to the selected room. With this solution you'll get a single point of access to all of your rooms.
Your intuition was right. This solution will require some changes in the design, and more work on the communication protocol (in the raw sockets version).

So after you learned C#, you might want to learn (kind of) a new technology. I suggest you take a look at the WCF version and see that it isn't that scary. You can skip all of that nasty communication plumbing and concentrate on your desired poker features.

Good luck!

Gil

New Post: Future plans

johnatan17 — Sat, 02 May 2009 02:08:23 GMT

First of all let me tell you once again ... nice job. I really like to say thanks, Why? Because months ago I told that I will try to change this program to Visual Basic, so you suggest that better try to learn CSharp. I did. I'm not the better of the better, that's your position but in these months I have learnt many new things about Csharp. I have made some changes to your program (Raw sockets version), I mage a graphical client (windows forms) with characters (people playing) like those on programs like bwin and pokerstars.
I'm still learning some techniques, so I have open at least 200 ports on my computer to assist players on 200 different rooms, I know is not the better way but for the moment is ok, if you have any tip that you like to share on how to implement the manage of many rooms using the same port, is very welcomed, I think it will require many many many changes to the code (socket version).

Thanks.

New Post: Future plans

flibble — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 20:09:56 GMT

It works! :) Thanks Gils. I'll see what damage I can do to it.

New Post: Future plans

gils — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:31:23 GMT

Hi!
Thanks for your interest in the project.
Regarding your first question, the project is still alive; future development is in hibernation on my part. Since this project is an open source project, the community is more than welcome to develop it and enhance it.
The only public project which extends it is described in the previous posts by Ivan.

Regarding your second question, when the client loads click "Game"->"Start New Game"
on the wizard select the "Single Player", click "Next", now enter the number of computer opponents you want and click "Finish".
Wait for the game to load and enjoy!

Good luck!
Gil

New Post: Future plans

flibble — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:25:38 GMT

Hi all.
I'm glad I stumbled across this project! Is it still alive?

Are there any instructions on how to get a game running? I can get it to build and the client to execute, but I'm not sure how to get the game server running and the client hooked up.

New Post: Bots

johnatan17 — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 03:23:04 GMT

First of all thanks ..., and second WOW ...
That's exactly what I want to do ... I hope you have tome soon at least to post in what way or how you achieve to do all of that.

Very good ...

PS: Yes, at this time I'm reading many books to stay on top about csharp and left for awhile vb.net.

New Post: Bots

ibondy — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 21:54:44 GMT

Hello Johnnatan,
I will make my code available when I am ready, but I will give you idea what I am working on:
Server Architecture:
1-x Game servers
1-x Lobby servers
1-x bot servers

Client:
Silverlight client (check my site for progress)

For game servers I successfully run test with 4500 hundred players on 900 tables. All players where powered by bot servers.
You can get additional info at http://www.mammothmicro.com/Blog/archive/tags/Poker/default.aspx

As for the lobby servers I have bunch of the back end coding done but need to create UI.
Same think with bot servers; running but need better management interface.

I do have so many features I would like to implement and so little time...

As for your question about sockets vs wcf. As far I know, none of the Poker networks is using WCF as this is relatively new technology and teir systems are java or c++ based. There are trade off between sockets and wcf like in everything. With wcf you will leave some performance on the table, but you will have easier time to manage the code. Also you can run wcf over http and bypass any firewall issues associated with sockets.

One of these days I will sit down and write about all the new features I implemented.

Cheers & good luck
Ivan Bondy

PS: Try to use C# it is very simmilar to VB.Net and you will safe yourself lots of time converting this application.

New Post: Bots

johnatan17 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:44:46 GMT

How you are more experimented developers, maybe you can give some tips or ideas to better manage or control de following scenarios:
- Imagine you have four rooms (of course they're going to be more) for each kind of game (texas holdem, 7 stud, ...) and wants to connect 10 players (max) in each room, a player can be present in diferents rooms. Using TCP Sockets for internet connections (maybe exists any better, I don't know)
¿How do you identify each player associated with their relative room? (*)
¿How make specific chats depending of the room?
¿How start automatically when the minimum players are present in the room, giving some time (10 seconds) to wait if somebody else wants to connect to the room?
¿More important, this got me grazy, How initiate each hand in each room (where is possible) automatically without freeze the time? (is necessary to have another thread checking about this?)
¿Inform to the lobby server the number of players and active rooms in the game server?
¿How many different ports is necessary open in the system client? I mean, one for the game, one for the chat, one to update the lobby, ???

forgive me if I'm making trivial questions or disturbing you're time, but I see a cleaning code in your program and I really love it, and I think all of you guys really know how to do the things.
ibondy said it has something about multiple rooms, and that is exactly I want to do.
Over Internet, many rooms, many players, which one WCF or Sockets TCP standard?

Great job.
Thanks in advance.
Johnatan.

New Post: Bots

johnatan17 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:21:03 GMT

I began the translation to vb.net, in fact I took from the project before the last one because I don't know if WCF is better or useful that TCP socket (pure). I think, We can mange or control better the communication behind internet using TCP, well WCF is really new for me.
Now, I would like to get some ideas to make the lobby, the game server, and the master ...

I never stop to say ... excellent work ...

Thanks.
Johnatan

New Post: Bots

gils — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 12:40:53 GMT

Hi,
Thanks for your interest in the project, and thanks for the positive feedback.

The great thing about the .NET framework is that applications can be written in multiple programming languages. So if you want to you can add code in VB. I wouldn't recommend converting the old code base since it is a lot of work. (Since the project is written in C#, the only issues you might encounter are name casing, C# is case sensitive)

As Ivan stated, there is no performance issue since C# and VB are similar languages (Static typing, dynamic binding and so on...)

Since I don't have much time working on the project, I would be glad seeing other contributions. Keep us posted!

Thanks,
Gil

New Post: Bots

johnatan17 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:17:24 GMT

Ok .. I understand ...
If possible to you public the code to see how you manage the idea to control many rooms and auto bots on it.
To be honest, I'm really confuse in that part, I try to begin adding some new code the your recent version, but I suppose I don'thave clear the logic to begin and control automatically everything.

Once again ... great job.

Thanks.

New Post: Bots

ibondy — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:40:16 GMT

No this version does not support multiple rooms.

There will be no performance issue with VB.net but you will spend lots of time with the conversion.

I do have multi table version running, but needs some more tuning before release.

Cheers

New Post: Bots

johnatan17 — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:03:18 GMT

First of all .... great ... great job.

Is possible to create n-number of rooms and make that bots auto play in at least the half of them?
Can we lost some performance if the code is changed to vb.net?

thanks.