REST Quest

Write a client that consumes server.js's REST API, grabs a treasure and returns to your castle faster than your opponent.

Installation

Prerequisites

You'll need NodeJS (https://nodejs.org), NPM (included in NodeJS) and Git installed on your machine.

Installation

Clone the repository and run npm install:

git clone [email protected]:cprerovsky/rest-quest.git
cd rest-quest
npm install

If you don't have a github account, cloning the repository will not be possible. In this case you can download the latest release as a zip file: https://github.com/cprerovsky/rest-quest/archive/master.zip

Run

Run the server using node

node server.js

Now point your browser to http://localhost:3000.

When the server is running you can connect two clients one after another. A really stupid test client is included in the package, which you can start twice to see if everything runs fine:

node client.js & node client.js

As soon as you start the clients a map appears in the browser and the two clients will start to battle it out like two drunk roombas.

API

1. /register/ your player by sending a POST request with your name
2. wait for your POST request to be answered by the server with a view
3. POST your next move to /move/ with playercontaining your name and direction the direction you want to move to. The server will also answer with a view

What is a view?

A view is an array of an array of objects that describes the surrounding tiles you can see. As different terrains provide different visibility, the array size can change.

{
    view: [
        [ {"type": "grass"}, {"type": "mountain"}, {"type": "mountain"} ],
        [ {"type": "grass"}, {"type": "forest"}, {"type": "water"} ],
        [ {"type": "grass"}, {"type": "water"}, {"type": "water"} ]
    ],
    treasure: false
}

Included with the view the server response also contains the treasure parameter, which tells you whether you successfully picked up the treasure from the map. The other player might have snatched the treasure the moment before you moved on the target square, so this field is for you to document whether you picked it up successfully.

Range of vision

Different terrains allow for different range, thus changing the size of the view returned.

• forest: will give you a 3x3 view of your surroundings
• grass: 5x5 view
• mountain: 7x7 view

Your avatar is always positioned at the center of the view, so in the previous example he is positioned on the only forest tile.

Tiles

The tiles contained in a view can contain the following data:

{
	"type":     "grass", // the tile type
	"castle":   "[playername]", // castle of a player named [playername]
	"treasure": true // treasure
}

Movement

You can /move/ either

• up
• down
• left
• right

Moving up a mountains takes two consecutive turns of moving in the same direction. So if you want to climb a mountain tile in direction up you will have to send the up direction twice - in two separate requests. Moving onto water or the enemy castle will instantly kill you.

Invalid Operation

If you violate protocol, eg. by invoking the /move/ API even though the game has not been startet yet, you will receive an Invalid Operation Response:

{ error : 'Invalid Operation' }

Game Over

When the game is over because you or your opponent died, or took a treasure to the castle you will receive a game over response.

{
	"game"   : "over",
	"result" : "won" // won, lost or draw
}

Benchmarking

To run benchmarks against your client, run:

node benchmark -[mapNumber]

Where mapNumber is an integer corresponding to a mapX.js file in the benchmark folder, i.e node benchmark -2 will load map2.js.

The benchmark uses a hard-coded map and outputs stats about how your client performed at the end of the game.

Changelog

Version 0.3.0

• added benchmark framework
• reimplemented webclient and added new tile graphics

Version 0.2.0

• added think time calculation
• vastly improved logging
• improved documentation