engine

% Engine TODOs

Reviewed 2021-03-03 by japhb

These todo items are for the core engine itself -- pretty much all of the code that is not specific to a particular UI type, game type, or game.

• WIP: Permanent storage

• WIP: Server-generated config options

• WIP: Async and out-of-order responses

  • Stronger validity checking on message exchanges and reply pairing

  • Injectible errors and latency

    • Note: may be able to do this by layering session Supplies

• Time

  • Time limits: game, character, turn, etc.

  • Pausable internal game clock

    • Support for "chess pause": current player puts move in escrow

    • Generalize to games in which participants simultaneous plan their move then all reveal their play at once

• Multiple players

  • User count limits, per game and per server

  • Min players, start players, max players, joinable, invitable

  • Game doesn't start until minimum number of players have joined

  • Character removal

    • Removing from turn order

    • What happens when mid-hand/round?

    • Abandon game when last person leaves

    • Handling player forfeit

  • Update participants when action completes

    • All participants immediately for perfect information, turn-based games

    • Nearby participants at next tick for action-based, limited knowledge games

  • Should be possible for a single player to be connected as multiple characters/avatars in the same game (and also for game admins to disallow this when they want player/character identity to hold)

    • Should this be by persona instead of by player?

      • Pro: Prevents info leakage of the personas owned by a player

      • Con: Allows a player to easily create many sock puppets (without at least having to create separate users/accounts for them)

• Sessions and connections

  • Persistent sessions and reconnection

  • Frontend --> backend connection multiplexing

  • Max connections/sessions

  • Load shedding

• General invite tokens

  • Fixed lifetime, single use

  • Invite to join: server, account?, team, game

  • Invite to be marked as "friends"?

  • 2FA for tokens? (e.g. the token code + an SMS code)

• Spectators

  • Separate spectator game(s) for a given real game to scale crowds?

  • Separate control of invites for players, spectator games, and plain spectators

• Game result tracking

  • High scores

  • Accomplishments/Achievements/Awards/Rewards

  • Player rankings

  • Tournament tracking

• Messaging

  • Persona messaging

  • Offline messaging

  • Server notices

• Service instance federation?

• Service management

  • logging

  • monitoring

  • slow rollouts

  • rollbacks

  • live backups

  • fleet management

  • universe management

  • etc.

• Repeatable playbacks

• Authn/login provides medium-life token that survives FE server failure