This Trivia Client-Server application is a multi-player trivia game where players connect to a central server to answer trivia questions. The server manages game sessions, player connections, and trivia question delivery, while clients connect to the server to participate in the game rounds. In addition the server keep update a server.log and extract the following stats: most common question, player with most wins and most common answer! 315071910 - Amit Avraham 316055634 - Barak Haziz 311394365 - Oded Atias
- Start-Up: Upon start-up, the server initializes and listens for incoming client connections over TCP after broadcasting its presence over UDP.
- Connection Handling: The server accepts client connections, assigning each client to a separate thread to handle communication.
- Game Management: Once the minimum number of players is connected, the server starts the trivia game, sending questions to all clients and managing their responses.
- End of Game: After a set number of rounds or when a termination condition is met (e.g., only one player left), the server concludes the game and prepares for a new session.
- Listening for Server Broadcasts: Clients listen for UDP broadcasts from the server to discover available game sessions.
- Connecting: Once a broadcast is received, clients attempt to establish a TCP connection to the server using the details provided in the broadcast.
- Game Participation: Clients receive questions from the server and send their answers back within a given timeframe.
- Timeout: If there is no communication from the server within a specified timeout period (
SERVER_NO_RESPONSE_TIMEOUT), the client assumes the server has disconnected. - Action: The client stops sending data, closes its current connection, and may attempt to reconnect or exit based on the situation.
- Wait Time: If only one player is connected, the server waits for an additional period (
WAIT_FOR_2_CLIENTS_AT_LEAST) for more players to join. - Cancellation: If no additional players join within this period, the server cancels the game session and informs the connected player before closing the connection.
- Game Conclusion: When a game session ends, the server sends a broadcast message to all clients indicating the game has ended.
- Readiness for New Game: Simultaneously, the server resets its state to be ready to start a new game, allowing it to handle new connections and start a new session immediately.
- Non-response: If a player does not respond during a round (i.e., does not answer a trivia question), their session is considered inactive.
- Session Termination: The server then attempts to close the inactive session to free up resources and maintain game integrity. This ensures that only active players are retained in the game.
- Genenal handling: The client will disconnect from the server, generate new name (method of generating depends on client type) and start listening for server broadcast again
- BOT behavior: choose another name from the poll of server names
- Non-BOT player behavior: add a suffix to the player name. for example if name "Lebron" is taken, the client new name will be "Lebron_1" and so on.
- Condition: If no players answer the question within the allotted time.
- Action: The server informs all players that no one answered and prepares another question. The round counter is incremented, and the game continues.
- Condition: Players who don't respond for any reason, including network errors or not knowing the answer.
- Action: These players are removed from the game. The server attempts to send a message indicating they are out of the game but handles any network errors gracefully.
- Condition: If all responding players answer the question incorrectly and more than one player remains.
- Action: The server notifies all players that everyone was wrong and presents another question without removing anyone from the game.
- Condition: If at least one player answers correctly.
- Action: Only players who answered incorrectly are removed from the game. The server notifies all players that there was at least one correct answer, and prepares another question. The list of connected clients is updated to only include those who answered correctly.
- Condition: Specifically when only one player answers and is incorrect, while other players do not respond.
- Action: This results in a game over scenario without a winner, lead to case 7
- Condition: When only one player remains after a round ends.
- Action: The server declares this player as the winner, sends a winner announcement to all initially connected players, and then closes all sessions.
- Condition: If no players are left in the game either due to disconnections or case 5.
- Action: The server announces that there is no winner and closes all active sessions.
To participate in the game, clients should run the client application which will automatically detect available servers and connect. Ensure that the server application is running and accessible over the network the clients are on.
- Programming Language: Python 3
- Networking: TCP for reliable data transmission and UDP for service discovery.
This Trivia Client-Server application demonstrates basic network programming concepts along with handling real-time client-server interactions in a trivia game context. It emphasizes robust handling of network issues such as disconnects and non-responsive clients, ensuring a smooth gameplay experience.