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Hey guys!
I am trying to create an own version of "cards against humanity" and therefore need to establish a LAN connection (e.g. via Hamachi) with 3 to 5 participants.
One of them could be the host so the game would additionally have to assemble all the players' chosen cards together.
Is there any extension which makes such an exchange possible?
Thank you in advance :)
Hi TheChiller,
You'd probably want to take a look at lacewing: http://community.clickteam.com/forums/222-Lacewing
It's basically two extensions to do server/clients over network easily (LAN and internet)
Thank you for the fast reply :)
I wish there was an actual tutorial to this but will have a look at the development threads now.
Edit: I actually can't find the extention itself in the forum, the 3 tutorials are missing it :/
Edit2: Found it in the extension manager. Now will have to find a way through all the info about the extension :P
You might wanna check out these video tutorials: http://community.clickteam.com/threads/58247-Lacewing-Video-Tutorials
Yeah, currently watching the video tutorial. The problem is, they're dealing with web adresses that are already down. Additionally, I'd like to establish a connection via LAN and not a webpage.
Is there any chance of connection to a host by specifying his hamachi IP before starting the game?
It'll work with one of the LAN users hosting the server, either as a separate 'server' program or a sub-app in the background using the Lacewing Relay Server extension.
Much like a game say... Minecraft... the user must specify his own IP (the Hamachi one of course) and the connection will establish directly, no external servers required.
I see. The Lacewing Extension seems quite handy to me.
Instead of having a server running as an external program in the background I thought about a first frame in which a user can choose to host or join a lobby. Then I have the main game frame twice, one for the host (with the relay server) and one for the person to join the server (with relay client). Should be possible, right?
And secondly: Do you also know how to exchange global values / -strings between host and participants?
Thank you all!
I'd stick with your initial idea of having an external program.. but to keep it together, a sub-app in the background simply running the Lacewing Server would work fine too (the user that's hosting would have to connect via address 'localhost' or '127.0.0.1')
The latter, having two versions of the game may be more complicated and take longer to complete and bug-fix. If you require different interfaces for the host/other players, the server can send a message to the local player (based on IP - 127.0.0.1) to use the alternate interface.
Exchanging global values/strings: You can do this by looping all the clients. Basically:
Client → Server: Hey, this is the new global string.
Server → Loop all clients: Update your global string, this is the new one.
There's various ways to do this. I usually check the first letter of a message using Left$(), and then set the string, excluding the first letter using Len().
You shouldn't need to have two versions of the game. Just make the game with both the Lacewing Relay Server extension as well as the Lacewing Relay Client extension. In the menu you choose if you want to host or join. By clicking Host you e.g set a global value to that you name e.g "Hosting" to 1 and by joining server you keep it 0.
This way you always know when you're hosting a server or have joined a server.
Then you need to program the game in two ways, one as the server and one as a client.
You can also see in the Video tutorial where he chooses to use an external server (the aquadasoft or klikfarm server) where he makes the Channel host the "server" (I put "server" in quotes because he is still a client connected to the server but he deals with all the actions). So instead of using the channel host as the host, you use the server as the host.
I hope that makes sense
Thanks for the good explanation =)
That's in fact how I have created the game (to a current state), the global string "host?" is set to "yes/ no".
I guess after I have completed the frame for the host, I'll duplicate it to make the client changes.
So if I chose to be the host, in the first screen I insert my own hamachi IP as the host's IP. 1) How do I set the IP recalled by global value as the host IP in Lacewing? 2) And what about the required port?
This seems quite different to the tutorial as there is no chance to try it out with the example servers (which are down for months) and it's LAN, not an external server.
And thirdly: I found the options to loop a message to clients but how do I loop a global value to their frames?
Thank you guys so much, you're a really big help!
When you host a server you don't select IP to host on, you will host on the Local IP address for the person who is hosting the game. So if you launch the game and host and you are having an IP that is e.g "192.168.1.5" then the server will be hosted on that IP address. If you open the port you choose (default is 6121, but you can choose whichever port you want) in your router than you will also be hosting the server online through your Internet IP address.
I'm not sure why you want to use Hamachi, since Lacewing works both through LAN and Internet.
When It comes to connecting to the server, the client needs to know the IP address.
There is also a different approach you can take. This require that you host a Master server (which you must have running on your computer at all times, or if you rent a dedicated server to host it on)
Then everyone will then connect to that server (so the people won't need to know what IP to connect to) And then use channels as servers. Where the "host" will then create a channel, and the clients can connect to that channel. By doing that you can loop through channels and people can select which ones to join. (like a server browser of sorts)
This method of course requires you to have a Master server running.
I didn't quite get what you meant by the third question.
if its just LAN (only), there is the network object. it is quite simplistic , but i have had success in the past. I havent looked at it for a long time now tho.
[edit] i noticed that you need more than 2 connections, so this option should be overlooked.
"I'm not sure why you want to use Hamachi, since Lacewing works both through LAN and Internet."
Actually if one of the players is the host, Lacewing doesnt work via Internet, host must port forward and allow inbound connections, and still in most cases others cant connect for whatever unknown reasons.
Hamachi or other VPN is currently the best way and also pretty much the only way for connecting via lacewing.
I think I know what you mean by this:
It's up to you how you send messages. You could do it so that when a client sends a specific message to the server, the server would loop all clients and send a value via subchannel 1 ('1' meaning it's for Global Value A). The client will need a condition to receive this number message from the server on subchannel 1 and set Global Value A to the number message that was received.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheChiller
This, of course is quite a simplistic approach and will vary if you choose to use channels instead of a direct server-client method.
Online modes are not an easy task, even for something that seems straight forward like a cards against humanity game. I am currently working on the exact same thing, i am making an online lacewing mode on the android version of http://playnsfw.com/
Thanks for the suggestions so far! I'm currently dealing with more basic problems as the program does not assign the randomly chosen answers (list lines) to the strings and this keeps freaking me out.
After I have solved this, I'll stick to the LAN connection again!
@SoftWarewolf: Sounds like an interesting project but far more elaborated! I'll check it out on my phone later. The reason I'm creating this game is actually the translation of the English original as me and my friends not having English as the mother tongue (but second language) need to look up many words or actually suitable answers are left unused due to lazyness to recap what they actually mean. But yours is a nice approach to port the game to smartphones :)
Will keep you posted of the progress!
Okay, fixed it but experienced a new problem:
The strings are empty at first, so the alterable string is "". When the alterable string is changed to a randomly chosen one that is longer than a specific number of characters, the string does not get split up (into two or more lines) so it fits into the string object but is written over the object's border, with the last characters invisible for the user. This seems to happen just for words with around 12-14 characters, all words greater are split up into two lines correctly. Why is that so?
Lowering the font's size doesn't really solve the problem :/
And second: How do I split up a global string? I have to save 2 strings (with alternating size) in one global string and separate them by a "|" - how do I split the string up again right at the "|" so I just get the part of the string I need? There seems to be no string operation that allows taking everything left/right after/before a specified character.
you would want the string tokenizer object, it can easily split a string by "|".
SoftWareWolf is right.
I personally use the String Parser 2 object. That object is also included in the Android and HTML 5 exporter as well.
Do this
Start of frame -> Right click on String Parser 2 -> List Tokenizing -> Delimiters -> Set delimiter
Then set it to whatever you wan to use to split up the string. E.g "|"
Then choose 0
Then you can send strings like this
String1 + "|" + String2 + "|" + String3
etc etc
When receiving text set the received text as "Source String" on the String Parser 2
And then you can pull out the different string from the expression from String Parser 2
"List Tokenizing" -> "Get Element"
Then you'll have this:
listGetAt$( "String Parser", > Enter value here < )
The value is which part of the string you want.
1 = the first part (e.g string1)
2 = the second part (e.g string2)
etc
I hope this helps
Nice! Thank you for the great explanation, guys :)
I will check the String Parser object in a while. I more often think the program breaks down on me with so many variables to loop between host and clients but I'll try to keep up the motivation!
Any idea why CF2.5 writes some strings over the edge of the object or how to fix it?
Thanks again!
I'm not sure what you mean by strings writing over the edge.
But in CF2.5 when you set the string, the entire string will be set, however it might not show the entire string because the lenght of the string is not long enough. So you need to resize the string in the Frame Editor.
Well, the thing is, I resized it so it fits perfectly into one of those game cards. Words with around 10 characters are displayed correctly but one or two characters more than 10 are missing as if the string would go further over the right edge of the string object. If the word displayed as alterable string has around 13 characters or so, it gets split up correctly with the second half of the word in a new line. But I need all words to be displayed correctly and there is no further resizing possible. I guess there has to be an easier solution to this than manual splitting at the end of the line.