Recoil Autohost

Starts Recoil engine dedicated game servers as-a-service over the Tachyon protocol.

---
title: Whole system view
---
graph LR
  subgraph player's machine
    lobby --> engine
  end

  lobby-server <-- tachyon protocol --> autohost
  lobby-server <-- tachyon protocol --> lobby

  subgraph game server
    autohost <-- engine autohost protocol --> engine-dedicated
    engine-dedicated <-- engine protocol --> engine
  end

  style autohost stroke-width:2px,stroke-dasharray:4,stroke:#ee4444

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Overview

This repo contain the Autohost service as defined in the Tachyon protocol definition. The service connects to the configured lobby server endpoint and allows lobby to start new battles. A single Autohost service can manage many battles in parallel. The autohost then facilitates communication between the running dedicated Recoil engine processes and lobby server (for example Teiserver): messages, commands, game updates.

Currently the service implements fully the Tachyon Autohost endpoints but isn't yet fully ready for production deployments.

Usage

Autohost takes a single JSON configuration file as argument and starts the operation:

npm install
npm run start config.json | npx pino-pretty

A minimal configuration file looks like:

{
  "tachyonServer": "lobby-server.example.com",
  "authClientId": "autohost1",
  "authClientSecret": "pass1",
  "hostingIP": "123.123.123.123"
}

To see all options take a look at schema in src/config.ts.

Autohost expects existence of engines folder that contains folder with different engine versions, for example:

$ tree engines -L 1
engines
├── 105.1.1-2590-gb9462a0 BAR105
└── local -> ../../spring/build-linux/install

During execution, autohost creates a new directory for each started battle under instances directory, for example instances/5a7b1354-e3ff-4a98-946e-9bece3b869a3/.

Development

Git hooks

It is recommended to set up a simple Git pre-commit hook provided in the repo (pre-commit) that runs automatic checks on changes in every new commit: formatting type-checking, tests, linting.

ln -s ../../pre-commit .git/hooks/pre-commit

Testing with tachyon server fake

This repository contains a minimal bare bones implementation of Tachyon lobby server: src/tachyonServer.fake.ts that can be used to test full end to end behavior of autohost without running real server.

To start the service run

npm run start-tachyon-fake | npx pino-pretty

The service will listed for autohost on port 8084 and config.dev.json contains the config that will make autohost connect to it:

npm run start config.dev.json | npx pino-pretty

The fake prints all tachyon messages it receives and sends JSON messages it gets via HTTP to the connected autohost. See below example session to see how autohost/subscribeUpdates and autohost/start are send to first connected autohost.

Example session

1. Set up BAR checkout as described in the main game repository https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason.

2. Make sure you have "Quicksilver Remake 1.24" map installed.

3. Fetch engine

   curl -L https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/spring/releases/download/spring_bar_%7BBAR105%7D105.1.1-2590-gb9462a0/spring_bar_.BAR105.105.1.1-2590-gb9462a0_linux-64-minimal-portable.7z -o engine.7z
   7z x engine.7z -o'engines/105.1.1-2590-gb9462a0 BAR105'

4. Start tachyon fake and autohost as described above.

5. Subscribe to all updates from autohost.

   printf '{"since":%d}' $(date '+%s%6N') | curl --json @- http://127.0.0.1:8084/request/0/subscribeUpdates

6. Create a simple start script request in start.json:

   {
     "battleId": null,
     "engineVersion": "105.1.1-2590-gb9462a0 BAR105",
     "gameName": "Beyond All Reason $VERSION",
     "mapName": "Quicksilver Remake 1.24",
     "startPosType": "ingame",
     "allyTeams": [{
       "startBox": { "top": 0, "bottom": 0.3, "left": 0, "right": 1 },
       "teams": [{
         "faction": "Cortex",
         "bots": [{
           "aiShortName": "BARb",
           "aiVersion": "stable",
           "hostUserId": "11111"
         }]
       }]
     }, {
       "startBox": { "top": 0.7, "bottom": 1, "left": 0, "right": 1 },
       "teams": [{
         "faction": "Armada",
         "players": [{
           "userId": "11111",
           "name": "Player",
           "password": "password1"
         }]
       }]
     }]
   }

7. Start the engine dedicated in autohost:

   jq ".battleId = \"$(uuidgen -r)\"" start.json | curl --json @- http://127.0.0.1:8084/request/0/start

8. Join the game yourself, using the port that will be printed on the tachyon server fake output and user name and password from start.json:

   ./engines/105.1.1-2590-gb9462a0\ BAR105/spring --isolation --write-dir "{absolute path to your data folder}""  spring://Player:password1@127.0.0.1:20001

Note

Until a fix gets released in some of the future engine version, you have only 30s between autohost starts the game and you connect to it.

License

This project is licensed primarily under the Apache License 2.0 license, and that's the license of the resulting executable, but there are exceptions for some files in the repository. We are using REUSE for documenting, tracking and verifying the copyright and licensing information of files in the repository.