mmitch / bash-n

bash client library for connected-n game server

bash-n

bash-n is a library to simplify writing connected-n game clients in bash.

To write a client, source bash-n-client in your script and then implement the methods at the top of bash-n-client by redefining the functions with your own code.

Use udpwrap.pl to run a client; see below for details.

demo clients

Some simple demo clients are included:

• bash-n-failbot permanently makes illegal moves
• bash-n-slothbot permanently times out
• bash-n-simplebot plays completely random
• bash-n-towerbot tries to build vertical stacks

UDP communication

Two pecularities of the way the game implements the UDP protocol prevent the usage of the internal bash methods for UDP communication via /dev/udp/host/port:

• the individual messages have no end-of-packet marker like a line ending or a final semicolon, so the raw UDP datagrams need to be handled by the client

• the game server sends from a different port than the one it is listening on

To mitigate this, udpwrap.pl provides a UDP wrapper written in Perl that translates between UDP datagrams and a single lines of text with a proper line terminator in both directions:

usage:
  udpwrap.pl <local_port> <server:port> <bot_script>

example:
  udpwrap.pl 5000 localhost:4446 ./bash-n-simplebot

This will also work for game clients not using bash-n-client and/or written in another language. Any game client that talks the game protocol via stdin/stdout can be wrapped with udpwrap.pl, removing the need to implement the low-level network stuff.

project location

bash-n has its home at https://github.com/mmitch/bash-n/

copyright

bash-n - bash library for connect-n game clients

Copyright (C) 2019, 2020, 2023 Christian Garbs [e-mail]
Licensed under GNU GPL v3 or later.

bash-n is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

bash-n is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with bash-n. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.