Stechec2

What is Stechec2

Stechec2 is a client-server turn-based strategy game match maker used during the French national computing contest. It is a complete rewrite of Stechec to achieve a simpler architecture.

Copying

Free use of this software is granted under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). For details see the files COPYING included with the Stechec2 distribution.

Requirements

• cmake >= 3.23
• gcc >= 4.7 (or clang)
• zeromq
• zeromq C++ wrapper (cppzmq)
• google-gflags
• googletest
• gcovr (for code coverage reports)
• python-yaml
• python-jinja2
• pkg-config

Arch Linux:

pacman --needed -S cmake gcc zeromq cppzmq gtest python-yaml python-jinja gflags gcovr

Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install build-essential cmake libzmq3-dev libcppzmq-dev python3-yaml \
    python3-jinja2 libgtest-dev libgflags-dev gcovr pkg-config

Installation with CMake

The goal of installing Stechec2 with CMake is to deploy its libraries and binaries on the system (excluding the tools). Only games that support the CMake build system use this method.

Clone the Stechec2 repository:

git clone https://github.com/prologin/stechec2
cd stechec2

Build Stechec2:

cmake -S . -B build_release -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Release" -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF -DBUILD_GAMES=OFF
cmake --build build_release
cmake --install build_release

Stechec2 is now installed on the system.

Contributing with CMake

The steps are quite similar to those in Installation with CMake.

Build Stechec2:

cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE="Debug" -DBUILD_TESTING=ON -DBUILD_GAMES=ON -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=YES
cd build && make -j$(nproc)

To enable Clang sanitizers, add these flags:

-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS="-fsanitize=address" -DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS="-fsanitize=address"

Run tests:

cd build
ctest --output-on-failure .

To use GDB (or other cool tools like rr), you don't need to use ctest. Instead, run the test binaries directly from the build folder.

Generate the player environment

To generate the player environment (different folders for each supported languages), you can use the stechec2-generator script installed by stechec2:

stechec2-generator player tictactoe player_env

Install languages dependencies

Requirements:

• php (warning: you may need to add open_basedir=/ to your /etc/php/php.ini)
• php-embed
• ocaml
• mono
• jdk-java
• ghc
• rustc
• python-dev
• js91

Archlinux:

pacman --needed -S php php-embed ocaml mono jdk11-openjdk ghc rust js91

Debian/Ubuntu:

apt-get install php-cli php-dev libphp-embed ocaml mono-devel ghc \
                openjdk-11-jdk rustc python3-dev mozjs91

Create your AI

You should now be able to choose your favorite language folder and begin to code:

cd player_env/python/
$EDITOR prologin.py
make

To create a tarball containing all your source files (you can add some by editing the Makefile), do:

make tar

Launch a match

To launch a match, you need to launch a stechec2-server and one stechec2-client per player. There is a wrapper called stechec2-run which runs everything you need in separate child processes, and only needs a tiny YAML configuration file to work.

A simple config.yml could be:

rules: /usr/lib/libtictactoe.so
map: ./simple.map
verbose: 3
clients:
  - ./champion.so
  - /path/to/other/champion.so
names:
  - Player 1
  - Player 2

Then you can just launch the match easily:

stechec2-run config.yml

Add spectators

Spectators are players that don't take part of the game, but can watch its different states during the match (to display it or to log it, for instance).

Make sure to compile your spectator first:

cd /path/to/prologin2014/gui
make

Then you just have to add those lines to the config.yml:

spectators:
 - /path/to/prologin2014/gui/gui.so

Testing The environment

Ensuring the environment is properly set up is crucial for the tools to function correctly.

A first test to check if the environment is properly set up is to compile all the champions. The tests of stechec2-generator do this effectively.:

cd ./tools
python3 -m unittest discover -s ./generator/test