Running excalibur on the server

[savaparoski]

There was a short conversation about running excalibur on the server.
I looked at the example @eonarheim provided and it works just fine.

However, this means I have to replicate a lot of my code into matter.js and then make sure it works just like in excalibur in order to simulate game on the server.

Are there any ways to run excalibur on the server from the same codebase as clients?

[eonarheim]

@savaparoski Let me dig around, it should be possible to run most systems (apart from graphics) in a server context. I'll publish a sample when I figure out something that works.

Totally agree that re-using the existing excalibur code would be ideal!

[eonarheim]

So at the moment, the latest version of excalibur resists running on node due to the webpack build configuration, I'm working through the build to see if I can't get something working locally 🤞

[savaparoski]

Thanks for the effort @eonarheim

Did you make any progress?

[eonarheim]

Hi @savaparoski!

I've made some progress, currently it only works on a local version of excalibur using npm link but I should be able to cut a patch soon.

Example repo: https://github.com/excaliburjs/sample-physics-server
Excalibur branch: https://github.com/excaliburjs/Excalibur/tree/bugfix/run-excalibur-in-node

Still a work in progress, I think the simulation could be a lot smoother on the frontend with some linear interpolation between server updates

[singerbj]

Looks like this thread is based around running excaliburjs on the client and a physics runtime on the server-side....what about running excaliburjs in a "headless" mode on the server? Or even the use of an appropriate shim on top of the main library that allows for this?

My goal would be to run a authoritative instance of my multiplayer game on a server, using the exact same codebase as the client.

[singerbj]

I'm still not sure this is exactly the official approach you would want to take to make this work. The purist in me says that you would want to refactor excalibur to have a mode that works as efficiently as possible in a non-browser env - but maybe this works? Especially if it does work for Phaser and Pixi? Maybe the overall use case here is not really even worth it?

[eonarheim]

@singerbj Many thanks for digging so hard into this! Honestly this is way easier than the refactoring, I might just say this is the way ❤️

[eonarheim]

Perhaps we add an engine flag that drops a shim into the global context? or maybe just a global export? That would make it theoretically easy to support both server and web, you'd need to have a factory function that outs the right engine or runs the shim?

[singerbj]

I'll continue to poke around with it - I am sure a more fully fledged project might need more finessing. I'll keep you updated!

[singerbj]

Perhaps we add an engine flag that drops a shim into the global context? or maybe just a global export? That would make it theoretically easy to support both server and web, you'd need to have a factory function that outs the right engine or runs the shim?

Oh just saw this - could do that, or could offer the shim as a separate package that you just need to run before Excalibur?

See how this package works: https://github.com/geckosio/phaser-on-nodejs

[KostarSf]

I'm also really looking forward to Excalibur on the server! Right now, I have implemented multiplayer in my game using some kind of distributed computing 😀 Each player locally processes himself and some of the background objects. The server only forwards events between players via web sockets. It's not a very secure system, but it works

[eonarheim]

Me too! It's part of the plan before v1, it might make the v0.30 cut but no promises :)

[KostarSf]

Can't wait for this!