Gaming/GameCenter

Documents

• Explainer
• List of competing game center/HTML5 distributors
• List of good HTML5 (WebGL/asm.js) games
• List of mobile game controllers in the wild
• History of Galaxy: A Trip Down Memory Lane
• Technical Architecture (Wiki)
• Technical Architecture (Presentation)
• Controller Lab

Communications

irc.mozilla.org backchannels

• #galaxy

Meetings

• Meeting Notes

Roadmap

Given that:

• HB is curious about the galaxy controllers
• Stumbler is going to check out leaderboards

Therefore, our priorities are:

1. Leaderboards
2. Off-the-shelf controllers
3. Load-testing
4. Localizations

Status

• Leaderboards: Complete and documented, awaiting feedback from MozStumbler contractors.
• Controllers: Complete but needs more documentation. We should encourage people to contribute to the wrapper for galaxy.getGamepads. cvan has a fork of commits to upstream and a bunch of controllers to add controller mappings. cvan wants to make a standalone Controller Configuration tool that we can deploy to crowdsource controller mappings in the wild.
• Login: Awaiting UX and integration help with Services.

Activities

• cvan: documentation
  • overall approach/backgrounder -- completing week of 20140902
  • REST API docs -- complete at [1]
  • galaxy.js docs -- in progress at [2]. Working on after overall approach/backgrounder.
• rfkelly: fxa integration, general backend helping-out

Game Center Roadmap

• In lieu of a lobby, keep the list of games private.
• Build a page for each game to show potential with API (e.g. show leaderboard, show who's playing); we can work with the game developers to skin/customize it as needed.
• The "lobby" as previously envisioned, should be justified with interest stemming from HB, Stumbler, etc.

Projects

Below are the following GitHub repositories that comprise the Galaxy services.

Catalogue

Summary

Contains the catalogue, a static web page, that showcases the games, leaderboards, and friends' activity.

During the build step, via Gulp and Metalsmith, the HTML is generated from static JSON files, Markdown files, and HTML templates. The compiled HTML talks to the backend API (`galaxy-api`) via WebSockets to render any user-specific information (i.e., leaderboards and friends' activity).

Technologies used

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, WebSockets, Node.js, Gulp, Metalsmith.

Repository

• https://github.com/mozilla/galaxy
• View open issues
• File an issue

Servers

• Staging: https://galaxy.dev.mozaws.net/directory/

Resources

• Tentative list of games

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REST/WebSocket API

Summary

Contains the REST API server and the WebSocket server that the catalogue (`galaxy`) talks to and the in-game services (`galaxy.js`) talk to.

Such services include game, leaderboard, and leaderboard score creation.

Technologies used

Node.js, Koa, Chai, Mocha, Redis, PostgreSQL, WebSockets, Gulp.

Repository

• https://github.com/mozilla/galaxy-api
• View open issues
• File an issue

Servers

• Staging: https://api-galaxy.dev.mozaws.net

Benchmarks

• Click here!

Documentation

• REST API Docs on Apiary

Example Code

• Python (and example output)

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galaxy.js

Summary

Contains the JavaScript file that developers can include in their games to get access to the Galaxy in-game services.

Technologies used

JavaScript, WebSockets, Gulp.

Repository

• https://github.com/mozilla/galaxy.js
• View open issues
• File an issue

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galaxy.js-mobile-gamepad

Summary

A drop-in JavaScript library for controlling an HTML5 game using WebRTC data channels.

Technologies used

JavaScript, WebRTC, WebSockets, Browserify (with Node), Gulp.

Repository

• https://github.com/mozilla/galaxy.js-mobile-gamepad
• View open issues
• File an issue

Screencasts & Demos

USB/Bluetooth Gamepads

A demo of cvan using two USB-based controllers (N64 and NES) to play a version of HexGL, a WebGL-based racing game, which has been modified to work with galaxy.js. Included in galaxy.js is galaxy.getGamepads, a simple, cross-browser wrapper around navigator.getGamepads, also providing mappings for various controllers on the market. Instead of writing lots of boilerplate code, game developers can simply listen to events (when buttons get pressed or axes change) or inspect a state object in their game loop.

Mobile Gamepads

A demo of cvan using a Firefox OS phone to play HexGL with galaxy.js. Also included in galaxy.js is galaxy.getMobileGamepads, an interface for pairing a mobile device with the Galaxy in-game services to provide accelerometer gameplay controls. Using the browser's deviceorientation events, we identify which direction the player is turning and whether the player is accelerating.

Screen Sharing

A demo of Sathya playing HexGL whilst sharing his screen with a friend. Using Chrome's desktopCapture API from an extension, the screen is turned into a Media Stream, which is then streamed to another browser using WebRTC. (The API will be available soon in Firefox Nightly.)

Code available on GitHub.

Archives

Contact Information

• #galaxy on irc.mozilla.org
• File bugs for REST/WebSocket API (and docs)
• File bugs for front-end catalogue (and docs)
• File bugs for galaxy.js (and docs)