In order to engage in competitive play.
General game players need a game manager
to distribute game descriptions, maintain
an official game state, update the state
with the player moves, verify the legality
of those moves, and ultimately determine
the winners. In the case of automated
general game players, the manager takes
the form of a web service that performs
all of these functions. Typical game
manager maintains databases of game
descriptions matched records and, and
temporary data while games are in
progress. Communicates with players via
TCP/IP connections, and in most cases it
provides graphical representations of
games for human spectators. Versus running
a game goes as follows, upon receiving a
request from a game director to run a
match, the game manager's first, first
issue's start message to each player to
initiate the match. Start message contains
an identifier for the match, the role the
player is assuming in that match, the game
description, a start clock and a play
clock. The start clock specifies the
amount of time remaining before play
begins, and the play cock, clock specifies
the amount of time each player has to make
each move once play begins. Once the play
begins, it issues play messages to each
player. This includes the match ID, and an
indication of the moves made on the last
time step by the various players in the
match. once the manager receives plays
from the players, it simulates the results
to determine the next state of the game.
this part of the process then repeats.
another play message is sent. It moves,
received, state simulated and so forth.
And this process continues until the match
is over. Once the match is over, the
manager issues a stop message to each
player and this is useful so that players
know what happened on the last move. And
now finally one other function of the game
manager is handling problem cases. failure
to play or incorrect, incorrect moves. In
such cases the game manager plays an
arbitrary legal move for the player and
reports that move in the next play m
essage. Now that's only one way to deal
with such cases the alternative would be
forfeiture. However, that's a somewhat
severe consequence where communications
are not perfect. Also it could give a win
to a weak player just because another
player failed to move in time or because
an internet connection dropped. Doing
things this way at least forces players to
do better than random.