Lobby

Code Colosseum provides no user authentication by design. The rationale is to keep its codebase and its setup as simple as possible. This, however, comes at the cost of having a (bit) more complicated match setup.

Code Colosseum keeps a lobby of waiting to start and running matches. The lobby serves as the sole access point for players to join a match waiting to start.

The command line client provides a way to show the current status of the lobby. Other clients could provide it as well.

Match Creation

A new match can be created by anyone, by either using the command line client or some other mean. When creating a match the user must specify the following parameters:

  • game to be played
  • name of the match
  • number of players
  • number of server bots
  • timeout for player inactivity
  • an optional password to join the match
  • optionally the server password to create a verified game
  • other parameters specific to the game requested

Note that, depending on the client used, some parameters could have defaults, and as such will not be needed to be specified. Also note that, depending on the game chosen, not all possible values of such parameters will be available (e.g. for Rock Paper Scissors creating a match with a number of players rather than 2 will cause an error and the match will not be created). Such restrictions will be indicated on the description of each game.

A match starts as soon as the number of players needed to start it has been reached. If a waiting-to-start match is inactive for some time, it will be removed from the lobby. The command line client provides an indication of such expiration time.

When created, the server will return the match ID, which is the identifier needed to join or spectate a match.

Spectators

Code Colosseum provides the ability to spectate any match, either be waiting to start or already running. Spectators can spectate password protected matches without needing a password. Thus, in the spectator sense, all matches are public.

Spectators will get a read-only stream of the match, the contents of which are specified in the description of each game. Note that, like the stream for playing parties, the stream is not supposed to be human-readable, and as such will likely need to be connected to a program that renders it in a human-readable way.

Note that some games provide such rendering programs, some even with a graphical user interface.