Pyker

Poker in Python for CUhackit 2018. Currently running Texas Hold'em and Blackjack. Pyker is a poker handler, designed with open-source in mind to be used/adapted to any network.

About

Pyker (Python + Poker, omg!) was created by Harrison Hall, Jackie Doan, and Jacky Wong during the 23-hour CUhackit (Clemson University Hackit) 2018 competition. Pyker allows players to play poker (Texas Hold'em and Blackjack) with each from different Unix terminals over the same internet connection. Over the course of 23 hours, we coded this project from scratch, with help from mentors and, of couse, lots of documentation.

The three of us have lately been in a bit of a poker binge, but are often at the disadantage of finding a place to play on campus on a saturday night. With our custom engine we can play whatever poker~esque games we can think of (and code). The only requirement is for the players to know each others IP addresses.

Goals

Our initial goals were to simply be able to play poker with each other from our rooms via the command line. This, we accomplished.

During development we had a few stretch goals:

Add a messaging feature
An AI to play with
More games aside from Texas Hold'em
A help menu
In-game hand statistics
A GUI version

During development we did have time to add one more game, Blackjack. We also were able to impliment a primitive messaging system. Networking must be fixed.

What would we have done differently?

A ton! And that's great, because it shows that we learned something. None of us were familiar with networking beforehand, and only one of us were familiar with python. We should have spent more than twenty minutes planning, and instead took an hour to create a thorough UML document, as it would have saved time and hardship later on. We should have probably used TCP instead of the UDP protocol, but since we began the night not knowing the difference, we forgive ourselves. The networking demonstartion may not be complete, but our project is successful.

Future Plans

We may impliment some of the stretch goals we did not have time to accomplish. Specifically, adding more games and in-game statistics.

Getting Started

The below instructions will help you get up and running with Pyker. Pyker currently only works on a Linux terminal.

Prerequisites

You will need Python 3.6. Check if you have Python.

python -V

If not, run one of the following or what is necessary for your distribution.

Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install python3.6

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S python

Fedora

sudo dnf install python3

Installing and Running

Make sure Python is installed. Then, clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/HarrisonHall/pyker.git

The user who wants to run the server in which all other computers connect to should run

python server.py

Everybody who is playing (which can include the server computer) should run

python main.py

Everybody follows the on screen instructions. Make sure to set up the players.txt file.