PlayMafia

PlayMafia is a web game that runs in the browser, based on the party game "Mafia" also known as "Werewolf" see wiki entry for details on the game. This implementation has been written in NodeJS with SockJS & Redis and is heavily based on the StarCraft 2 Mafia Mod .

A server admin can simply launch the PlayMafia code, any number of users can then create and join games and play mafia with each other.

Features

Feature list

A front-end website, with a full description of the game for new players. The game is completely run in the browser for all players - no game client install required.
Ability for users to create accounts, login, add friends and private message each other on the server.
Ability for users to create & join lobbies, set game settings and chat pre-game.
A modular structure enabling an admin to easily skin the game, make changes to gameplay, text and images and the games roles.
Ability to play the game of Mafia with 19 different roles (citizen, doctor, sherif, mafioso, godfather, black mailer, vigilante, escort, serial killer, jester, consort, bodygaurd, investigator, consigliere, framer, survivor, mayor, jailor and bus driver)
Ability to chat in game via public chat, privately or in special group chat.
Game follows traditional Night/Day cycle until mafia or town fail their objective.
Comprehensive ingame help with information on how to play the game and the different roles.
Post game screen shows who completed their objectives and allows players to talk to each other.
The ability for players who have closed their browsers or been disconnected, to rejoin their games while games are still running.
If for some reason the server goes down, when the server is restarted, all games are relaunched and players can rejoin them to continue thier games.

Screenshots

Server - setup

Prerequisites

Linux or Windows
NodeJS
Redis
Optionally npm module hiredis, this will significantly improve game server speed. Note on windows this will require you to make additional installations. If this is installed, PlayMafia will automatically use it.

Installation

Checkout this repo locally
In CMD, Navigate to "trunk\game", run "npm install", this will install all required NodeJS Modules
Ensure redis is running
Simply run "node index.js" to run the server script, once this is running you should be ready to go!

Configuration

For configuration options, see "trunk\game\server\mafia.constants.js", the game server must be restarted to use changes to mafia.constants.js

Codebase & Notes for production

Administrator Notes

If this is being run on a website, it needs to be run on HTTPS, otherwise some browsers will struggle to connect.

Technology

NodeJS - Serverside (Javascript) scripting language which PlayMafia is written in.
Redis - Redis is used like a database in PlayMafia, both for storing game state and also for passing around messages between clients.
SockJS - This enabled realtime messaging between the server and the clients (web browsers).

Game modifications

The game was intentionally created to be modular, to enable ui skinning, additional roles etc.

The role stats can be easily tweaked (JSON format), and are located in "trunk\game\server\mafia.config.raw.js".
The role name options can also be tweaked (JSON format), and are located in "trunk\game\server\mafia.names.raw.js".
The role interaction and game logic for the action phase, is all located in "trunk\game\server\mafia.gamelogic.js".

Area for improvements

Promises - The code should really be using promises to handle the Asynchrounous callbacks. I started writing this long before promises were commonplace in JS. This code suffers from serious callback hell unfortunately.
Error handling - So long as the redis connection is stable, things tend to work, however the code lacks propper error handling and failure callbacks, plenty of room of improvment for this.
Code could be improved by breaking it up into further files.

Client

The game was written for google chrome, their are minor UI bugs with firefox and IE10+.
New players simply need to provide a username and password, register the first time, then login each additional time.
New users must enter a beta key to register, this can be configured in the configuration settings by an admin "BETA_REG_KEY".
An administrator can test the game with bots (they do not play the game, but enable you to see how it works), to do this you must change the configuration "PLAYMAFIA_DEBUG" to be true, bots can be added in the lobby by typing in the chat "+b" for a single bot for "+bb" for 10 bots.

Debugging

The game extensively logs all activity. The amount of logging that is output to the console or to log files can be configured in the configuration file.

Lisence

MIT Lisence - Feel free to branch and create fixes or improvements, I am happy to bring improvements back into this repo.

Jezternz/PlayMafia