Problem Set 4: Memory Scramble
The purpose of this problem set is to explore multithreaded programming with a shared mutable data type, which you will protect using different concurrency safety strategies; and to practice writing a client/server system.
On this problem set, you have substantial design freedom.
Pay attention to the PS4 instructions in the provided code.
You must satisfy the provided specifications for certain functions in Board.ts and WebServer.ts.
You may rewrite or delete any of the other provided code, add new classes and methods, etc.
Take care that the coordinate system of your game board matches the specifications: (row, column) coordinates start at (0, 0) in the top left corner, increasing vertically downwards and horizontally to the right.
Your code will be tested against the HTTP protocol specified below. It is your responsibility to examine Didit feedback and make sure your code compiles and runs for grading, but you must do your own testing to ensure correctness.
Get the code
Ask Didit to create a remote
psets/ps4repository for you on github.mit.edu.Clone the repo. Find the
git clonecommand at the top of your Didit assignment page, copy it entirely, paste it into your terminal, and run it.Run
npm install, then open in Visual Studio Code. See Problem Set 0 for if you need a refresher on how to create, clone, or set up your repository.
Overview
On this problem set, you will build a networked multiplayer version of Memory, a.k.a. Concentration, the game in which you turn over face-down cards and try to find matching pairs. Our version will have players turning over cards simultaneously, rather than taking turns. We’ll call it Memory Scramble.
Problem 1: you will design and implement one or more ADTs for this game.
Problem 2: you will implement a game server that handles clients using HTTP.
When you’re done problems 1-2, you can play Memory Scramble in your browser.
Problem 3: you will revise your system to handle multiple simultaneous players using an asynchronous game board.
Optional Problem 4: optionally, you can design and implement watching for changes to the board, which makes the Memory Scramble user interface more responsive. This part is completely optional – there is no grading attached to it at all.
Iterative Development Recommendation
Both automatic and manual grading for the alpha will focus more on your board and server without concurrency.
First, do problems 1 & 2 without considering concurrency: make your Board or other ADTs use synchronous methods, and don’t worry about multiple concurrent players in your server.
Implement the gameplay rules specified below by writing tests, choosing data structures, and writing code.
Consider the abstraction functions and rep invariants of all your data types.
Then, revise your work in problem 3 to make your system ready for concurrent players. Revise your choice of ADT operations based on the need for asynchronous blocking calls.
Game board · Gameplay rules · Example game transcript · Playing on the web
Game board
The Memory Scramble game board has a grid of spaces. Each space starts with a card. As cards are matched and removed, spaces become empty.
A card in our game is a non-empty string of non-whitespace non-newline characters.
This allows “pictures” like Hello and pictures like 🌈 by using emoji characters.
For example:
| 👁 | 💖 | M | √-1 | ☕️ |
All cards start face down. Players will turn them face up, and the cards will either turn face down again (if the player turned over cards that don’t match) or be removed from the board (if they do match).
Game boards are loaded from a file. Here is the formal grammar for board files:
BOARD_FILE ::= ROW "x" COLUMN NEWLINE (CARD NEWLINE)+
CARD ::= [^\s\n\r]+
ROW ::= INT
COLUMN ::= INT
INT ::= [0-9]+
NEWLINE ::= "\n" | "\r" "\n"?In BOARD_FILE, ROW is the number of rows, COLUMN is the number of columns, and the cards are listed reading across each row, starting with the top row.
|
… would be specified in a file as:
Gameplay rules
Multiple players manipulate the cards on the board concurrently. They play the game by trying to turn over pairs of identical cards. In a competitive game, those matching pairs would be worth points, but score-keeping is not part of our game for this problem set.
Here’s an informal summary of the rules:
- 1
- When a player turns over a first card in a pair, they control that card. If someone else already controls it, they block until they can take control.
- 2
- When the player turns over a second card, if the cards match, the player keeps control of them; otherwise, the player gives up control. The cards stay face up for now.
- 3
- When the player makes their next move, if their previous cards matched, those cards are removed from the board; otherwise, if no one controls them, they turn face down.
Notice at least two differences from usual Memory game rules: you can “turn over” a card that is already face up, blocking until that card is available; and turned-over cards stay face up on the board until the player who turned them over makes another move.
Complete rules
First card: a player tries to turn over a first card by identifying a space on the board…
- 1-A
- If there is no card there (the player identified an empty space, perhaps because the card was just removed by another player), the operation fails.
- 1-B
- If the card is face down, it turns face up (all players can now see it) and the player controls that card.
- 1-C
- If the card is already face up, but not controlled by another player, then it remains face up, and the player controls the card.
- 1-D
- And if the card is face up and controlled by another player, the operation blocks. The player will contend with other players to take control of the card at the next opportunity.
Second card: once a player has turned over a first card, they can try to turn over a second card…
- 2-A
- If there is no card there, the operation fails. The player also relinquishes control of their first card (but it remains face up for now).
- 2-B
- If the card is face up and controlled by a player (another player or themselves), the operation fails. To avoid deadlocks, the operation does not block. The player also relinquishes control of their first card (but it remains face up for now).
- —
- If the card is face down, or if the card is face up but not controlled by a player, then:
- 2-C
- If it is face down, it turns face up.
- 2-D
- If the two cards are the same, that’s a successful match! The player keeps control of both cards (and they remain face up on the board for now).
- 2-E
- If they are not the same, the player relinquishes control of both cards (again, they remain face up for now).
While one player is blocked turning over a first card, other players continue to play normally. They are not blocked, unless they also try to turn over a first card controlled by another player.
Failure in 1-A, 2-A, and 2-B only means that the player fails to control a card (and in 2-A/B, also relinquishes control). The player continues in the game.
After trying to turn over a second card, successfully or not, the player will try again to turn over a first card. When they do that, before following the rules above, they finish their previous play:
- 3-A
- If they had turned over a matching pair, they control both cards. Now, those cards are removed from the board, and they relinquish control of them. Score-keeping is not specified as part of the game.
- 3-B
- Otherwise, they had turned over one or two non-matching cards, and relinquished control but left them face up on the board. Now, for each of those card(s), if the card is still on the board, currently face up, and currently not controlled by another player, the card is turned face down.
If the player never tries to turn over a new first card, then the steps of 3-A/B never occur.
Example game transcript
Playing on the web
To support multiplayer Memory Scramble games over the network, we’ll define a HTTP protocol so the game can be played in a web browser.
The protocol uses standard HTTP, which means every communication is a client request with a server response.
All of our client requests will be GET requests for a particular path, and all server responses will be plain text.
In the protocol, each player identifies themselves by an ID, a nonempty string of alphanumeric or underscore characters of their choice. All requests with the same player ID are the actions of a single player.
Here is the formal grammar for requests and responses:
REQUEST ::= "/look/" PLAYER
| "/flip/" PLAYER "/" ROW "," COLUMN
RESPONSE ::= BOARD
BOARD ::= ROW "x" COLUMN NEWLINE (SPOT NEWLINE)+
PLAYER ::= [\w]+
SPOT ::= "none" | "down" | "up " CARD | "my " CARD
CARD ::= [^\s\n\r]+
ROW ::= INT
COLUMN ::= INT
INT ::= [0-9]+
NEWLINE ::= "\n" | "\r" "\n"?Rows and columns on the board are indexed starting from 0 at the top left.
For all requests, the server responds with BOARD, the current board.
In the response, ROW is the number of rows, COLUMN is the number of columns, and the cards are listed reading across each row, starting with the top row.
none indicates no card in that location, down is a face-down card, up is a face-up card controlled by another player (or by no one), and my is a face-up card controlled by the player who sent the request.
For example:
3x3↵ up␣A↵ down↵ down↵ none↵ my␣B↵ none↵ down↵ down↵ up␣C↵ |
In this example There are no cards at (1,0) or (1,2). The cards at (0,0), (1,1) and (2,2) are face up, and the player receiving this message controls the |
GET /look/player
The server responds with the current board.
GET /flip/player/row,column
The server tries to flip over the card at (row, column) for the player, following the rules above, and responds with the current board after trying to flip.
Since the response is sent after the flip, this request may block waiting for another player to relinquish control of a card.
A player waiting for a blocked flip to complete may not send concurrent GET /flip/... requests until the blocked flip has completed.
Problem 1: Game board
Specify, test, and implement a mutable Board ADT to represent the Memory Scramble game board.
It may be useful to define other ADTs as well.
Board.ts defines a static factory method for creating new boards that you must support:
parseFromFile(filename): creates a board by parsing a file in the format described above
Remember to include: a specification for every class and every method you write; abstraction functions and rep invariants, and checkRep and toString; and safety from rep exposure arguments.
Iterative development recommendation: implement a synchronous board first (i.e. with no async instance methods), and connect it to a server in Problem 2.
The alpha grading will focus more on using your server without concurrency.
Then revise for correct behavior with concurrent players in Problem 3.
For parsing board files, a parser generator (like ParserLib) is more complexity than you need.
String.split()andString.match()probably can handle all the parsing and extracting.fs.readFile()reads a file asynchronously. Be sure to useimport fs from 'fs/promises'to get the promise-based version of this function, rather than the older callback-function-based API.
To keep track of players and their state:
Each player might simply be identified by the ID it uses in the wire protocol. All of the game state would be stored in the
Board.Each player might be represented using an ADT, e.g.
Player. Some of the player’s state might be stored in thePlayerobject, or theBoardmight store all the state.
You decide which actions are atomic, since the rules do not specify. In rule 3-B, for example, turning the two cards back over might be a single action — where no other player can see or manipulate the intermediate board — or two separate actions. But the board must never reach an inconsistent state, such as two players controlling the same card, or having a face-down card that a player still controls.
You will need to track who controls which cards according to the gameplay rules.
To implement blocking according to the gameplay rules, use asynchronous methods and await, or callback functions.
The board should not busy-wait.
Simulating a game
In simulation.ts we have provided skeleton code for a program that simulates one player interacting with a board, randomly flipping over several cards.
You should be able to fill in the blanks in simulationMain() function and use npm run simulation to run simulated single-player Memory Scramble games.
Problem 2: Web server
To implement the web server, we will use the Express web app framework.
In WebServer.ts we have provided skeleton code for WebServer, which:
- creates an Express
Application - attaches a callback function for GET requests to paths that begin with the prefix
/hello/. The handler:- uses named route parameters to parse the text that follows
/hello/. - returns a text result based on that parameter
- uses named route parameters to parse the text that follows
- uses
Application.listen()to connect the app to a web server listening at a given port, and returns thehttp.Serverobject.
Note that requests for /hello/ are not part of the game protocol, and you should replace the example code once you understand it.
In the provided WebServerTest.ts file:
testHelloValidtests the behavior of the provided server on the valid requestGET /hello/w0rld.testHelloInvalidtests its behavior on invalid requestGET /hello/world!.
Note that these test cases are asynchronous: they use async function and await.
You should follow the same pattern for your own test cases that need to use asynchronous code.
To see the example code running, use npm start, which runs main() in server.ts.
This code parses command-line arguments, calls the Board parsing function based on those arguments, and creates and starts a server.
You should not need to change server.ts.
To run main(), first open a terminal, either inside Visual Studio Code or in a separate terminal window.
Then start a web server on port 8080 with our 3×3 board of rainbows and unicorns:
npm start 8080 boards/perfect.txt
The example web server doesn’t use the game board yet, but we can try out the handler for /hello/.
Browse to:
http://localhost:8080/hello/world→ valid request,Hello, world!http://localhost:8080/hello/%F0%9F%8C%8D→ invalid request,Go away, 🌍.
Remember that the server keeps running until you terminate its process, and if you try to run a second server on the same port, it will fail with “address already in use”.
If you run the server on the command line, use Ctrl-C in that terminal to stop it.
Specify, test, and implement support for /look/player and /flip/player/row,column requests according to the HTTP game protocol.
In WebServer, the specifications of the constructor, port(), start(), and stop() are required, but you are free to change any of the code in this class.
At this point, your server may not implement correct blocking behavior according to the rules or be able to handle concurrent players, but it should be able to handle multiple clients that make moves in sequence.
Once your server is complete, you can play the game online! We’ve built a client web page that speaks the game protocol with your server:
Play Memory Scramble
Enter the address of your running server (the default is localhost:8080), or connect to a friend’s server by IP address.
There is no code running on the web.mit.edu server here: the web page is running JavaScript in your browser that talks directly with your game server.
(If your browser refuses to connect: make sure you have not removed the lines from WebServer.ts that set the Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, which declares to the browser that this is a legal cross-origin request.)
Problem 3: Revise for concurrent players
3.1 Asynchronous Board
Revise Board to make it asynchronous, updating other ADTs as needed.
In simulation.ts, increase the value of players to simulate multi-player Memory Scramble games.
By instrumenting your code, for example with console.log() statements or by keeping track of cards that different players flip over, you should observe correct control of cards, correct blocking when players try to flip over a first card, and correct removal of matching cards when players make a next move.
Notice that your simulation should not terminate if one player turns over matching cards in their last move (leaving two cards face up under that player’s control) and another player tries to flip one of them as their first card.
3.2 Multi-player WebServer
Review your web server to make sure it is using the asynchronous Board properly, according to the rules.
Your server should not busy-wait or hang. While one request is blocked, other requests must be handled normally.
Notice as well that when a WebServer is constructed, the board may be shared with other clients of that same Board instance.
If a Board is being served, for example, by two different web servers, players on those two servers are all playing together.
This sharing of a mutable Board is a documented and desired part of the spec, and you must ensure it does not create rep exposure (for example, don’t give WebServer any rep invariants that external mutation of the Board could break).
Manual testing
Don’t rely on manual testing, or on using simulation.ts, to build a correct system.
Each ADT should have a Mocha unit test suite constructed with a principled testing strategy; and careful design to ensure mutual exclusion for critical sections.
However, if there are specifications you are not sure how to test automatically, you can document manual tests that cover parts of some partitions.
Document these tests in the relevant mocha test file — manual web server tests belong in WebServerTest.ts — immediately below the testing strategy.
For each manual test: give it a descriptive name, list the parts covered, and briefly but precisely describe each step a human tester should follow, along with assertions about expected results at each step.
For example, imagine you are testing the MIT web site:
/*
* Manual test: navigate to academic calendar
* Covers: page=home, type=static, type=redirect, data-source=registrar
* 1. browse to http://web.mit.edu => assert that header contains today's date
* 2. click "education"
* 3. click "academic calendar" => assert that page shows previous June through next June
*/Follow the same guidelines as for automated tests: test first, design a small set of tests, keep each test short, and make sure the tests are testing the spec.
A few enormous caveats about manual testing of our game protocol in a web browser:
- Browsers cache pages you visit (so revisiting a URL doesn’t always fetch it again from the server) and they preload URLs you might visit (so a page might be fetched before you hit enter in the URL bar).
- Our game protocol violates the spec of HTTP ( ! ) by using
GETfor the/flip/...request: aGEToperation should only be an observer, never a mutator! That requirement allows browsers to e.g. preloadGETrequests without worrying about mutating data on the server. Since we’ve violated HTTP spec (to keep things simple for this pset), beware that your browser may pre- or re-request/flip/...URLs when you manually visit them. So your browser may make a flip request that you didn’t intend, or before you intended it. - Chrome has been seen to behave in surprising ways when multiple tabs are blocking waiting for the same server to respond; some tabs never unblock, even when the server finally sends a response.
For these reasons, if you choose to do some manual testing, you may want to forgo your browser and instead use a command-line HTTP client like curl.
You should already have curl installed in the command prompt where you use git, since the GitStream exercises you did at the start of the semester also use curl.
But much better than manual testing is writing as many automated tests as possible, following the pattern of WebServerTest.ts.
(optional) Problem 4: Board events
This part of the problem set is optional. It makes the Memory Scramble user interface more responsive to users, and allows you to explore another level of concurrency design. Didit will have autograding tests for this problem, but no points will be associated with them in the alpha or beta submission.
This problem adds one more request, /watch, to the grammar for server requests:
REQUEST ::= "/look/" PLAYER
| "/flip/" PLAYER "/" ROW "," COLUMN
| "/watch/" PLAYERGET /watch/player
The server does not immediately respond. Instead, this request blocks, and the server waits until the next time the board changes. At that point, it responds with the current board.
A change is defined as any cards turning face up or face down or being removed from the board.
A GET /watch/player request must block until such a change occurs.
When there is no change in the state of the cards — for example, if a player tries to turn over an empty space, or if a player takes control or relinquishes control of a card but it does not turn face up or down — pending watch requests must continue to block.
While a GET /watch/player request is blocked, the player may send other requests, and they will be processed normally.
For example, a concurrent GET /look/player request must not block.
Specify, test, and implement support for informing clients of the game board ADT about when it has changed. Your board ADT might implement notification of only a single change, or notification of all future changes:
- If the client receives only a single change, it might be an asynchronous method whose promise fulfills when the board changes.
- Listeners might provide a callback function to
Board. The board will call them back on each change.
First try using your change notifications in simulation.ts to watch the board from another thread during a simulated game.
Then use your change notifications to specify, test, and implement support for web server /watch/player requests, notifying players when the board changes.
In that specification:
- A change is defined as any cards turning face up or face down or being removed from the board.
- When there is no change in the state of the cards — for example, if a player tries to turn over an empty space, or if a player takes control or relinquishes control of a card but it does not turn face up or down — it is not considered a change.
You decide which changes are atomic. The “watch” request specification does not say whether, when a pair of matched (or mismatched) cards is removed (or turned face down), that is reported as a single change or two separate changes.
Once you have added /watch to your server, you can flip the switch in the Memory Scramble web user interface from “update by polling” to “update by watching”, and you should find that the UI is quicker to display board updates made by other clients.
The link below flips the switch automatically:
Play Memory Scramble with /watch
Before you’re done
Make sure you have documented specifications, in the form of properly-formatted TypeDoc comments, for all your types and operations.
Make sure you have documented abstraction functions and representation invariants, in the form of a comment near the field declarations, for all your ADTs.
With those comments, also say how the type prevents rep exposure.
When you implement blocking behavior, make sure you are using a promise or a callback, not busy-waiting.
Make sure you specify, test, and implement
equals()for all immutable types.Make sure to implement
toString().Also use
@inheritdocwhen a class implements an interface method, to remind readers where they can find the spec.Make sure you have a thorough, principled test suite for every type.
This is the last problem set in 6.031: your work should exemplify SFB, ETU, RFC software construction.
Submitting
Make sure you commit AND push your work by 10:00pm on the deadline date.
⏳ This problem set can take much longer for Didit to process than previous psets, so push early.
Remember that Didit feedback is provided on a best-effort basis:
- There is no guarantee that Didit tests will run within any particular timeframe, or at all. If you push code close to the deadline, the large number of submissions will slow the turnaround time before your code is examined.
- If you commit and push right before the deadline, the Didit build does not have to complete in order for that commit to be graded.
- Passing the public
WebProtocolTesttest on Didit is no guarantee that you will pass the full battery of autograding tests, but failing it is sure to mean many lost points on the problem set.
Grading
Your overall ps4 grade will be computed as approximately:
~35% alpha autograde + ~5% alpha manual grade + ~45% beta autograde + ~15% beta manual grade
The autograder test cases will not change from the alpha to the beta, but their point values will. In order to encourage incremental development, alpha autograding will focus primarily on situations where clients make moves in series (separated by time), not concurrently. On the beta, autograding will look at a full range of concurrent situations.
Manual grading of the alpha will only examine internal documentation (AF, RI, testing strategy, etc.) and implementation that does not relate to concurrency. Manual grading of the beta may examine any part, including re-examining those docs or code, and how you addressed code review feedback.