1. Settlers of Alpha Centari
Peter Smith
Software Architecture – Spring 2011

2. Project Goals Clone of popular board game Settlers of Catan
Ability to host extendible AI players
Enhanced network reliability

3. Approach
Developed a P2P event driven Java application based on MVC pattern
Utilized some existing libraries: JGraphT, JDOM, and Jython
Default AI Player written in Python

4. Basic Game Architecture

5. Game Board Data Structure
Game Board is composed of tiles
with 6 vertices each, yields
a very natural Graph Structure
Each tile is assigned a number
Settlements are built on vertices
Roads are built on edges
JGraphT provides container classes
for this graph as well as common
graph algorithms like breadth first
and dijsktra’s shortest path 6 8 4

6. P2P Architecture Player #1 Player #3 Event driven
Represent TCP\IP Connection
Player #1
Player #3
Event driven
Each peer is connected
to every other peer
Player #2

7. P2P Arch. Adding a new player
1) New Player connects to
any of the existing nodes
by knowing an existing node’s
IP Address
Player #2
New Player
Join Request
2) New Player retrieves list of other players from the node it initially connected to and forms connections with the rest of the nodes in the network . It also receives initial game state from the node it initially connected to.

8. P2P Arch. Playing the game
Player #1
Placed Settlement at Vtx #5 – Player #1
Player #3
All actions in game are published to
other players via events. Events are broadcasted
(sent to every other player). There are
around 19 total different game events
Placed Settlement at Vtx #5 – Player #1
Player #2

9. Problems encountered
Existing bugs in implementation of network voting system to handle timed out\dropped players
Not enough time to properly design AI strategies to play game

10. Future Work
Enhance network robustness – allow for partially connected network topologies with routing of events between peers
Allow for player rejoin on hangup\time out
Explore AI Strategies to play this strategy game
Allow for user defined game engine rules for injectable logic and user game customization (i.e. a game board editor)

11. Demo
Any questions???