When you run the game, you are using Node.js and the ws library for the server-side Web Socket architecture. Node.js runs the web server through its HTTP module serving it along with the Express node framework.
Upon production releases, we use pm2 to start and manage the Node server. We transpile the Node.js using Babel.
Every new server has a global world object, located at server/core/world.js, that keeps track of all things and listens for incoming connections and requests to properly update other connected clients.
{
socket: {},
map: {
foreground: [],
background: [],
},
npcs: [],
items: [],
respawns: {
items: [],
monsters: [],
},
monsters: [],
players: [],
clients: [],
}Global socket listener for every incoming client.
The foreground is a current array of tile's ID for objects, structures, walls, etc. The background is the same but for the surface layer (grass, dirt, roads, etc.)
Current list of NPCs in-game
Current list of items on the game map floors -- whether or respawn or dropped by player.
Current tracking of items and monsters that have been repawned and their current status.
Current list of Monsters in-game that are alive.
Current list of players logged into the game.
Socket connection of players logged into the game. Their socket_id is attached to the world.player objects listed above as a relation.
When debugging the Node.js server (server.js), a package comes installed called ndb (node debugging). You can run it by running npm run ndb which will fire up the local ndb. Once activated, you can start the npm dev:node script from the left-hand side.
dev:node executes the Node.js server using nodemon for auto-restarts upon code changes and babel-node to transpile latest code into legancy-complaint code.
You can also, without needing to debug, just simply run npm run dev:node to quickly start the server and see what's going on.