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some other details about the environment and we present rules to be known to play the TRESSETTE, an online
game at ‘A Cantina i Bifarelli.
Server architecture.
The server consists of a Java stand-alone multithreaded application which manages the communication with
Java applets clients via sockets. It’s architecture is outlined in [Fig. 1].
Figure 1: Server architecture.
The MasterServer is the main process; it starts offspring threads and manages the GameSocket.
The StatusServer handles the StatusSocket in order to satisfy a client request of server status parameters value.
The ChatServer handles the ChatSocket; it associates two sockets (Input and Output) and a thread to any
connected client and it sends any received message to all clients.
The GameServer handles a single card game and it is started by the MasterServer as soon as a new player
arrives into an empty room. A thread is associated to any player and it handles two sockets for the client-server
communications.
Communication protocols.
We have considered three protocols:
StatusProtocol (SP), for the StatusServer and StatusClient communication;
ChatProtocol (CP), for the ChatServer and ChatClient communication;
GameProtocol (GP), for the GameServer and GameClient communication.
In the SP case, the client which is connected on the StatusSocket receives back a string message from the
server of the following format:
STATUS: ||...|.
Such a string is then interpreted and graphically displayed by the client for the end-user.
In the CP case, the client sends on the ChatInputSocket a string of the type:
USERNAME:
where nickname is the name chosen by the end-user. The client sends messages on the same socket with the
format:
PUBMESSAGE:
and it receives from the server other client messages on the ChatOutputSocket with the format:
PUBMESSAGE:
Therefore, the server simply collects the incoming messages, labels them with the appropriate nickname and
transmits them to all clients.
The GP is actually a set of protocols each one of them is relevant to a particular card game. At the time being
the only card game implemented in ‘A Cantina i Bifarelli is TRESSETTE.