Abstract
This project proposes the development of a highly interoperable poker application designed to
seamlessly connect players across various devices, platforms, and client applications. The system
will prioritize interoperability, scalability, and reliability to ensure smooth integration between
diverse clients and the central server, handle a large number of concurrent users, and deliver
consistent performance.
Author
Name: William Sawyer
Student number: 46963608
Functionality
The proposed poker application will include the following features:
- Multi-Platform Support: Ensure consistent functionality across desktop, mobile, and web-based
clients.
- Unified API: Develop a robust API to facilitate seamless communication between diverse clients
and the central server.
- Cross-Platform Multiplayer: Enable real-time gameplay between users on different devices and
platforms.
- Secure Transactions: Implement platform-agnostic methods for in-game purchases and currency
transactions.
- Universal Authentication: Provide a unified authentication system compatible with various client
implementations.
Scope
The scope of this project encompasses:
- Core Server Development: Design and implement a central server with a flexible API to support
various client types.
- Client SDK(s): Create a software development kit(s) to facilitate easy integration for various
client platforms and third-party client developers.
- Reference Clients: Develop sample client applications for web, iOS, and Android platforms.
- Cloud Deployment: Host the application on scalable cloud infrastructure to accommodate varying
user loads.
- Integration Testing: Ensure seamless interoperability between different client types and the
central server.
Quality Attributes
The success of the poker application will hinge on the following prioritized quality attributes:
- Interoperability: The system must seamlessly integrate various client applications, platforms,
and devices with the central server. This ensures a consistent user experience regardless of the
access method and enables cross-platform gameplay.
- Scalability: The application must efficiently handle a growing number of users and increased
data volume without performance degradation. This is crucial for maintaining smooth operations
during peak usage times across multiple platforms.
- Reliability: The system must consistently perform its intended functions without failures,
providing users with a dependable gaming environment across all supported platforms. This
includes maintaining uptime and quickly recovering from any unexpected issues.
Evaluation
To assess whether the poker application meets the desired quality attributes, the following
evaluation methods will be employed:
- Interoperability Testing:
- Develop a suite of integration tests to verify seamless communication between different
client types and the central server.
- Measure API response consistency across various platforms and client implementations.
- Conduct cross-platform gameplay sessions to ensure feature parity and data synchronization.
- Scalability Testing:
- Simulate high user traffic scenarios with a mix of different client types to observe system
performance under load.
- Measure response times, throughput, and resource utilization across various client-server
interactions.
- Evaluate the system’s ability to scale horizontally by adding more server instances.
- Reliability Testing:
- Perform continuous uptime monitoring for both the central server and sample client
applications.
- Introduce fault injection techniques to evaluate the system’s ability to maintain operations
and recover from failures across different platforms.
- Analyze metrics such as mean time between failures (MTBF) and mean time to recovery (MTTR)
for both server and client components.
By focusing on these quality attributes and implementing rigorous evaluation methods, the proposed
cross-platform poker application aims to deliver a highly interoperable, scalable, and reliable
gaming experience across a diverse ecosystem of devices and platforms.