Multiplayer game using pygame [duplicate] - pygame

Question

We are working on a Top-Down-RPG-like Multiplayer game for learning purposes (and fun!) with some friends. We already have some Entities in the Game and Inputs are working, but the network implementation gives us headache :D
The Issues
When trying to convert with dict some values will still contain the pygame.Surface, which I dont want to transfer and it causes errors when trying to jsonfy them. Other objects I would like to transfer in a simplyfied way like Rectangle cannot be converted automatically.
Already functional
Client-Server connection
Transfering JSON objects in both directions
Async networking and synchronized putting into a Queue
Situation
A new player connects to the server and wants to get the current game state with all objects.
Data-Structure
We use a "Entity-Component" based architecture, so we separated the game logic very strictly into "systems", while the data is stored in the "components" of each Entity. The Entity is a very simple container and has nothing more than a ID and a list of components. Example Entity (shorten for better readability):
Entity
|-- Component (Moveable)
|-- Component (Graphic)
| |- complex datatypes like pygame.SURFACE
| `- (...)
`- Component (Inventory)
We tried different approaches, but all seems not to fit very well or feel "hacky".
pickle
Very Python near, so not easy to implement other clients in future. And I´ve read about some security risks when creating items from network in this dynamic way how pickle it offers. It does not even solve the Surface/Rectangle issue.
__dict__
Still contains the reference to the old objects, so a "cleanup" or "filter" for unwanted datatypes happens also in the origin. A deepcopy throws Exception.
...\Python\Python36\lib\copy.py", line 169, in deepcopy
rv = reductor(4)
TypeError: can't pickle pygame.Surface objects
Show some code
The method of the "EnitityManager" Class which should generate the Snapshot of all Entities, including their components. This Snapshot should be converted to JSON without any errors - and if possible without much configuration in this core-class.
class EnitityManager:
def generate_world_snapshot(self):
""" Returns a dictionary with all Entities and their components to send
this to the client. This function will probably generate a lot of data,
but, its to send the whole current game state when a new player
connects or when a complete refresh is required """
# It should be possible to add more objects to the snapshot, so we
# create our own Snapshot-Datastructure
result = {'entities': {}}
entities = self.get_all_entities()
for e in entities:
result['entities'][e.id] = deepcopy(e.__dict__)
# Components are Objects, but dictionary is required for transfer
cmp_obj_list = result['entities'][e.id]['components']
# Empty the current list of components, its going to be filled with
# dictionaries of each cmp which are cleaned for the dump, because
# of the errors directly coverting the whole datastructure to JSON
result['entities'][e.id]['components'] = {}
for cmp in cmp_obj_list:
cmp_copy = deepcopy(cmp)
cmp_dict = cmp_copy.__dict__
# Only list, dict, int, str, float and None will stay, while
# other Types are being simply deleted including their key
# Lists and directories will be cleaned ob recursive as well
cmp_dict = self.clean_complex_recursive(cmp_dict)
result['entities'][e.id]['components'][type(cmp_copy).__name__] \
= cmp_dict
logging.debug("EntityMgr: Entity#3: %s" % result['entities'][3])
return result
Expectation and actual results
We can find a way to manually override elements which we dont want. But as the list of components will increase we have to put all the filter logic into this core class, which should not contain any components specializations.
Do we really have to put all the logic into the EntityManager for filtering the right objects? This does not feel good, as I would like to have all convertion to JSON done without any hardcoded configuration.
How to convert all this complex data in a most generic approach?
Thanks for reading so far and thank you very much for your help in advance!
Interesting articles which we were already working threw and maybe helpful for others with similar issues
https://gafferongames.com/post/what_every_programmer_needs_to_know_about_game_networking/
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/408859/
https://docs.python.org/3/library/pickle.html
UPDATE: Solution - thx 2 sloth
We used a combination of the following architecture, which works really great so far and is also good to maintain!
Entity Manager now calls the get_state() function of the entity.
class EntitiyManager:
def generate_world_snapshot(self):
""" Returns a dictionary with all Entities and their components to send
this to the client. This function will probably generate a lot of data,
but, its to send the whole current game state when a new player
connects or when a complete refresh is required """
# It should be possible to add more objects to the snapshot, so we
# create our own Snapshot-Datastructure
result = {'entities': {}}
entities = self.get_all_entities()
for e in entities:
result['entities'][e.id] = e.get_state()
return result
The Entity has only some basic attributes to add to the state and forwards the get_state() call to all the Components:
class Entity:
def get_state(self):
state = {'name': self.name, 'id': self.id, 'components': {}}
for cmp in self.components:
state['components'][type(cmp).__name__] = cmp.get_state()
return state
The components itself now inherit their get_state() method from their new superclass components, which simply cares about all simple datatypes:
class Component:
def __init__(self):
logging.debug('generic component created')
def get_state(self):
state = {}
for attr, value in self.__dict__.items():
if value is None or isinstance(value, (str, int, float, bool)):
state[attr] = value
elif isinstance(value, (list, dict)):
# logging.warn("Generating state: not supporting lists yet")
pass
return state
class GraphicComponent(Component):
# (...)
Now every developer has the opportunity to overlay this function to create a more detailed get_state() function for complex types directly in the Component Classes (like Graphic, Movement, Inventory, etc.) if it is required to safe the state in a more accurate way - which is a huge thing for maintaining the code in future, to have these code pieces in one Class.
Next step is to implement the static method for creating the items from the state in the same Class. This makes this working really smooth.
Thank you so much sloth for your help.

Answer 1

Do we really have to put all the logic into the EntityManager for filtering the right objects?
No, you should use polymorphism.
You need a way to represent your game state in a form that can be shared between different systems; so maybe give your components a method that will return all of their state, and a factory method that allows you create the component instances out of that very state.
(Python already has the __repr__ magic method, but you don't have to use it)
So instead of doing all the filtering in the entity manager, just let him call this new method on all components and let each component decide that the result will look like.
Something like this:
...
result = {'entities': {}}
entities = self.get_all_entities()
for e in entities:
result['entities'][e.id] = {'components': {}}
for cmp in e.components:
result['entities'][e.id]['components'][type(cmp).__name__] = cmp.get_state()
...
And a component could implement it like this:
class GraphicComponent:
def __init__(self, pos=...):
self.image = ...
self.rect = ...
self.whatever = ...
def get_state(self):
return { 'pos_x': self.rect.x, 'pos_y': self.rect.y, 'image': 'name_of_image.jpg' }
#staticmethod
def from_state(state):
return GraphicComponent(pos=(state.pos_x, state.pos_y), ...)
And a client's EntityManager that recieves the state from the server would iterate for the component list of each entity and call from_state to create the instances.