Resend Game Pigeon Message

This is an old post and doesn't necessarily reflect my current thinking on a topic, and some links or images may not work. The text is preserved here for posterity.

I'm still experimenting with building games, and one of my projects is a little client/server game. Rather than using WCF and dealing with the leaky abstractions, I decided to write something small and custom.

01 November 2012 Government code-breakers are working on deciphering a message that has remained a secret for 70 years. It was found on the remains. Tutorial on how to uninstall game pigeon from iphone and pad in 2019. Working method to delete game pigeon from imessage app.

Pigeon is an alternative to WCF designed for high throughput.

It uses raw TCP sockets
It uses Google Protocol Buffers to keep messages small
It is asynchronous
The code is on BitBucket

On my local machine, WCF NetTcpBinding maxes out at about 10,000 messages/second, while Pigeon achieves 40-50,000 messages/second.

Messages

Messages are encoded using Google Protocol Buffers. You just have to decorate your C# classes with the following attributes:

You don't have to use the same class library/DLL on the client and server. Instead, the number 57 in the Message attribute above is used to identify the type. So long as the client and server have a type with the number 57, and attributes numbered 1, 2 and 448, even if the classes have different names, it will just work.

Client example

First you configure the client - here I'm connecting to my loopback IP address on TCP port 90001.

We need the KnownTypes.Add call to make the deserializer aware of the CreateCustomer class, so that if it is told to deserialize 57, it knows which class to create.

After we create the client, we can listen for messages from the server:

The call to client.Start creates a new background thread, which sits in a loop raising the MessageReceieved event each time a message is read from the TCP socket. Note that this means your MessageReceived handler will be called from a background thread.

Finally, the client can send messages to the server:

This will queue the message for sending by another background thread, leaving your application code to continue running uninterrupted.

Server example

Writing a server is a little more complicated, since you need to track which clients are connected, and send messages to specific clients.

The server is configured in a similar way to the client - it needs a TCP port number and known types:

The server can also broadcast a message to all clients:

FAQ

How many threads are used?

A simple client application would use four threads:

The main application thread
The send thread, which sends outbound messages to the server
The receive thread, which queues receieved messages from the server for dispatch
The dispatch thread, which raises the MessageReceived event

A simple server application would also use five threads:

The main application thread
The listen thread, which accepts incoming socket requests
The send thread, which sends outbound messages to any client
The receieve thread, which queues receieved messages from the client for dispatch
The dispatch thread, which raises the MessageReceieved event

Note that each of these threads sleep when there is no work to do

Will I run out of memory?

Resend Game Pigeon Messages

If your application is producing messages faster than they can be written to the sockets, or if you are receiving messages from the socket faster than your MessageReceieved event handler can handle them, messages will be discarded. The memory usage should hit a limit, since there will never be more than a fixed number of messages on the queue at once.

To illustrate, imagine an MMORPG. As the characters walk around the online world, they continually call client.Send(new Moved(currentPosition)) messages to the server. Chances are, if the server is struggling to cope with the number of messages, you'd be happy to discard the Moved message that was sent 20 seconds ago in favour of processing the Moved message that was sent 1 second ago.

Hello, I'm Paul Stovell

I'm a Brisbane-based software developer, and founder of Octopus Deploy, a DevOps automation software company. This is my personal blog where I write about my journey with Octopus and software development.

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With iOS 10, iMessage gained many new features. One such feature is the ability to use apps from within iMessage. This allows you to download an app, such as a game, and play against someone else by sending messages.

If the thought of apps in messages sounds confusing, don’t worry. It’s not as complicated as it may seem. To demonstrate, we will step through the process of downloading a game and starting a game with a friend.

Downloading an App in iMessage

To get started, open the Messages app and select a contact like you would normally do to send a message to a friend. To the left of the text entry field, you will see three gray colored icons (a camera, a heart, and the letter “A” for the App Store). Tap the icon for the App Store. If you see an arrow in a gray box instead of the three icons, tap the arrow to reveal the three icons.

After tapping the App Store icon, you will see a window that typically shows the last app used or recently used apps in iMessage. In the bottom left corner of the window, you will see four gray dots. Tap this icon to display the apps currently installed on your device.

By default, you will see apps for Store, Recents, #images, and Music. Tap the Store app to open the App Store for iMessage.

The iMessage App Store shows all the apps that can be used with iMessage. Across the top there are three navigation tabs: Featured, Categories, and Manage. The Featured and Categories tabs allow you to browse the App Store. The Manage tab allows you to manage which apps appear in iMessage on your device.

You can browse the App Store and download whatever app you want. For our example, I will download a game called GamePigeon. This app contains several different games you may enjoy playing with friends. Once you locate the app, it can be downloaded to your device by tapping the Get button.

Play a Game in iMessage

Once the app is installed, you can now use it in iMessage. Create an iMessage to a friend, tap the App Store icon, and tap the four gray dots to show the apps installed on your device. Tap the app you want to use. In our example, we will select GamePigeon.

GamePigeon contains several different games within the app. For our example, we will select a game called Sea Battle. After we make our game selection, a game invitation appears in the message. Send this invitation to your friend.

If your friend already has the game installed on their device, they can begin playing immediately. If they don’t have the game installed, they will get a link to download the game to start playing.

Playing games with friends using iMessage is convenient because each player takes their turn whenever they read their messages. Both players don’t have to be online at the same time.

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