Building a Multiplayer TicTacToe Game with Meteor

Meteor framework has become an ideal choice for building simple multiplayer browser games with its full-stack features and efficient prototyping capabilities. This tutorial will guide you to build a multiplayer tic-toe game using Meteor's default front-end template engine Blaze. Assume that you already have the basics of Meteor and experience in programming JavaScript.

If you have never been exposed to Meteor, it is recommended that you complete the TODO application tutorial on the official Meteor website first.

The full code has been uploaded to the GitHub repository.

Core points

• Meteor's full-stack ability and reactive nature make it ideal for creating simple multiplayer games like tic toe.
• This tutorial uses Meteor's default template engine, Blaze, to manage the front-end, highlighting its ease of setting up and prototyping applications.
• The game structure involves creating basic 3x3 game boards using HTML and CSS and rendering dynamically using Blaze templates.
• Use Meteor's account system to anonymously handle user sessions, enhance multiplayer game functions without the need for complex login systems.
• Game logic is processed using the Meteor method and MongoDB to ensure that the game state is synchronized in real time between players.
• This tutorial covers advanced game features such as joining games, playing chess and determining winning conditions, all synced between clients.
• This guide also covers the possibilities of further improvements, such as AI opponents and larger boards, encouraging readers to go beyond the basics.

Create an app

If you do not have Meteor installed, follow the instructions on their website according to your operating system.

Generate scaffolding

After installing Meteor, open the terminal and run the following command:

meteor create TicTacToe-Tutorial

This will create a folder called TicTacToe-Tutorial that contains the basic file structure of the application. This contains a sample application.

Navigate to this folder:

cd TicTacToe-Tutorial

Run the application now:

meteor

If all goes well, the console should now be building the application. Once done, open your web browser and visit https://www.php.cn/link/4a914e5c38172ae9b61780ffbd0b2f90 to view the running application. If you have never done this before, it is recommended that you try the sample application and try to understand how it works.

Let's look at the file structure. Open the application's folder. Currently we only care about client folders and server folders. The files in the client folder will be downloaded and executed by the client. Files in the server folder are executed only on the server and cannot be accessed by the client.

The contents in the new folder are as follows:

<code>client/main.js        # 客户端加载的 JavaScript 入口点
client/main.html      # 定义视图模板的 HTML 文件
client/main.css       # 定义应用程序样式的 CSS 文件
server/main.js        # 服务器加载的 JavaScript 入口点
package.json          # 安装 NPM 包的控制文件
.meteor               # Meteor 内部文件
.gitignore            # git 的控制文件</code>

Build a chessboard

Tic toe board is a simple three by three table; nothing too fancy, which is great for our first multiplayer game so we can focus on the features.

The board will be downloaded by the client, so we will edit the files in the client folder. Let's start by deleting the content in main.html and replacing it with the following:

client/main.html

meteor create TicTacToe-Tutorial

After modifying the file, be sure to save it! Otherwise, Meteor will not recognize them.

Now let's add some CSS to the board. Open the main.css file and add the following:

client/main.css

cd TicTacToe-Tutorial

We also added some extra ids and classes that we will use later in this tutorial.

Finally, delete client/main.js because we don't need it and open the app in the browser to see its appearance.

This is good, but not the best solution. Let's do some refactoring by introducing the Blaze template.

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