Network Play
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Chapter 3. Network Play

General Network Play

Kenolaba supports playing across a network. This allows two people to play against each other on different computers, or one person to observe the game play of another Kenolaba program. To use Kenolaba's network features, Kenolaba must be set to Network Mode by selecting Game->Network Play.

All running Kenolaba programs which are in Network Mode broadcast changed positions to each other.

To exchange positions, the Kenolaba programs have to be told about each other. If they are running on the same machine, nothing is needed (apart from switching to Network Mode). If running on different computers you have to specify the other's machine on the command line with the -h switch, as so:

%kenolaba -h SomeHostName

Note

For insiders: Kenolaba, when in Network Mode, listens on a TCP socket for position change commands by other Kenolaba programs. You can specify the port number with the -p command line switch. You need this if you want to play two different Kenolaba Network games.

Examples

  • Chris on machine1 and Mary on machine2 want to play against each other: Mary simply starts Kenolaba, sets Options->Computer Play to None and switches to Network Mode. Chris starts Kenolaba with

    %kenolaba -h machine2
    and then does the same as Mary. Now one of the two can start the game and draw a red move. Each time the position is changed in one program, it automatically changes in the other one too.

  • John wants to observe the game: He does the same as Chris, but doesn't draw a move himself.

  • Two different Kenolaba Network Games will run among machines m1 and m2. To distinguish the games, we choose port number 12345 for one. On m1 we start as usual:

    %kenolaba
    for the first game, and (not so usual):
    %kenolaba -p 12345
    for the second. On m2 we start the first game with:
    %kenolaba -h m1
    and the second with:
    %kenolaba -h m1:12345
    (The colon separates host and port as in a URL).

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