Stratego is a fun game, but what if we re-engineered it?
I’ve got the challenge to create a stratego game, but re-engineering it. The goal was to create a framework to train an AI to play stratego. This of course could be extended to a lot more functionalities, like playing against other people, gathering data, …
The game
The game itself is based around the standard rules of stratego.
Backend
The backend is built using Go and uses a PostgreSQL database to store the game state. The first version of the backend is plain Go with a REST API and Websockets. The backend can be used independently from the frontend to train and test AIs faster (very much faster).
Go
I’ve had a little prior experience with Go, but not that much, mostly theoretical. When I started the project, I didn’t know much about frameworks in Go and choose to go vanilla.
Go has is very well built for concurrency and I’ve used that to my advantage. The whole game is built around Go routines and channels. Each game is its own Go routine and communicates with the frontend using websockets.
The critical game components are fully cover by unit tests to ensure the integrity of the game.
PostgreSQL
The database is built using PostgreSQL which is a modern option for relational databases.
AI training
AI training can be done via the CLI. Via this way we can easily see how AIs perform against each other. The training is very fast, one of the reasons we choose Go for the backend.
Frontend
The frontend is built using SvelteKit and TypeScript.
I choose not to include server functions and SSR (server side rendering) because we already have a backend that can be used independently from the frontend. It is also not necessary to render the website very fast.
Svelte is an excellent framework that really shines above the rest. It uses tailwind mixed with CSS for styling.
Docker makes everything easier
All services are containerized using docker. This makes it easy to deploy the project on different environments and test it beforehand.
Theme
For the theme I tried to go for a modern look while still remaining playful. All images and characters are inspired by the Go mascot “gopher”.
Pieces
The pieces are a more modern version of the classic stratego pieces.
They represent a more modern battle field with tanks, IT-specialists, mortars, …
The essence of the pieces is kept: bombs are bombs and the most powerful piece is still the marshal.
AIs
For now we have 2 AIs. More AIs will be added in the future.
FAFO
The f*ck around and find out AI. This AI is very simple: take a random piece and do a random valid move. Thats all. It doesn’t know what is going on, it just lives on hopes and prayers.
FATO
The f*ck around and try out AI. This AI is a bit more advanced than FAFO. It tries to understand the board and make strategic moves but if it doesn’t know what to do, it will just do a random move.
Hosting @ home
Hosting is setup and the game is playable online! I’ve set up a NixOS VM on a Proxmox server that hosts the project. It is made easy by the docker-compose that is already present.
I've created a powerful CD pipeline to automatically deploy the project on my server.
This project is open source!
Feel free to check out the project on GitHub: https://github.com/Thomas-More-Digital-Innovation/2526-DI-004-Stratego