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Computer Science and Software Engineering Capstone Presentations

Summer Quarter

August 21, 2020

Norwick Lee

"Inter-Platform Communication for Werewolf Engine"

(Group Project - Student Defined)

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Marc Dupuis

Abstract

As social isolation has demonstrated, online socializing is important to have access to, and online friendships are important to mental health. Werewolf is a popular social deduction game, played by many on forums and instant messaging clients. However, each game currently requires a non-player to take a moderation-intense role that can take upwards an hour per day per long-term game.

This tool provides quality of life improvements by tracking player and game information for the moderator, reducing the time and experience needed for someone to moderate a game. Currently it allows players to play werewolf on Discourse forums and Discord servers, with the potential for expansion.

For sake of game-engine to platform communication, this tool required the creation of a Discord bot using Discord4J and a web-crawler that queries a Discourse site with JSON HTTP Requests. In addition the tool required the creation of a way to track message and user contexts in order to track games and contact relevant parties, and it required creation of a way to create formatted messages and translate them into platform-specific text. Finally, the tool required creation of a robust serialization framework using JSON via Gson to backup and reload context information in event of a software update to the tool or a crash.

Updated August 18, 2020, 13:54