I often get asked what kind of technology was used to build WarLight. WarLight’s server components are written in C#, and the Flash client is written in haXe utilizing Adobe’s Flex 4 layer for layout / buttons / sliders / checkboxes / etc. All backend data is stored in a Postgresql database running on Ubuntu Linux, while the website is served from IIS 7.5 running on Windows Server 2008 R2, both hosted on virtual Rackspace Cloud Servers.
WarLight’s maps are originally uploaded in SVG format (as every map designer knows), but they’re immediately converted by the server into a custom map format built for WarLight. This format is optimized to be quickly loadable by Flash, which makes loading games much faster than if they tried to render out the SVG directly.
WarLight’s communication protocol is custom written, as well as its object serialization protocol. After all, WarLight was started as a for-fun hobby project, and re-inventing the wheel is fun!
I’m a big believer in automated testing, and I’ve worked to have thorough coverage for WarLight from the very beginning. Before every release, WarLight goes through an extensive automated test pass that takes several hours. The idea is that the tests cover as many possible use-cases as possible. Any time a new bug is found in WarLight, I add a new test to cover it and this ensures the issue never comes up again.
Some of these tests use the Selenium web-testing framework to actually automate the browser and the Flash client. Here’s a short sample of what some of these tests look like when they’re running:
Having the WarLight testing being automated is essential. Due to the vast number of settings (and permutations of those settings) that WarLight games can have, it would be nearly impossible for me to do big changes or to refactor code and still be able to release WarLight with confidence that the game will still work. However, with the tests I can simply run them all and get a level of confidence that all of the features work. The tradeoff is that this makes each feature more time-consuming to add, since I not only have to write the feature but I also have to think up and write all of the tests that ensure the feature works.