General Requirements

The single player game mode can be played with or without an internet connection on any computer. To play multiplayer, an internet connection is required. Both players must be connected to the same network, and some networks with locked down settings will not allow the connection to form. At Olin, use OLIN-DEVICES, not OLIN In order to host a multiplayer game, the host must run the game from MacOS, Windows, and most Linux systems.

The host can not run the game from WSL. Network ports in WSL are not accessible to outside devices.

Python Dependencies

Our program is built to run with Python 3.12. Download python here.

Our program relies on the following dependencies:

  1. pygame is used to handle user input and to create the GUI. Install with: 
    pip install pygame
  2. pytest is used for unit tests. Install with: 
    pip install pytest

Single player

To play single player:

  1. Navigate to the type-race directory (cd type-racer)
  2. In the terminal, run python main.py to launch the game
  3. When prompted on-screen type ‘s’ to play single player

Multiplayer

Two laptops are required to play type-race multiplayer. One player will serve as the host and the other player will serve as the client.

Host Instructions

  1. Navigate to the type-race directory (cd type-racer)
  2. In the terminal, run python main.py to launch the game
  3. When prompted on-screen type ‘h’ to play as the host

If hosting on Windows, there a couple of things to keep in mind:

  • The first time you play as host, you will get a popup asking if you want the program to communicate over public and private networks. Click Allow. If you fail to do this, you will have to manually add a Windows Defender firewall inbound rule to allow TCP on port 5555.
  • If the game fails unexpectedly, you might into the following error next time you attempt to host: SERVER: Failed to bind server [WinError 10013] An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. This means that the port was not properly closed from the last game session. To rectify this, do the following from an administrator powershell terminal:
    • Run: netstat -ano | findstr :5555. Look for the last 4 numbers in the output that follows. These numbers represent the PID.
    • Run: taskkill /PID 0000 /F. Replace 0000 with the PID from the last step.

Client Instructions

  1. Navigate to the type-race directory (cd type-racer)
  2. In the terminal, run python main.py to launch the game
  3. When prompted on-screen type ‘c’ to play as the client
  4. Enter the IP address displayed on the host’s screen when prompted