Game summary (brief & clear):
Private room, exactly 4 players, fixed teams (1&3 vs 2&4).
Phases per hand:
Intro/seating →
Deal 5 cards to each + one face-up middle card →
Bidding (up to two rounds). Rules decide who may respond and who wins the contract (sometimes suit choice required).
Deal to 8 cards per player (winner or partner may take the middle, depending on contract).
Play 8 tricks: must follow suit; trump may apply with overtrump/overcut rules; trick winner leads next.
Score per trick and contract; hands repeat with dealer rotating.
The game has many validations (legal bids, who may respond, must-follow-suit, trump overcut, timeouts).
Requirements:
Server-authoritative state machine: one turn timer; on expiry do auto-pass/auto-play and advance turn.
All clients must see the same state & timers (whoseTurn, timeLeft, current bid, played cards, trick winner, scores).
Atomic action processing (reject out-of-turn and duplicates).
Reconnect: a snapshot to rebuild UI instantly (phase, dealer, contract, my hand, middle card, bids so far, current trick, whoseTurn, timerEndsAtMs, scores).
Questions (seeking best practices on SFS2X):
Extension structure: Would you recommend one game controller per Room (room-scoped state) with specific RequestHandlers (StartGame, Bid, PlayCard, Sync), or a shared/global controller? Any template you suggest?
Timers: Use SFS2X TaskScheduler vs ScheduledExecutorService? Pattern to avoid drift/races (e.g., broadcast serverEpochMs + duration once, clients render countdown locally)?
State propagation: When to use RoomVariables (coarse snapshot / rejoin) vs custom send() GameEvent messages (bids, plays, turn, scores)? Any guidance to keep it consistent and bandwidth-light?
Validation & idempotency: Recommended pattern to reject stale/duplicate actions (per-turn sequence number, action tokens, or server-stamped seq)?
Reconnect snapshot: What minimal fields would you include, and do you have a sample approach for rejoin after disconnect?
Any official samples or docs for a server-authoritative, turn-based card game with synchronized UI/timers?
Thanks!
Best practices for server-authoritative timers, turn order, and synchronized UI in a 4-player card game (Unity + SFS2X)
Re: Best practices for server-authoritative timers, turn order, and synchronized UI in a 4-player card game (Unity + SFS
Hi,
Not sure what you mean by "controller" in this case.
Generally speaking you can write an Extension that handles the game logic in its entirety (from game start to end) then deploy it at Room Level. This means that every Room will run its copy of the Extension, each running independently of one another.
This is the simplest and most common choice for this kind of scenario.
They are the same thing. The former wraps the latter and exposes a simplified interface.
Both are bandwidth light. RoomVariables are useful to keep global state in the room, but you will likely also need specialized messages that are sent to just one player, so you can mix both approaches.
Reconnections can be handled transparently by SFS2X, if the time of disconnection is minimal (few seconds). See here: https://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/Getti ... n-hrc-plus
If the game allows long interruptions of the game, then a custom strategy must be devised where the player state is stored on the server side and retransmitted upon reconnection.
Sorry, no idea. It may depend on the game requirements.
Yes, we provide the TicTacToe demo for Unity, Godot and Javascript
See here, for instance: https://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/Examp ... ic-tac-toe
Cheers
Extension structure: Would you recommend one game controller per Room (room-scoped state) with specific RequestHandlers (StartGame, Bid, PlayCard, Sync), or a shared/global controller? Any template you suggest?
Not sure what you mean by "controller" in this case.
Generally speaking you can write an Extension that handles the game logic in its entirety (from game start to end) then deploy it at Room Level. This means that every Room will run its copy of the Extension, each running independently of one another.
This is the simplest and most common choice for this kind of scenario.
Timers: Use SFS2X TaskScheduler vs ScheduledExecutorService?
They are the same thing. The former wraps the latter and exposes a simplified interface.
State propagation: When to use RoomVariables (coarse snapshot / rejoin) vs custom send() GameEvent messages (bids, plays, turn, scores)? Any guidance to keep it consistent and bandwidth-light?
Both are bandwidth light. RoomVariables are useful to keep global state in the room, but you will likely also need specialized messages that are sent to just one player, so you can mix both approaches.
Reconnect snapshot: What minimal fields would you include, and do you have a sample approach for rejoin after disconnect?
Reconnections can be handled transparently by SFS2X, if the time of disconnection is minimal (few seconds). See here: https://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/Getti ... n-hrc-plus
If the game allows long interruptions of the game, then a custom strategy must be devised where the player state is stored on the server side and retransmitted upon reconnection.
Validation & idempotency: Recommended pattern to reject stale/duplicate actions (per-turn sequence number, action tokens, or server-stamped seq)?
Sorry, no idea. It may depend on the game requirements.
Any official samples or docs for a server-authoritative, turn-based card game with synchronized UI/timers?
Yes, we provide the TicTacToe demo for Unity, Godot and Javascript
See here, for instance: https://docs2x.smartfoxserver.com/Examp ... ic-tac-toe
Cheers