Starting battle on LAN Websocket address

[electricSoda]

The bug
When you start a Robocode Tank Royale server from the GUI on any LAN Websocket address, boot up bots to connect to the server through the command line (e.g. java -cp ../lib/* AvoidWall.java), and then try and start up a match between these bots through the GUI, the match doesn't start.

To Reproduce

• Go to the server.properties file and add your computer's LAN address converted to a websocket address (e.g. ws://192.168.1.20:3000) to the server-urls property

• Select the the IP address from Server > Select Server from the GUI

• Start up a server on this new websocket address through the GUI (Server > Start Server)

• On a separate computer (or on the same computer), change the SERVER_URL environment variable (by doing set SERVER_URL=<url>) to the same websocket address you did in the server.properties file

• Also make sure to configure the secret for the bots by doing set SERVER_SECRET=<secret>; you can find the bots-secrets in the server.properties file

• Then go in command prompt or terminal and then boot up a bot e.g. java -cp ../lib/* Corners.java

• It should show that it's connected on the battle menu thingy on the GUI (in the Joined Bots (local/remote))

• Add that remote bot for battle

• Boot up another bot from a local directory through the GUI (not from command line)

• Click start battle

• You will see that the pop up for selecting bots disappears like it's going to start a match, but then nothing shows up on the main screen (the battle interface doesn't show up)

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• Windows 10

Java info:

• Java 16.0.2 (yeah I need to update Java lol)
• Vendor: Oracle

[flemming-n-larsen]

@electricSoda Thank you for reporting this as a bug and providing really good information for how to reproduce the issue you see. 😊👌

I will have a look into this issue.

[flemming-n-larsen]

I reproduced the problem 👍 So I will figure out how to fix that

@electricSoda When you start a local server, it will start up at localhost:, not the address(es) specified with the 'Select Server' dialog. This dialog is mainly meant for which server the GUI will connect to, which could be an external server or local server. It might even run from a Docker container or Linux shell within Windows.

That said, I believe the local IP address and localhost must be resolved equally, meaning that the GUI should be able to connect to the server. So it is still a bug, and a dialog should show up for sure.

[electricSoda]

Sounds good 👍

[flemming-n-larsen]

@electricSoda I just released 0.24.1 with fixes for this issue. I should like you to try out, if it works for you as well. ❓

Also notice, that I updated the check when entering/adding a new URL, so you don't need to do this manually via a text editor. 😉

[electricSoda]

Still doesn't work :(. If I select a LAN server like ws://192.168.1.28.:3000 (which is my machine's local LAN address), boot up some bots from the GUI, and some from the terminal, and then click start battle, the battle doesn't show up on the GUI...

[flemming-n-larsen]

@electricSoda
I am sorry. I think I misunderstood you, and feel a bit embarrassed, as I did not fix at least the main issue with the GUI. My bad! And I think the GUI needs more work, so it is less confusing, and will be smarter to work with.

If I get you right, the main issue is that the GUI automatically starts up a server locally on the default (Robocode) port 7654. That is at ws://localhost:7654, where local IP addresses like e.g. 192.168.1.28 will work too, but only if you use the same port, i.e. ws://192.168.1.28:7654. The Select Server dialog only lets you select any server including your own (local server). And you can hit the Test button to check if the server is up and running. Note that this is useful, if you are trying to reach an external server outside your system, or if you have multiple servers running, e.g. started an independent server in the background on another port than 7654, e.g. 3000.

Then, when you add the server URL ws://192.168.1.28:3000 and try to start a battle nothing happens! Which is what this issue is about.
This is caused by no server running on port 3000 unless you start one in the background, which is possible. Nevertheless, the GUI should alert you that no server is running on port 3000.

To fix this issue, I have some proposals I will start working on. If you have other suggestions, make sure to add those to this thread.

1. The GUI should alert the user when a selected server is not running, which is the main issue. The alert should provide the URL of the server, which is not running.

2. There should be a configuration for the server, where it is possible to set the default port so the default port can be changed from 7654 to e.g. 3000.

3. Perhaps I need to add something to the Select Server dialog to let people know that the dialog is not used for setting the possible local IP addresses and port(s) of the server, but only for choosing which server to use when starting battles.

4. I could improve the Select Server dialog so the list of servers indicates which servers are online and offline, e.g. by an icon beside the URL.

5. The Start Server (in the Server menu) should ask the user if the default port should be used, or if another port must be used. This could use the configuration from 2)