Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

Software Architecture Design

Flappy Bird Duo
December 15, 2014
Isley M. Gao
University of California, Irvine
In collaboration with:
Anita Marie Gilbert, Dae Kim, Samuel Mathison, and Tina Bui
{ gilbera1, daeyk3, smathiso, tinab1 }@uci.edu
Adapted from Design Studio 4 from Informatics 121: Software Design I,
taught by Andre van der Hoek, chair of the Department of Informatics at the
University of California, Irvine

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

Table of Contents
1. SCOPE OF WORK .......................................................................................................................... 3
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7

PROJECT OVERVIEW ................................................................................................................... 3

GOALS ....................................................................................................................................... 3
CONSTRAINTS ............................................................................................................................ 3
ASSUMPTIONS ............................................................................................................................ 3
AUDIENCE .................................................................................................................................. 3
GOALS ....................................................................................................................................... 3
STAKEHOLDERS .......................................................................................................................... 3

2. OVERALL SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE ........................................................................................... 4

2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5

OVERALL SYSTEM DIAGRAM ........................................................................................................ 4

OVERALL SYSTEM DESCRIPTION .................................................................................................. 4
SERVER INTERNAL ...................................................................................................................... 5
CLASS DIAGRAM ......................................................................................................................... 6
USER SCENARIO ......................................................................................................................... 6

3. GAMEPLAY .................................................................................................................................... 7
3.1
3.2

SEQUENCE DIAGRAM .................................................................................................................. 7

GAMEPLAY SEQUENCE OF EVENTS .............................................................................................. 7

4. ARCHITECTURAL STYLE.............................................................................................................. 9
4.1
4.2

POSSIBLE ARCHITECTURAL STYLES ............................................................................................. 9

CHOSEN: CLIENT-SERVER ......................................................................................................... 10

APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................................... 11
APPENDIX A. DESIGN PROCESS RATIONALE........................................................................................... 11
APPENDIX B. GLOSSARY ....................................................................................................................... 12

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

1. SCOPE OF WORK
1.1 Project Overview
This document describes the architecture design of Flappy Bird Duo, a new version of
Flappy Bird that allows two players to fly through Flappys worlds at the same time. This mobile
game is played over 10 rounds in real-time, where players play against opponents globally, and
are paired with players of roughly equal ability. Although the game is not a web application, it is
connected to a web page leaderboard where players can see the top performers over various
windows of time, and see where they themselves rank.

1.2 Goals

Allow two users to play against each other in live time

Users should have same enjoyable playing experience as original Flappy Bird
Allow users to view online leaderboard of top performers and find where they are ranked
themselves
Game can match players to play against others with similar ability

1.3 Constraints

Cannot be a web based application, must be a mobile application

Features cannot deviate from original game design and structure
Tapping the screen during a round makes the bird fly

1.4 Assumptions

User interface looks identical to original Flappy Bird game

Game structure parallels old game style
Rating of application is managed by appropriate app store
Users cannot pick who they play against, it is fully automated by system
Game is cross platform for both Android and iOS users
Game may be modified or updated by system programmers

1.5 Audience

Children
Teens
Adults

1.6 Stakeholders

Game users
Google Play, Apple App Store, Windows Store
System programmers

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

2. OVERALL SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

2.1 Overall System Diagram

2.2 Overall System Description

* Client in our diagram represents either an iOS client or an Android client. Clients do not
interact with each other. Clients interact with users only through server.
** Data in our diagram represents data that is being sent either from the client to the server, or
from the server to the client. [Represented by arrows between client and server]
Servers main responsibilities are verifying user information, matching users based on their
rankings, assigning a game room to matched users, transmitting data between users through
server, storing user records, and providing user records upon request.
The webpage is a static website with a leaderboard that displays the username and ranking of
each user. Users can view the top performers over various windows of time and search for
rankings by username.

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

2.3 Server Internal

Client Server architectural style

Client can be iOS or Android Software Application
Web Server is Apache and SQL Database

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

2.4 Class Diagram

*startGame() in Server: This is a simulation of the startGame() in main. This is to ensure that the
server will know which player has lost in case the information is obstructed

2.5 User Scenario

1. Player A clicks on the start button on the Home Screen and is matched with Player B
by the server.
2. Both players are placed into a game room, and a countdown of three seconds begins.
3. The match starts, Player B runs into an obstacle and dies, and the game starts over
again at the three second countdown with the score being Player A: 1, Player B: 0.
4. This repeats for another nine rounds (for a total of ten rounds).
5. At the end of the game, if Player A wins 6/10 rounds, six points is added to Player As
total of games won, and his/her rank is calculated accordingly. Four points is added to
Player Bs total of games won, and his/her rank is calculated accordingly.
We envision that both app devices and the server will independently run the game with the
same start time and tap data sent back and forth through the server. For example, for the server
once the game begins, the gravity starts and the birds start falling, once the server receives a
tap from a player the server updates its instance of the game. This continues until die().

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

Reusability: we are basing our game off of the original Flappy Bird game, so we have used that
game framework as the basis for the two player game. We re-used the familiar look of the UI for
our version of the game; this includes the main menu style as well as in-game play. Actual
physics of the game such as the bird flying, and bird impact with the tube was also kept the
same to hold onto familiarity.

3. GAMEPLAY
3.1 Sequence Diagram

3.2 Gameplay Sequence of Events

Player A
1. Starts app
a. Downloads B username
b. 3 second pause
2. Game starts moving, gravity kicks in
3. Player Tap
a. Display renders the tap A
b. Send tap A to Server
Server
1. Receives request to Play: get player B data
2. Creates room
a. Find player B : User records are matched
b. Assigns players a room
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Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

3. Sends player B username
4. Wait 3 seconds
5. Starts play: gravity starts
Player A - Repeat 10 times
1. Wait 3 seconds
a. Starts play: gravity starts
b. Player A tap
c. Render A position on display
d. Send Player A tap to Server
i.
Server
1. Receives Player A tap
2. Stores Player A tap
3. Updates game play
4. Sends Player A tap to Player B
e. Request Player B tap from Server
i.
Server
1. Receives Player B tap
2. Stores Player B tap
3. Updates game play
4. Sends Player B tap to Player A
f. Download Player B tap
g. Render Player B tap
2. if (Die)
a. Render Death Display
i.
Server
1. if(Die) sends Death to Player
2. Send Leaderboard data to Player
b. Receive Death from Server
c. Receive Leaderboard data from Server
d. Render Leaderboard Display
Webpage
1. Request Leaderboard data from Server
a. Server
i.
Send Leaderboard data
2. Render Leaderboard
Leaderboard:
Shows user score on top.
Shows top rankings today, past week, month, year, all-time.
Based purely on how many rounds you win (doesnt matter how far you get)
Users can tie, affects their ranking accordingly.

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

4. ARCHITECTURAL STYLE
4.1 Possible Architectural Styles

Data flow
Conceptually does not have a program counter - executability and execution of
instructions is solely determined based on the availability of input arguments to the
instructions, so that the order of instruction execution is unpredictable
Why we did not choose this:
Only successful for specialized hardware (e.g. graphics processing, database
engine designs, and parallel computing frameworks)
Unnecessary for how simple our program is
Shared memory
Multiprocessing design where several processors access globally shared memory
Several processors sharing same memory allows for simplicity and load balancing
Why we did not choose this
Costly, limited extensibility (limited to up to 16 processors for best efficiency
given cost constraints), and low availability
Unnecessary for a small mobile app to use shared memory
Flappy Bird - Duos memory requirement is not large enough to benefit from
load balancing to complete tasks
Peer-to-peer
A distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between
peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application
Clients both provide and use resources
Unlike client-server systems, the content serving capacity of peer-to-peer networks
can increase as more users begin to access the content
Why we did not choose this:
Flappy Bird - Duo does not allow users to connect peer-to-peer. It uses main
server to exchange game data and user information through the server.
Implicit invocation
System is structured around event handling, using a form of callback
Implicit invocation system components use events to communicate with each other
Announcement of events causes a second set of handlers to receive calls
Why we did not choose this:
Although Flappy Bird - Duo is an event-based game in terms of the tapping
event causing the bird movement, the only event that our system needs to
have handlers for is when the bird collides with a pipe, thus it would be
unnecessary to structure our entire system based on event calling

Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

4.2 Chosen: Client-Server

Architecture Style: Layered Client-Server
Definition: A distributed application structure that partitions tasks or workloads between the
providers of a resource or service, called servers, and service requesters, called clients.
Our client does not need to share its resourcesit simply requests a servers content or service
function. A client initiates messages to the server, which waits for a request from the client. The
server cannot send messages to the client on its own.
Web Server: Apache, SQL Database
Apache
Open sourced and free
Well documented
Software is available for a wide variety of operating systems, including Unix,
FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Novell NetWare, OS X, Microsoft Windows, OS/2, TPF,
OpenVMS, and eComStation
Supports a variety of features, including:
Server-side programming language support
Authentication schemes
Popular compression methods
Configurable error messages
SQL (Structured Query Language) Database
Compatible with Apache
Well documented
Designed for managing data held in a relational database management system,
or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system
New databases such as Mongo are used for large amounts of data, which is out
of scope for our product

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Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

APPENDIX
Appendix A. Design Process Rationale
We decomposed this system into three actors. These components were chosen as actors for
our design process and we used them as we talked through the project.
Client: we assume 2 clients per game as users requesting and updating the server.
Server: mostly passive.
Webpage: similar to a client, but with limited scope to just pull
Our classes evolved as we used these actors in our sequence diagram to play the game. Here
you can see the pseudo-code to the right being developed along with the object classes as we
consider the interaction.

A cleaned up version of the sequence diagram.

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Software Architecture Design: Flappy Bird Duo

4.1 Glossary
Flappy Bird

mobile side-scroller game where a player controls a bird,

attempting to fly between rows of green pipes without coming
into contact with them

game room

a virtual place where users are matched with another user of

a similar ranking

Google Play, Apple App

Store, Windows Store

digital platforms that serve as app stores for Android, iOS, and
Windows phones, respectively

leaderboard

a scoreboard showing the names and current scores of the

leading competitors

user

any person who plays the game

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