Rule Game Server Documentation

To get started...

• The main concepts of the Rule Game, a.k.a. the Game of Hidden Rules (GOHR)

Designing an experiment

If you are a researcher designing new experiments, these documents are for you.

Preparing an experiment:

• Standard Operating Procedures: Preparing and running an experiment with the Rule Game Server
• Standard Operating Procedures: Special notes for working on the DoIT Shared Hosting hosts (aka the Plesk hosts)
• About the data files (read the first section, concerning the control files)
• About the syntax of rule set files
• About the syntax of rule set files: GS5 extension
• About stalemates and the stalemate tester (Includes an online stalemate tester)
• Bucket expression arithmetic: more about the expressions used to compute the accepting bucket number(s)
• Try out your arithmetic expressions!
• Notes on Rule Game Server parameter sets
• Using custom colors and shapes in Game Server 2.*
• Image-and-property-based objects in Game Server 3.*
• Composite image objects, available in Game Server 4.009.
• Using the random board generator with a post-processing script to create predefined initial boards.
• Adding a plan or a rule set to the MLC or APP launch pages
• "Experiment Design Checklist (on Google Sheets)

Special topics:

• [Fairly obsolete] About the initial board settings and the control flow
• About the balancing algorithm, used to assign players to trial lists.
• What's new in Game Server 2.* (slides for a presentation, PDF)
• What's new in Game Server 2.* (same in HTML)

Online tools for experiment designers:

• The clear tables tool. You can use it after you have modified an existing rule set file, and want to make sure that the server reloads it right away.
• The experiment plan validation tool. Use it to check the syntax of your rules, etc.
• The Automatic Rule Generator

Processing experimental results

Read here about the data saved by the Rule Game Server, and how to use them

• About the data files (read the 2nd and 3rd sections)
• Quick guide: getting started on your laptop
• Where are the analysis scripts? (and how to get them if you don't have them yet)
• The Analyze Transcripts tool
• Analyze human results: M-W comparison of rule sets -- online form
• Analyze human results: M-W comparison of rule sets -- about the command-line tool
• Drawing and annotating ECD curves
• Pulling data from a remote server (e.g. from a Plesk host to a CAE host) fof analysis

For the ML team

• The Captive Game Server
• Board display tool (for Shubham and the rest of the ML team)
• The Machine Learning Challenge (MLC):
  • MLC Participant's Guide
  • MLC Participant's Dashboard (submit results here; nickname password required -- obtain it from Paul or Eric)
  • MLC Manager's Guide
  • MLC Manager's Dashboard

For partners at other institutions

• Set up your own Rule Game Server!

Client-server interaction

If you are designing a TypeScript/JavaScript front end GUI app to run in a web browser, or an Android app, these documents discuss how the front end app is to talk to the Rule Game Server

• [Obsolete]: Web API: First Batch (for research API, without player name and SQL databasse). This also includes HTML play (old version), an HTML-GUI interface for the first batch API.
• Web API: Second Batch (in use for the main public-facing API). This page also includes:
  • HTML play (second batch -- current version),
  • GetImageServlet (since ver. 3.0)
• Web API: pregame and postgame experience . (Since ver. 6.000)
• The DOUBLING incentive scheme
• Java API documentation

Managing the Game Server

• SOP: Maintaining and deploying server code and server data files

Old proposals

Kept mostly for a historical reference

• Proposal: wildcard syntax for a wider object space (2021-04-01) -- an early proposal, mostly superseded by subsequent ones
• Proposal: image-and-property-based description of objects (2021-04-13) -- mostly implemented in GS 3.*, and described in Image-and-property-based objects
• Proposal: code snippets (2021-05-20) -- still outstanding

Github repositories

• Rule-Game-server - server code
• RuleGame - client code.
• Rule-Game-game-data - experiment control files (trial lists, shapes, etc).
• ruleGameHumanDataAnalysis - ask Aria for access and details.

The front-end (GUI) tools, from Kevin

• GUI play (production client) -- go here to start playing any game! This is what M-Turkers see.
• GUI play (development client) -- go here to start playing any game! This comes with more debugging info.
• Launch form for Tanvi:
  (Experiment plan=) (Player ID prefix=)
  

  Dev client Prod client

  Show intro Skip intro

  
  GUI play
  The above form uses the POST method, but the underlying service can be used with the GET method as well, using URLs such as http://wwwtest.rulegame.wisc.edu/w2020/front-end-form-2.jsp?exp=U/JF/tht/exp1&prefix=RU-JF-THT-&dev=false. (Change the host name and the experiment plan name as appropriate).
• Board builder (dev)

Special launch pages

• Launch pages for staff and students

Software Copyright University Wisconsin-Madison, under Apache License, Version 2.0