Algebrain - Playing 2 Player over a LAN (Local Area Network)

Although 2 players can play Algebrain on the same device, either with controllers or with one person using the keyboard / controller and another person using the mouse, it can be more convenient to have each player on their own device. It especially lends itself well to each player having the own tablet, so they can each use the touchscreen interface.

To set this up on your home network, you need to run a server program on some device on your home network that lets the 2 tablets (or computers or phones) communicate with each other. To set this up:

1. Download and extract these files into a folder on a Linux laptop running somewhere on your home network.
2. Run the algebrain_server_lan executable in that package from a terminal with root priveleges (needed so players can connect on port 80):
   chmod u+x ./algebrain_server_lan
   sudo ./algebrain_server_lan

The program will tell you what address to browse to when it starts.

To make it more convenient so each player can start the game by browsing to http://algebrain.local do the following:

1. Install avahi-daemon on the Linux computer that's hosting the server program
2. As root user, edit /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf and set the host-name using this line under the "server" section:
   host-name=algebrain
3. Restart the daemon to have the change take effect:
   sudo systemctl restart avahi-daemon

Note that if you don't want to start the server program as root or if there's another server program (like a web server) already using port 80, you can start it with a port parameter. For example:
./algebrain_server_lan . 8080
Then players have to include the port in the URL they browse to (e.g. http://algebrain.local:8080)
Note: the second optional parameter to the server program (".") is the location of the html game files that you extracted.

Once you've started the game:

1. Each player chooses the "2 Player Cooperative LAN or Online" option
2. One player chooses Create Room and chooses the speed (difficulty) level, the other player chooses Join Room