An incremental binary state serializer with delta encoding for games.
Made for Colyseus, yet can be used standalone.

Features

• Incremental State Synchronization: Send only the properties that have changed.
• Trigger Callbacks at Decoding: Bring your own callback system at decoding, or use the built-in one.
• Instance Reference Tracking: Share references of the same instance across the state.
• State Views: Filter properties that should be sent only to specific clients.
• Reflection: Encode/Decode schema definitions.
• Schema Generation: Generate client-side schema files for strictly typed languages.
• Type Safety: Strictly typed schema definitions.
• Multiple Language Support: Decoders available for multiple languages (C#, Lua, Haxe).

Schema definition

@colyseus/schema uses type annotations to define types of synchronized properties.

import { Schema, type, ArraySchema, MapSchema } from '@colyseus/schema';

export class Player extends Schema {
  @type("string") name: string;
  @type("number") x: number;
  @type("number") y: number;
}

export class MyState extends Schema {
  @type('string') fieldString: string;
  @type('number') fieldNumber: number;
  @type(Player) player: Player;
  @type([ Player ]) arrayOfPlayers: ArraySchema<Player>;
  @type({ map: Player }) mapOfPlayers: MapSchema<Player>;
}

Supported types

Primitive Types

Type	Description	Limitation
string	utf8 strings	maximum byte size of 4294967295
number	auto-detects int or float type. (extra byte on output)	0 to 18446744073709551615
boolean	true or false	0 or 1
int8	signed 8-bit integer	-128 to 127
uint8	unsigned 8-bit integer	0 to 255
int16	signed 16-bit integer	-32768 to 32767
uint16	unsigned 16-bit integer	0 to 65535
int32	signed 32-bit integer	-2147483648 to 2147483647
uint32	unsigned 32-bit integer	0 to 4294967295
int64	signed 64-bit integer	-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807
uint64	unsigned 64-bit integer	0 to 18446744073709551615
float32	single-precision floating-point number	-3.40282347e+38 to 3.40282347e+38
float64	double-precision floating-point number	-1.7976931348623157e+308 to 1.7976931348623157e+308

Declaration:

Primitive types (string, number, boolean, etc)

@type("string")
name: string;

@type("int32")
name: number;

Child Schema structures

@type(Player)
player: Player;

Array of Schema structure

@type([ Player ])
arrayOfPlayers: ArraySchema<Player>;

Array of a primitive type

You can't mix types inside arrays.

@type([ "number" ])
arrayOfNumbers: ArraySchema<number>;

@type([ "string" ])
arrayOfStrings: ArraySchema<string>;

Map of Schema structure

@type({ map: Player })
mapOfPlayers: MapSchema<Player>;

Map of a primitive type

You can't mix primitive types inside maps.

@type({ map: "number" })
mapOfNumbers: MapSchema<number>;

@type({ map: "string" })
mapOfStrings: MapSchema<string>;

Reflection

The Schema definitions can encode itself through Reflection. You can have the definition implementation in the server-side, and just send the encoded reflection to the client-side, for example:

import { Schema, type, Reflection } from "@colyseus/schema";

class MyState extends Schema {
  @type("string") currentTurn: string;
  // ... more definitions
}

// send `encodedStateSchema` across the network
const encodedStateSchema = Reflection.encode(new MyState());

// instantiate `MyState` in the client-side, without having its definition:
const myState = Reflection.decode(encodedStateSchema);

StateView / @view()

You can use @view() to filter properties that should be sent only to StateView's that have access to it.

import { Schema, type, view } from "@colyseus/schema";

class Player extends Schema {
  @view() @type("string") secret: string;
  @type("string") notSecret: string;
}

class MyState extends Schema {
  @type({ map: Player }) players = new MapSchema<Player>();
}

Using the StateView

const view = new StateView();
view.add(player);

Encoder

There are 3 major features of the Encoder class:

• Encoding the full state
• Encoding the state changes
• Encoding state with filters (properties using @view() tag)

import { Encoder } from "@colyseus/schema";

const state = new MyState();
const encoder = new Encoder(state);

New clients must receive the full state on their first connection:

const fullEncode = encoder.encodeAll();
// ... send "fullEncode" to client and decode it

Further state changes must be sent in order:

const changesBuffer = encoder.encode();
// ... send "changesBuffer" to client and decode it

Encoding with views

When using @view() and StateView's, a single "full encode" must be used for multiple views. Each view also must add its own changes.

// shared buffer iterator
const it = { offset: 0 };

// shared full encode
encoder.encodeAll(it);
const sharedOffset = it.offset;

// view 1
const fullEncode1 = encoder.encodeAllView(view1, sharedOffset, it);
// ... send "fullEncode1" to client1 and decode it

// view 2
const fullEncode2 = encoder.encodeAllView(view2, sharedOffset, it);
// ... send "fullEncode" to client2 and decode it

Encoding changes per views:

// shared buffer iterator
const it = { offset: 0 };

// shared changes encode
encoder.encode(it);
const sharedOffset = it.offset;

// view 1
const view1Encoded = this.encoder.encodeView(view1, sharedOffset, it);
// ... send "view1Encoded" to client1 and decode it

// view 2
const view2Encoded = this.encoder.encodeView(view2, sharedOffset, it);
// ... send "view2Encoded" to client2 and decode it

// discard all changes after encoding is done.
encoder.discardChanges();

Decoder

The Decoder class is used to decode the binary data received from the server.

import { Decoder } from "@colyseus/schema";

const state = new MyState();
const decoder = new Decoder(state);
decoder.decode(encodedBytes);

Backwards/forwards compability

Backwards/fowards compatibility is possible by declaring new fields at the end of existing structures, and earlier declarations to not be removed, but be marked @deprecated() when needed.

This is particularly useful for native-compiled targets, such as C#, C++, Haxe, etc - where the client-side can potentially not have the most up-to-date version of the schema definitions.

Limitations and best practices

• Each Schema structure can hold up to 64 fields. If you need more fields, use nested structures.
• NaN or null numbers are encoded as 0
• null strings are encoded as ""
• Infinity numbers are encoded as Number.MAX_SAFE_INTEGER
• Multi-dimensional arrays are not supported.
• Items inside Arrays and Maps must be all instance of the same type.
• @colyseus/schema encodes only field values in the specified order.
  • Both encoder (server) and decoder (client) must have same schema definition.
  • The order of the fields must be the same.

Generating client-side schema files (for strictly typed languages)

If you're using JavaScript or LUA, there's no need to bother about this. Interpreted programming languages are able to re-build the Schema locally through the use of Reflection.

You can generate the client-side schema files based on the TypeScript schema definitions automatically.

# C#/Unity
schema-codegen ./schemas/State.ts --output ./unity-project/ --csharp

# C/C++
schema-codegen ./schemas/State.ts --output ./cpp-project/ --cpp

# Haxe
schema-codegen ./schemas/State.ts --output ./haxe-project/ --haxe

Benchmarks:

Scenario	@colyseus/schema	msgpack + fossil-delta
Initial state size (100 entities)	2671	3283
Updating x/y of 1 entity after initial state	9	26
Updating x/y of 50 entities after initial state	342	684
Updating x/y of 100 entities after initial state	668	1529

Decoder implementation in other languages

Each Colyseus SDK has its own decoder implementation of the @colyseus/schema protocol:

• C#
• Haxe
• Lua
• C++ (Not up-to-date)

Why

Initial thoghts/assumptions, for Colyseus:

• little to no bottleneck for detecting state changes.
• have a schema definition on both server and client
• better experience on staticaly-typed languages (C#, C++)
• mutations should be cheap.

Practical Colyseus issues this should solve:

• Avoid decoding large objects that haven't been patched
• Allow to send different patches for each client
• Better developer experience on statically-typed languages

Inspiration:

• Protocol Buffers
• flatbuffers
• schemapack
• avro

License

MIT