The software consists of four layers: Presentation Layer, Business Logic Layer, Data Layer and Infrastructure Layer.
The main purpose Presentation Layer is the UI interface that is used to interact with users who will use this system, mainly game players and game publishers.
The Business Logic Layer is the layer that contains the main functions of the system, and these functions are split into five different sets according to their purpose. These five sets are User Management, Publisher Management, Game Transaction, 'Community Management' and Game Management.
The Data Layer uses MySQL, and has four main functions, Data Transaction, Data Analysis, Data Storage and Database Operation.
The last layer Infrastructure Layer is the most basic layer. It contains the OS (Operating System), Server, Network, Cloud Storage and Backup.
Users can use Presentation Layer to interact with the system, the action is then passed through the layers in an orderly fashion until the action is complete.
In Presentation Layer, mainly uses HTML, CSS and Vue.JS. Users interact with the system through this layer. Presentation Layer will pass the information to Business Layer, then Business Layer will call the related functions to finish the action includes exchange information with Data Layer.
Here are some examples that how users interact with the system.
In this example, the user inputs their userID and password, and then choose the login button in the page. login function will be called. The information will be sent to the data layer to be checked whether it is already stored in the database. If the answer is yes, the system will jump to the homepage. If the answer is no, the system will give the user a register option, after the user inputs the information needed to do the register work, the information will be added in to the database, and then jump back to the homepage.
In this example, the user first needs to finish the login work, then the system will jump to the homepage. At the same time, the function recommendByRate will be called. The system will query the private rating information of the user to see what types of game the user likes and the games that the user already has. Then the database will give the weight of the same type of games. Then the rating will be calculated by the weight. The result will be showed in the main feed of the homepage.
Business Logic layer has five main subsystems, which are User Management, Publisher Management, Game Transaction, 'Community Management' and Game Management. Game Management has three subsystems, Rating Management, Review Management and Expansion Management To realize all the requirements, there are eight classes in BLL, userService, User, userCommunity, Publisher, Game, ratingService, reviewService and gameExpansion. Some functions of a system can be included in another system, for example, there is not a class for Game Transaction but its related function can be accessed in User class.
The user class has four attributes, userID, userName, password and email. The user class also has seven functions, updateGame which updates the game collection, add which adds a game to the user's game collection, remove which removes the chosen game from their game collection, postReview which posts a new review for the chosen game, postRules which posts a new rule to the chosen game (the rules also need to be checked by publisher), and updatePersonFile which updates the user's own personal details.
The User can use userService class to finish three steps, register, login and logout.
The Publisher class is similar to the User class. The differences are that Publisher can publish rules, clarification and errata documents.
The userCommunity class has four attributes. communityID is the identification of the community. communityGame indicates which game this community belongs to. peopleNumber is the number of people in this community (including players and publishers). Review stores all reviews in this community. Apart from that, every player can invoke the postComment method to comment in that community.
The Game class has attributes that help the player to manage their game collection and buy new games. gameId, gameName and type help players to search games. The price is the money paid when buying the game. The Status indicates whether this game is available or if there is a new version. The rate allows players to search the highest rating or most popular games. There are four methods, to change the state of games(changePrice, updateStatus and changeRules) and recommand the game (recommandByType).
The ratingService class provides several methods to modified game's rate and recommend by rate. These services can be invoked when players give feedback to games or the system recommend popular games for players.
The reviewService class has methods for players to post their review (postReview) and read others' reviews (orderByGame and orderByUser). There is also a weight system that can filter certain review sources (orderByWeight).
The gameExpansion class has attributes, expansionID, expansionName and expansionPrice and two main functions, (addExpansion) and (deleteExpansion). This class can be used to manage expansions of games.
There are 8 tables in the database. The User Table and Publisher Table store the personal information of game player and publisher, including userid, password, name and email. The Community table stores the data of the user community where users can read other's review or add their own review. The Game Table stores information of all published games. The Rules Table stores games' rules and clarifications. The Rate Table stores the user's private rate to all games and corresponding weight. The Docs Table stores publisher's FAQs and errata documents to the game. The Review Table stores all the reviews from players, including review id, post date, content and reviewGameID.
Relationship between tables is also important for data layer. Firstly, each user can own several games and several players can all play the same game, so there is a many-to-many relationship between User Table and Game Table. For publishers, they can publish several rules, FAQs and errata documents for games, which means that the relationships between Publisher Table and Docs Table (and Rules Table) are both one to many. Also, one rule might contain several FAQs and documents to be explained, so that the relationship between Docs Table and Rules Table is many to one. For the games, one game always has more than one rule (many-to-one relationship between Rules Table and Game Table) and there is one community for each game (one to one relationship between Game Table and Community Table). Players could share their rating and review to a game so that one game could have more than one rates and reviews (one-to-many relationship from Game to Review and Rate).
Infrastructure Layer is basic but also the most important. This layer has five fundamental parts, Network, Server, OS, Cloud Storage and Backup. First, all the service needs to be based on a valid server cluster. Second, the network needs to have adequate bandwidth to accommodate numerous user accesses. Third, there should be enough cloud space to store all the information that is produced by the users and the games. Fourth, the operating system should be strong enough to keep the whole system running. Last, there should be a backup version of the system that can be used to recall, which will reduce some avoidable problems.
At first, the Infrastructure Layer should be decided. The operating system should be open enough for most of the requirements to be implemented. The network and server can have enough load to support the operation of the entire system, and the storage space should be large enough. The second step is to collect and organize the data and realize the UI interface. It is also clear that the interface between the front end and the back end should stay consistent. The database should match the tables in the component design. Next, different subsystems of the business layer are developed by stages, and each subsystem is carried out on the basis of meeting the project requirements. In the process of each stage, the progress is recorded in the development log, and the project is regularly backed up.