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Town Squared at school: IT manager guide
This guide is for IT managers and technicians. It provides some background information on the software, how it works and the setup required.
How it works
Town Squared is a real-time multiplayer world that weaves maths concepts into gameplay. Students can see, interact and collaborate with each other in the game, and go on quests together.
To enable real-time communication to operate safely within your school network behind the firewall, Town Squared has two components:
- Town Squared: Launcher (server)
- Town Squared: Game (client)
The Town Squared: Launcher (“Launcher”) needs to be installed on the educator’s classroom machine. After running and logging in, the Launcher acts as a local server. An IP address is displayed, which students enter to connect to the server. The Launcher then securely manages all the communication between the student devices.
The Town Squared: Game (“Town Squared”) should be installed on the student-facing iPads or Android tablets. Once logged in, students will be prompted to enter the IP address of the local server as displayed in the Launcher on the educator’s machine. The students can then connect and play the game with their classmates.
You can see it in action here:
The specifics
The Launcher spawns a lobby server on the teacher's PC and listens to port 7777.
The clients connect to the lobby server locally and all communication to the server is via the local area network.
When players request a quest, the Lobby server spawns a quest server on the teacher's PC (default max of two, configurable). The quest players then connect via the LAN to the quest server. The new quest servers listen to ports 31000 and 31200 on the teacher's machine. (The ports are also configurable).
When the quest server is empty of players it shuts itself down.
The Client, Launcher and Servers also communicate over the internet to our back end systems (MS Azure techstack) and PlayFab (a Microsoft application programming interface) for account logins and player game data storage.
Whitelist domains
The following domains need to be whitelisted for user authentication and saving progress:
- https://*.townsquaredgame.com/
- https://*.playfabapi.com/
We take security seriously. We use a Microsoft Azure techstack, and our servers are located in Sydney, Australia. PlayFab is a Microsoft application programming interface (API) for managing game communications. In a school environment we’re only hitting the API to save student progress.
Downloads
PC
The Launcher is available to download as a standard Windows installer, or silent installer for remote installation.
- Launcher (standard): https://portal.townsquaredgame.com/downloads/launcher/windows
- Launcher (silent): https://portal.townsquaredgame.com/downloads/launcher/windows-silent
Mac
iOS
- Town Squared app: https://apps.apple.com/au/app/town-squared-kids-maths-game/id1570197726
Android
- Town Squared app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playlunchgames.townsquared&pli=1
Testing
During our initial systems check meeting, we will help you set up and test everything you need to ensure that your network is configured so that the two components (the Launcher and Town Squared) can communicate on your network within the firewall.
Our goal is to make this process as simple as possible for every school to use our platform.
Please feel free to email us on support@playlunchgames.com.