I have a multiplayer web game that uses Phoenix Channels for communication with clients via websockets. I’d like to add server-side bot players to my game.

I’ve given some thought on where in the stack to add the bots. My current plan is to simulate the bots at the “edge” of the system as GenServers that are subscribed to the same phoenix endpoint channel that actual clients are. It is my understanding that they will need to maintain virtual Socket connections to accomplish this.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to explicitly create sockets and subscribe them to a Phoenix Channel. I’ve looked at the code for channel testing utilities as a starting point.

Alternatively, I was considering implementing an intermediate “event server” sitting between the game server and the actual endpoint channel. This event server would be a pass through for all game chit chat and would allow me to handle event delegation to bots and actual clients discriminately. In this case, a bot would still be a GenServer with event behaviors but it would not need to simulate an actual socket. Curious to hear thoughts.