Beepong – Real-Time Multiplayer Game with System Observability

A Hive Helsinki group project combining game development, real-time systems, and DevOps tooling.
Features real-time gameplay, tournaments, and full-stack observability via the ELK Stack.

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Table of Contents

• Project Overview
• Collaborators
• Tech Stack
• Game Features
• System Architecture
• System Observability
• Installation
• What I Learned
• License

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Project Overview

Beepong is a modular multiplayer Pong game built to showcase real-time interactions and observability across services.
It supports:

• AI opponent fallback for solo games
• Tournament mode with brackets
• Real-time multiplayer via WebSockets
• Clear frontend-backend separation
• Centralized log monitoring for observability

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Collaborators

• Diego James
• Linh
• Lionel Clerc
• Valeria
• wengcychan

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Tech Stack

Area	Stack/Tool
Frontend	Vanilla JS
Backend	Django REST Framework, WebSockets
Database	PostgreSQL
DevOps	Docker, Docker Compose
Monitoring	ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana)
Testing	Cypress (E2E), Jest, Django tests

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Game Features

• Multiplayer Pong: Real-time gameplay against human or AI
• Lobby System: Create, join, and manage game lobbies
• Tournament Mode: Compete through bracket-based matches
• Chat & Presence: Interact with players in real-time
• AI Mode: Fall back to AI if no human opponent is found

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System Architecture

Beepong uses a containerized microservice architecture:

• Frontend: Vanilla JavaScript SPA served via Nginx
• Backend: Django-based API + WebSocket server
• Database: PostgreSQL for user/game state persistence
• NGINX: Reverse proxy, static serving, load routing
• ELK Stack: Monitoring and log aggregation for all services

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System Observability

My part of this project involved integrating the ELK stack:

• Real-time log ingestion with Logstash
• Searchable service logs with Elasticsearch
• Dashboard creation in Kibana for insights

📊 Example Visual Dashboards:

• Postgres FATAL errors over time
• Authentication success/failure rates
• WebSocket traffic volume
• Routing and 404s from NGINX

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Installation

git clone git@github.com:liocle/42_transcendence.git
cd beepong
cp .env.example .env # Edit the required templated fields
make up_all

Then, open:

• 🕹️ Game frontend: https://localhost:8443
• 📊 Kibana logs UI: http://localhost:5601

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What I Learned

• Running a real-world multi-container application using Docker
• Setting up the ELK stack from scratch for real-time observability
• Collaborating with developers to ingest and structure backend and service logs
• Building visual dashboards in Kibana to support debugging and gameplay insights
• Understanding the importance of testing environments and reproducibility in full-stack development

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License:

This project is licensed under the MIT License.