puzzleserver/mainpuzzleserver

The main repo for the Puzzle Hunt and Puzzleday servers.

mainpuzzleserver's Issues

File upload and access

We need authors to be able to upload puzzle files, and the system to deliver those files to players.

Add CI build verification for PRs

It may be nice to have some sort of continuous integration build verification for PRs and also master branch. This would catch build errors before and when they enter master so that one mistake in a PR won't break everyone's builds.

Unpack zipped ContentFiles

Some puzzle contents could be small static websites (e.g. an html page with some images). They need to end up in the same blob directory for relative links to work. A way to do that could be to accept a zip file and extract it on the server before uploading all of the files to a blob.

We would need a way to differentiate zip files that aren't intended to be extracted from those that are.

Submitting a null string for an answer results in NullReferenceException

Caused by PR #60

Add [Required] attribute to DB properties

If a property on an Entity Framework table is a nullable type (such as String or another class), the column is treated as optional and the DB will accept null. For values that shouldn't be null, we should set the [Required] attribute.

Add "hi" page

We should have a page with everybody's name!

Implement puzzle unlocking mechanisms

Figure out how mocks work for testing

Open / close team registration

Implement area specific auth

• dependent on overall auth first
• site owners can access everything everything (if possible, add blocking specific puzzle content so that site owners can have full tech control without content access)
• event owners can access everything related to the event (owner perms are a superset of author perms)
• authors can only access their own puzzles, but can add new puzzles, as well as do all editing on their puzzles (including file upload & unlock mechanisms) (authors perms are a superset of players)
• players can only access puzzles that have been unlocked for their team, team details, their profile, etc

Make IsPuzzle default to true

Most puzzle-like objects are puzzles, so we should set it to true by default to avoid mistakes

Add unlock waves

Unlock waves should support several scenarios:

• Manual unlocks (e.g. Start the Event)
• Fixed time unlocks for (e.g. for PuzzleDay pre-game)
• Time deltas from previous unlocks/actions:
  • Allow migrating timing from beta to final events without editing a bunch of dates
  • Support betas running in multiple time zones (e.g. Boston manually starts 3 hours earlier than Seattle, each should get a time wave 4 hours after starting)
  • Possibly to account for late starts

Players can access unlocked puzzles by navigating to its corresponding url

If a team doesn't have puzzle 2 unlocked, they can still access its response page by navigating to Submissions?puzzleid=2&teamid=1.

Implement automatic response editing logic

Add a quick way to populate the database with a mock event for testing

See title

Implement team registration

Split out puzzleday and puzzlehunt projects

• use the classes from the servercore & datamodel projects and build on them using extensions & child classes. This should be as close to the UI level as possible.

Implement impersonation system

Essential for monitoring an event while it is running.
Example: Can teams actually see the puzzles? OK good.

Ensure puzzle/team specific pages check their events

We have lots of puzzle and team pages that work in the context of an event, but don't check whether the input puzzle/team id is actually in the event.

Implement event management

• most of this can be done with scaffolded pages and small modifications.

Feedback wanted on database & archiving designs

I'm currently taking feedback on how we want the database to be set up - running multiple databases is cost prohibitive and many users overlap, so splitting by event would also increase the storage cost.

My existing plan is to have a current event table for each of Puzzleday & Puzzlehunt, then an archive table for each event. Anything that does not carry over between events (puzzles, authors, etc) gets archived when the event ends and the table is cleared out for the next event. The archived data will be accessible from the un-timed events feature.

Un-timed events will allow players to register & access events that ran in the past using the same UI that was available during the event - how exactly this will work is TBD, largely depending on Azure cost models. It might range from a single archive UI that provides access to puzzles grouped by event to a complete copy of the previous event site, including theming and interactive elements.

Maximum line length for code

http://katafrakt.me/2017/09/16/80-characters-line-length-limit/

Clean up the UI so it looks nice and has a unique theme for each of the events.

-It should be something that's generic enough that we can use it as the base layout and not feel like we need to completely redo the UI to re-theme

• It should also be immediately obvious if the user is on the puzzle hunt or the puzzle day site

Remove null tolerance in puzzles pages

Since some people might have databases set up, I've left in the ability to see puzzles even without specifying an event. We should remove this once everyone's databases are clean.

[P0] Implement food system

Puzzleday only, so it should be in the puzzleday project

Implement standings tracking

Requires metapuzzle specific logic

• Standings page/logic
• Fastest solves page
• State map (do we want an anonymized/filtered state map for modules so that authors can see the solve patterns for their puzzles more easily?)

Answer Submission

Players submit answers to puzzles, validate correctness, and update appropriate tables (i.e. responses)

Implement puzzle creation and materials uploading

• Include automatic response editing in this logic, it should be a one stop shop for the puzzle

Set up CI and deployment on the VSTS server

Talk to Megan for access

DateTimes displayed to users should be localized

Times are stored in the DB as UTC+0 but should maybe be shown to users in their local time zone. This crops up in a few places

Ability to remove / export user data

[P0] Implement meta puzzle token system

**Cards**

Cards can be added to your board to track the progress of issues and pull requests. You can also add note cards, like this one!

Start / Stop event

Fastest solves doesn't show rows for puzzles that haven't been solved

Custom 404 page

A custom 404 page would be nice. Currently, returning NotFound(object? value) with a string for the value sends the user to a blank page with the string as the only content.
A custom page would be useful as it could contain more detailed information and navigation links so the user has more options other than the browser back button to return to a real page.

Implement author dashboard page

• Submission history (depends on submission implementation)
• Feedback history (depends on feedback system implementation)
• Threads on the puzzle (depends on thread implementation)
• Any solve/state tracking?

Standings doesn't show rows for teams that have solved 0 puzzles

Add cooldown/lockout to prevent answer spamming

When teams are submitting incorrect answers too fast, the current system allows X unlimited submissions, followed by an increasing time backoff for Y further submissions, followed by putting the puzzle in email mode -- telling the team to email an author and the author can unlock them. We should have some combination of those.

Ensure PuzzleStatePerTeam table integrity

The PuzzleStatePerTeam table will be particularly sensitive to integrity issues since we don't want missing or duplicate entries. To handle this, we need a few things:

1. Required attributes on the Puzzle and Team entries. That will both avoid nulls and enable cascading deletes
2. A unique index on Puzzle+Team to prevent duplicate entries. We might want to make this the primary key.
3. Whenever a team is created, states for all puzzles must be generated and the reverse for puzzle creation. This should happen transactionally so that we don't lose some states if the request fails or is interrupted.
   a. Ideally, this would also do transactional/locking reads such that a new team can't be created in the middle of puzzle creation or vice versa. It's not totally clear how to do that with EF or whether that's a significant concern for us since it's a fairly tight race condition.

Implement answer submission logic

Automatic responses, lockout, etc

Contact specific / all players via e-mail

We can just show player e-mails to admins on website

Team Member Rules and Report

• this needs to send an email to an alias that contain a token link. When the link is clicked that MSA is linked to that alias & the user is marked as an employee/intern.

Edit puzzle dependencies

Top level menus

Provide a place for people to start making pages and hooking them up.

Strawman proposal follows.

[Note: ~ links only available when the event is running]
[Note: * links should work for authors AND for admins, just with a different puzzle set]
[Note: ! links are admins only]

NAME OF EVENT

Puzzles
~ Solved Puzzles
~ Unsolved Puzzles

• Administer Puzzles
• Import Puzzles/Responses (P2 but really really helpful)

N Updates (if any) (aka Tasks and response updates - look ma, no mailer)
each update listed here in menu

Results
~ Standings
~ Fastest Solves

• Puzzle State Map
• Submissions
• Puzzles in lockout

Registration
My team (if known)
Matchmaking Zone (teams ISO players, players ISO teams)
List of Teams
List of Players (full details for admins)
! Authors
! Admins

Resources
FAQ
Rules
Encodings
! Event Properties
My Events
! Events Dashboard

Sign up/Log in

Implement feedback system

Add unit test sample to the wiki documentation

Implement authentication

Server can confirm who you are and what you're allowed to access.

• the plan of record is to use MS accounts and no AD integration.
• also includes implementing auth-z

Heatmap colors

Deep green solved and unlocked look too similar. Dana wants the unsolved color to be purple.

Remove IDs from team member lists and event player lists

Currently the pages show player / team IDs to help with development and debugging. Those should be removed once we start to clean up the UI.