mirror of https://github.com/dirtbags/moth.git
142 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
142 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
Dirtbags King Of The Hill Server
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=====================
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This is a set of thingies to run our KOTH-style contest.
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Contests we've run in the past have been called
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"Tracer FIRE" and "Project 2".
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It serves up puzzles in a manner similar to Jeopardy.
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It also track scores,
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and comes with a JavaScript-based scoreboard to display team rankings.
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How Everything Works
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----------------------------
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### `assigned.txt`
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This is just a list of tokens that have been assigned.
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One token per line, and tokens can be anything you want.
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For my middle school events, I make tokens all possible 4-digit numbers,
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and tell kids to use any number they want: it makes it quicker to start.
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For more advanced events,
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this doesn't work as well because people start guessing other teams' numbers to confuse each other.
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So I use hex representations of random 32-bit ints.
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But you could use anything you want in here (with some restrictions, detailed in the registration CGI).
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The registration CGI checks this list to see if a token has already assigned to a team name.
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Teams enter points by token,
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which lets them use any text they want for a team name.
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Since we don't read their team name anywhere else than the registration and scoreboard generator,
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it allows some assumptions about what kind of strings tokens can be,
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resulting in simpler code.
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### `packages/`
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`packages/` contains read-only package archives.
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Within each subdirectory there is:
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* `map.txt` mapping point values to directory names
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* `answers.txt` a list of answers for each point value
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* `salt` used to generate directory names (so people can't guess them to skip ahead)
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* `summary.txt` a compliation of `00summary.txt` files for puzzles, to give you a quick reference point when someone says "I need help on js 40".
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* `puzzles` is all the HTML that needs to be served up for the category
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### `bin/`
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Contains all the binaries you'll need to run an event.
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These are probably just copies from the `base` package (where this README lives).
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They're copied over in case you need to hack on them during an event.
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`bin/once` is of particular interest:
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it gets run periodically to do everything, including:
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* Gather points from `points.new` and append them to the points log.
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* Generate a new `puzzles.html` listing all open puzzles.
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* Generate a new `points.json` for the scoreboard
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#### Pausing `once`
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You can pause everything `bin/once` does by touching a file in the root directory
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called `disabled`.
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This doesn't stop the game:
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it just stops points collection and generation of the files listed above.
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This is extremely helpful when, inevitably,
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you need to hack the points log,
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or do other maintenance tasks.
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Most times you don't even need to announce that you're doing anything:
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people can keep playing the game and their points keep collecting,
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ready to be appended to the log when you're done and you re-enable `once`.
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### `www/`
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HTML root for an event.
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It is possible to make this read-only,
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after you've set up your packages.
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You will need to symlink a few things into the `state` directory, though.
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### `state/`
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Where all game state is stored.
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This is the only part of the contest directory setup that needs to be writable,
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and tarring it up preserves exactly the entire contest.
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Notable, it contains the mapping from team hash to name,
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and the points log.
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`points.log` is replayed by the scoreboard generator to calculate the current score for each team.
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New points are written to `points.new`, and picked up by `bin/once` to append to `points.log`.
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When `once` is disabled (by touching a file called `disabled` at the top level for a game),
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the various points-awarding things can keep writing files into `points.new`,
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with no need for locking or "bringing down the game for maintenance".
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How to set it up
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--------------------
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It's made to be virtualized,
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so you can run multiple contests at once if you want.
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If you were to want to run it out of `/opt/koth`,
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do the following:
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$ mkdir -p /opt/koth/mycontest
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$ ./install /opt/koth/mycontest
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$ cp kothd /opt/koth
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Yay, you've got it set up.
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Installing Puzzle Categories
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------------------------------------
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Puzzle categories are distributed in a different way than the server.
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After setting up (see above), just run
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$ /opt/koth/mycontest/bin/install-category /path/to/my/category
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Running It
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-------------
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Get your web server to serve up files from
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`/opt/koth/mycontest/www`.
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Then run `/opt/koth/kothd`.
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Permissions
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----------------
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It's up to you not to be a bonehead about permissions.
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Install sets it so the web user on your system can write to the files it needs to,
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but if you're using Apache,
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it plays games with user IDs when running CGI.
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You're going to have to figure out how to configure your preferred web server.
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