Sorry that my blog has been kind of... abandoned for 14.5 months, I promise I'm still here.

But 14.5 months ago, a.k.a. my most recent blog post before this, I did announce about mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame. For it's job, I'm really happy about how it's doing, and of course, I'm still happy it's still here. But don't you think it's time for a change? While it gets the basic things done, it seems like everyone wants "to create their own [judge] system and add some unique features that are missing from other systems." [1]

If you're new here, welcome! mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame is (one of my) side and somewhat commerical projects.

The premise of this website is that it's "a website where you have to find out hidden passwords to each problem", and that's the whole point. It's something like a CTF or puzzle-hunt website. Puzzles range from high-quality to low-quality, from easy to hard, and some are even straight up brute force puzzles. If you would like to try your hand on some of the puzzles, feel free! I've already put the link to the website earlier in the blog post. I just don't want to repeat myself.

Oh, and one of the reasons I made this is to get to practice writing puzzles.

So going back to the main point, I guess it's now time to make a wishlist of what features I want (i.e., am planning to implement) for the next (content) release of mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame.

Features that really should've been implemented

Well, I don't know why, but maybe it's because I was too lazy to actually implement these features?

Different score rules for different contest problems

It's already partially done, and by partially done, I recall 1 thing I can make different that I've never used for four contests: Different maximum scores per each problem. That's it.

I used it once, and it was for the first testing contest. That's it.

What I meant is the ability to deduct (possibly) different amount of points per (possibly) different amount of time intervals.

Maybe some of the problems are (objectively) harder than others. Of course, I can assign different maximum point values, but that's the only thing I could customize.

Something nice would be that I could take off the same propotion of maximum points per problem, instead of it being fixed across all problems.

For example, for two problems, with maximum scores of 100 points and 300 points respectively, my plan is to make it so that it is possible to deduct 1 point and 3 points per incorrect answer, for the first and second problems, respectively. The current codebase doesn't support it yet.

Guest submissions

Well, maybe you don't want to sign up just to do one puzzle. Maybe it's too much of a hassle. I get that.

Does this even need an explanation?

Although the reason is pretty clear, maybe some technical and design choice explanations might not hurt: When I added the administrator dashboard (the one only accessible to myself), I wanted to get submissions from everyone across every problem. The reason why it's only allowed for signed in users is that. Every submission is a new MongoDB record. In the past, I wasn't ready to take that risk of a (e.g.) bot submitting problems and clogging up my VPS storage space. I guess you can see why it's signed-in only.

But if I do add it, the plan is just to... not make guest submissions create a record, but still show answers. The end. That was easy. If I do implement this, I'll won't make it restriction-free entirely. A restrcition like "during a contest, only signed-in users can submit to a problem if it's a part of a active contest" is one of the good restrictions I can think of, and another is...

Rate limiting

There is rate limiting on the website itself, but not on the submissions people actually made. In the past, there are users who actually brute forced problems (and received cash prizes from myself from it!), and..., oh, they were meant to be brute forced. Oh well.

Password change

Self-explanatory.

And I guess four is enough. Well, four really needed features, according to my discretion. Now it's time for what I kinda what but not that of a priority.

Features that I want but it's not that necessary

Rating System

Self-explanatory.

Oh wait, that's it. LOL

There are obviously more things to add, e.g. pagniation on problem selection screen. But those aren't big-enough on their own to warrant their own section.

Thank you!

Now, if you are a member of mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame, thank you!

At time of writing, mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame has 2,186 submissions to every problem combined. It's currently not that much, especially if people are driving the numbers up by brute-forcing it. But I am still grateful nonetheless.

At time of writing, mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame has held 4 contests (5 if you include the testing one). Those contests attracted 16 unique participants across every contest. Once again, it's not much, but that's what you get when mistertfy64 does marketing stuff.

Hopefully I counted that right.

At time of writing, mistertfy64 UntitledPasswordFindingGame has 1 guest author, who authored 1 problem. Thank you!

And, of course, there will be more contests. [2] If you want to be the first to know when a new contest is coming up, maybe follow UntitledPasswordFindingGame on Instagram?

See you sometime in the future! (hopefully)

There will still be updates to Mathematical Base Defenders as well. Like I said, I'm still here. Sorry for the word salad as well. I just want to write something so that the blog doesn't look abandoned or something. Maybe that's only the reason there's only one "nice-to-have" features, because I can't think of any more c o o l enhancements.

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1. Quote used from https://cses.fi/about, I think they put it into words perfectly. I made my first submission on October 2020 on CSES to get into competitive programming. I'll be honest though, I don't do that much competitive programming anymore. I still join contests, but not as frequent as when I was in POSN camp. But a thank you to all the online judges and graders that taught me competitive programming, including but not limited to CSES. ^

2. Unproctored. Of course. I don't have the willpower to tell you not to use some prohibited tools, nor do I have the willpower to organize an official large-scale one where I can splurge on prize money. ^