Forum

A New Version of MysteryTwister C3

A New Version of MysteryTwister C3  

  By: Javex on July 31, 2013, 5:10 p.m.

Hello everyone,

Less than a year ago, we made the last major update of this website and a lot has happened since then, so it is time for a new version. This time, most of the changes are small and barely visible. Instead we focused on the internals to improve the experience with this page.

Nevertheless, there are some nice changes involved:

1) Solved challenges:
Some time ago we had to take down our RSA-704 challenge because its solution was publicly available. But we didn't want this challenge to just disappear as we had to do in the former version. Luckily, we were already working on a feature just for such an occasion: A challenge for which the solution becomes publicly known. Now it's here: RSA-704 is now back again and you can again solve it – however, you will not receive any points for it, and at the website a warning is displayed so you know, that there will be no points rewarded for it.

While RSA-704 is a nice example, this is mainly targeted at our new way of looking at level X challenges (see this announcement): Now, once a challenge is deemed solved in level X, we can mark it this way.

2) New formula for the awarded points:
We have reworked our formula for calculating points in the hall-of-fame according to your feedback. It is now a bit more complicated as it introduces a coefficient for each level. A challenge of a higher level looses points more slowly than one of a lower level. For a full explanation see the Overall Hall-of-Fame. The global points have thus increased by about 14 %. In the higher ranks there is a higher increase due to the fact that here more level III and level II challenges were solved. The ranks itself are unchanged in the top 10, and in the lower ranks it should only vary slightly to favor those who solved harder challenges.

3) Automatic forum updates & tags:
Because the forum is largely independent of the site itself, we had a problem with updating challenges: Whenever we wanted to update the text (or title, filename, etc.) of a challenge, we had to do it in two places. Furthermore, when a challenge was removed from the system (in some way), we had to manually announce this in the forum. Now, whenever we update a challenge, the forum post is updated, too. Additionally, there are three tags for special challenges available:
4) Multiple authors and better support for authors:
Before the update, it was not really possible to have multiple authors. Instead, the author's name was just a comma separated list of names. This led to the complication that we could not assign a user unambiguously on such multi-author challenges.
In the frontend an author noticed that by not seeing such collaborative challenges in the "My Profile" page as "his". Now this is fixed: All challenges by multiple authors are correctly assigned to all of them. A small notice for the authors: You might want to check your log mail settings under the "My Profile" page as they might have changed in case the information was not a 100 % accurate. You can just re-enable logs if you want them again.

For most of the users there is only one noticeable difference: On a challenge with multiple authors there are now multiple addresses you can contact. Note however, that most of the addresses are placeholder addresses that lead directly to us if the author did not provide an address for himself.

5) Updated Joomla version & bugfixes:
The Joomla version was moved from 1.7 to 2.5. This follows the Joomla recommendation and we are now on an LTS version that is supported for quite some time.

We also made some small bugfixes, for example a warning if JavaScript is deactivated, and the removal of the redundant "Logout" button under "My Profile".

What do you think?
We are now interested what you think of the changes? Also please let us know, in case you notice any problems. While these changes were tested for quite some time now, we can never be a 100 % sure that we found all bugs – so if you encounter any problems, just drop us a message here or via the contact form.

We hope you enjoy this new version!

Your MTC3 team

 Last edited by: Javex on Aug. 1, 2013, 2:01 p.m., edited 4 times in total.
Reason: Typos

Re: A New Version for MysteryTwisterC3  

  By: Veselovský on July 31, 2013, 10:52 p.m.

The wrong post is displayed as "Last post" for "Announcements" in the forum.
It currently displays "Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:31 Javex" but there are more recent post then that.

Actually I noticed it even before this upgrade, so it is not a "new bug".

Re: A New Version for MysteryTwisterC3  

  By: Javex on Aug. 1, 2013, 10:19 a.m.

Hi Viktor,

actually, this is correct, because the more recent topics (like this) are global: They do not belong in any category, so they are listed nowhere as recent.

The topic has a timeout after which it will be removed from the global category. Then it should be in the announcements section automatically.

Regards,
Javex

Re: A New Version for MysteryTwisterC3  

  By: Yokozuna on Aug. 1, 2013, 12:55 p.m.

Hello,

when viewing this site in the german version, I always get an 404-error, if I want to view the forum topics for a challenge. I get also an 404-error when I try to logout. In the english version there seems no such problems. This seems to be a new problem after the upgrade.

I encountered also another problem. After entering the solution for the level III challenge "RSA with Special d" I got this orange colored smiley for a wrong solution. I found this very confusing, because I have been pretty sure that my solution is ok (I have checked it before) and I wanted to look at the corresponding forum topics, which resulted in an 404-error. Suddenly I could see this running message at the bottom, that I have successfully solved the level III challenge. Apparently the solution check took some seconds and during this time the orange colored smiley shows up. This is very irritating to the solver.

With kind regards
Yokozuna

Re: A New Version of MysteryTwister C3  

  By: Javex on Aug. 1, 2013, 2:28 p.m.

Hello Yokozuna,

thanks for your report. There was an error in the routing that created the wrong urls. We have fixed this, so you should not hit 404s anymore (but in the course we invalidated old links, so if you had any bookmarks to our forum, you need to update them).

Regarding your other problem: I just tried it and entered the correct solution. It took some time but it came out with a green smiley and my solution was accepted. I don't know what went wrong, since this should not happen. If this happens again, please let us know - we just fixed some bugs and this might have been related so it's hopefully fixed now. Bottom line: If you enter the right solution and see an orange smiley, it is a bug and should not have happened.

Regards,
Javex

Re: A New Version of MysteryTwister C3  

  By: DarkFibre on Aug. 5, 2013, 7:36 p.m.

How about a way to have new challenges automatically posted to FB, Twitter, etc?

Re: Challenge  

  By: Veselovský on Aug. 8, 2013, 2:03 p.m.

Maybe a bug???

How can it be that the above post was edited before it was even posted?

Posted: Thu Aug 08, 2013 15:04
Last edited by admin on Thu Aug 08, 2013 13:15

The current time displayed on this site as I am reading it now is:

It is currently Thu Aug 08, 2013 14:01

Furthermore, this thread is still showed as unread although I have opened and read it several times.

Re: Challenge  

  By: Veselovský on Aug. 8, 2013, 2:08 p.m.

…another bug… we received 0 points for solving this challenge

Re: Challenge  

  By: Veselovský on Aug. 8, 2013, 2:33 p.m.

Two more bugs:

  1. There are incorrect links to the forum in the site. Only one of the two bellow is correct.
    https://www.mysterytwisterc3.org/en/mtc3-forum
    https://www.mysterytwisterc3.org/mtc3/en/mtc3-forum

To reproduce error… do not log in, just use the site as a guest, open any thread of the forum, then click on "Forum" (there is the wrong link)… what is displayed is not the forum page but the index page of the site

  1. When I log in the first page that is displayed for few seconds (before redirecting to the forum page) looks strange… the things are shuffled. For example the logo is at the bottom of page instead at the top

Please delete all these posts that I sent there after you have read them

Edit:
The same apply also for Challenges like for Forum, only one of the bellow links is correct:
https://www.mysterytwisterc3.org/mtc3/e ... our-levels
https://www.mysterytwisterc3.org/en/cha ... our-levels

Re: A New Version of MysteryTwister C3  

  By: Javex on Aug. 13, 2013, 2:39 p.m.

Hello together,

sorry it took some time for me to respond, but here it goes:

DarkFibre: Things like that are already on our to do list, but not as high-priority as other things.

Veselovský: There seems to have been some kind of time issue, maybe my system time was wrong. Thus also the 0 points (as you would have gotten negative points otherwise). I fixed the time and you now all have gotten points accordingly.

For the routing issue, I was able to reproduce it, clicked around a bit and then it was gone for me. I hope I fixed it, because now I cannot reproduce it. If not, please let me know again.

Thanks for your feedback.
Regards,
javex

Re: A New Version of MysteryTwister C3  

  By: Veselovský on Aug. 13, 2013, 2:51 p.m.

Another bug.
When sending PM to someone from a thread of the forum I assume that it should automatically fill in the "Subject" according the name of the thread.
So for example it could be:

Subject: Re: Name of the thread
if the name was: Name of the thread

But what it does when there are quotes (") in the name is:
Subject: Re: Challenge
if the name was for example: Challenge "Nils away on travel".

It clearly fills in only up to the first occurrence of quotes (").

So there is some error… I guess improper using of escape characters or not using them at all.

I received several PM-s with subject Re: Challenge and the sender assumed that the subject is filled correctly, but I have no clue what challenge is the sender talking about.

Re: A New Version of MysteryTwister C3  

  By: Veselovský on Aug. 13, 2013, 3:07 p.m.

For the routing issue, I was able to reproduce it, clicked around a bit and then it was gone for me. I hope I fixed it, because now I cannot reproduce it. If not, please let me know again.

This is exactly what happens to me. Sometimes it works correctly and sometimes it does not. Few minutes ago it worked and now it does not. It sometimes adds "/mtc3" in the address which makes it wrong.
…/en/mtc3-forum
…/mtc3/en/mtc3-forum

PS: …looks like also quote does not work properly this time

Re: Challenge  

  By: Veselovský on Aug. 14, 2013, 1:36 p.m.

  1. When I log in the first page that is displayed for few seconds (before redirecting to the forum page) looks strange… the things are shuffled. For example the logo is at the bottom of page instead at the top

Regarding this… this only happens when you log in through "Forum" page. There are two ways to log in… first through "Login" page and second through "Forum" page (at bottom of that page)


Currently 25 guests and 0 members are online.
Powered by the CrypTool project
Contact | Privacy | Imprint
© 2009-2024 MysteryTwister team