The game's online side

How crates/typepper talks to typepper.com, and the files and flags around it. The rule for all of it: nothing happens unless the player asked, and nothing blocks the game.

When the game touches the network

Never at startup, never while playing, never retried in the background.

online.rs

The one module that talks to the server. Desktop and web share its shape:

pub struct Call;                                  // a request under way
impl Call {
    pub fn submit(body: Vec<u8>) -> Result<Call, String>;
    pub fn board(mode: &str, period: &str) -> Result<Call, String>;
    pub fn poll(&mut self) -> Option<Result<String, String>>;   // never waits
}
pub fn submission(replay: &[u8], claimed: Option<f64>) -> Vec<u8>;
pub fn answer(line: &str) -> Result<String, String>;           // a link (and rank), or why not
pub fn rows(text: &str) -> Result<Vec<Row>, String>;            // a board
// desktop: account(), link(), unlink(), outbox_add(), outbox(), outbox_settle()

App::tick polls every frame; the answer lands whenever it lands.

Desktop: the system ssh

The game runs ssh as a child process, with stdin, stdout and stderr redirected so nothing touches the screen, and kills it after 20 s. The options make sure it never prompts:

ssh -T -p 36080 -l typepper
    -o ConnectTimeout=5 -o LogLevel=ERROR
    -o StrictHostKeyChecking=yes -o HostKeyAlias=typepper
    -o UserKnownHostsFile=<data dir>/known_hosts
    -o PasswordAuthentication=no -o NumberOfPasswordPrompts=1
    -o PubkeyAuthentication=no            # anonymous; =yes once linked
    ssh.typepper.com v1 submit

No ssh on the machine: "ssh isn't installed". typepper link is the exception to all this quiet: it runs in the terminal, not the game, so the agent may ask as it likes.

Web: fetch

fetch through spawn_local; the answer lands in a slot that poll takes. Submitting copies the link to the clipboard (a canvas has no text to select). The web is anonymous for now: no account, no outbox.

Sharing and saving

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Hint: round over
    Hint --> Sending: u (anonymous) / round over (linked)
    Sending --> Done: answer
    Done --> Sending: u again (after an error)
    Done --> [*]: next screen

The results screen's bottom line says how it's going:

• One call at a time. An upload carries on if the player moves to another screen (its handle lives on App); only the screen it started on talks about it.
• Hidden with online: off, on touch screens (no u to press), and under someone else's replay.

The outbox

Linked players' rounds go up by themselves, and survive being offline.

1. A round ends (not the bot's, online on): it's written as one submission item (claimed | replay, hex) to outbox/<unix ms>. Past 20 entries, the oldest go.
2. If no upload is running, the whole outbox goes up, oldest first, in one v1 submit.
3. The answer settles entries, line by line: ok, old-engine, bad-replay and too-big remove theirs; anything else, or no answer at all, keeps it for the next round.
4. The results line reports the last item: this round.

So a round played on a plane goes up with the first round played back on the ground. Nothing is ever sent twice: one upload at a time, and entries leave only once settled.

Accounts

typepper link <your-github-login>   # ssh -l <login> … v1 link, in the terminal
typepper unlink                     # v1 unlink, and forgets the account here

The game keeps only the login, in account; there are no tokens. Linking needs an ssh key that's on github.com/<login>.keys. If ssh doesn't get in, the game points at ssh's own message, printed just above: either the server is unreachable, or none of the keys is on that account.

The boards screen

b on the menu opens the board of the selected card's mode, at its last-picked starting level, starting at today. ←/→ switches today, this week, this month, this year and all time; each switch is one call. Non-all periods show "resets in … (UTC)", computed locally (calendar maths in boards.rs). The player's row is highlighted, and shown under the top 20 when it's lower. Esc goes back.

The results screen has the same board as a strip beside the chart (only on a column at least 76 wide, and not for zen, which has no score). It opens by itself once a linked player's upload answers, so it's never behind their own round; for anyone else, at the first ←/→ press, which is the player's action (decision 1). A player who isn't on the board sees where this round would land (#4?, a tie going under) as you, if linked. ←/→ walks the periods, and b opens the full screen at the same period.

Files

Under the data dir ($XDG_DATA_HOME/typepper/, else ~/.local/share/typepper/, else %APPDATA%\typepper\), or localStorage as typepper.<name> on the web:

Flags and overrides