v3.12.0

Version 3.12.0

New Features & Enhancements

Practice Area

• User activity in a console while playing a practice challenge will now automatically reset the remaining time of a practice session to one hour. The overall length of the session is still subject to the limit configured in Admin -> Practice Area (by default, 240 minutes)
• Practice challenges now have an associated set of tags which players can use to find challenges relevant to a particular skill or topic.
  • Tags are imported from the Topomojo instance supporting Gameboard and are “gated” by the Suggested Search terms entered. That is, if a term doesn’t appear in the suggested searches configured in Gameboard, it will not be shown in the Practice Area, and searches for the tag’s text will not match (unless that text appears elsewhere in the challenge’s name or description).
• Players who have more than 60 minutes remaining in their practice challenge are no longer permitted to extend the session.
  • A tooltip has been added to the Extend button which either explains the extension cap or explains that sessions with more than 60 minutes are not extendable.

Challenge Bonuses

• Challenges can now be awarded bonus points by administrator users:
  • Challenges can now be configured to award automatic bonuses to players and teams based on the order in which they solve a challenge (e.g. the first full solution awards 50 additional points, the second awards 20 points, and so on) These bonuses are configured in Admin -> New/Edit game using a YAML-based configuration.
  • Admins can also award manual bonuses using the Admin -> Game -> Players screen. Note that manual bonuses may only be awarded after a team has begun a challenge.
  • Bonuses are not currently included in scoreboard calculations, but the scoreboard will be updated to include them in a future release.

Miscellaneous

• Admins can now reset player/team sessions without unenrolling them from the game. To do this, visit Admin -> Game -> Players and use the triple-dot context menu to choose "Reset Session" (rather than "Reset & Unenroll")
• The Sponsors administration form has received additional labeling on its fields to clarify their function.
• Players now receive a toast notification at the top of the sponsors page when they select a new sponsor
• Challenge specs (challenge metadata like text, description, and tags) will now be automatically synchronized with the supporting Topomojo installation when Gameboard starts.
• Added infrastructure support for a new game type (“External”). This architecture is designed to support games played in external clients (e.g. Unity games).
  • Updated the Admin -> Game Edit screen. All mode-related settings (e.g. competitive/practice, synchronized start, engine mode, and external game settings) are now grouped on this screen.
  • Improvements to stability for players and teams enrolled in a game with synchronized start enabled

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue that caused bulleted lists to render incorrectly in markdown fields.
• Resolved an issue that caused the Practice Area to incorrectly claim that the user hasn't selected a sponsor when they are not logged in.
• Resolved an issue that caused new users to see an error message upon first login.
• Resolved an issue that caused the /api/teams/{id} endpoint to produce errors.
• Resolved an issue that prevented some expired challenges from syncing.
• Resolved a potential future issue where players could accept invitations to games without having selected a non-default sponsor.
• Resolved an issue where resetting a player session did not correctly zero out their score and challenge solve count.

What's Changed

• v3.12.0 by @sei-bstein in #292

Full Changelog: 3.11.5...3.12.0

v3.11.5

Corrected an issue that prevented team code redemption

What's Changed

• Corrected an issue that prevented team code redemption. by @sei-bstein in #284

Full Changelog: 3.11.4...3.11.5

v3.11.4

Fixes an issue that caused errors for new Gameboard users who haven't yet been assigned a sponsor.

What's Changed

• SponsorId issue on user create by @sei-bstein in #277

Full Changelog: 3.11.3...3.11.4

v3.11.3

Resolves an issue that caused exceptions when the api/teams/{gameId} endpoint was invoked.

What's Changed

• Resolved ListTeams null ref by @sei-bstein in #274

Full Changelog: 3.11.2...3.11.3

v3.11.2

• GB now allows a POST to /api/challenge/grade

What's Changed

• Accept POST to api/challenge/grade by @sei-bstein in #268

Full Changelog: 3.11.1...3.11.2

v3.11.1

• Updated packages used in the web client
• Adjusted the appearance of the "Solution Guide" callout to clarify its information
• Added an icon to represent External-mode games
• Cleaned up unused validation code

What's Changed

• v3.11.1 by @sei-bstein in #267

Full Changelog: 3.11.0...3.11.1

v3.11.0

Version 3.11.0 of Gameboard contains new features and enhancements and bug fixes to the application.

New features

• Sponsors can now contain "child" sponsors to represent agencies which house other agencies (e.g., the Department of Defense houses the Central Intelligence Agency).
  • By default, all sponsoring agencies are top-level "parent" sponsors, but additional parent and/or child sponsors can be added via the revamped Sponsors page in Administration.
  • When child sponsors exist in Gameboard, players will see sponsors grouped by parent in their profile when selecting a sponsor.
  • A new Sponsors filter has been added to the Reports area to represent parent/child relationships between sponsors. Selecting a parent in the filter automatically selects its children, but children can be manually deselected if your goal is to report on specific subsets of the parent's child sponsors.
• Gameboard no longer permits users to exist without a sponsor.
• Upon creation, users will be assigned to a sponsor called "Other Department/Agency" and flagged as not having selected a sponsor.
• Users who have not manually selected a sponsor will see a banner notification at the top Gameboard prompting them to select one.
• Users will be unable to register for games or play practice challenges if they have not manually selected a sponsor.
• The search bar in Admin -> Challenges now additionally searches by player ID and team ID.
• Challenge specs associated with a game are now always listed in alphabetical order (e.g., in the Game Editor menu of Admin)
• Improvements have been made to the Practice Area
  • Admins may now designate "suggested searches" which will appear on the home page of the Practice Area. To configure these, visit Admin -> Practice Area.
  • Admins may now also add links to solution guides for practice mode challenges. To add these, visit the Game Editor screen in Admin. The solution guide URL can be entered in the Challenges area.
• To improve clarity, the Enroll and Admin Enroll options now always show simultaneously for users who have the ability to use them, whether the current time is within the registration window or not.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue (#194) which caused incorrect resolution of the team captain in some cases.
• Resolved an issue (#236) that prevented testers and admins from registering for games outside the registration window
• Resolved an issue (#213) which caused links to PDFs and some images in challenge document data from the game engine to be rendered incorrectly. Moved this processing to server-side.
• Resolved an issue (#156) that caused players who played a game in practice mode to be unable to register for it if it's transitioned to competitive mode.
• Resolved an issue (#145) which prevented the "Table" view from rendering in Admin -> Games.
• Resolved a persistent issue which prevented correct sync of some expired challenges. May improve matters for #235, but we'll continue to review the state of this issue.
• Resolved an issue (#178) which caused the "confirming" state to persist across challenge selections during competitive play.

What's Changed

• v3.11.0-beta0 by @sei-bstein in #264
• v3.11.0-beta1 by @sei-bstein in #265
• v3.11.0 by @sei-bstein in #266

Full Changelog: 3.10.3...3.11.0

v3.11.0-beta1

• Resolved an issue that caused the challenge doc url to replace absolute urls with an incorrect value
• Resolved an issue that prevented the new alert about zero-point challenges to fail to show/hide as expected

What's Changed

• v3.11.0-beta1 by @sei-bstein in #265

Full Changelog: 3.11.0-beta0...3.11.0-beta1

v3.11.0-beta0

Version 3.11.0 of Gameboard contains new features and enhancements and bug fixes to the application.

New features

• Sponsors can now contain "child" sponsors to represent agencies which house other agencies (e.g. the Department of Defense houses the Central Intelligence Agency).
  • By default, all sponsoring agencies are top-level "parent" sponsors, but additional parent and/or child sponsors can be added via the revamped Sponsors page in Administration.
  • When child sponsors exist in Gameboard, players will see sponsors grouped by parent in their profile when selecting a sponsor.
  • A new Sponsors filter has been added to the Reports area to represent parent/child relationships between sponsors. Selecting a parent in the filter automatically selects its children, but children can be manually deselected if your goal is to report on specific subsets of the parent's child sponsors.
• Gameboard no longer permits users to exist without a sponsor.
• Upon creation, users will be assigned to a sponsor called "Other Department/Agency" and flagged as not having selected a sponsor.
• Users who have not manually selected a sponsor will see a banner notification at the top Gameboard prompting them to select one.
• Users will be unable to register for games or play practice challenges if they have not manually selected a sponsor.
• The search bar in Admin -> Challenges now additionally searches by player ID and team ID.
• Challenge specs associated with a game are now always listed in alphabetical order (e.g. in the Game Editor menu of Admin)
• Improvements have been made to the Practice Area
  • Admins may now designate "suggested searches" which will appear on the home page of the Practice Area. To configure these, visit Admin -> Practice Area.
  • Admins may now also add links to solution guides for practice mode challenges. To add these, visit the Game Editor screen in Admin. The solution guide URL can be entered in the Challenges area.
• To improve clarity, the Enroll and Admin Enroll options now always show simultaneously for users who have the ability to use them, whether the the current time is within the registration window or not.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue (#194) which caused incorrect resolution of the team captain in some cases.
• Resolved an issue (#236) that prevented testers and admins from registering for games outside the registration window
• Resolved an issue (#213) which caused links to PDFs and some images in challenge document data from the game engine to be rendered incorrectly.
• Resolved an issue (#156) that caused players who played a game in practice mode to be unable to register for it if it's transitioned to competitive mode.
• Resolved an issue (#145) which prevented the "Table" view from rendering in Admin -> Games.
• Resolved a persistent issue which prevented correct sync of some expired challenges. May improve matters for #235, but we'll continue to review the state of this issue.
• Resolved an issue (#178) which caused the "confirming" state to persist across challenge selections during competitive play.

What's Changed

• v3.11.0-beta0 by @sei-bstein in #264

Full Changelog: 3.10.3...3.11.0-beta0

v3.10.3

Version 3.10.3 of Gameboard includes bug fixes, small feature updates, and stability/architecture improvements.

Bug fixes

• Resolved an issue that deploy errors for practice challenges to fail to display
• Resolved an error that caused the launch of challenges that exceed the gamespace limit for their game to fail to display an error message in competitive play. The descriptiveness of this error message has also been improved.
• Resolved an exception that was thrown by the /api/teams/{id} endpoint when a user has not selected a sponsor.

Feature updates

• The Game Editor screen now displays a warning if one or more challenge specs has a zero or negative point value.
• Challenge specs on the Game Editor screen are now displayed in fixed (alphabetical) order.
• The game and gameboard screens for competitive mode now display the name of the game in the browser tab title.

Stability/architecture

• Centralized logic which computes gamespace limit evaluations
• Made architectural improvements to how EF core logging is configured
• To better assist with issue identification, gamespace limit errors which occur due to the practice mode single-gamespace limit have been differentiated from gamespace limit errors which occur to game configuration in competitive mode.
• The developer exception page is now disabled by default in dev environments. It's still always disabled in other environments.

What's Changed

• v3.10.3 by @sei-bstein in #260

Full Changelog: 3.10.2...3.10.3