salmonbot

a vkontakte bot implementing some neat text&image-based quest challenges

prerequisites

• a recent version of rust (developed on 1.41)
• an instance of redis accessible on redis://127.0.0.1/

community setup

1. go to settings -> api usage
2. create a new token with the following rights: community management, community messages, photos
3. switch to the long poll api tab
4. enable it
5. uncheck all event types but message received

static data

mkdir static and put all static content (texts and images) in there. if you are not sure what files you need, move along to the next step, the compiler will error out on missing entries

getting up and running

cargo run -- <behavior>

see below for a list of available behaviors

deployment

prepare the server:

1. apt-get install redis
2. vim /etc/redis/redis.conf:
   • navigate to the append only mode section and set appendonly to yes. it is a good idea to keep both AOF and RDB (only the latter is enabled by default).
3. service redis restart
4. create a shell script to make the bot ｒｅｓｉｌｉｅｎｔ to failures:

   #/bin/bash
   
   echo "Starting salmonbot $1, log file: salmon-$1.log (append mode)"
   
   while true; do
     ./salmonbot $1 2>&1 | tee -a salmon-$1.log
     echo "Panic encountered (exit code $?), restarting the bot..."
   done

build the bot and upload it:

1. cargo build --release (might take a few minutes)
2. scp target/release/salmonbot ocean:~

run it:

1. ssh ocean
2. ./hacky-shell-script.sh <behavior>

pray

behaviors

chest

perform perceptual image comparison against a hardcoded hash, additionally preventing the player from participating more than once (the player's id is stored/looked up in a set)

stone

control the player's progression through the challenge by placing their id in buckets (sets) according to the submitted image

the challenge is split into several stages with distinct images. to advance to the next one, the player's id needs to exist in all buckets for the current stage

test

reply with perceptual hashes of submitted images — handy for development and testing