mpp-server-dev2

Multiplayer Piano server for MPP.dev

Quick Guide

This server is both a websocket server for MPP clients and an HTTP server that serves the website itself. If you want to disable the website, you will have to disable file requests through means of code.

Description

This is an MPP server currently in development for MPP.dev. It is roughly feature complete, supporting many of the planned ideas already, but certain features that some users might want to use for another site are currently unimplemented, namely a more complicated scheme for the antibot system.

This server uses Bun - not just the runtime, but the internal libraries as well. This is because Bun provides easy access to uWebSockets.js, a speedy implementation of WebSockets that heavily outperforms the old ws module that is used so frequently in other MPP servers and MPP-related code.

I have tried to comply well with Brandon Lockaby's original MPP server so that this server stays widely accessible for any frontend implementation, including the ones used by MultiplayerPiano.net, LapisHusky's frontend, and the frontends used by nagalun's server, as well as the smnmpp and mpp.hri7566.info frontends.

Of course, most of the ones I have listed probably won't work yet because I haven't implemented a way to switch between token authentication and legacy connections yet.

Regardless, this server is meant for speed, stability, and compatability.

This server uses Prisma as an ORM for saving user data, and is currently setup to interface with SQLite. I may be switching this to PostgreSQL in the very near future, so don't get too comfortable with SQLite.

Brandon's server originally used MongoDB for storing user data, but there are too many reasons to list why it isn't fit for this project here, so I will link this video by Theo instead.

Naming

This server is a rewrite/reimplementation of the MPP.dev server specifically, which was called mpp-server-dev in its final stage of development.

The dev in the name is only referring to the name of the website itself, not to the fact this server is still in development.

In the future, this might just be renamed to mpp-server or mpp-server-dev again with the version v2.0.0, given that the original server is no longer in development.

This has always been the future intention of this project.

List of features

• Chat
  • Original chat filter by chacha and Brandon Lockaby
  • Commands for debugging or administrative purposes
• Piano Notes
  • Uses the same NoteQuota implementation from the client
• Usernames/colors
  • Allowing color changing can be toggled in the config, similar to MPP.com
  • Default user parameters can be set
  • Configurable ID and color generation methods
• Channels
  • Channel list
  • Channel settings
  • Options to keep channels forceloaded
    • Configurable
    • Ability to forceload at runtime
• Rate limits
  • Borrowed from Brandon's GitHub Gist account
• Brandon-style admin messages
  • Remote name changing
  • Color changing
  • User flag settings
    • Ability to change the volume of users' notes (affects note velocity)
    • Chat muting
    • Rate limit bypasses
  • Channel/User-targeted notifications
  • Server-wide/channel-specific/user-specific notifications
• New admin messages
  • Restart message
    • Triggers notification on every connected socket, then shuts down after 20 seconds
    • Server must be setup as a pm2/docker/systemd process for automatic restarting
  • Ability to change tags
    • Similar to the MPP.net server, but uses a Brandon-style admin message
  • Ability to rename channels
  • Chat clearing similar to MPP.net
  • Channel forceloading message
• YAML configs
  • Automatic reloading of configs during runtime via file watching
  • Interfacing handled by JS Proxy objects
• Templating on frontend
  • Handles changing things on page based on config
  • Requires the use of mpp-frontend-dev to function properly

TODO

• Token generation
  • Frontend implementation
  • Token generator
  • Test if they even work correctly
• Permission groups and permissions
  • Probable permission groups: owner, admin, mod, trialmod, default
  • Setup tags for each permission group
  • Implement permissions into rest of server
  • Probably already needs to be reworked, given the weird state of how tags work
• MPP.com data message
  • Implement based on spooky.js given there is no official documentation
  • This could be useful for only a few things, but still good for debugging
• No cussing setting
  • Decide on "lyrical notes"
• Full server-wide event bus
  • Channel events
  • Socket events
  • User data events
  • Permission-related events
• Redo ratelimits
• Test fishing bot
• Remote console
• Modify frontend to use templating
  • index.html
  • Load configs on client
  • Tags
    • Update tags live when changing from server console

Backlog/Notes

• Use template engine instead of raw HTML?
  • Change frontend files at runtime?
  • Split script.js into multiple files
  • Implement tags as a server option, toggles code on frontend
    • Same with color changing
• Reload config files on save
• Expose API?
• Client type identification?
  • Check for certain css?
  • Check for different messages?
  • Check for URL?
  • Notifications for server-generated XSS?
  • Somehow check for templating, maybe with the existing httpIPCache?
• Migrate to PostgreSQL instead of SQLite
  • Likely a low priority, we use prisma anyway, but it would be nice to have a non-blocking database
• Implement user caching
  • Skip redis due to the infamous licensing issues
    • fork?
  • Probably use a simple in-memory cache
  • Likely store with leveldb or JSON
• Socket events could all be handled in one emitter
  • Maybe use one external emitter so the functions aren't copied on each conncetion
    • Does JS/Bun use symbols for such a thing already?

How to run

This might seem like a lot of reading, but it's worth reading through everything here. There's a lot of info that you could miss, so take your time! Also, don't expect these instructions to stay the same forever. Because this server is in an early pre-release state and is in active development, there will be frequent changes in this repository.

0. Setup

• Install bun

  $ curl -fsSL https://bun.sh/install | bash
  

• Clone the repository and setup Git submodules

If you are forking this repository, you can just setup a new submodule for the frontend (instructions not included), however, templating will likely not function properly with this approach unless you implement it yourself.

If you would like to use a different repository for the frontend, the files go in the public folder.

In any case, if you would like the templating features and want the frontend to change based on the server's configuration, setting up git submodules is practically required for full compatability.

$ git clone --recursive https://git.hri7566.info/Hri7566/mpp-server-dev2

2. Configure

   • Copy default environment variables

   $ cp .env.template .env
   

   Edit .env to your needs. Some variables are required for certain features to work. Most of this is self-explanatory if you have set up other large projects.

   • DATABASE_URL: Database URI for prisma to connect to (as of right now, this is required to be a sqlite path)
   • PORT: TCP port the HTTP/WS server will run on
   • ADMIN_PASS: Admin password for the server
   • SALT: Hashing salt for creating general-purpose IDs/user IDs
   • COLOR_SALT: Hashing salt for creating user colors

   Obviously, you can also set those in your shell environment instead, if need be.

   • Edit the files in the config folder to match your needs

   For token authentication, there are a few options to consider. In config/users.yml, you can set tokenAuth to a few different values:

   • jwt: Use JWT token authentication
   • uuid: Use UUID token authentication
   • none: Disable token authentication

   If you are using UUID token authentication, the server will generate a UUID token for each user when they first connect. This option is relatively simple and could be considered less secure.

   If you are using JWT token authentication, the server will generate a JSON Web Token for each user when they first connect. You will need to generate a key in the file mppkey for the server to use. This can be done by running the following command, given openssl is installed:

   $ openssl genrsa -out mppkey 2048
   

   For antibot/browser detection there are also a few options to consider. In config/users.yml, you can set browserChallenge to a few different values:

   • none: Disable browser challenge
   • basic: Use a simple function to detect browsers
   • obf: Use an obfuscated function to detect browsers - this is not implemented yet

   The basic option only sends a simple function to the client, and the obf option sends an obfuscated mess to the client.

   Token authentication is only supported on most frontends newer than 2020.

3. Install packages

   $ bun i
   

4. Setup database

   $ bunx prisma generate
   $ bunx prisma db push
   

5. Run

   The main entrypoint is in src/start.ts.

   $ bun src/start.ts
   

   If you would like to run in development mode:

   $ bun dev
   # or
   $ bun run dev
   

Background Info on Feature Implementation Decisions

To avoid various controversies or mass confusion, I will attempt to explain why certain features were implemented any why certain things may be missing in this section.

General Explanation

Multiplayer Piano (MPP) was originally developed by Brandon Lockaby from 2012-2020, and this server was the original MPP server and was written in JavaScript for the Node.js runtime. Brandon didn't share details about it often, and it had many unknown features and basically has no documentation, so most of the admin features based on this server are guesswork or based on tiny snippets of code acquired from various sources. The only other people known to be associated in the development were chacha and This server was hosted on Linode under the domain www.multiplayerpiano.com:80 until some time in 2019-2020, when it was upgraded to https and moved to www.multiplayerpiano.com:443.

After that point, in late 2020, the rights to the site were sold to some user who later revealed themselves as "jacored", but they have been unhelpful in all regards. As much as I would like to make peace with them, I have decided they are simply not worth it due to neglecting my help in the past, and threatening to sue me for alleged DDOSing or copyright infringement, call my local police, and even threatened to get some of my good developer friends arrested. So... past 2020, we don't have much information about the server's changes.

Due to those reasons, I have decided to deem the original server 2021-onwards as "jacored's server" or similar. This is because it is a lot less stable and less like Brandon's original efforts to keep things running smoothly, and there is a transition point where it was no longer running on Linode.

Somewhere around 2015-2017, there was another server developed by nagalun (aka Ming) called multiplayerpian-server on GitHub. This server was written in C++ and was largely based on Brandon's server. It was used for piano.ourworldofpixels.com and was forked for various other clone sites, including mpp.terrium.net. This server had various admin features of its own, but due to its lack of popularity as well as documentation, it isn't very useful for this project, so not many things have been implemented from it.

In the same time frame, there was also another server developed by BopItFreak called mpp-server on GitHub. This server was written in JavaScript and resembled Brandon's server in more ways. It included some of the same admin features using the same protocol, but it was not very stable and had many bugs pertaining to untested code. This server was used as the basis for this repository. Due to this, BopItFreak's work is also credited, whether it be required or not, as his work had a lot of technical influence on this project. BopItFreak's personal server was hosted at augustberchelmann.com/piano/.

In 2019, I (Hri7566) forked BopItFreak's server and fixed a lot of the issues with it, and maintained it for a few years, but given it didn't grow much, it was eventually slightly abandoned. My fork was hosted at mpp.hri7566.info.

Also around 2019-2020, I helped Foonix create a server known then as multiplayerpiano.net, hosted at multiplayerpiano.net. This server was heavily based on my fork of BopItFreak's server, but it slightly diverged when I added features to each site. The site was renamed to multiplayerpiano.dev due to lack of care for domain maintenance on Foonix's part. Since the original server for this site was called mpp-server-dev, this is where the dev2 in the name of this project comes from.

In August 2020, a server was developed by a user named aeiou (now known as LapisHusky) called MPPClone, hosted at mppclone.com. This server was eventually handed off to multiple other users, and is still up and running to this day at multiplayerpiano.net. This server is likely what people call the "genuine" server now, since it is community-driven, the frontend has been maintained a lot more than the original server's, and many features were added to both the server and the frontend to keep moderation and user experience in check. This server is now the most popular to clone. Due to this, I have decided to implement most features from the MPP.net server here. None of the source code from MPP.net is used in this repository.

Around 2021-2024, multiple servers in direct correlation with each other were developed by Someone8448 called smnmpp or similar. These servers were closed source and roughly based on MPP.net.

Other servers were developed and forked by other users, but none of them are necessarily popular enough to be used as a reference. This is not to say they are bad, but the fact they don't implement features in different ways makes them roughly equivalent to MPP.net/MPP.com.

Brandon-style admin messages

MPP.com used an admin message system that could be considered fairly outdated by today's standards. This server aims to implement all of the known features of this system.

Based on info from other users, these admin messages required a single password to be sent to the server with an admin message. This is insecure for a number of reasons, but is implemented for the sake of compatability with older scripts.

Note that not many of these scripts exist publicly, and all of the known admin messages are from those scripts.

This likely causes these messages to be inaccurate to the original MPP.com admin messages.

Also note that this currently isn't able to be used on MPP.com because either very few people know the new password, the system doesn't work the way it is currently implemented here, or it was removed from MPP.com's server code.

These admin messages included the following:

• "name"
• "color"
• "user_flag"
• "notification"

From the aforementioned scripts, user flags were also found and implemented in this server.

Token authentication

MPP.net used two different token authentication systems in the past.

The first system was a UUID token system that would generate tokens with random UUIDs. This was used for a few years until it might've been deemed insecure and was replaced with JWT tokens.

The second system is a JWT token system that is used to this day. This system is a bit more complicated, but the tokens contain more information than the UUID system.

Both systems are used to authenticate users, but the JWT system is likely slightly more secure.

Due to this, both systems have been implemented, and, when either system is enabled, tokens from any other system are allowed to be used, mimicking MPP.net's behavior.

Browser challenge (Proof of Work/Bot detection)

MPP.com did not check for bots very well. Brandon implemented various methods to detect proxies and VPNs, but it wasn't very effective. These methods included checking lists from ip2proxy and even portscanning users sometimes, but it wasn't very reliable and portscanning isn't really a justifiable action.

MPP.net checks for bots using an obfuscated function that is sent to the client. This obfuscated code that checks various things in the browser to determine if it is running in a browser or another runtime, such as Node.js, Bun, or raw V8.

There was another method previously used by MPP.net for proof of work, but it was far too unreliable and caused issues relating to CPU usage on the client. This caused the developers to switch to the generic obfuscated function method used nowadays.

Someone8448 also implemented their own antibot system, but there are no plans to implement it in this server.

Color changing

Although this feature is likely self-explanatory, this is worth mentioning due to the fact this isn't enabled on MPP.com's server. Most other servers including MPP.net allow color changing.

Color changing is simply whether clients have the ability to change their color in the userset message. The original server was capable of controlling the served HTML for the modal UI related to changing user settings.

Chat filtering

MPP.com and MPP.net use separate chat filters.

MPP.com's chat filter was very basic. It only blocked the terms "AMIGHTYWIND" and "CHECKLYHQ" from chat. It also had an unused channel setting called "no cussing" that would have been used to block chat from certain channels, but it was never implemented server-side.

MPP.net's chat filter is more advanced. It blocks many terms that may be considered offensive. This chat filter isn't planned to be implemented on this server, but it may be implemented in the future if there is enough interest. This server also has the aforementioned "no cussing" setting, and it is fully implemented server-side and enables more strict chat filtering.

Notifications

MPP.com sent notifications to clients for certain reasons. These notifications technically have the ability to be used for malicious purposes, but are controlled by the server, thus not much of a concern.

The fishing bot script would send notifications with the html property set, containing images. This is technically XSS, and can contain <script> tags that can be used to execute malicious code.

These notifications may or may not be used by this server, especially in the future, for detecting certain things on the client for various reasons including bot detection and legacy features.

Tags

The features relating to user tags in this server are toggleable for the simple reason that they don't exist on MPP.com. Sending this data has no side-effects on older clients, but it is still optional for the sake of full compatibility with bots written in other languages, perhaps.