Cooldowns were tracked per kind ({move,hint}), so a hint ad and a move ad
did not see each other: after a hinted move's ad the move timer was still
zero, and the next plain move fired an ad immediately — two ads within a
minute, under the cooldown. Track a single shared last-shown time; the kind
only selects the required gap (hint 1m, move 5m, vs_ai 30m) measured from the
last interstitial of any kind. A hint can still fire on its shorter gap
(D30's "independent" hint cooldown), but never stacks a second ad within a
cooldown.
Tests: a hint uses the shorter shared gap; a move does not stack onto a
just-shown hint ad.
Taking a hint fired the post-move interstitial immediately, when the hint's
preview tiles landed — interrupting the turn and reverting the board to the
rack on the ad's close while the hint stayed spent. Move the trigger to the
move confirmation: a hint applied this turn marks it (hintUsedThisTurn), and
the confirmed play fires the hint-kind interstitial (its own cooldown)
instead of the plain move one; the marker clears on any turn boundary
(applyMoveResult) so a hint-then-pass does not leak into the next move.
e2e: taking a hint fires no ad; confirming a move does.
Interstitial video after a confirmed play or a hint, VK-only, offline
banner-only. The gate is client-mirrored: the backend puts the config
cooldowns (global 5m / vs_ai 30m / hint 1m) and a suppressed flag (the
no-ads / no_banner gate, same as the banner) on Profile.ads via adsFor;
the client self-gates on a per-kind last-shown time in localStorage, with
the VITE_ADS_STUB contour "ad fired" toast. Never fires after a pass,
exchange or resign. maybeShowInterstitial + vkShowInterstitial; the codec
and gateway transcode carry the ads block.
Also retires the deprecated accounts.hint_balance / paid_account domain
usage (expand-contract, code only — the columns stay for a later DROP so
image rollback stays DB-safe): drop the Account fields and their scan, the
dead account.SpendHint, account.GrantHints and the admin grant-hints
action; the in-game hint display now comes wholly from the payments hint
benefit. Banner eligibility and account merge no longer read the legacy
flags.
Tests: ads.test.ts (the client-mirrored gate), the codec ads round-trip,
the gateway ads transcode test, and a profile ads-config integration test
(cooldowns + suppressed under no-ads / no_banner). Docs: PAYMENTS §10 (+ru)
interstitial, the decision amends, backend README, the plan.
Ilia Denisov