Bitcoin Forum

After falling in love with the idea behind BitCoins, I wanted see if I could incorporate it into a flash project.
I came up with this (currently small) flash bitcoin tournament game.

The idea is fairly simple.
The player pays an entry fee into the jackpot to play.
At the conclusion of the tournament, the pot will be split amongst the winners.

If things go well and theres some interest behind this, I'll probably flesh out a more defined site offering heads up and smaller scale tournaments.

If youre interested, check out the Beta site here:
http://pigames.dyndns.org (http://pigames.dyndns.org)
This test run will be finished at 11:59PM EST time on May 6th

I'd strongly recommend playing a few practice games before actually playing in the tournament to get a feel for the game.

The game itself is very simple in design. Its a trivial math game. The objective is to click on the blocks to create a sum of 10. The faster you do this, and the more blocks you use, the higher your score.
The game ends after 1 minute.
I tried to come up with a game that focuses more on 'skill' than any type of RNG.

I'd recommend pausing your miners if playing this from your mining machine. It uses both Box2D and a particle engine (CPU heavy).
I'm also going to be releasing this game into the wild to drum up some BitCOIN awareness (my Facebook games generate around 250,000 views a month).

As for the backend....
Im using a 3rd party leaderboard system for keeping track of scores.
The user ID will be the payout address for any winnings.
I'm also using a 3rd party tool to 'hide' the scores from memory hacks.
The swf file itself is domain locked, encrypted and obfuscated.

There is no account system and no need to supply an email (its completely anonymous) - just make sure you supply the right payout address.

If anyone has any questions feel free to PM me or email me at nick [at] handvoodoo [dot] com

-Also..
As the main page says, dont ever refresh your browser after submitting a payment or address, everything is handled in the Flash Player, no need to refresh anything, ever.

I played this yesterday, and I really like the idea.

One feature request : I'd like to be able to see the top few scores without having to pay to play again. If my score is winning I have no reason to play, but I have no way of seeing this until I actually play. If I'm losing, I'd like to know in case I want to try and top the current leader(s). Thanks!

PiGames, I like your style and I haven't even clicked on your link yet...

...checking it out now.

Edit: Wow that was fun, I'll keep an eye on it :)

Pretty good point.
Ideally the scores would be hidden until you played..but because this design is still in its infancy..theres really no way to notify past players when their score is bested.

To this end I added a little leaderboard slug to the main page so you can see the current leaders and keep track of your position.
I also cleaned up some stray CSS that was causing a display bug (may need to clear cache or F5 the page to get the new one).

Thanks for the feedback  ;D

One thing I don't like about the actual game play, is that too much text is constantly getting in the way of the blocks in the middle.

Especially when you're on a hot streak, you can barely see the middle blocks at all.

Good idea, good execution. A little pricey maybe. We need bitcoin farkle, can you do this?

The next tourney will be adjusted to combat the sudden spike in BTC price.
Also, I'm pretty embarrassed to say that I had to google Farkle =/
The game itself would be easy enough to make (maybe ~4days) but the multiplayer tie in would take quite a bit longer.
Ill definitely tinker around with it and see what I come up with.

Yeah I'd say 0.05 or 0.1 would be good, get more people playing.

2 Days left.
Current prize pool up to 6.5btc

Could you help, I should be in second place but don't know why it's still not listed...


http://imgur.com/dRtmu

Sent 0.5 BTC to: 1KhsCbpVn1P46G97tsDjVpq6h2qMFKXZr1
(20 confirmations so far)
My payment address: 14DzDW8t8vryuUcWGDwttP5MZc5oJuNoyv

My score: 26200

Hi crazypig.

I looked into this and it's a display error with Mochi Boards not updating the 'all time' scores with scores from this month.
I've kept my own (not displayed) database of scores for backup reasons and I do show that you did infact score 26200 and have paid the entry fee.

I've updated the main page with the current top 3 players and their scores/payout in place of the mochi widget until the display issue gets updated. You may need to refresh to page from cache to view the updates.

Rest assured a score will never be missed.
I'm using mochi boards for the display, since its pretty and 'real time'.
Scores are also sent to a private database (just in case) and
each time a game is played I am emailed with the players address, what wallet they sent .5btc to and what they scored.

3 copies may be overkill but I'm paranoid about data.

Sorry for the confusion.

It costs .5 before each game that you want to count, right?

Correct.
The practice version is just a free copy of the game so you can become familiar with it before playing in the tournament.
The scores that are submitted for the practice are ignored.

The 0.5 is admittedly a bit steep.
I had published everything when btc was well below $3.
The next round will be somewhere in the realm of 0.1 or lower to attract more competition  :D

Did you hardcode the 'payout' column of this table?

The flash says the pot is 7.5 btc, so first place in the table should show 3.75, not 3.5.

Its hard text I threw in yesterday..Ill probably take that column out.
The amount in Flash is correct (7.5btc) and the payout would be 3.75 for 1st.

....actually..ill remove that column now =p

(edit)
Changed the page, may need to f5/refresh
Also added a 10% payout to third place.

That's cool. I only thought it was steep before I realized I was going to win, now it seems reasonable :)

But yeah, lower might be better next time. Especially if the game has high volatility because then you'll need many entries to get your best score in there.

lol..im assuming thats you with 32k...very nice score.
I updated the page with the new leader(s).
The jackpot's now @ 8.5btc (that last btc is waiting for 1conf before displaying in flash).

I guess the scores are timestamped and you'll send payment after the time is up? Is that manual or will it just happen at midnight?

Also, a javascript (or flash) countdown timer would be handy for aliens unfamiliar with EST.

Actually I looked up 'EST' on timeanddate.com and they must have detected my Aussie IP address because they just showed me Sydney EST.

I just played my first pay game and got ~31100 the tx has 2 confirms, but I'm not listed at the bottom. How long should it take? For the deadline it's just when the game was completed right? Don't need a certain number of confirms before midnight?

I just played 3 practice games all which scored above 30,000, so I thought "okay, time to put in another paid entry".

So I payed 0.5 and got 22000 something :(

So I payed another 0.5 and got 26000 something :(

So I payed another 0.5 and got 24000 something :(

I then thought "this is crap, I can't play under pressure" but decided to pay for one more.

So I payed another 0.5 and finally got the dream run I was hoping for... 35680 :)

Over 1200 practice games played, lol.
As for the questions..
The bottom area listing highscores is not automatically updated..I'm placing the new values in now.
As for the deadline.
The server will be shutting off @ 11:59PM EST tonight. So roughly 13 hours from now.
You do not need to have the confirmations in by then, just the score submitted.
I'll send out the winnings shortly after midnight, once all the transactions in the wallet are confirmed and all the scores are confirmed.

On a side note..something thats not mentioned on the FAQ page...
If I discover any tom-foolery or wanna-be hacks in the scores, I'll be refunding the entire balance of the wallet in .5 blocks (so if you paid to play 4 times you will get 4 transactions of .5btc when everything's paid out). I've taken precautions against this..but just-in-case.

Holy crap! How is that even possible?!

Maybe later you can construct a video replay of that game using the incoming data that you said you recorded! That would be very cool to watch.

It's definitely possible to score that hi.
Technically the highest score possible (perfect game) is 71760.
I say technically because you have a better chance at winning the lottery than getting the blocks needed to pull that score off.

Unfortunately, I was able to accomplish a ridiculous score (99630), which isnt humanly possible by some memory shifting/hacking.
I'm going to run on the assumption that if I can do it..anyone can.
That being said, I closed the server and will be issuing refunds for everyone who paid to play.
If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM or email.

Was definitely a fun, learning experience.
Refunds will be going out within an hour.