Bitcoin Forum

I've implemented a feature in Dragon's Tale, the Bitcoin-based Casino MMORPG, that gives free Bitcoins, with no catch.
http://www.egenesis.com/soldier2.jpg
As you explore, you'll come across Soldier statues like the ones shown above: Click on one and "Ask for a Gift." They'll often give a 0.01 Bitcoin gift, but sometimes a 0.05, 0.50, or even occasionally a 5.00 Bitcoin gift, no strings attached: Unlike other casinos, these are real gifts that you can immediately withdraw. Of course I hope that you'll use the gifts to experience all the unique games that we've built into Dragon's Tale, and I hope that you'll even bring a few Bitcoins of your own some day to play.

Dragon's Tale runs (natively) in Windows, Linux, and OSX, and can be downloaded here (http://www.dragons.tl).

Why?

Do you have to pay to play the game?

Sounds cool, I'll have to check it out.

You don't have to spend any BTC, Dollars, Euros, or Yen to play Dragon's Tale. The software is free, no credit card is required, truly no catch. We do ask for an email address, but don't require one.

We're the guys behind "A Tale in the Desert," which has been around for almost 8 years, won all sorts of awards, and is respected in the MMORPG world for our unique social and crafting gameplay.

Dragon's Tale is a new kind of game - it's a cross between an MMORPG and a casino. Imagine a casino where some of the games are luck-based, and some are skill-based, and where you increase your character's level up by gambling.

I'm giving away free Bitcoins because I think that some people will try the games at low-stakes, and then want to play for higher stakes. But it bugs me when companies say "free (whatever)" and then there's all sorts of fine print that makes it not-free.

The gifts are small, but they're real, and if people like the gameplay itself, the game should be successful.

Get me to show up for the free Bitcoins, then I stay for the high stakes gambling...clever.

I can already tell this game is going to be dangerously addictive.

Tried to play using the linux installer. On launch is get

Fatal: Cannot write to output file: egenesis.lc

Also won't let me run it as root as a 'fix'.

It seriously is! already... good thing I'm sick and don't have anything better to do.

I wanna ask a question to people that aren't the makers and others that have a direct interest in making this popular; can i trust this binary to not clone my wallet or secretly spend the 'coins in it?

Just run it boxed?

Doesn't seem to have cloned my wallet, though I played it long ago. Seemed very legit, if homemade (as far as game quality). Still, not bad :)

I presume you keep your wallet encrypted.

I lost too many coins playing this lol

This thread is misleadingly titled.

It should be "Free Bitcoins to be found in a game you can play if you download and install some software."

How long does it take usually to accumulate one whole 'coin with the statues?

Bitcoins trickle out at the rate, currently, of about 1-3 BTC/day to the statues in total. If you go behind the big pagoda, you'll see a faucet (a little homage to Gavin's original Bitcoin Faucet) and you can click on it to see how many coins are in statues total, and how many are in the system in total.

Every day it will distribute about 1/14 of whatever is in the faucet, to the statues.

It distributes 24x7, at random intervals, so there's no "best" time to hunt for coins. If a given statue has more than one denomination of gift, it will always offer the highest one. A good hunting strategy is to seek those statues in out-of-the-way locations, because they tend to be searched less often, and the larger gifts sit there longer.

I'll be releasing a new Dragon's Tale game "The Great Wall," later today. Takes about a minute to learn, and you get to show off your best plays. I'll demo it at 2:00PM EDT.

I had some fun with The Great Wall today, my best play was only around 7 pictures though. :) Still, this is a nice concept, I'll be surely dropping some spare change into this game if I'm feeling lucky (punk).

Make sure the install directory (the one containing elaunch) is writable. elaunch will download a file egenesis.lc from one of our servers, and then look inside that to figure out what stuff in that same directory to patch. (Executable and library files.)

I was installing the game on my friends mac and got the exact same message. I was trying to open the files directly without putting them into a folder that had write permissions. Just copy the files to a new folder and you should be fine.

I gave it a shot.

It was a slow start. I didn't know how to run for the longest time, so it was excruciating to get anywhere. Also, the camera is a pain in the arse. And the constant "You can't move there" dialogs (even though I disabled them). But after I got a few BTM from the statues I played a few of the games and ... it was pretty fun! So, overall, a neat little thing. Worth trying if you want to just relax for a few hours after work.

Only major problem now, is, I withdrew 0.13 BTC last night before logging off. The transaction showed up on my wallet, but 10 hours later at it has no confirmations at all. :( Guess it's really low priority.

It looks like fun, but at a whole bitcoin to play most of the games (and a bitcoin being worth upwards of 6 USD at this point), it's a bit more expensive than I want in a game. I think you need to update the prices to match the massive growth of bitcoin value.

There are much cheaper games than that. Kicking a bench only costs .001btc if I'm not mistaken.

I agree, of course there could (And should  ;D ) be high stakes, but at this point, I think most games should have bitcent options. :)

Takes just a few minutes to learn, it is pretty cool.


@teppy I'm heading off the main island (bottom of screen), will there be another area there?
Edit: 2 main sections so far, any others in Dragon's Tale?

We're working on a new island which will reveal the story of Dragon's Tale as your character progresses. If you'd like a preview, contact me in-game (I play "Di"), and I'll warp you to the new island.

as can I. I'm, well, noitev in game.

Just an update on the free Bitcoins in soldier statues: I've made it so that a given soldier won't repeatedly give Bitcoins to the same character. There were already controls in place such that each character had to rotate through different soldiers, so this is sort of the reverse of that.

So far it's has worked well - as I write this, every soldier now has a gift of at least one Bitmill (1/1000 BTC), and quite a few have gifts of 2 or 3 Bitmills. Gifts of 10, 50, 500, and 5000 (5 BTC) happen from time to time, as well.

We're going to do some small-stakes Beetle Racing today, so come grab some gifts and try to multiply them if you're inclined!

uses pretty much cpu power.. a miner?

I will try this , will let you know how it went.

That would be clever, but no, just a 3D game engine. :)

Were you doing Beetle Racing with us yesterday? I just finished a really nice, clean interface to that game. Hoping to get some races going this afternoon.

@teppy I tried to download the game, but it was going to take 4 hours for a 60MB download  :(

Is this a safe app?as in no malware,trick,wallet cloning or data theft of ny kind?
Does this absolutely require no spending of ny currency or no info like email address required?
Can I use this without giving up ny of my info?

If u guys can check this 4 me as I need 2 keep my MBP (my personal 'work' laptop) and PC clear of ny iffy apps (if thats the case with this) then it'll help me a lot.

Is this a safe app?as in no malware,trick,wallet cloning or data theft of ny kind?
Does this absolutely require no spending of ny currency or no info like email address required?
Can I use this without giving up ny of my info?

If u guys can check this 4 me as I need 2 keep my MBP (my personal 'work' laptop) and PC clear of ny iffy apps (if thats the case with this) then it'll help me a lot.

its clean and you can put fake info if you want to. i think all you need is an email, but its never really used

I have a few questions on this Teppy

I've found myself on the recieving end of a problem where even though I haven't gotten much btm,the same soldiers who I go to (all of them) just won't give my anything after 3 days so I'm on the recieving end of a problem where I'm not getting hardly any while I see some players routinely get 50btm or above. Why is this?

2.Im on the recieving end of where te statues don't 'reset'on me after like more than 3 days and counting while I witness some players getting many btms from the same statues sometimes.This type of issues is ruining my experience and enjoyment of this game.If these issues aren't fixed then ppl like me will be forced to abandon this game altogether.If im asked 2 be a beta tester,then please make it worth my while.Like microsoft did by giving me free copies of win 7 during the testing period (well fully usuable betas actually)

3.Is it possible that a protection system originally designed to keep things 'fair' can be over zealous as well?

I also want to suggest some features that will help people like me:
1.If I lose a lot,there should be a feature for new like players,or inexperienced players like myself, where they can reclaim what they lose, but in exchange for this, they can't gamble for a while so that only players with problem gambling can enjoy their game, while every1 else can play as normal if the feature is optional by switching it off/on. If this is implemented then more ppl will 'try out' the game with minimal risk unlike now.The reason I say n exchange for not gambling if you choose this feature is because I think we should deter problem gambling while allowing every1 else to just play without the feature. I mainly want this to serve as a cooling off period if thing get hairy and I feel that this should be complementary to the bet limit we have now. I want this game to be enjoyable for all (from the n00bs and inexperienced players to the serious pro gamblers)

2.There should be a built in help feature in the players menu (like in windows) where they can read all about the games from a central interface as this will improve the user experience.
3.Add a features suggestion system to make it easier for players to suggest what they want to change in the game,add or remove things.

Can you tell me if:
The feature can be implemented?
The feature is viable to implement?
you have other comments about my suggestions so far.

Thank you

damm I was playing a tale in the desert years ago this take me back

not even email is needed. It's nice if you forget password but can play without.
I used only uname/pwd and works fine

edit: email might be needed. just went to dragon's tale and the message said that asking for gifts from statues (local faucet) requires email. i don't know now. not asking for gifts, can not tell.

Answers to a few questions:

ptmhd: An email address is requested but not required. We'll only ever use this to tell you about Dragon's Tale news, and other games that we (eGenesis) make. So, you may get a message when we release A Tale in the Desert VI, for instance.

Film2240: The soldiers do limit how often you can return to them, and they require you to visit many different soldiers before returning. Check the wiki for tips on coin-hunting from soldiers. For instance, you may elect to skip smaller gifts and collect fewer larger gifts: the soldiers pay attention to the *number* of gifts that they give you, not the size. You can also make a small deposit - a tenth of a Bitcoin bypasses probably hours of running around to soldiers.

As to the idea about letting you reclaim large losses within X minutes, it's just too hard to make the math work: If the game worked this way, you could place a single large bet; if you win, withdraw the BTC. If you lose, reclaim the bet and try again.

Hi Teppy,
Thanx 4 the clear and concise answers to my questions.Can u link to the wiki please?

As for reclaiming losses,it probably is impossible anyway with the math involved,unless you make a completly different game based on different math/programming code.Some times it's better to deal with the losses.Also i never knew that just isn't possible with the math used in this case.I think the best advice I can give n should follow myself is this,if you can't deal with losing money,then you probably shouldn't be gambling in the first place.I learnt this the hard way in game and with £8 worth of lotto ticket scratchcards (which is why I gave those up afterwards). I think I'll stick to the non-gambling games such as herb hunting,feed the animals or get gifts from soldier statues from now on in the MMORPG.

I'll play but only if you promise to SPAM my wallet address.
Bitcoin - where getting spam'd for free stuff is good!