I don't know why or how it could or would be, so probably someday when I re-visit that part of the code I will have a try at adding a check of reserves too. First though I want to wait and see whether what I have done so far actually works, as previous attempts to check whether you are building type 4 (Croplands) mysteriously failed to work. As I have not figured out why they did not work I do not know whether the current attempt will similarly mysteriously fail. Not much point trying to elaborate it with a chack against reserves if the check of what you are actually building still isn't actually working yet.

-MarkM-

Whoa, you were consuming 11 of the 10 units of crop you were growing.

Somehow you had gotten into a crop supply deficit. I hope that was an artifact of my various attempts to fix the problem allowing you to somehow slip by or something.

-MarkM-

The trigger was your previous post plus me reading it.

Stand by for complaints from newbies who suck their granaries dry due to not growing any crops, because I did not unravel the warning from the convoluted set of conditions and reasons why not to build etc, I simply commented out the compare part that made the initial decision that there was not enough food being grown. That leaves nothing for the warning to be triggered by so, with no warning, some idiot some day will eat every scrap of food in their village and... aha... maybe the real reason for all that logic was the lack of a starvation consequence for running out of food! Hmm...

I think I will have to make sure population start dying, thus leaving less workers to work the various things, thus making the player choose what to dismantle to free up a labourer to go home and die...

...Or have another go at unraveling the logic and getting a proper warning in there. The thing doesn't seem to understand when crop fields are what the player is trying to build, and my every attempt to tell it has mysteriously failed so far.

-MarkM-

EDIT: Okay, one more try. I moved the check for type of thing being built into the place that checked how much crop was being grown so now the warning should again be able to be triggered but hopefully in this part of the code the variable purporting to identify the type of thing being built might actually do so, allowing the check whether a crop field is being built to maybe work this time. Cross fingers touch wood.

Yes, I have been trying over and over again to get it to exclude cropland from that, as it was just blindly saying it without even checking whether you were in fact at that very moment trying to build cropland.

-MarkM-

Well for one thing I think the crop income isn't shown correctly. I got around this problem by spending 5 of the gold he had given me (for reading the message he sent me) on a one week 25% crop bonus. That bonus actually increased yields by closer to 50%. I think there ar a few people eating food who aren't being counted and also what they eat isn''t counted, in the display of total yield per hour and total consumed per hour. I think this because searching all over for .25 seemed to indicate that unless you are somehow imagined to have an oasis or something the bonus is done in the code as plus 25% and thus it must be the total crop that it is multiplying by 1.25 must be higher than what we are being shown as our total crop yield.

Also, it seems that at about 3 or 4 crop left per hour in the display, it thinks there is not enough food. So I think there must be 3 or 4 consumption not being shown, or some reason why it thinks 3 or 4 per hour is not enough.

Most things you try to build want a certain amount of crop per hour once they are built, is your yield so low that it is not enough for the hourly needs of what you want to build?

You only get 6 fields for crops, what you are building is a level of improvement, you can build a second level onto a field you already built up to first level.

Did you get to the quest where he gives you gold yet? So far everyone who hit that problem simply threw gold at it.

I will go look now though to try to figure out what it thinks it is doing. I recall one of the changlelog entries in the Devana game has something about a bug possibly along these lines, maybe Devana derives from some common ancestor code, I will check the Devana code too to see if I can find what exactly they fixed.

-MarkM-

EDIT: I am pretty sure the programmer miss-typed, it was checking $crop == 2 which seems stupid since if 2 isn't enough why would 1 be enough? So I changed that to $crop < 2. Its possible it was meant to be <=2 but if so maybe some other hint will occur hinting we need to revisit it.

Edit again: It seems to rule out villages intended to rely on trade for food. In Freeciv and other civilisation-building games part of the usefulness of granary/foodbox is you can survive a while of eating from stores. Hmm.

Weird. The whole thing is all .css and maybe even .js, I only just in the last hour or so came up with a trick for actually displaying images myself from HTML without all the .css and .js stuff vanishing the image.

I want to mess with that image anyway, since I cannot figure out how to make it clickable (except on the index page, which has its footer in the html instead of having the .css and/or .js do it).

...Aha, I now see why they had that stupid chunk of blank space pushing the footer below "the fold" on the registration page. Maybe I'll find it and make it less large an expanse, on my screen it had seemed to precisely push the footer out of site and only just push it enough to get it out of sight.

I will put it back, as I think it is not the logo that is your problem but the entire footer area.

Try it now, and let me know if any other pages have that problem. I hope none inside do as the footer-pusher thing seems only to have been used on external pages, I hope that was because it is not needed inside.

-MarkM-

Yeah misleading has its drawbacks. It shouldn't be necessary unless the games come to the attention of some busy-body who doesn't even play but doesn't think games with whatever terms we purport to have should exist, or should not be reachable from their part of the internet (like they never heard of Netnanny or something, sheesh...)

Part of this worry about busybodies is the idea of maybe not using bitcoins directly as cashable-out officially. Oh sure there might be some places out on the net where one could trade Ixcoins or I0coins or Solidcoins or Devcoins or Groupcoins etc etc etc for cash, but I was kindof thinking that maybe we could even enhance the perception of Bitcoin by treating Bitcoin like it is "real money", so kind of put it aside somewhat from all the "game money" varieties.

So basically people would be playing for all kinds of "chips" or "tokens" aka "coins", and what they do with them between themselves outside of the game isn't something the game can do much about, other of course than simply not letting people bring their toys into the playground in the first place. Which seems like a somewhat silly idea.

Basically the more kinds of "things" the deeper one can dive away from all the bullsheet, we are trying to play games here, and if we end up liking and enjoying edible toys and toys we can live in and toys we can drive and toys we can fly or cruise around the world in fine and dandy but toys are just not as much fun when a bunch of playground bullies come along and start messing with our enjoyment of our play, games, and toys.

I originally happened upon Bitcoin when I went searching for source code for markets, in order to have all the stock markets on all the Freeciv worlds of the Galactic Milieu be useable as actual playable stock markets, with local companies whose fortunes revolve around the locality of the city they are in and regional companies traded in various markets in a region and even interstellar companies (such as Galactic Mining Corp aka General Mining Corp (GMC) and Galactic Retirement Funds aka General Retirement Funds (GRF)) traded at markets on many planets.

I still don't have market code for that though. I keep looking at Open Transactions but so far its client doesn't even seem to let its user specify which server (IP address and port, or hostname and port or whatever) to connect to so it doesn't seem much use yet even for games.

But hey, the Digitalis D'ydii Cluster supercluster of galaxies is a project that has been on the go since back before the Internet came along so if it takes a while it takes a while...

-MarkM-

It is total bullsheet is what it is. I think they might even have stolen their rules directly from Travian, of which they were making an open source clone. I have not expunged all the crap from the rules yet, I too find actual functionality of the code more important than the verbiage/eye-candy and mostly delegated all that verbiage to the eye-candy category other than when grep Travian brought it to my attention in the course of moving from a "look at me I am a clone of Travian" approach toward a "generic villages game" approach.

Suffice to say I am putting all the working open source games I can find online precisely in order to have games that don't have those stupid "trading of digital collectables is not allowed" rules. Yes, game stuff can be collectable and trade-able, that is what collectable-card games for kids have been all about since way back when. It is silly to let kids trade collectables then go all ape-shit over adults doing the same.

I am particularly fond of blockchain-base digital collectables...

So yeah, those rules either have to be re-written or, and this thought as well as general priorities led to me not re-writing the whole thing on the spot when I came across it, we could figure heck let outsiders think all that crap so they don't come barging in purely to complain that our rules do not include all that crap.

(Maybe even pseudocode for rules display along the lines of "if not logged on, then yada yadda blah blah bullshit crap all the usual junk else hey by the way, we are here to have fun with our digital collectables, wanna buy some blockchain based collectables or hire players as mercenaries by bribing them with your digital collectables? Meanwhile here is all the usual crap the people on the outside see, obviously we aren't particularly concerned about the blah blah fiat money blah blah government money blah blah crap. Oh and by the way if you wanna run robots or browser plugins how much you willing to pay for the privilege in what kinda coin?")

tl;dr Use some common sense fergoshsakes!

-MarkM-

With so many newfangled blockchain-based currencies around lately the Coin Wars are now underway at Villages Online

Apparently the Holy Books of some of these Villagers tell them to store up their riches "in heaven", so the Priests of the Virtual Coins are capitalising on that as a springboard for their Sermons In Praise Of Virtual Coins.

Tired of raiders attacking your village to steal your resources? Virtual Coins are for you!

Instead of storing stuff in warehouses, granaries and crannies, consider selling it to the Priests for Virtual Coins. This way you virtually "store up your riches" in Digital Heaven to redeem later from the same Priesthoods.

With resources being bought and sold for all manner of Virtual Coins, which Coins will prove to be the winner?

Play Villages Online to find out! Champion your favourite Virtual Coin, picking and choosing who to buy and sell resources from, who to give the best prices to, whose villages to raid to punish them for undercutting your prices. Business and Warfare go hand in hand in Villages Online ... will only the strongest Coins survive or will some happy free market trading all coins with all comers emerge? You can be instrumental in determining the outcome, sign up now at  Villages Online and bring the virtues of your coin of choice to the masses!

Note 1:  Villages Online is a development project, you can help steer the path of development as well as the course of history. Currently only three Tribes are implemented, maybe Battle for Wesnoth or some such source has resources we can use to add additional Tribes? Currently all Villages have the same mix of resource fields, maybe it would be nice to create different mixes for villages located on different types of terrain? Maybe Devana has some stuff we can use? Etc...

Note 2: I currently have it pointing at the DevcoinTalk forum since as a development project it seems appropriate that Devcoins be involved. But that forum seems to be un-moderated and full of spam so not sure how much use it can actually be...

-MarkM-

Cool!

Is there a way to tell the client where the server is? I have not been able to find it if it exists, which makes it hard for people to try out the client against whichever server they want to try it with... it looks like you can maybe tell it about a bitcoind but not about an Open Transactions server, which seems a bit strange...

-MarkM-

There was some talk about not bothering to charge interest on the loans because the coins would, or could be caused to, increase in value by as much as the interest would have been.

But then they looked at the other side of it, borrowing coins to loan. Aha. They figured they would be more likely to be able to borrow coins if they offered interest. So, in order to attract investors so as to have more coins to loan, they eventually decided they would go ahead with the plan of charging interest.

So the poor suckers they are loaning to have to be doing something pretty darn lucrative with the borrowed coins since not only are they being charged interest but in addition the amount of stuff they will have to fork over, or the amount of service they will have to provide, in order to buy enough coins to pay the loan would be increasing even without also having interest on top of that.

So basically what you need to do this effectively is a very lucrative opportunity people need your coins to get into, and in order to be able to do it as secured loans you need to be pretty much in control of that opportunity (so you can repossess it if the debtor defaults, and easily repay your investors with the repossessed value/opportunity).

-MarkM-

Two blockchains are already doing very profitable lending, secured loans at that, so much so they are able to offer 1% per week to investors who loan them coins that they re-loan at exorbitant, but secured, rates. So it seems there isn't really anything inherent in deflationary blockchain-based currency that preclused lucrative loan businesses.

-MarkM-

GLBSE is an un-necessary complexity since the coins themselves can be traded directly person to person without need for a "stock exchange".

A simple coin-exchange like bitparking uses, for each currency people might choose to buy the coins with, should suffice.

There is no need for votes and so on, that too can simply be distributed decision-making, andone can do stuff they think might increase the value of the coin, if it does increase the value all holders benefit, if it lowers the value oops too bad.

As for who gets paid for the initial shares, it is going to cost *something* to have a block chain created, however much some programmer is paid to create the initial app(s) is the initial cost of the IPO.

For example the Martians paid the Hackers an undisclosed amount of the Hacker currency (Bitcoin) plus the initial fifty Martian Botcoins. The Brits, Canadians, whoever is behind Bitnickels (the Martians again, maybe? Hackers themselves, maybe? No one seems sure which nation is behind those a lot of nations seem to exchange with them though) and so on also each gave an initial 50 coins in their gernesis block to the Hackers.

If you can get someone to put in the hours creating your initial coins for you free, fine, you have an IPO at cost of zero. Hmm at that price might as well give everyone as many blockchains of their own as they can fit on their machines...

-MarkM-

This can be quite simple really.

Create a blockchain with 21 million (to keep it simple and familiar) coins already mined.

Sell all 21 million coins in one "must sell them all" auction.

Each coin is 1/21000000 share of the burden and pleasure of ensuring they actually have and retain value.

Or leave out the auction. Find the cost of creating the chain. Let us suppose for example we can have them built for a nice round 21 Bitcoins.

Everyone who wants such a chain simply buys one.

Those who cannot afford the full 21 Bitcoin price can divvy up their 21 million coins based on how much of the 21 Bitcoins each of the sharers or the cost paid.

This way we can have many blockchains, some of them shared some of them completely owned, every coin, by one person or entity.

Then each chain's decision-makers can choose their own means of distributing the coins.

Some of them might choose to buy coins of other blockchains using coins of their blockchain if they feel the price is right.

The games is basically to cause your coins to be perceived as having value.

If all the nations of the world buy each others' currencies, does that help make all those currencies seem to have some value?

How is the relative value of different nations' currencies determined? Supposedly that is what markets are for. We would need markets of all currencies against all other currencies. We might want some variability in order to attract speculators who will try to profit from the variations in relative price. On the other hand we might want some that are relatively stable compared to each other to attract businesses that like currency to be relatively stable. So ideally we provide a whole gamut of variation and stability in order to attract a whole spectrum, from those who like extreme instability to those who like extreme stability.

For the latter, we could look at Bitnickels and wonder which currency it should be that they ought, by-and-large, be worth 1/20th as much as.

Are they Martian Botnickels, 1/20 of a Martian Botcoin each? Or Britnickels, worth 1/20 of a Britcoin each? Or Canadian Digital Nickels, worth 1/20 of a Canadian Digital Note each?

Hmm, maybe we can look at fundamentals. There are 21 million Martian BotCoins, 21 million United Kingdom Britcoins, 21 million Canadian Digital Notes, and 420 million Bitnickels. Aha! Maybe a Bitnickel ought by and large be 1/20 of any of those other three types of coin?

But wait! What if Martian BotCoins trade at much higher price (value?) than CDN or UKB? Which should the value of a Bitnickel follow, if any?

See how fascinating a game this can be? How much does the warp speed and cargo capacity of Martian starships relative to whether Brits or Canadians even have starships and if so the capabilities of such starships as they do have affect the relative value of the currencies?

If you have no Martian BotCoins but the Brits and Canadians do, and they use them to buy Martian technology for resale to you at prices denominated in Britcoins or Canadian Digital Notes will arbitrage make sure that the price of Martian BotCoins balances the markups the Brits or Canadians make in re-selling Martian technology?

I am looking forward to finding out. There are 21 million General Mining Corp coins and 21 million General Retirement Funds coins, how many would you like to buy? How many Martian Botcoins are you willing to pay for them? How many Britcoins are you willing to pay for them? How many Canadian Digital Notes are you willing to pay for them?

Will GMC and GRF start charging more Britcoins per coin for their coins once they have as large a reserve of Britcoins as they feel they need? Will they start charging more Canadian Digital Notes per coin for their coins once they have as many Canadian Digital Notes as they feel they need? If Britcoins start trading at higher prices compared to various "baskets" of other currences might GMC and/or RF re-evaluate how many Britcoins they would like to have in their reserves? Or will they, on the sontrary, dump some of their reserves due to basing their estimation of how many they want or need on apparent "value" instead of simply the number of coins or the percentage of the total number of coins?

Currency is such a fun game! Bring it on!

-MarkM-

You won't need to care about what is being mined, you simply get paid to do hashing.

You have no need to know whether the entity paying you USD to do hashing is mining Bitcoins or Ixcoins or merged-mining Martian Botcoins and United Kingdom Britcoins and Bitnickels and Namecoins and Czech Bitcash and United Nations Scrip etc etc etc all at the same time.

You just look who will pay you a steady rate of USD the longest reliable time and the best USD price per hash and let them worry about which coins to mine and whether to merged mine and if so what to merge with what and so on and so on.

You simply selling hashing for USD.

-MarkM-

The value of a const cannot be derived from a variable, so here is how I actually coded it:


-MarkM-

General Mining Corp and General Retirement Funds are two experiments along those lines.

The idea is not to test using a testnet that will simply be scrapped, but instead to test by starting in "games", more or less abstract "virtual worlds" or "virtual environments" and let the fact that real world people and events do interact with virtual world people and events possibly open opportunities for these corps to gradually expand their sphere of influence and the variety of their assets into realms Earthlings regard as less virtual, more tangible. (Both are "real".)

-MarkM-

Do any of them have any DNS, even a no-ip.org type DNS, so we can use them in the DNSseed part?

Also, the IP address array has them coded somehow, I am not sure exactly how, what byte order it uses for instance...

-MarkM-

A blockchain is similar to shares in that way.

When you do an Initial Public Offering of shares, the "early adopters" get the majority of the shares.

That is not considered a bug, it is considered a feature.

Coins of a blockchain are thus basically very easily traded shares.

The big problem of course, is what is it that they are shares of.

This is why so often the idea of having them "backed somehow" tends to come up.

-MarkM-

The run.sh does not work whether I am in its directroy with it or up in the main project directory when I run it, it claims it cannot find the class.

lein run from the main directroy does run it, but once I put my username and password and repeat of password to create a user it says


Which looks like it crashed, but, it doesn't return to the commandline prompt so maybe that is not a fatal error and I now am to wait however long it might take for the i2p network to establish connections and tell everyone about this new user I created or something?

Or is it simply in some kind of loop or just waiting for that thread to finish which actually is never going to finish having in fact crashed?

Should I leave it overnight and see if it has finished making the new user in a few hours? Or just kill it as broken?

-MarkM-