BitPoint - Unique point buying game

[galaxyAbstractor]

Hello,

For some time I've been working on a small project of mine - a simple and (hopefully) unique game. Let me present you BitPoint
How it works
You start of by buying a point in the field (by clicking anywhere). Each point costs a small amount of BTC (the cost per next point increases for each point, if first point costs 0.005btc, next point will cost 0.005+0.005btc). The bitcoins from each point is added to the jackpot. Each day at midnight UTC a random point is selected on the field with a certain radius. Every point inside this radius is a winner and will split 70% of the jackpot amongst them. 20% of the jackpot goes to the next round and 10% to me (the jackpot number on the frontpage already takes this into account and that is the actual amount that will be split!). If no one wins, 100% of the jackpot goes to the next round.

Please note
I can't take responsibility for lost bitcoins but I will try to work something out if something goes wrong, except if you accidentally sent to wrong address, I can't do anything about that. Please make sure you send to the correct address listed after you confirm the points and to send the correct amount. If you happen to send the wrong amount or to send to an old bitpoint address (an address is unique to every purchase), it will be logged in a table, but you'll have to contact me to get the refund.

Points are confirmed once 2 confirmations is in on the transaction. If you don't pay for the points within 2 days the order will be removed. Please don't try to send a payment to the address after this.

There might be bugs with it, if you find anything please contact me either here on the forum or on the email listed on the about page. Include relevant stuff, like transaction hash for missed payments or what you did when it bugged out etc.

Current settings
Fieldsize: 960x500
Point cost: 0.005+previous point cost for next point. Example: 0.005 + 0.01 + 0.015 if you buy 3 points.
Winner point radius: 25+125*2^(-0.08x)px where x is number of points
Round time: 1 day, ends at midnight UTC
Jackpot split: 70% to winners, 20% to next round, 10% to me (galaxyAbstractor).

I need feedback on this about stuff that isn't working, what might need to be changed and such. I made this mainly for fun and to learn, so don't expect some serious large winnings .

Who am I
I am galaxyAbstractor, a computer science university student from Sweden. I like to code and game with friends, and I mostly spend my days at the computer (wow I suck at introductions, this sounds so generic lol). I've been interested in bitcoins for a while, I found it a couple of weeks after it's released but removed it as I didn't understand it at the time (I'm an huge idiot ). When I found it again in 2011 I was obviously angry about removing it the first time, but oh well who would have known. I used it for a while but got bored once bitcoin crashed down to $3 or something and recently got interested again. I don't really know what more to say. Also, I'm not a good designer, the site design started out decent but went a bit downwards after a while

[galaxyAbstractor]

Radius should be 25+125*2^(-0.02x)px where x is number of points from now on. This might change a bit in the future

[ThaddeusB]

Interesting idea; I gave it a try. 

One suggestion: add a feature to clear your (unplaced) bets.  I misclicked and had to reload the page to clear it. I'm sure I won't be the last.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I can't take responsibility for lost bitcoins

Really? If your site gets hacked, or if you accidentally spent all the coins on satoshiDICE, then it's your responsibility.

[galaxyAbstractor]

I can't take responsibility for lost bitcoins

Really? If your site gets hacked, or if you accidentally spent all the coins on satoshiDICE, then it's your responsibility.

I will try to replace lost coins in my best effort, but at this time I cannot guarantee having enough bitcoins or money to replace everyone if there is a lot of points. There doesn't seem to be much interest right now so I could probably take the blow to my own money. I wont be spending anything of the jackpot amount on anything because that would be a stupid thing to do.

If a user sends wrong amount of bitcoins or to an old payment address, I will refund that back if they just contact me about it and can prove that they sent it. That's no problem because the bitcoins will still be in the wallet.

I know it doesn't sound good, but that's how it is. I'm a student and I can't finance it if a lot of bitcoins are lost, unfortunately.

Interesting idea; I gave it a try. 

One suggestion: add a feature to clear your (unplaced) bets.  I misclicked and had to reload the page to clear it. I'm sure I won't be the last.

Gonna work on that later this week

[galaxyAbstractor]

Interesting idea; I gave it a try. 

One suggestion: add a feature to clear your (unplaced) bets.  I misclicked and had to reload the page to clear it. I'm sure I won't be the last.

This has now been fixed, you can now deselect points.

A topic of provable fairness was brought up to me and I'm unsure a bit of how to implement it. Currently the point is chosen by using PHP's mt_rand(). A suggestion was that I preselect random points and release their hashes in advance, but that means I'll always know where the point will be and that isn't good because that could defeat the purpose. I thought of fetching the latest transaction hash from blockchain.info at the time of the draw and somehow base the point location of that, but I'm unsure. Any suggestions on how to tackle this problem?

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Fetch the next block at a certain point, and use the hash of that.

Also, why do costs for points go up the more I pick? You do realize I can just buy it multiple times and not pay the extra amounts?

[galaxyAbstractor]

Fetch the next block at a certain point, and use the hash of that.

Also, why do costs for points go up the more I pick? You do realize I can just buy it multiple times and not pay the extra amounts?

I thought of fetching the next block, but I'll probably have to disallow buying points a bit before picking the point so you can't buy the right point in the last minute. I'll look into that.

About the cost going up: Originally I didn't want to make the point cost too high for no one to play, but if I had it too low it would be too easy to just buy up a lot of points all over the field. Say the jackpot is 1BTC, if the price of the points stayed at 0.005BTC, you could buy the entire field for less than 1BTC, tho your chances maybe still are low. But the idea was not to let a single person buy so many points that it's certain victory. It's bound to IP too, so if you buy 10 points, if you wanna buy more the point cost would still account for the 10 points you already bought. Sure, you could use a different IP to buy, but there is no easy solution to that. In short, I didn't want users discouraged by a high price for 1 point with a low chance of winning, but I didn't want people buying up the whole field for cheap.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

Fetch the next block at a certain point, and use the hash of that.

Also, why do costs for points go up the more I pick? You do realize I can just buy it multiple times and not pay the extra amounts?

I thought of fetching the next block, but I'll probably have to disallow buying points a bit before picking the point so you can't buy the right point in the last minute. I'll look into that.

About the cost going up: Originally I didn't want to make the point cost too high for no one to play, but if I had it too low it would be too easy to just buy up a lot of points all over the field. Say the jackpot is 1BTC, if the price of the points stayed at 0.005BTC, you could buy the entire field for less than 1BTC, tho your chances maybe still are low. But the idea was not to let a single person buy so many points that it's certain victory. It's bound to IP too, so if you buy 10 points, if you wanna buy more the point cost would still account for the 10 points you already bought. Sure, you could use a different IP to buy, but there is no easy solution to that. In short, I didn't want users discouraged by a high price for 1 point with a low chance of winning, but I didn't want people buying up the whole field for cheap.

Seriously?

It is not certain victory, the more points you buy, the more chances of you winning it, but also the more you lose if you don't win.

It's.. as ridiculous as satoshiDICE not allowing people to bet on 97% because "the idea was not to let a single person [..] that it's certain victory".

Anyone who buys multiple points on the same IP is doesn't do maths. You are going to get an EV of <0.01 if you buy enough points.

[galaxyAbstractor]

I mean, if the jackpot would reach say 2BTC. If the price of each point is 0.005, you could buy 200 points for 1BTC. 200 points. On small jackpots sure this wont work.

But maybe you're right, I maybe miscalculated everything and am bad at getting activity. I guess it doesn't matter.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

I mean, if the jackpot would reach say 2BTC. If the price of each point is 0.005, you could buy 200 points for 1BTC. 200 points. On small jackpots sure this wont work.

But maybe you're right, I maybe miscalculated everything and am bad at getting activity. I guess it doesn't matter.

Sure you could but there is still the chance that you just lost your 1 BTC.

If you don't seed your jackpot and it is all from player points, then a 2 BTC jackpot would mean there has being 400 points, and your chance of winning 3x is 33.33% assuming no house fees.

[mathkid]

can someone just say how much a pt is worth?

i mean let me say it like this

how much is 100 bit points worth??
or better yet   how many pts at the general going exchange rate does it take to make 0.1 btc   ?


thanks

[lexxus]

When I click the link it shows me empty "Index of /" 
The idea is nice but it seems OP hasn't designed it carefully enough and implementaion is far from being production ready.