1000 BTC Giveaway – Dragon’s Tale Beta Test Celebration

[teppy]

Over the first weekend of February 6, Dragon’s Tale, the Bitcoin-powered Gambling MMORPG, will host a party to commemorate our forthcoming Beta release with a Grand Opening Party… by giving away one grand in Bitcoins!

We will be giving away 1000 Bitcoins to readers of the bitcoin.org forum (and of course our current players) who sign up for the party and show up to help demo all our new features.

For newcomers or those of you who may not have been by since our Alpha party in October, you’ll find:

    * A modified world design with more games and more to discover.
    * New PvP (Player-vs. Player) games with no house advantage: Smart players can expect >100% return.
    * Multiplayer strategy games with no house advantage.
    * Micro-stakes games with wagers of 1/1000 Bitcoin. Play for hours with a single Bitcoin.
    * Many more skill games in which using a smarter strategy than other players have will give you a big edge.
    * Dragon’s Treasures, bundles of 100 Bitcoins, awarded based on your play.
    * A greatly expanded Level system: Completing Level Quests increases the rate that you earn Dragon’s Treasures.
    * A new mentorship program in which experienced players get rewarded for helping out new players. Even if you don’t gamble, you can still earn Dragon’s Treasures by introducing new players to the game and showing them around.

And on the day of the party, in addition to free coins, expect:

    * A world-wide treasure hunt for hidden prizes.
    * Bonuses for the biggest winners, and even a 100 BTC consolation prize for the biggest loser!
    * Scheduled raffles, giveaways, and other surprises throughout.
    * A chance to own a piece of Dragon’s Tale. Depending on turnout, we’ll be giving away ownership of a single game for a 3-month period. For that game, you are the house.

Why are we doing this?
Obviously we’d love for you to try Dragon’s Tale, fall in love with it, and tell all your friends, but we’re throwing this party because we value the input of and feedback from the Bitcoin community.

We’re trying to create something never before seen with this game. With Dragon’s Tale we’re striving to create a platform that simultaneously embodies the social recreation that MMORPGs provide as well as the excitement known to the casual - and advantage gambler… within the context of this new cryptocurrency that has caught all of our attention.

Are we trying to be something for everybody? Absolutely not. We’re trying to be something novel, exciting, and, most importantly, fun for a select group, and we while we believe that many of bitcoin.org’s readers will be among that group, we know that bitcoin.org’s readers won’t bite their tongues when it comes to giving us useful feedback.

As such, a significant portion of the giveaway will go to those who provide us their comments and critiques in the days after the event. We’ll be providing bounties for the best suggestions, best critiques, and more.

What’s the catch?
Simple – we want your input. This is a no-strings-attached giveaway. You will not be required to deposit any BTC whatsoever to participate, play, or win. But since we’re after your feedback, we need our partygoers to be familiar with the basic operations of the game – anyway, we hope to be way too busy entertaining to answer your questions during the party itself!

So, in order to be invited to the giveaway party, all we ask is that you log in to Dragon’s Tale sometime prior to the day of the event, and learn enough from me (Di) or one of the game’s current Mentors (Ramapithecus, Kat) to explain them to others. We’ll then flag you as eligible for the main giveaway on the 6th. We will schedule game tours and Q&A sessions over the next month, but often we’re online anyway, and are happy show you around at odd hours. We can’t offer tours 24/7 while we gear up for the party, but suffice it to say we’ll make every attempt to accommodate anybody who expresses an interest. We’re a small company but we’re fortunate enough to have volunteers from around the world, so we hope to be able to accommodate everyone’s schedule/time zone.

To sum up:

   1. This February 6th, we’ll be giving away 1,000 BTC to our current players and to bitcoin.org members at our Beta Test Celebration.
   2. No deposit is required. You  don’t need to give any personal information – the surveys will be conducted in-game so you don’t even need to provide an email address.
   3. In order to get invited to the party, all we ask is that you first learn the basics of the game by logging in to the game ahead of time, and get familiar with some of the games.
   4. Orientations will be scheduled as demanded, and we hope to create a schedule that will accommodate absolutely everyone.
   5. Everyone who attends the party will get a party-favor (in BTC of course), and we know that the night will see some big winners.

We’re working around the clock to get ready for our party, so we’re still hammering out the fine points, but please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions in the meantime.

To download the client software, visit:

    http://www.dragons.tl

Hope to see you there!
Teppy

[Cynosure]

Count me in!

I played a long time ago with a friend and it seemed like you had a good concept.   Good to see you've done more development.

Obv., I'll spend the hour to get free bitcoins....just hope nobody else does, lol.

I'll schedule for any evening Eastern Standard Time.  If it helps if I'm more specific then I'll take a tour at 7 Eastern on next Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.  I'll have to install my own computer!

How do I sign up officially?

[Pegasus-Rider]

Prompt please what's the licence of the game client?
I'm also interested whether there are non-IA32 builds and these for other operating systems (*BSD for instance).

Bandwidth and graphics requirements for the game are ought to be clarified too (I, for one, experienced huge lags on a 2Mbps connection on a machine with integrated graphics (running GNU/Linux) )
Otherwise, game looks quite interesting and novel, I wonder what it may evolve into

[teppy]

Cynosure - I see you've logged in, and I think Ramapithecus flagged you for the Feb 6 giveaway, but you can check that by clicking on your avatar, and then Utility/Feb 6 Party Information.

Pegasus - It's a closed source server/client. I've considered open-sourcing it, but to reap the advantages of open-source requires some resources (documentation, increased project management) that I can't spare ATM. It may eventually happen, or may happen with the next client/server architecture that I'm developing. We do maintain a PPC version of the client for OSX.

I'll be in game most of today for anyone that wants a quick tour and flag for Feb 6.

[Pegasus-Rider]

What about GPU and bandwidth requirements?
As for resources for opening the project up, I bet that such an innovative game would attract flocks of developers. I personally would like to help with documentation if you would be kind enough to free the engine at least.

[LucK]

So how do we get entered into this? I downloaded the game trying it now.

[teppy]

Pegasus - pretty much any GPU will work, and bandwidth (once you have downloaded all resources) is around 5kbps. So (not counting the initial download), it will actually work over a modem.

So far just 5 people have signed up, so 200 Bitcoins each on average. I'll be online all day for tours.

http://www.dragons.tl

[teppy]

Right, it's on Feb 6, which is a Sunday. I'm still working out the prize pools, but I'm thinking something like this:

500 BTC split among those that have logged in beforehand and been flagged by an existing mentor. We'll give this out as those on the list log in. So far, 5 people in that group.
100 BTC bonus BTC to the person that wins the most Bitcoins.
100 BTC consolation prize to whoever loses the most.
50 BTC bounty for the best suggestion for the game
50 BTC bounty for best bug-find. (If no unknown bugs are found, I'll roll this over to something else.)
200 BTC worth of other giveaways. I'm creating a bunch of mini-quests, and maybe we'll do giveaways based on who completes the most mini-quests.

[Ramapithecus]

Cynosure - I see you've logged in, and I think Ramapithecus flagged you for the Feb 6 giveaway, but you can check that by clicking on your avatar, and then Utility/Feb 6 Party Information.

Hi folks...  I've lurked for a while but I figured since the party's coming up I'd drop in and say hi.

I know that Teppy mentioned setting up organized tours and for those who express interest here I'll be happy to respond, but so far informal tours seem to work well (I just met two of you in the game today!).  I'm on with some regularity when I'm not busy at work and then again with some frequency in the evenings.

I've been playing at Dragon's Tale for several months now and have really grown to enjoy the game and all its social aspects...  It's been great to see more people come out in advance of the party - I have a feeling it'll be a blast when all the interested bitcoiners show up!

Anyway, Teppy's obviously "the man" when it comes to design, development, etc., but having played for a while and volunteered as a mentor I'd like to think I have a pretty good knowledge of how the game works as well as how to introduce new players to its various facets...

I look forward to seeing you all in the game and at the party in particular!

Rama

[SteveL]

Looking forward to it. Nice mix of luck and skill games in Dragon's Tale, gambling with bitcoins is fun. My handle there is EvilSteve.

[fabianhjr]

count me in, my handle is fabianhjr.(registering right now) Must I be a grownup to participate or be a USA resident?(Just making sure )

Hey, I got this great idea: A shooting range with some balloons.(Skill + luck) One basket has nothing, the second one has 50%, the next one has what you inserted , and the last one has 2.5x multiplier.(Statistically players should not lose a bitcent, you might want to change it a bit xD) They move in a circle(Clockwise or counter-clockwise) and they can switch direction on average each 3 seconds.(And never less than 1 second) The dart itself will take about 0.25 seconds to reach the target and your hand shakes a little bit.(Though, it will still go exactly where you aim) Some testing should be done for the appropriate speed of the wheel. Hope you like it.

[fabianhjr]

Bug report
Title: Screen turns black and freezes on resize for a considerable moment.
Type: B
Num of times tested: twice
Steps to replicate:

• Open the client and enter the game
• On Win7 click on the resize button on the top-right corner

Specs:
ATI Radeon HD 5870
i7 930
6 GB DDR3-1600
Win7 Up-to-date
Client fresh install.

I am newb on bug reporting so I hope this is readable enough.

[hacim]

Hi,

I'm trying to get the game to work on GNU/Linux. I was really happy to see that you have a build for my platform!

However, I think that it might be 32bit only? Because when I try to run elaunch, I get this error:

Code:

./elaunch: error while loading shared libraries: libXpm.so.4: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

Ideally, you could put up a 64-bit version of the game as well as the 32-bit version. If you can't build 64-bit, then it would be really good to note that the Linux version is 32-bit only in the requirements section!

I'd really like to try it out, and was hoping to make it in before the celebration, but I'm not sure I can! If you can make a 64-bit build, I'll be happy to test it.

[teppy]

A 64 bit Linux build is on our to-do list. It probably won't make it in by Feb 6 though. I know that (at least in Ubuntu) it's possible to install the 32 bit libraries to get it to work, but I don't recall which ones are needed. (I use Linux on my desktop, but I'm not a Linux expert.) I'll ask the guy that maintains the Linux distro what is involved.

[hacim]

A 64 bit Linux build is on our to-do list. It probably won't make it in by Feb 6 though. I know that (at least in Ubuntu) it's possible to install the 32 bit libraries to get it to work, but I don't recall which ones are needed. (I use Linux on my desktop, but I'm not a Linux expert.) I'll ask the guy that maintains the Linux distro what is involved.

Ok, good to hear! I do think that you should mention on the Linux download page that the download is for 32-bit, lest you confuse more people like me. If I can figure out how to get 32-bit libraries working, I'll join the celebration, but if not, I guess I've reported my bug and wont be able to report more 

[TORNS]

Count me in too. FYI Kat is a great mentorextremely helpful and kind

[hacim]

Ok, good to hear! I do think that you should mention on the Linux download page that the download is for 32-bit, lest you confuse more people like me. If I can figure out how to get 32-bit libraries working, I'll join the celebration, but if not, I guess I've reported my bug and wont be able to report more 

I managed to fool around and figure out how to get 32-bit applications to work on my amd64 Debian system. In the end what I had to do was to install the ia32-libs package, and then the game would launch!

I logged in tonight and wandered around, tried to get familiar with the interface and such. It doesn't seem like I can do that much, without some bitcoins, but I explored and got familiar with how to move about.  The game is really interesting, I'm excited to play it more!

I looked for someone to give me a tour, or how I could sign up for the celebration, but it didn't seem like anyone was logged in at the same time as me. 

[teppy]

I'll be online today until at least 5:00PM EST. If, say, 3:00PM works for you, log in then. If others want to do a tour at 3:00PM today, just log in and we'll get a group together.

Teppy

[hacim]

Ahh too bad, I wont be able to make it by 5pm EST. If anyone will be on later, or tomorrow, i'll show up!

[teppy]

***PARTY UPDATE***

I’d just like to update everyone on the state of the Dragon’s Tale Beta Party / 1000 BTC giveaway.

We’re still scheduled to have the party on Sunday, February 6th, from noon until 6:30p.m. Eastern (GMT-0500). 
So far twenty-one players have gotten a tour and consequently an invitation from either me or another mentor.  So as of right now, if everyone shows up, each player will get approximately 24 (500/21) Bitcoins to play with. If some don't show up by, say, 4:00, I'll consider those coins unclaimed, and will distribute them in some surprise way. There's still plenty of time to take a tour.

Now, some updates about the game and the party structure I outlined earlier (we’re still working on it so this is subject to some small changes, but expect nothing substantial, perhaps just small tweaks here & there – the structure will be finalized and published before the party).

First, we’ve officially introduced games based on BTM & BTU as well as BTC.  A BTM ("BitMill") is one-thousandth of a Bitcoin, and a BTU ("BitMicron") is one-millionth of a bitcoin.  This will to allow players of varying bankrolls to play the different games as they like.  Look for the soldier statues holding spears of Bitcoins, Bitmills, and Bitmicrons to find the higher- and lower-stakes games.

Regarding the 100 BTC “biggest winner” bonus (and the consolation prize): we will award those based on the largest winning (and losing) streaks. So if you have a big loss and a big comeback, or vise-versa, you could win both prizes.

We’re keeping the specifics of the 200 BTC in “other giveaways” secret until the party, but I’ll give a few teasers here: at random times throughout the party we’ll be giving away coins in the form of coin-showers… we’ll make system-wide announcements a short bit before the event and then everyone who gets to the area can try to catch the falling coins.

Also, we’ll have “party challenges” – tasks for you to attempt to complete during the party.  They range from very simple to very difficult.  Some require you to cooperate and play with others; others will be tasks you can accomplish on your own.  Completing the party challenges serves two purposes.  First, every party challenge that you complete earns you a raffle ticket into the game-lease giveaway.  Secondly, we’ll be giving away bonuses based on completing as many  challenges as possible from a special “Party Quest” - leaderboards scattered around town let you track progress vs. other players.

After the party, you will have the option to fill out a survey, in which you will be able to stake your claim to the two 50 BTC bounties… the 50 BTC bounty for the best game suggestion will be awarded by a panel of eGenesis staff and Dragon’s Tale volunteers; if any previously unknown bugs are found, we will award 50 BTC to the most critical bug submitter – this will be determined by me (the programmer) alone.

I hope this starts to address the questions I’ve been receiving and, as always, please don’t hesitate to ask me here or in-game about anything else.

I look forward to seeing everyone on February 6.

Good Luck!
Teppy