BitStrat.com (pure skill gaming) - Project updates

[romsa9]

I am looking for people in interested in trying out a new (maybe first?) Bitcoin strategy gaming website: www.bitstrat.com.
Currently running on testnet coins, so feel free to bet big .

Stuff to look out for:
- Poor game balance
- Lag, unreasonable delays
- Any behavior deemed strange
- Login/Logou session issues?
- Bitcoin wager transfer issues (negative balances? missing coins?)

Feedback very appreciated romsa9@gmail.com

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[videos4btc]

I'm so confused lol

[romsa9]

I'm so confused lol

About how to play?
I've been meaning to put up a detailed guide.

Basically you defend your castle with towers while attacking the opponent's castle.
If you get 10 creeps past their castle, you win the game.

[bitspill]

This looks quite awesome at first impression, love strategy games.

Will be playing and return with some feedback.

[bitspill]

After playing with you for a while it feels very well done and just needs more balancing tweaks, a tower upgrade system, and more players

[infobiactrader]

I would definitely play this game for money I love tower defense style stuff.  Only problem - it takes forever to find anyone to play with.

[TheUntitled]

Would love to try this out properly, rather than play with an AFK opponent, but it looks like it could be really fun. I could see myself playing this a lot.

If anyone else is having trouble finding an opponent, look out for me on there! My username is The_Untitled1, most of the time I'm not AFK.

[Tymer]

Wow! already addicted! im DYING to bet mBTC :3

[romsa9]

Wow! already addicted! im DYING to bet mBTC :3

I am glad to hear it

After playing with you for a while it feels very well done and just needs more balancing tweaks, a tower upgrade system, and more players

I would definitely play this game for money I love tower defense style stuff.  Only problem - it takes forever to find anyone to play with.

Sometimes two people come on at once and the get matched up instantly, and other times player sit and wait for a partner, eventually go afk, then someone finally joins the game, playing with an afk.
Looking into a better system.

Thank you for everyone's feedback. Very kind of you I am thrilled that people are liking the game.

Definitely needs a 'speed' increase. Someone came on and quit because it was simply too slow. Will raise the rate income comes in at.

Updates:
- Tower placement now shows tower radius
- Shortcuts: 1,2,3,4 to place towers quick.

Near future:
- Speed increase (income rate, creep speed)
- Limit # of creeps on the gameboard at any given time - issues with spamming.
- Quickplay system: Thinking of having a 10-minute in-game timeout (kick and forfeit), and a 1 minute cursor movement checker for game ready screen.

Far future:
- Tower upgrades, tower selling?
- More towers, more creeps.
- Game manual for the TD newbs.

[TheUntitled]

Wow! already addicted! im DYING to bet mBTC :3

I am glad to hear it

After playing with you for a while it feels very well done and just needs more balancing tweaks, a tower upgrade system, and more players

I would definitely play this game for money I love tower defense style stuff.  Only problem - it takes forever to find anyone to play with.

Sometimes two people come on at once and the get matched up instantly, and other times player sit and wait for a partner, eventually go afk, then someone finally joins the game, playing with an afk.
Looking into a better system.

Thank you for everyone's feedback. Very kind of you I am thrilled that people are liking the game.

Definitely needs a 'speed' increase. Someone came on and quit because it was simply too slow. Will raise the rate income comes in at.

Updates:
- Tower placement now shows tower radius
- Shortcuts: 1,2,3,4 to place towers quick.

Near future:
- Speed increase (income rate, creep speed)
- Limit # of creeps on the gameboard at any given time - issues with spamming.
- Quickplay system: Thinking of having a 10-minute in-game timeout (kick and forfeit), and a 1 minute cursor movement checker for game ready screen.

Far future:
- Tower upgrades, tower selling?
- More towers, more creeps.
- Game manual for the TD newbs.

Don't forget the XP system I suggested in our game earlier! I think that'd solve some balancing issues between newbs and pros.

Also, some keyboard shortcuts for creep spawning would be nice. It's kind of tedious when you're trying to shield a soldier in a group of wolves or rats to get it right.

[Tymer]

And you should add a "How to play" page/link for newbies.

and you should add a bitcoin donate adress because this game is f*cking awesome!

[StreakfortheBTC]

Im waiting for a player to join, someone come play?

[Tymer]

Im waiting for a player to join, someone come play?

Sure i'll go in a second!

[Elwar]

I am currently beta testing another Bitcoin strategy game (bitfantasy.com) but will give yours a try, the two are different concepts but the more Bitcoin games the better.

[Tymer]

You should add a quick affiliate progam that gives the user some bitcoins (mBTC or lower) directly into theyr Bitcoin adress so more people start knowing about the website

[Elwar]

A quick response after my initial trial run.

Quite fun. I assume graphics will come later but the concept is quite nice.  Perhaps have an AI to practice against.

As someone with extreme lag at times I think it required that I refresh when I lost connection, which I believe kicked me out of the game I was playing and I had to start over with a new game. I would have expected to lose connection but come back into the same game (however poorly I would be getting my butt stomped, but still).

[romsa9]

SOrry guys, As many of you may have noticed the server would kick you after 1 minute,,

This has been fixed now

I was tryin out a new model for wuick games.. but there was a flaw which i will need to look moredeeply into

[rammy2k2]

looks good

[defaced]

Pretty fun game man, i love it! Any plans for a mobile version?

[Elwar]

Bad things start happening when you send thousands of rats in all at once...

For me it starts repeating the same thing over and over like deja vu on the screen without all of the rats.

[romsa9]

Pretty fun game man, i love it! Any plans for a mobile version?

It works on iPad quite well, would need to optimize controls for tap though.

Bad things start happening when you send thousands of rats in all at once...

For me it starts repeating the same thing over and over like deja vu on the screen without all of the rats.

hmm probably has to do with data packets arriving late. Thanks, Will look into fixing it.

[romsa9]

UPDATE:

New Creep Controls (Optimized for fast decisions and combo-attack strategies)
Shortcuts for building: 1,2,3,4, for when you really need to build 10 towers in a row asap!
Players now get kicked for inactivity, if the game is active, players will forfeit after being inactive for about 5 minutes.
Inactive means navigating away from the page, etc.

[TheUntitled]

UPDATE:

New Creep Controls (Optimized for fast decisions and combo-attack strategies)
Shortcuts for building: 1,2,3,4, for when you really need to build 10 towers in a row asap!
Players now get kicked for inactivity, if the game is active, players will forfeit after being inactive for about 5 minutes.
Inactive means navigating away from the page, etc.

Loving the new look of the creep spawning, but there are a few issues with it: mainly that you've removed custom amounts. I said it was tedious, not unnecessary. Now you can't send out anything between 1 and 10 creeps. My suggestion would be: in addition to having the buttons there which spawn set amounts, add an input box where you can put custom amounts. Adding it after the 100x button would be best.

It would also be cool to be able to set custom amounts for every single type of creep, making combo attacks easier.

Another suggestion would be to rearrange the layout of the game screen a little. It's tedious to have to scroll down to select a creep or a tower.
I was thinking of rearranging it in this way from left to right:

Tower Selection, Your Screen, Enemy Screen, Creep Selection

Where as now its:

Your Screen, Enemy Screen
Tower Selection, Creep Selection

Really liking the way this is going, though. I look forward to our future matches together.

[Tymer]

Wow looks awesome!

Going to try it in a second!

Good job

[Elwar]

Loving the new look of the creep spawning, but there are a few issues with it: mainly that you've removed custom amounts. I said it was tedious, not unnecessary. Now you can't send out anything between 1 and 10 creeps. My suggestion would be: in addition to having the buttons there which spawn set amounts, add an input box where you can put custom amounts. Adding it after the 100x button would be best.

It would also be cool to be able to set custom amounts for every single type of creep, making combo attacks easier.

I agree, with the new setup you have to click on a creep 3 times if you want 3, then it spaces them out where there is not much advantage over just sending 1.

A combination would be great too. But doable with fast clicks.

[romsa9]

UPDATE:

New Creep Controls (Optimized for fast decisions and combo-attack strategies)
Shortcuts for building: 1,2,3,4, for when you really need to build 10 towers in a row asap!
Players now get kicked for inactivity, if the game is active, players will forfeit after being inactive for about 5 minutes.
Inactive means navigating away from the page, etc.

Loving the new look of the creep spawning, but there are a few issues with it: mainly that you've removed custom amounts. I said it was tedious, not unnecessary. Now you can't send out anything between 1 and 10 creeps. My suggestion would be: in addition to having the buttons there which spawn set amounts, add an input box where you can put custom amounts. Adding it after the 100x button would be best.

Added custom spawn back.

Also added spectator mode .

Total creeps limited to 1000 now, to avoid mass spams. In the real world you can only produce so many rats at a time, no matter how much money you have .

Done for today, going to watch some Mad Men, ill be on if anyone wants to have a game.

Once again thank you to everyone who has been providing feedback - it's very valuable, and you guys have great ideas. I look forward to perfecting this game and by the time it launches you all will be experts at it ,

[Tymer]

@Offtopic -> You should provide some BTC to the beta testers after the game is done XD (Joking!)
__________________________________________________
@Ontopic -> Maybe you should add different maps?
Same background n' stuff but other paths!
And a option to choose a map on the start game !

[tspacepilot]

I tried it on ff on debian wheezy and it worked ok.  I say ok because twice I got kicked for 'inactivity' when as far as I could tell, I was being active.  Sorry I didn't report back right away so I can't tell you what my session id was.  Pretty fun game though. 

[tspacepilot]

@Offtopic -> You should provide some BTC to the beta testers after the game is done XD (Joking!)

Hey, it wouldn't hurt my feelings at all.

[romsa9]

Haha there will be rewards! I can't let my first loyal fans and testers get away with nothing

On a side note, I was thinking of opening up a sort of investment service - where anyone can invest bitcoins and get a return based on profits.. sort of like owning shares. Probably no official voting rights, but definitely influence.

also there's an IRC channel: FreeNode #bitstrat idle&support

[romsa9]

Update:

There are now player rankings. (Get on there!)

Coming Soon:

New Maps (easy, hard, and everything in between)
Real Bitcoin Transactions (no more testnet)

[TheUntitled]

Update:

There are now player rankings. (Get on there!)

Coming Soon:

New Maps (easy, hard, and everything in between)
Real Bitcoin Transactions (no more testnet)

I know I'm a bit late, but I just tried out the spectate mode. It's great, but I'd suggest allowing spectators talk in the chat. Perhaps with a [SPECTATOR] tag, and an option where players can choose not to see what spectators say, if spectators get irritating. Something like a /mute command.

Also: I - for some reason - keep getting logged out and then can't log back in again. Not sure if there's anything you can do about that, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. It doesn't give me an error message or anything, just refreshes the page.

Anyway, time to get myself to the top of that leaderboard.

[romsa9]

Update:

There are now player rankings. (Get on there!)

Coming Soon:

New Maps (easy, hard, and everything in between)
Real Bitcoin Transactions (no more testnet)

I know I'm a bit late, but I just tried out the spectate mode. It's great, but I'd suggest allowing spectators talk in the chat. Perhaps with a [SPECTATOR] tag, and an option where players can choose not to see what spectators say, if spectators get irritating. Something like a /mute command.

Also: I - for some reason - keep getting logged out and then can't log back in again. Not sure if there's anything you can do about that, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. It doesn't give me an error message or anything, just refreshes the page.

Anyway, time to get myself to the top of that leaderboard.

There was an issue with session storage. Sessions would expire after 6 minutes. I now made them persist for 20 years, as it's dangerous if players get logged out mid-game. Hopefully no one has a 20-year long game or they may run into a session issue.

[romsa9]

NOW WITH SOUND EFFECTS!!!!

[Tymer]

NOW WITH SOUND EFFECTS!!!!

COOOOL!

[Lillith81]

I'd be happy to?

[romsa9]

I'd be happy to?

lol http://bitstrat.com/ <--



Made a reddit post if anyone cares enough to read it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1kn5n8/bitcoin_tower_defense_is_nearing_launch/

[bitspill]

socket.io.js seems to be exceptionally slow at downloading and without it nothing on the page works

https://i.imgur.com/QIGMWn5.png

EDIT: Image was a little large for the thread so changed to a link
EDIT Again: 2 hours later and now the loading of socket.io.js and loading.gif simply fail and nothing works

[bitspill]

Why the missing 0.0001 BTC, is that an error or a fee?

[romsa9]

Why the missing 0.0001 BTC, is that an error or a fee?

https://i.imgur.com/iJJacUA.png?1

The available amount means what you are able to withdraw, minus the transaction fee. If it's confusing I can apply the fee silently. But there's a 0.0001 BTC txn fee.

[romsa9]

It's back up now.

It appears the server was hit hard last night.
There is now a load balancer to keep traffic throttled.

[TheUntitled]

Hmmm... Not too sure about the sound effects. Some of them work really well, others not so much. If you like I can go on with you and help you weed out sounds that don't work.

Also, it's worth reporting there are loads of spam accounts. I've been trying to get a legitimate opponent for a while now but I always get an afk player whose name consists of random numbers and letters. Perhaps add email confirmation as a requirement when registering so as to combat this?

[romsa9]

Hmmm... Not too sure about the sound effects. Some of them work really well, others not so much. If you like I can go on with you and help you weed out sounds that don't work.

Also, it's worth reporting there are loads of spam accounts. I've been trying to get a legitimate opponent for a while now but I always get an afk player whose name consists of random numbers and letters. Perhaps add email confirmation as a requirement when registering so as to combat this?

Those aren't spam accounts, those are quickplayers. (People that hit quickplay before making an account/signing in)
They are people with no account, so they are generated a random name.

[bitspill]

Server is busy, try again in a few!

Aww... I just won 2 games in a row went to start a new one and site is busy.


EDIT: Back online.

[romsa9]

In case anyone is following development: This morning, Bitstrat switched from testnet coins to real bitcoins.

A game has already been played for real coins today, (0.1 BTC) yay!

Also, the game balance has been modified:

Tower damages and prices were doubled. (proportionately)
The game creep capacity per path is 500. (down from 1000)
Higher income on weak creeps (rats 2.5% ROI) ... lower income on stronger creeps (destroyer 0.5% ROI)
Same loot (prize for killing a creep) for rats (50% of cost) ... lower on stronger creeps (30% of cost for destroyer)

[romsa9]

NEW MAP!

[romsa9]

Hey guys.

So the site had been getting some decent traffic. Some days it's busy, other days it's not that busy.

My question to the bitcoin community is.. what do you look for in a Bitcoin gaming site to feel comfortable enough to play for real bitcoins?

A summary of security features? A code review?
SSL?
Email verification?

How does one gain trust among the Bitcoin community?

Would love the feedback before diving in to developing additional games.

Thanks for everyone's support

[bitspill]

This is a funny community everything is a scam until proven otherwise.  

Personally I would like to see consistent up time and fast page loading times.

The gambling category of services must be "provably fair" which does not apply here due to the lack of chance but rather pure skill.

If players are to keep a balance on the website 2 factor authentication is needed to prevent unauthorized withdrawals or bets.

I'm not sure what else you could do beside continue onward and overtime build trust within the community

[blblr]

I'm on right now if anyone wants to play! 

[monbux]

Looks like an amazing game, when will you allow us to play with real coins!?

[TheUntitled]

Looks like an amazing game, when will you allow us to play with real coins!?

You already can! Just click on the Account tab to find your deposit address.

[romsa9]

While watching the first few bitcoin games (I played one too and lost lol) .. It has become obvious that using the current system, bitcoin transaction fees make micro-transactions very wasteful. Playing a game for 0.001 bitcoins means the winner will get 0.001 - 0.0005 - 0.001*3% = 0.00047! That is a very crappy return.

To fix this.. I will implement off-chain transactions for transfers between players. So bitcoin blockchain fees of 0.0005 will only occur upon withdraws in the next update. This will allow players to keep more money after every game they play, allowing them to play more, bet more, and, basically not waste 0.0005 BTC every time they play. Those tiny fees add up, especially in micro-transactions.

With the new scheme, you will be able to play games for mere Satoshi wagers without incurring fees until you actually withdraw funds.

So you can bet 0.001, and the winner will get 0.001 - 0.001*3% = 0.00097, a much, much better return and better incentive to play.

So in the mean time.. it's really just profitable to play large-wager games.

It's my honest observation, so stay tuned, and although i would love you to play wager games at this time, but for your own benefit, wait for the next update coming in a week or so .

- rs

[GCInc.]

Some very nice client side technology there! Graphics could be improved. Thumbs up 

[td services]

Is game server down?  I haven't seen any game rooms since last night, site was down for a while nut came back up, now my account and balance show, but game room just keeps "loading"

[TheUntitled]

Is game server down?  I haven't seen any game rooms since last night, site was down for a while nut came back up, now my account and balance show, but game room just keeps "loading"

Can't speak for romsa but I've had a lot of contact with him over the past couple of weeks, and he hasn't responded to me on Skype since Friday.

There are quite a few issues with the server, mainly that if there's too much traffic it just flat out crashes, so all we can do is await his return.

[romsa9]

I'm here. Sorry I've been steady testing a new micro transaction implementation. Everyone's balances will remain untouched if server goes down. Last time the server wasn't working was because blockchain.info was having server issues. The game service is a bit dependent on blockchain.info at this point, will look for a better wallet management solution in the future.

[td services]

Worked a couple of days, now back to just loading and spinning in game room page. Too bad, I enjoyed playing it and had some bitcoin in the account to start wagering, but after a couple of days of site hanging, probably won't bother to check back much. Also withdrew coin in case server goes offline entirely. Tried both Firefox (preferred) and Internet Explorer - same results, hangs waiting for game rooms to display.

[romsa9]

Worked a couple of days, now back to just loading and spinning in game room page. Too bad, I enjoyed playing it and had some bitcoin in the account to start wagering, but after a couple of days of site hanging, probably won't bother to check back much. Also withdrew coin in case server goes offline entirely. Tried both Firefox (preferred) and Internet Explorer - same results, hangs waiting for game rooms to display.

I think an update is long overdue to address the downtime of the service.

So earlier this week, I thought it wise to do a full upgrade as Natty (the Linux version running at that time) is no longer supported, and it was becoming hard to find necessary packages for it.

After the update, everything was re-installed, including a new version of Node.js (0.10.17) to replace the old (0.8.x). Everything was upgraded smoothly, it seemed. But the webscokets are unable to communicate over the proxy now, for some reason..

Long story short.. after long sleepless nights spent debugging every possible problem, it has been narrowed down to the fact that the proxy is doing something strange with the websocket data.

At this time, the site works as it should at bitstrat.com:8002 (bypassing the proxy), but not at bitstrat.com.

If anyone understands websockets I would love some help.

I am quite embarrassed this had happened, and apologize very much to everyone who has been following this project. I hope you all know that development will continue past these rough patches, and that the project is still very much alive.

With that said, I am also looking for help from and interested JS developers to come on board, as my hours in the day are becoming quite limited. (Starting work in September).

Thanks again for sticking around. I assure you this is just a small bump along the way.

Access the game temporarily at: http://bitstrat.com:8002/ until proxy issues are fixed.

[td services]

Thanks for the update. It is a good project. It would be a shame to see it lose momentum with all the work you've put into it. Maybe a system status notice would be good so users know what is happening.