Devcoin

[markm]

Well, I can help with both. What goes into building a scenario, programming? Or is it all written?
And is it a visual game, or is it all words?
I like D'ydii. How does all of this work, I might stat playing when I get a better computer, which I hope to do through Devtome. Right now I have a laptop that can't even handle it's own built in webcam.

Battle for Wesnoth is a storyboarding tool in which you can control which branch you got to by making decisions or by the outcome of scenarios (did you win, did you leavey this dge or that edge type of stuff).

The battles are two dimensional hexmaps with turn-based movement, one side moves all of its units, next side moves all of its type turns.

Crossfire RPG is two dimensional square-tiles type maps, with units as individual characters, monsters, etc, a glorified nethack (graphical nethack) type of thing.

Freeciv is two dimensional map, dquare or hexagonal tiles, with various wrapping possible of map edges to make cylinders or donuts type of topologies, with tiles being maybe about 100 kilomters to 100 miles across in the old days when max map size was 24000 tiles; now that larger numbers of tiles maps are possible an earth sized world could be made using tiles construed as smaller than that I guess. Cities are one tile initially, eventually about 21 tiles (on square tiles, a five by five square of tiles with the corners missing.) Units are of a scale that takes in ancient times centuries for a city to build, in modern times at least a year to build, so like an entire regiment or battalion of tanks or mech inf, a squadron of bombers, and entire Enterpise-class starship or whatever.

The closest we have so far for three-dee would be either to use OpenSImulator or try to cre4ate or adopt free open source models for that crystal space or phase space or crystal phase or whatever game that only releases its source code and keeps its imagery/models/music/sounds etc to itself.

-MarkM-

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[FinShaggy]

Well, I can help with both. What goes into building a scenario, programming? Or is it all written?
And is it a visual game, or is it all words?
I like D'ydii. How does all of this work, I might stat playing when I get a better computer, which I hope to do through Devtome. Right now I have a laptop that can't even handle it's own built in webcam.

Battle for Wesnoth is a storyboarding tool in which you can control which branch you got to by making decisions or by the outcome of scenarios (did you win, did you leavey this dge or that edge type of stuff).

The battles are two dimensional hexmaps with turn-based movement, one side moves all of its units, next side moves all of its type turns.

Crossfire RPG is two dimensional square-tiles type maps, with units as individual characters, monsters, etc, a glorified nethack (graphical nethack) type of thing.

Freeciv is two dimensional map, dquare or hexagonal tiles, with various wrapping possible of map edges to make cylinders or donuts type of topologies, with tiles being maybe about 100 kilomters to 100 miles across in the old days when max map size was 24000 tiles; now that larger numbers of tiles maps are possible an earth sized world could be made using tiles construed as smaller than that I guess. Cities are one tile initially, eventually about 21 tiles (on square tiles, a five by five square of tiles with the corners missing.) Units are of a scale that takes in ancient times centuries for a city to build, in modern times at least a year to build, so like an entire regiment or battalion of tanks or mech inf, a squadron of bombers, and entire Enterpise-class starship or whatever.

The closest we have so far for three-dee would be either to use OpenSImulator or try to cre4ate or adopt free open source models for that crystal space or phase space or crystal phase or whatever game that only releases its source code and keeps its imagery/models/music/sounds etc to itself.

-MarkM-

Well, once I get a better computer I will start playing on one of those. And I will find other people to play it too. Do you earn Devcoins playing, or are you guys just using Devcoins to support it? I'm just wondering, because if you can earn them in game more people would play it.

What do you guys mainly need in order to develop 3D? Devcoins to be more valuable, or a bigger team of developers? or both?
Or is it mainly just about getting more members in game to support it all?

[FinShaggy]

And by 3D I mean like even something a simple as Minecraft, or like old school Runescape.

[markm]

The earning of coins by playing is what we refer to as CPU mining.

We are currently using CoffeeMUD to work on basic economics for that.

Basically there seem to be two main potential sources for coins that the players could earn:

One would be they earn coins that they paid as the fee to play the game.

Two would be they earn coins mined by hardware that was bought with the fees they paid to play the game.

That only addresses basic built in coin-earning as part of the game itself. Obviously if one can find other players who are willing to pay coins of some kind for some in-game consideration or for characters or player-accounts and so on, then one could also earn coins by selling stuff to players.

Basically the higher the price per year to play, the more loot per year there could be to be won.

I say per year because ideally players who actually play the entire year they paid for could benefit from any players who pay to play but then fail to utilise their entire paid-for year, leaving loot on the table, so to speak, for players who do persistently play.

3-D needs money, yeah. One freeciv map tile, about 100 kilometers square, would be about 16,000 OpenSimulator "regions".

A service that stores regions on Amazon storage and only actually fires them up live on Amazon elastic computing servers when players actually enter or come in eyesight of the region used to cost maybe a dime per region per month to store it, and maybe a quarter per hour per region to actually run it, but I think they raised their prices. 16,000 regions just for one tile of a possibly 21-tile city, without even considering the surrounding terrain, would add up to a lot of money to have a complete depiction of an entire Freeciv planet in OpenSimulator!

Currently played nations are only being charged something like 1/16 of a cent per "square mile" that Freeciv reports their nation as owning, or some such figure. (Three or four bucks a month for a single-size-one-city nation, several  thousands of dollars a month for e.g. the Martians of the planet known as M4, or the British of the planet known as B24, or the Canucks of the planet known as C24.)

(M4 is a 4000-tile planet, B24 and C24 are 24000-tile planets, and the nations are only paying for the square miles Freeciv actually claims that particular nation directly controls/utilises. Who will pay for all the wildlands and all the square miles even within nations that aren't counted in that "square miles utilised/controlled" figure? Furthermore we are treating those square miles as if they were square kilometers, that is, a four-by-four block of regions close enough, since a region is a 256 metres by 256 meters square.)

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

The earning of coins by playing is what we refer to as CPU mining.

We are currently using CoffeeMUD to work on basic economics for that.

Basically there seem to be two main potential sources for coins that the players could earn:

One would be they earn coins that they paid as the fee to play the game.

Two would be they earn coins mined by hardware that was bought with the fees they paid to play the game.

That only addresses basic built in coin-earning as part of the game itself. Obviously if one can find other players who are willing to pay coins of some kind for some in-game consideration or for characters or player-accounts and so on, then one could also earn coins by selling stuff to players.

Basically the higher to price per year to play, the more loot per year there could be to be won.

I say per year because ideally players who actually play the entire year they paid for could benefit from any players who pay to play but then fail to utilise their entire paid-for year, leaving loot on the table, so to speak, for players who do persistently play.

3-D needs money, yeah. One freeciv map tile, about 100 kilometers square, would be about 16,000 OpenSimulator "regions".

A service that stores regions on Amazon storage and only actually fires them up live on Amazon elastic computing servers when players actually enter or come in eyesight of the region used to cost maybe a dime per region per month to store it, and maybe a quarter per hour per region to actually run it, but I think they raised their prices. 16,000 regions just for one tile of a possibly 21-tile city, without even considering the surrounding terrain, would add up to a lot of money to have a complete depiction of an entire Freeciv planet in OpenSimulator!

Currently played nations are only being charged something like 1/16 of a cent per "square mile" that Freeciv reports their nation as owning, or osme such figure. (Three or four bucks a month for a single-size-one-city nation, several  thousands of dollars a month for e.g. the Martians of the planet known as M4, or the British of the planet known as B24, or the Canucks of the planet known as C24.)

-MarkM-

Is the game a MMORPG type game? Basically, do you interact with other people that are playing?
I have an idea for implementing coins into the game if so.

And are there skills in the game, like creations skills? Mining, smithing, leatherworking, etc?

[markm]

CoffeeMUD has all kinds of mining, woodchopping, farming, foraging, smithing, all that stuff, which is why we are using CoffeeMUD to prototype economics of that kind of stuff. It is a text mode multiplayer RPG, that is to say, it is a MUD.

It has pretty much everything most RPGs have, except graphics. It is thus bandwidth-efficient and easy-to-parse for using scripts to run hundreds or thousands of characters. No need to try to use image recognition to try to compute what is happening by looking at images, you get actual text saying what is happening, and are free to use the most powerful visual processor in the known universe - your own imagination - to image it however you please, with full artistic license. Different artists could illustrate it differently, different movie-directors and wardrobe people and props people and so on show it in film differently and so on, you get the actual facts, in plain text, of what your character can actually see and hear and smell and so on, so you can set triggers in your client to script your actions in response and give orders in text as to how to respond and so on.

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

CoffeeMUD has all kinds of mining, woodchopping, farming, foraging, smithing, all that stuff, which is why we are using CoffeeMUD to prototype economics of that kind of stuff. It is a text mode multiplayer RPG, that is to say, it is a MUD.

It has pretty much everything most RPGs have, except graphics. It is thus bandwidth-efficient and easy-to-parse for using scripts to run hundreds or thousands of characters. No need to try to use image recognition to try to compute what is happening by looking at images, you get actual text saying what is happening, and are free to use the most powerful visual processor in the known universe - your own imagination - to image it however you please, with full artistic license. Different artists could illustrate it differently, different movie-directors and wardrobe people and props people and so on show it in film differently and so on, you get the actual facts, in plain text, of what your character can actually see and hear and smell and so on, so you can set triggers in your client to script your actions in response and give orders in text as to how to respond and so on.

-MarkM-

Wait... I don't understand, it's text based and 2d?
And is there no interaction with other characters, like in Runescape or minecraft? Is it like fallout, in the sense that you play the story line alone?

[markm]

These are totally different and separate already-existing free open source software games.

CoffeeMUD is a MUD - a text mode multi-player game, with player killing player optional, with death being permanent optional and limit of what level player relative to yourself you can attack optional, with player versus player being only if both players agree optional and all that kind of stuff.

Crossfire RPG is a two dimensional nethack-like game but fancier and with images for tiles and units and objects instead of ascii characters. We use it permadeath turned on because we aim at a Dungeons and Dragons old style play with pencil and paper type of thing where dead is dead unless resurrected, not a videogame where you rack up lives and "dying" merely means going back to start of level with all your gear and loot still on you kind of crap.

Freeciv is a civlisation-building game, initially like Sid Mieir's CIv 1, now more like his Civ 2.

Battle for Wesnoth is a two-D hex-map turn-based tactical combat system used single-player to re-enact campaigns and such or multiplayer usually as very limited chess-like battles on very carefully balanced small maps for quick chess-like games.

OpenSimulator is a three-D system compatible with the one the Lindens guys run.

Galactic Milieu is a multiverse that finds use for those and other free open source components to depict and/or run various of its aspects.

(It also uses Xnova Redesigned, Two Moons and Devana php-with-mysql type web-based games for various purposes too and actively researches the whole free open source games field looking for more components that are useable.)

(Oh and it also uses Open Transactions to represent such things as Banks and Stock Exchanges and Markets; and Cryptocoins for some of its currencies.)

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

These are totally different and separate already-existing free open source software games.

CoffeeMUD is a MUD - a text mode multi-player game, with player killing player optional, with death being permanent optional and limit of what level player relative to yourself you can attack optional, with player versus player being only if both players agree optional and all that kind of stuff.

Crossfire RPG is a two dimensional nethack-like game but fancier and with images for tiles and units and objects instead of ascii characters.

Freeciv is a civlisation-building game, initially like Sid Mieir's CIv 1, now more like his Civ 2.

Battle for Wesnoth is a two-D hex-map turn-based tactical combat system used single-player to re-enact campaigns and such or multiplayer usually as very limited chess-like battles on very carefully balanced small maps for quick chess-like games.

OpenSimulator is a three-D system compatible with the one the Lindens guys run.

Galactic Milieu is a multiverse that finds use for those and other free open source components to depict and/or run various of its aspects.

(It also uses Xnova Redesigned, Two Moons and Devana php-with-mysql type web-based games for various purposes too and actively researches the whole free open source games field looking for more components that are useable.)

-MarkM-

Ok... So MUD would be like an old school runescape game, trading between players, mining, etc. But it doesn't have graphics AT ALL? Just words?

Crossfire is like Myspace Mobsters, where you build a "army" and "attack" and do "missions", and there are a few pictures, but it writes out what happened under the picture?

Freeciv is something like Kingdoms of Camelot, or even Farmville.

Battle for Wesnoth is similar to Final Fantasy Gameboy games?

Galatic Milieu... Brings these worlds together?

[markm]

http://coffeemud.org/

http://crossfire.real-time.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv

http://wesnoth.org/

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

I found all the above simply by using Google.

-MarkM-

[FinShaggy]

http://coffeemud.org/

http://crossfire.real-time.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeciv

http://wesnoth.org/

http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page

I found all the above simply by using Google.

-MarkM-

Ok, Wesnorth and Freeciv look the best. And what I am understanding now is that opensimulator is not something you are using yet, but hope to use to create the "Galactic Malieu" which will be a 3d world like in the link. I have a few ideas of how you guys could implement DVC into the game, giving them more of a "real world" value.

In freeciv it says that the "winner' wins when they have conquered all civilizations, I thin you guys should advertise that as a contest, and offer a DVC prize for the winner. And if there is no direct interaction between players, the prize should be awarded to the person with the best score, play time, civilization size, etc by the end of the contest or something like that. Then like you said, have people pay devcoins to start playing.

In Wesnorth there should be some kind of game-world you can go play (like how runscape has that capture the flag game), because it looks like multiplayer is already strongly built in.  And it should cost a small amount per game to play, and the winnings are distributed amounts the winning team based on a players score or something. And they could just submit DVC addresses, and have it deposited at the end of the day or whenever.

[markm]

A couple of versions ago Wesnoth was talking about addinf to its markup language commands for going out to a database server to get actual up to date information about a persisten gameworld.

Last time I looked they still had not implemented that, as far as I could tell, But they seem to be on another version now that I haven't checked for that yet.

Once that is in place, it will be possible to start connecting what different players are doing, recording their outcomes in the persistent central database all copies of whatever specific campaign or scenario consult.

Freeciv is already multi-player, it used to have a limit of 30 players, incuding pirates and barbarians the game mechanics can sometimes cause to pop up, but that was increased to 127 or 128 or somesuch in recent versions.

So basically we can do things like put worlds on Tor servers, using Tor addresses as Stargate addresses, eventually.

Right now our current worlds date back to the older versions so have less than thirty civilisations per world.

Freeciv is a one player plays one civilisation game, basically who-ever a nation appoints to have the Freeciv password for their nation has total control of the nation, there is no ability to delegate control of different aspects of play to different players or anything like that.

One idea was to have a room in Crossfire RPG representing the throne room or somsuch, which would tell who-ever managed to enter it the current password to the nation whose throne room or council chamber or supreme command bunker or whatever they had entered. That way multiple players could all play citizens of one nation, and have a method by which they could use hand to hand combat skills, spells, or whatever to decide who gets to control their nation.

It would be nice some day though to add support for multiple players per nation. Also it would make sense to have a number of players requirement for government types, so if there is only one player in control of a nation it can only use Despotism, if there are two players, one male character and one female character, they can marry and establish a Monarchy, if there are three players or more they can form a Republic, and some higher number maybe to form a Democracy, or even install voting systems so any player of any of the subgames who is a citizen of the nation gets to vote on actions taken on the Freeciv scale.

-MarkM-

[metazilla]

I was looking through Devtome to see what other people have been writing and there are a few articles that look a little fishy. The user WildElf posted a few articles that look like they were either generated automatically, or directly copied from journal articles that aren't publicly accessible. Eg:

http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=identity_and_access_management
http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=dodmerb_cloud_computing

And FinShaggy posted a few articles that are just directly copied from publically available pages, eg. this: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=texas_rulings_october_1997

I'm not sure why FinShaggy would do this, since a lot of his other contributions seem to be original, and he's been posting a lot in this thread.

Sorry to call people out, I'm just curious if this sort of thing is allowed? Or if there is anyone who checks to make sure what people are contributing is actually their original work? (I spent a lot of time writing the articles I've contributed, so it kind of sucks to see people submit huge articles that they probably didn't write to try and get some extra coins.  )

Edit: Another article that is copied legal text: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=legal_article_regarding_research_chemicals

It seems that things like this may be able to fall under collated work, if the users actually did any editing of the original source material, rather than just copy/pasting it, but that they are putting this on their user pages under "Original", even if they are attributing a source, it still looks like they are trying to cheat the system to me.

[FinShaggy]

And FinShaggy posted a few articles that are just directly copied from publically available pages, eg. this: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=texas_rulings_october_1997

I'm not sure why FinShaggy would do this, since a lot of his other contributions seem to be original, and he's been posting a lot in this thread.

I did that because it doesn't say that everything has to be original. It says that if something is not original to site the source, and that it is worth .3 vs what a regular article would be.

And I can't edit a legal document or it's not the same. That's like editing a diary.

[Unthinkingbit]

And FinShaggy posted a few articles that are just directly copied from publically available pages, eg. this: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=texas_rulings_october_1997

I'm not sure why FinShaggy would do this, since a lot of his other contributions seem to be original, and he's been posting a lot in this thread.

I did that because it doesn't say that everything has to be original. It says that if something is not original to site the source, and that it is worth .3 vs what a regular article would be.

And I can't edit a legal document or it's not the same. That's like editing a diary.

From:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=earn_devcoins_by_writing#earnings_per_word

Original work gets a generation share per 1,000 words. The original work can be from your website, it can not be based off another article.

Collated work, which is largely based on another open source article, is also counted, although with a weighting of currently 0.3. The collated work can not be simply a copy of another article, it must have improvements and the type of improvements must be listed in the invoice.

Anything in the Original section has to be written by you. If you wrote something on another site, and you didn't already write a paragraph explaining that you're posting documents that you wrote on other sites, then you should add a link to the other place that you wrote your article.

This does not mean that you can get word earnings for posting someone else's article, even if you link to it.

Collated work, has to be in the collated section, not the original section. It can not be simply a copy of another article, it must have improvements and the type of improvements must be listed in the invoice.

[FinShaggy]

And FinShaggy posted a few articles that are just directly copied from publically available pages, eg. this: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=texas_rulings_october_1997

I'm not sure why FinShaggy would do this, since a lot of his other contributions seem to be original, and he's been posting a lot in this thread.

I did that because it doesn't say that everything has to be original. It says that if something is not original to site the source, and that it is worth .3 vs what a regular article would be.

And I can't edit a legal document or it's not the same. That's like editing a diary.

From:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=earn_devcoins_by_writing#earnings_per_word

Original work gets a generation share per 1,000 words. The original work can be from your website, it can not be based off another article.

Collated work, which is largely based on another open source article, is also counted, although with a weighting of currently 0.3. The collated work can not be simply a copy of another article, it must have improvements and the type of improvements must be listed in the invoice.

Anything in the Original section has to be written by you. If you wrote something on another site, and you didn't already write a paragraph explaining that you're posting documents that you wrote on other sites, then you should add a link to the other place that you wrote your article.

This does not mean that you can get word earnings for posting someone else's article, even if you link to it.

Collated work, has to be in the collated section, not the original section. It can not be simply a copy of another article, it must have improvements and the type of improvements must be listed in the invoice.

The invoice is like our page where we have =original= right?

[Unthinkingbit]

The invoice is like our page where we have =original= right?

Yup.

[FinShaggy]

The invoice is like our page where we have =original= right?

Yup.

Ok, thanks. I'm adding to the legal pages, and posting the changes on the invoice.

[Unthinkingbit]

Hi Metazilla,

..
Sorry to call people out, I'm just curious if this sort of thing is allowed? Or if there is anyone who checks to make sure what people are contributing is actually their original work? (I spent a lot of time writing the articles I've contributed, so it kind of sucks to see people submit huge articles that they probably didn't write to try and get some extra coins.  )

Edit: Another article that is copied legal text: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=legal_article_regarding_research_chemicals

It seems that things like this may be able to fall under collated work, if the users actually did any editing of the original source material, rather than just copy/pasting it, but that they are putting this on their user pages under "Original", even if they are attributing a source, it still looks like they are trying to cheat the system to me.

Thanks for bringing this up. This sort of thing is not allowed. When someone first posts an article, I check for plagiarism, however, I used to assume that people wouldn't plagiarize, so I didn't check carefully. I contacted the author of:
http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=legal_article_regarding_research_chemicals

and WildElf, asking them to remove plagiarized articles. If any of the authors do not remove plagiarized articles, they'll be dropped from devtome.

I really appreciate that you caught this. I should of noticed it, but didn't because I was busy. I can't really send you the informative post bounty:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=devcoin_bounty#post

because you're already getting a lot of shares this round, so I sent you a million of my own coins.

[FuzzyBear]

Hi Metazilla,

..
Sorry to call people out, I'm just curious if this sort of thing is allowed? Or if there is anyone who checks to make sure what people are contributing is actually their original work? (I spent a lot of time writing the articles I've contributed, so it kind of sucks to see people submit huge articles that they probably didn't write to try and get some extra coins.  )

Edit: Another article that is copied legal text: http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=legal_article_regarding_research_chemicals

It seems that things like this may be able to fall under collated work, if the users actually did any editing of the original source material, rather than just copy/pasting it, but that they are putting this on their user pages under "Original", even if they are attributing a source, it still looks like they are trying to cheat the system to me.

Thanks for bringing this up. This sort of thing is not allowed. When someone first posts an article, I check for plagiarism, however, I used to assume that people wouldn't plagiarize, so I didn't check carefully. I contacted the author of:
http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=legal_article_regarding_research_chemicals

and WildElf, asking them to remove plagiarized articles. If any of the authors do not remove plagiarized articles, they'll be dropped from devtome.

I really appreciate that you caught this. I should of noticed it, but didn't because I was busy. I can't really send you the informative post bounty:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=devcoin_bounty#post

because you're already getting a lot of shares this round, so I sent you a million of my own coins.

.. another reason why I like the devcoin so much