[ANN][HUC] Huntercoin - Worlds First Decentralized Game/World on the Blockchain

[jwinterm]

Was there discussion of dynamic fees for hunter creation or other actions in there?

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[ThePanDaKungFu]

I think this coin has died 

[Murch]

Was there discussion of dynamic fees for hunter creation or other actions in there?

Yup, check pages 4 and 5 on it.

[jwinterm]

Was there discussion of dynamic fees for hunter creation or other actions in there?

Yup, check pages 4 and 5 on it.

Oic, think I started on middle of page 5. Thanks

[Murch]

Was there discussion of dynamic fees for hunter creation or other actions in there?

Yup, check pages 4 and 5 on it.

Oic, think I started on middle of page 5. Thanks

No problem.

Like I said though, even if it does change eventually, I don't believe it's happening with this fork.

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

It's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when emotions run high, and I hope MM will consider returning once they've boiled over. This coin has not died; on the contrary, it's about to have a new client with blockchain pruning and many addition protocol-level features. Snail is all stressed out because his fiat job and family take up too much time, those problems will be alleviated when Huntercoin goes up more, which it looks poised to do if you're watching the charts.

Until then, though, we have to be realistic about our resources and manpower. For example, while Wiggi's client does have a BitShares-esque system that can theoretically peg the value of an asset, his client is currently handicapped by lack of a spectator mode for Hunters. Basically, it uses commands issued to Hunters to put data on the HUC blockchain, so we need to allow people to have Hunters that they aren't playing with that could get killed.

The fork we're implementing includes a spectator mode, so once it's out, this whole conversation about dynamic Hunter fees becomes more grounded in reality. Right now, we're just picking some fee and Hunter values to get us through to the next fork, where the real fun begins. Even if Hunter cost and fees did go up considerably, spectator mode--and standard names, another feature enabling third-party games on the blockchain--would provide lower stakes alternatives.

A subsequent fork will likely also include things like additional maps, where one is more noob-friendly than the other. We can also incorporate the testnet into the client, so they can practice without consequence. For now, though, we just gotta compromise on a fee structure. I was able to talk SnailBrain and wiggi down to 100 HUC for Hunters, a 50% reduction  

[JasonXG]

Ok so I am interested still but what mithrilman said is disencouraging especially since I have never even played yet. I guess I'll save my extra coin till I can get a character. Then get killed.... Lol Can't someone else run the client ? What is needed ?

[wiggi]

Ok so I am interested still but what mithrilman said is disencouraging especially since I have never even played yet. I guess I'll save my extra coin till I can get a character. Then get killed.... Lol Can't someone else run the client ? What is needed ?

better wait until the game rule change is in effect, or you won't have much fun

final testnet in a box:
http://forum.huntercoin.org/index.php/topic,22265.msg30111.html#msg30111

I played with this for 1000 blocks after fork, and the new Huntercore node and the old Qt clients work well together. No bugs.

And, partial ghosting of coins is in:

[Geenstijl]

I've had hunter coins for ages now, made significant losses, but I don't blame the development team. The developments in this coin are interesting, innovative and fun. The crypto market ain't always fair when it comes to pricing according to coin fundamentals.

Keep it up! Cheers.

[no-ice-please]

Crosspost from HUC forum:

Has there been any discussion of making the fees for hunter creation dynamic? I think there are a couple of options here:

...

...

If you think about it, as any coin grows bigger, the mining becomes less and less accessible to the masses. We may just have to accept that this is a natural law of crypto. After discussing in that thread, I think (correct me if I'm wrong anyone) that the game wasn't necessarily meant to be profitably mined by everyone. I'm starting to think that that's not such a bad thing. It allows the devs to continue developing and provides them time to work on blockchain optimization without having to worry about sudden bloating of the size. A dominant mining operation won't kill the coin but 0 full nodes will.

As price increases vs fiat then more money is available to miners. Right now huntercoin is worth 0.02 usd or 2 u.s. cents. At that price most people in the world outside the wealthiest countries are prevented from playing. If the price were usd 1 per huntercoin it would be as it has been. Almost nobody could afford to play unless the price drops dramatically and since there is no way to predict the future price, game cost should be either dynamic, cheap or free.

You are using the phrase 'profitably mined' but the thing that huntercoin offers is 'human mining' which in crypto is going to be a tidal wave eventually, as more and more people realize that they can use the mining of a currency to motivate some human interaction with a computer. The big issue is that if the price were low enough mining farms might take over the coin in poor countries, as is happening with neucoin, which is being dominated by poor Asian workers. Huntercoin should step in front of neucoin and others in that market.  The 'profitably mined' issue is trivial compared to the potential growth of the coin if it is sent wild into poor countries. A very fair coin like huntercoin, which offered practical human mining, i.e., a reasonable fee that did not exclude poor countries, would be a news event.

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

final testnet in a box:
http://forum.huntercoin.org/index.php/topic,22265.msg30111.html#msg30111

I played with this for 1000 blocks after fork, and the new Huntercore node and the old Qt clients work well together. No bugs.

And, partial ghosting of coins is in:

Alright, so to summarize for everybody who glanced over the development work going on: we've pretty much decided upon what's going into this upcoming hardfork. You can test the new protocol by checking that link Wiggi provided, but it's not yet hooked up to the official testnet you can access via Huntercoin QT. It's like a testnet in a box, with you being the only node, connecting to yourself with 3 different test clients.

It can, however, test the new Huntercore client (will enable blockchain pruning), but you can't yet play the game on it. Gameplay changes must be tested on one of the older clients. You can see the spawn/bank ring around the coin farms, now, and I think that coin ghosting will also appear once you've mined to the block where it begins. I'm trying to make that work on my Windows machine, now, and recommend others do the same. Once domob has approved it on the official testnet, we can plan a launch date.

This plan should give enough time for any bugs to arise. We'll be able to get Huntercore glitch-free in that time, too, and also work on updating the external unity client so it plays well with Huntercore and its pruning, and visually registers the gameplay changes in the hardfork.

Speaking of which, here is a list of the new features/changes included in this upcoming fork:

• Tile reduction. New Hunters spawn and also bank at a ring of tiles around coin farms, instead of at random locations around the map. You can see the ring in the above screenshot. This enables you to get in and out of the action more quickly, an improvement for casual players. We estimate a reduction in minimum required play time from over an hour to around 15 minutes.
• Coin ghosting. According to a specific pattern--part of which is visible in the above image--coins on certain tiles will be unlootable, and will instead accumulate and pile up until the ghosting period ends. This forces players with entrenched positions to move around, and causes a flood of players to attack those positions to get the piled up coins.
• Spectator mode. Hunters start the game in an unattackable state, which lasts a few chronons or until they move or launch an attack of their own. This gives them time to decide if they want to spawn there (could be too crowded) and plan. If they stay still the whole period, they go into spectator mode permanently, making them not part of the game. Wiggi's client with games on top of the Huntercoin blockchain needs this for its 2.0 functionality, as it uses Hunters to store information in the blockchain.
• Lower costs. Once the fork goes live, a timer will count down until the cost of creating a Hunter goes from 200 HUC to 100 HUC. Also, the fees for creating Hunters and using the Destruct ability will be reduced to a fraction of what they were.

Somewhere along the way, in-between now and the fork's launch, I'll also resume the Huntercoin marketing campaign. Expect articles and such. Considering the tiny number of Huntercoin developers, I think the extent of the changes are pretty impressive, so we should all try to spread the word.

[no-ice-please]

...

• Lower costs. Once the fork goes live, a timer will count down until the cost of creating a Hunter goes from 200 HUC to 100 HUC. Also, the fees for creating Hunters and using the Destruct ability will be reduced to a fraction of what they were.

...

At new lower price now then it costs somebody usd $2.20 to create a hunter. $2.20 is a lot of money in some places.

Some countries that are ripe for human mining, with per capita gdp.

The first coin to plug cafes with miners may be a milestone in crypto. At least a few of these countries have cheap internet cafes.

161   VIETNAM   $6,000   2015 EST.
162   NIUE   $5,800   2003 EST.
163   TIMOR-LESTE   $5,600   2015 EST.
164   BURMA   $5,500   2015 EST.
165   LAOS   $5,300   2015 EST.
166   SAMOA   $5,200   2015 EST.
167   TONGA   $5,100   2015 EST.
168   SYRIA   $5,100   2011 EST.
169   MOLDOVA   $5,000   2015 EST.
170   PAKISTAN   $5,000   2015 EST.
171   NICARAGUA   $5,000   2015 EST.
172   HONDURAS   $4,900   2015 EST.
173   MAURITANIA   $4,400   2015 EST.
174   SUDAN   $4,300   2015 EST.
175   GHANA   $4,300   2015 EST.
176   WEST BANK   $4,300   2014 EST.
177   ZAMBIA   $3,900   2015 EST.
178   WALLIS AND FUTUNA   $3,800   2004 EST.
179   BANGLADESH   $3,600   2015 EST.
180   CAMBODIA   $3,500   2015 EST.
181   KYRGYZSTAN   $3,400   2015 EST.
182   TUVALU   $3,400   2015 EST.
183   COTE D'IVOIRE   $3,300   2015 EST.
184   SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE   $3,200   2015 EST.
185   MARSHALL ISLANDS   $3,200   2015 EST.
186   KENYA   $3,200   2015 EST.
187   DJIBOUTI   $3,200   2015 EST.
188   CAMEROON   $3,100   2015 EST.
189   LESOTHO   $3,000   2015 EST.
190   MICRONESIA, FEDERATED STATES OF   $3,000   2015 EST.
191   TANZANIA   $2,900   2015 EST.
192   TAJIKISTAN   $2,700   2015 EST.
193   PAPUA NEW GUINEA   $2,700   2015 EST.
194   YEMEN   $2,700   2015 EST.
195   CHAD   $2,600   2015 EST.
196   SENEGAL   $2,500   2015 EST.
197   NEPAL   $2,500   2015 EST.
198   VANUATU   $2,500   2015 EST.
199   WESTERN SAHARA   $2,500   2007 EST.
200   MALI   $2,200   2015 EST.
201   BENIN   $2,100   2015 EST.
202   ZIMBABWE   $2,100   2015 EST.
203   SOUTH SUDAN   $2,000   2015 EST.
204   UGANDA   $2,000   2015 EST.
205   SOLOMON ISLANDS   $1,900   2015 EST.
206   AFGHANISTAN   $1,900   2015 EST.
207   RWANDA   $1,800   2015 EST.
208   ETHIOPIA   $1,800   2015 EST.
209   KIRIBATI   $1,800   2015 EST.
210   KOREA, NORTH   $1,800   2014 EST.
211   HAITI   $1,800   2015 EST.
212   BURKINA FASO   $1,700   2015 EST.
213   GAMBIA, THE   $1,600   2015 EST.
214   SIERRA LEONE   $1,600   2015 EST.
215   TOGO   $1,500   2015 EST.
216   GUINEA-BISSAU   $1,500   2015 EST.
217   MADAGASCAR   $1,500   2015 EST.
218   COMOROS   $1,500   2015 EST.
219   ERITREA   $1,300   2015 EST.
220   MOZAMBIQUE   $1,200   2015 EST.
221   GUINEA   $1,200   2015 EST.
222   NIGER   $1,100   2015 EST.
223   MALAWI   $1,100   2015 EST.
224   TOKELAU   $1,000   1993 EST.
225   LIBERIA   $900   2015 EST.
226   CONGO, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE   $800   2015 EST.
227   BURUNDI   $800   2015 EST.
228   CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC   $600   2015 EST.
229   SOMALIA   $400   2014 EST.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html[/list]

edit to add

...
I know, but we can't really tackle that until the next fork without destabilizing the game. At that point, things like pegged Hunter costs or dynamic ones are more realistic. It would ideally happen next year, at which point we could do things like have 2 maps, one with cheaper costs and one with more expensive costs. We could also create an account system to solve the issue of a Dominator exploiting cheap Hunters to flood the map.

A lot of big development issues ahead on top of what seem like major changes recently. It would be helpful to the coin to have more developers and hopefully somebody who is familiar with the personalities involved can mediate something that lets Snailbrain and Mithril work together without bloodshed. I don't know at all what the argument was but it should be solvable.

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

...

• Lower costs. Once the fork goes live, a timer will count down until the cost of creating a Hunter goes from 200 HUC to 100 HUC. Also, the fees for creating Hunters and using the Destruct ability will be reduced to a fraction of what they were.

...

At new lower price now then it costs somebody usd $2.20 to create a hunter. $2.20 is a lot of money in some places.

Some countries that are ripe for human mining, with per capita gdp.

The first coin to plug cafes with miners may be a milestone in crypto....

I know, but we can't really tackle that until the next fork without destabilizing the game. At that point, things like pegged Hunter costs or dynamic ones are more realistic. It would ideally happen next year, at which point we could do things like have 2 maps, one with cheaper costs and one with more expensive costs. We could also create an account system to solve the issue of a Dominator exploiting cheap Hunters to flood the map.

[Murch]

Crosspost from HUC forum:

Has there been any discussion of making the fees for hunter creation dynamic? I think there are a couple of options here:

...

...

If you think about it, as any coin grows bigger, the mining becomes less and less accessible to the masses. We may just have to accept that this is a natural law of crypto. After discussing in that thread, I think (correct me if I'm wrong anyone) that the game wasn't necessarily meant to be profitably mined by everyone. I'm starting to think that that's not such a bad thing. It allows the devs to continue developing and provides them time to work on blockchain optimization without having to worry about sudden bloating of the size. A dominant mining operation won't kill the coin but 0 full nodes will.

As price increases vs fiat then more money is available to miners. Right now huntercoin is worth 0.02 usd or 2 u.s. cents. At that price most people in the world outside the wealthiest countries are prevented from playing. If the price were usd 1 per huntercoin it would be as it has been. Almost nobody could afford to play unless the price drops dramatically and since there is no way to predict the future price, game cost should be either dynamic, cheap or free.

You are using the phrase 'profitably mined' but the thing that huntercoin offers is 'human mining' which in crypto is going to be a tidal wave eventually, as more and more people realize that they can use the mining of a currency to motivate some human interaction with a computer. The big issue is that if the price were low enough mining farms might take over the coin in poor countries, as is happening with neucoin, which is being dominated by poor Asian workers. Huntercoin should step in front of neucoin and others in that market.  The 'profitably mined' issue is trivial compared to the potential growth of the coin if it is sent wild into poor countries. A very fair coin like huntercoin, which offered practical human mining, i.e., a reasonable fee that did not exclude poor countries, would be a news event.

You completely missed the point I was trying to make. First of all, we went into far more detail about all this in the gameplay changes thread on the huntercoin forum, so take a look through that. I was also advocating for a lower cost to open it up to more people. The issue with doing so is that it would make the blockchain way too big. On the order of at least several hundred gigs eventually. And the point I was making in my post is that mining always becomes prohibitively expensive to normal people as the market cap grows. Are you sure you understand how expensive it is to mine bitcoin? or litecoin? or dogecoin? Any coin with a market cap above 1M?

It will never be possible for people in those countries to actually make a decent amount off of something like huntercoin. That's a pipe dream. Huntercoin mining is a competitive game for money. That in itself makes what you're suggesting impossible. Only way you could change that is to remove the competitive, which would be silly.

[no-ice-please]

...

...

... And the point I was making in my post is that mining always becomes prohibitively expensive to normal people as the market cap grows. Are you sure you understand how expensive it is to mine bitcoin? or litecoin? or dogecoin? Any coin with a market cap above 1M?

It will never be possible for people in those countries to actually make a decent amount off of something like huntercoin. That's a pipe dream. Huntercoin mining is a competitive game for money. That in itself makes what you're suggesting impossible. Only way you could change that is to remove the competitive, which would be silly.

Huntercoin is mined both by machines and by humans. The likely scenario with coins is a shift to coins using only human mining, since it gives the people behind a coin the ability to input human reactions to *anything* in an immediate way. A person could speculate that the most important use will be ai, but regardless it will also have the effect of leveling economies that are skewed by fiat.

If Huntercoin had a marketcap of $328,294,, as it does at the moment, and produces about 14,000 coins a day then about usd $318 are mined a day. That certainly isn't a lot.

If you look at the start of MZC, Neucoin and similar coins that started with an "economy leveling" agenda, i.e., to balance the disparity in fiat economies, re enfranchise some group, those coins, despite being abysmally made, got massive publicity. If either of those coins had been even a tiny fraction as well made as huc they would be near btc now. Society generally, across countries, is waiting for some entity to take that step and crypto is capable, and huntercoin is positioned well.

The general problem you are talking about would lead to wild fluctuations in price until many more coins stepped in and the capitalization of that sector was distributed better.

You can look at what Neucoin is doing, they are a poorly made corporate coin, already they have an infrastructure to go far in the developing world once development shifts to mining that involves human input. They are dipsydoodling along like some hillbilly who doesn't know anything but in reality that is the only coin I'm aware of that is preparing for the shift. The people behind that coin, as shitty a coin as it is, are going to blindside people who miss the obvious.

-

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

You know, I totally feel you on this, because I'm heavily involved with the African Bitcoin scene. Might be remotely presenting at a conference, there, soon, the organizer of which is on board with Huntercoin ever since I gave her some. I also lived in India for a stint, so I've personally seen the applications of what you're talking about. A little goes a long way over there, and they have surplus manpower.

But again, we have development work to do, first. People in third world countries need a faster and more lightweight client like Huntercore, and spectator mode will enable all kinds of new tokens and games via Wiggi's system that they could play. Meanwhile, we find time and manpower to design a lower-cost map.

There's other stuff we could do even further down the road. We have a pretty long-term plan. For example, if we figure out a way to significantly reduce the presence of malicious AI, we could talk about proof of play, again. In that system, human miners would actually be confirming transactions, instead of just getting coins for actions. That would be way more interesting!

[snailbrain]

with the new changes (banks and spawn areas near coin spawns) - lower fees might not cause the map to be completely saturated like it was in the past - there might not be an advantage for someone to control 10000+ hunters.
It was easier for a dominator type player to control the map through masses of hunters making it virtually impossible to compete, as well as increasing blockchain size quickly..
The issue atm is not how many the dominator controls (dominating by numbers), but the fact they play 247 and combat is dumb/dull and it takes a long time to get to any coins (unless you are lucky)

The changes may prevent having masses of players blocking the coin spawn areas (or increasing the blockchain rapidly), and should allow people to access to the coin spawn areas in just a couple of minutes.

But - 90% of the map will be wasted - if we start placing random coin drops on the map (from the game fund), we'll see the map saturated again with low cost bot/dominators collecting those coins.

As i said in the other thread, we should probably wait to see how this fork pans out for now.

-

imo, we need to improve the gameplay, and especially the combat mechanics.

[wiggi]

The issue atm is not how many the dominator controls (dominating by numbers), but the fact they play 247 and combat is dumb/dull and it takes a long time to get to any coins (unless you are lucky)

The changes may prevent having masses of players blocking the coin spawn areas (or increasing the blockchain rapidly), and should allow people to access to the coin spawn areas in just a couple of minutes.

This is the key point (or 1 of the 2 key points), time.

Everyone is still free to make 60, or 120 or more hunters, but if they show one weakness, like having an hunter attacked and not reacting properly, the prewarn time for the world of hurt that will come is now down to 4 minutes. Plus, the prewarn time for having that hunter attacked in the first place is now also down to 4 minutes.

Being able to play 24/7 is no longer an advantage, until now it was the decisive advantage, with the map being an abyss of time.

[The Bitcoin Co-op]

As i said in the other thread, we should probably wait to see how this fork pans out for now.

Basically this.

The thing is, this is all revolutionary stuff we're doing here, straight from the minds of SnailBrain and wiggi to reality. That means it's all experimental and untested. You guys can't run too far with your theories and suppositions until we've tested some of your basic conclusions. This is why I really want multiple maps for our next fork, so we can measure the effects of different Hunter costs.

I'm also really curious what Wiggi will do with spectator mode, now, among other things. I think it'll take a couple months for us to fully understand the direction we need to go in, next.

[wiggi]

Snailbrain set up a node for testnet and we did a testing session last night which went very well.
The official testnet is now past fork height, by 2 coin ghosting periods

This also means game rules of the "timesave" fork will remain as they are, and the fork will happen
on mainnet in a few weeks. (the exact block height is not set yet)

Windows executables:
Theoretically can be used on mainnet too, at the user's own peril, Being able to sync mainnet without error was of course part of the tests.

huntercoin-testnettimesave-win32-20161026.zip, 28.0 MB

Code:

https://mega.nz/#!rZVwDZYK!QVul-znYv8k66ViWZ1IZfLC9DGFvmmeMV4_rfgp96sw

huntercore-testnettimesave-win32-20161026.zip, 21.0 MB (wallet only)

Code:

https://mega.nz/#!yZ0SzYzR!TJSzvaVx_z1AIOHRQrakRvC_CruVi1ryN1uzyVxH6o0

source:
https://github.com/wiggi/huntercore/tree/master-timesave5
https://github.com/wiggi/huntercoin/tree/master-timesave5

Code:

addnode=178.62.17.234

Timesave fork list of changes ("timesave" because it makes getting into and out of action go much faster)

Reduction of possible player spawn tiles, and reduction of possible bank tiles:

Code:

#  unwalkable tile
c  coin harvest tile
.  adjacent tile
p  player spawn

 pppppppp
pp......p
p..cccc.p
p.ccccc##
p.cccccc#p
p.cccccc.p
p...cccc.p
ppp......p
  pppppppp

Banks can't spawn on all walkable tiles but only on coin harvest tiles 'c' and adjacent tiles '.'

Logout on bank tile in 1 block (i.e. you can't be on a bank tile and not logout)

Player spawn tiles work like banks, faster than pre-fork banks (2 blocks until logout)

New hunter cost 1 HUC (down from 5)

Destruct cost 1 HUC (down from 20)

Refundable cost of a hunter is halved to 100

Hunter invulnerability after spawn for 5 blocks (ends if waypoints set)
Hunters can also choose to stand still to become spectator

Spectators are invulnerable and also can't move, refund normally 15 blocks after becoming one.

Ghosting to break up attempts of domination (with "phasing in") :
- repeated every 500 blocks so that every "timezone" has one event per day,
  1 ghosting event will accumulate about 700 coins that are released for the hunters at once when it ends
- when ghosting is in effect, coins spawn normally, but can't get picked up and accumulate on map
- ghosting is visualized with semi-opaque coins (Qt client)

Ghosting schedule:
at block 300 out of full 500, every 4th coin spawn is ghosted (game continues normally but coins already accumulate)
at block 450 out of full 500, 3 out of 4 coin spawns are ghosted (2 out of 4 would look ugly graphically)
at block 480 out of full 500, full ghosting
at block 500, return to normal

Misc:

All banks reset at once when fork hits

If banking on player spawn strip, the Crown of Fortune will remain with this hunter

(Qt client) The number behind hunter names is the counter for spawn invulnerability

Counter for spawn invulnerability will remain at 0 during the last 10 blocks before ghosting ends, for newly spawned hunters.
(so they have more time to consider strategy before the new war begins)


Once the mainnet fork height is set, I'm sure we can write an actual "Player's Handbook" from this and GameLogicChanges.txt