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

[MithrilMan]

@MithrilMan:  Out of curiosity, will your client be cross-platform or Windows-only?  In the back of my head I seem to remember you mentioned .Net once, which would make it (probably) Windows-only (would be a pitty for GNU/Linux users like me, and it would also mean that the original client needs to retain its UI for non-Windows users).  But of course I understand that it is probably much harder to make it cross-platform with a toolkit like Gtk+ or Qt than to do it for Windows only.

Just for myself, I've found that QT is simply miserable to work with in .NET. GTK+ is a bit rough (the differences between it and Windows Forms take a while to get used to), but it works with .NET. I'm not sure how the newest version is, or even if Miguel and the Mono team have updated it. There is the option to use Windows Forms, but that doesn't give you a native feel.

I dimly recall XNA being mentioned in a previous post... not sure if that would rule out cross platform.

But yeah... cross platform with .NET can be very rough unless you plan it from the outset. I wouldn't expect MithralMan to come out with a cross platform version any time soon. It's just a truckload of work.

Snailbrain put an announcement up on the official site about a browser-based version and an Android and iOS version as well. I'm a bit skeptical about the iOS one though... I sure as guns wouldn't consider developing anything like that for an Apple platform - they're just monopolist douches the way they sweep out all the Bitcoin apps. However, as a GAME, it might make it in there without them censoring it. Who knows though? It's a toss-up with them. iOS users would still have the option to use a browser-based version, so that makes the browser version particularly powerful. (I still like client software over browser-based software, but, that's just me.)

RenegadeMind has responded well, for linux users wine could worth a try, we can do tests as soon as i'll release something
speaking about cross compatibility i'm planning to looking around, Monogame could be the right choice maybe, but before trying it i want to end this with current technology

[Falafel75]

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD? I noticed that the wallet hammers the disk with an average of 25 gb a day and already had the life reduced by 2% in just a couple of weeks (drive is a Crucial M4 128 gb). I already disabled the logging but i just got a 1-2 gb reduction in writings, which is definitely not enough.

Anyway, my deep condolences for your loss. We are all close to you.

[RenegadeMind]

RenegadeMind has responded well, for linux users wine could worth a try, we can do tests as soon as i'll release something
speaking about cross compatibility i'm planning to looking around, Monogame could be the right choice maybe, but before trying it i want to end this with current technology

I don't know if you've checked out the Mono IRC channel, but it's really, really helpful. The core devs are in there all the time. I'm sure you could get some quick answers there if you had questions.

I've not tried MonoGame (I don't program games), but I did take a peek, and it looks pretty good. Have you tried out MonoGame before?

For myself, I've found that when writing cross platform in C#, it's a lot better/easier to use MonoDevelop rather than Visual Studio. But, I don't write games...

[gobpaul]

good coin.

[kulakowka]

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD?

I have SSD, but it does not help. Today's impossible to play, this problem should be solved.

[MithrilMan]

RenegadeMind has responded well, for linux users wine could worth a try, we can do tests as soon as i'll release something
speaking about cross compatibility i'm planning to looking around, Monogame could be the right choice maybe, but before trying it i want to end this with current technology

I don't know if you've checked out the Mono IRC channel, but it's really, really helpful. The core devs are in there all the time. I'm sure you could get some quick answers there if you had questions.

I've not tried MonoGame (I don't program games), but I did take a peek, and it looks pretty good. Have you tried out MonoGame before?

For myself, I've found that when writing cross platform in C#, it's a lot better/easier to use MonoDevelop rather than Visual Studio. But, I don't write games...

I never used monogame before and this is my first "serious" attempt about game developing. I'm an experienced C#/WEB/Android(Java here) consultant programmer and during my daily job i use Visual Studio (and Eclipse for Android) so i'd like to stick with it, i don't think it will be a problem but, again, i don't have cross platform experience with .Net so it's a new world to visit, for me (but i like challenges)

[snailbrain]

@MithrilMan:  Out of curiosity, will your client be cross-platform or Windows-only?  In the back of my head I seem to remember you mentioned .Net once, which would make it (probably) Windows-only (would be a pitty for GNU/Linux users like me, and it would also mean that the original client needs to retain its UI for non-Windows users).  But of course I understand that it is probably much harder to make it cross-platform with a toolkit like Gtk+ or Qt than to do it for Windows only.

it will be windows only.. but i assumed people could just run the daemon on linux and then run mithrilmans client in wine..

----

the browser (and mobile device) based Huntercoin is at a very early stage of planning atm, don't hold your breath the ui/map etc is all easy... it's the exchange style login/security (and rawtransaction stuff?), multiple daemons(?), infrastructure etc which i will need to find a lot of help on...
if anyone has experience with this and can help, there could be $$ in it for you

----

I'm still waiting to hear back from someone who is looking at the daemon random crash (i have the back traces if someone else wants to have a look?)

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD? I noticed that the wallet hammers the disk with an average of 25 gb a day and already had the life reduced by 2% in just a couple of weeks (drive is a Crucial M4 128 gb). I already disabled the logging but i just got a 1-2 gb reduction in writings, which is definitely not enough.

Anyway, my deep condolences for your loss. We are all close to you.

Thanks, yes as you are aware I unfortunately lost my partner in the project. Until I can find someone who can at least do 1/4 of his job, this will have to wait. For now there are a few devs helping with little things, and I will see who can take on this role... If anyone wants to have a go at this, send me a pm. The client is virtually complete, apart from the odd bug which will get rectified soon, the cosmetic things, and improvements shouldn't be too difficult.

The only thing I can suggest atm regarding the life of your SSD:

1. Backup wallet and use a RAM Drive - possible can set it to backup every few hours.
2. It should pay for itself in a short time. You could have an SSD specifically for Huntercoin (use -datadir option) if you are using your OS drive atm, and see that as a running cost for your new job (in Huntercoin)

sorry if these suggestions are not helpful, but that's all I have atm.

[RenegadeMind]

I never used monogame before and this is my first "serious" attempt about game developing. I'm an experienced C#/WEB/Android(Java here) consultant programmer and during my daily job i use Visual Studio (and Eclipse for Android) so i'd like to stick with it, i don't think it will be a problem but, again, i don't have cross platform experience with .Net so it's a new world to visit, for me (but i like challenges)

You're probably a or 2 league above me.

I love Visual Studio. It's just soooo nice... I simply found that working in MonoDevelop was a bit more comfortable when working cross platform. It was simply easier to work in a Linux VM, then compile on Windows and OS X with the IDE.

But if you're looking for a challenge, cross platform is it! With C#, it's all pretty much Mono, Mono, or Mono.

I'm still dying to play with your new Huntercoin client! And I'm sure I'm not the only one cheering you on!

[kulakowka]

snailbrain, I really respect you, you are done!

[subSTRATA]

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD?

I have SSD, but it does not help. Today's impossible to play, this problem should be solved.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk

Once you create RAMDISK, shutdown Huntercoin and copy it's whole data directory to RAMDISK. Then use -datadir command to tell it
location of data directory on RAMDISK, for example if it is drive X and directory name is HUC than use -datadir=X:\HUC to start wallet.

Size of RAMDISK should be at least 1.5 GB

I'm using both RAMDISK and high-performance SSD and Huntercoin still occassionaly freezes but not for long, around 1 minute maximum.

You and others can thank me on HGkEyaxqEKSPH9dVUzZAiYWa9DkfhWHcsk  

[domob]

@MithrilMan:  Out of curiosity, will your client be cross-platform or Windows-only?  In the back of my head I seem to remember you mentioned .Net once, which would make it (probably) Windows-only (would be a pitty for GNU/Linux users like me, and it would also mean that the original client needs to retain its UI for non-Windows users).  But of course I understand that it is probably much harder to make it cross-platform with a toolkit like Gtk+ or Qt than to do it for Windows only.

it will be windows only.. but i assumed people could just run the daemon on linux and then run mithrilmans client in wine..

I think that relying on everyone not running Windows to use Wine is a bit harsh - that would also mean that everyone not using binaries needs to cross-compile for Windows, which is (never tried myself but heard lots of times) really painful.  So I hope there will always be a cross-platform UI available, even if it is not as comfortable as MithrilMan's.

[snailbrain]

@MithrilMan:  Out of curiosity, will your client be cross-platform or Windows-only?  In the back of my head I seem to remember you mentioned .Net once, which would make it (probably) Windows-only (would be a pitty for GNU/Linux users like me, and it would also mean that the original client needs to retain its UI for non-Windows users).  But of course I understand that it is probably much harder to make it cross-platform with a toolkit like Gtk+ or Qt than to do it for Windows only.

it will be windows only.. but i assumed people could just run the daemon on linux and then run mithrilmans client in wine..

I think that relying on everyone not running Windows to use Wine is a bit harsh - that would also mean that everyone not using binaries needs to cross-compile for Windows, which is (never tried myself but heard lots of times) really painful.  So I hope there will always be a cross-platform UI available, even if it is not as comfortable as MithrilMan's.

true

[mmockett]

Is there any point trying to solo mine this anymore? Can't get P2Pool running but been soloing for a while with no luck. Any idea the average time it would take to find a block per MH?

[subSTRATA]

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD?

I have SSD, but it does not help. Today's impossible to play, this problem should be solved.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk

Once you create RAMDISK, shutdown Huntercoin and copy it's whole data directory to RAMDISK. Then use -datadir command to tell it
location of data directory on RAMDISK, for example if it is drive X and directory name is HUC than use -datadir=X:\HUC to start wallet.

Size of RAMDISK should be at least 1.5 GB

I'm using both RAMDISK and high-performance SSD and Huntercoin still occassionaly freezes but not for long, around 1 minute maximum.

You and others can thank me on HGkEyaxqEKSPH9dVUzZAiYWa9DkfhWHcsk  

0.00000000 HUC received ... no one feels like sending some or even just reply with "Thanks", really? Community all time low, it seems.  

[HunterMinerCrafter]

Snailbrain we are very sorry to hear about thecoder.  He will be missed, particularly in the NMC.

the browser (and mobile device) based Huntercoin is at a very early stage of planning atm, don't hold your breath the ui/map etc is all easy... it's the exchange style login/security (and rawtransaction stuff?), multiple daemons(?), infrastructure etc which i will need to find a lot of help on...
if anyone has experience with this and can help, there could be $$ in it for you

We could perhaps help with this.

I'm still waiting to hear back from someone who is looking at the daemon random crash (i have the back traces if someone else wants to have a look?)

We have now found this bug!  We delayed launching our pool until we could resolve the crash, but now we have been running for 48hrs without crash!  This means we are now stable to launch (it was the last bug we wanted to resolve) and will have news today about our plan details.

The problem itself is an obscure (but known) issue in Boost, of all things!  Our patch is suitable for headless daemons but not suitable for the gui wallet - as it makes even more GUI locking.  We will make an appropriate patch for the gui wallet (instead of patching boost libraries which is less than ideal) after we finish deploying our pool.  We can discuss the details in PM with snailbrain but will not put details public because the problem could be used to DoS attack other clients and interfere with the human mining.  (We have seen little evidence that this is already happening now.)

sorry if these suggestions are not helpful, but that's all I have atm.

We also did some things to reduce disk I/O of the daemon, but it is still very heavy.  We are toying around with another patch which trims some information from being written with the blocks, but we are not sure yet if it is safe, since it means not storing full blocks.  (We know this affects many things like rescan, for example!)

Also we have some questions about the difficulty math.  We think there might be something weird there from our testing, but want to discuss this privately as well.

--HMC

[JohnnyBTCSeed]

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD?

I have SSD, but it does not help. Today's impossible to play, this problem should be solved.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk

Once you create RAMDISK, shutdown Huntercoin and copy it's whole data directory to RAMDISK. Then use -datadir command to tell it
location of data directory on RAMDISK, for example if it is drive X and directory name is HUC than use -datadir=X:\HUC to start wallet.

Size of RAMDISK should be at least 1.5 GB

I'm using both RAMDISK and high-performance SSD and Huntercoin still occassionaly freezes but not for long, around 1 minute maximum.

You and others can thank me on HGkEyaxqEKSPH9dVUzZAiYWa9DkfhWHcsk  

0.00000000 HUC received ... no one feels like sending some or even just reply with "Thanks", really? Community all time low, it seems.  

I just woke up and am still digesting this info. Maybe you could add in some more detailed instructions. I've never used RAMDISK or -datadir. But your info sounds great. Good suggestion.

As an aside I'm curious on how huntercoin runs on a live linux cd such as mint. Those load the os in the ram. I've tried to compile while running a live disk but it no work despite the comments from others on how easy it is to compile for linux. Wish I could just dl a compiled linux wallet.

[kikeda]

Snailbrain, is there any chance to reduce the number of writings the wallet is doing on SSD?

I have SSD, but it does not help. Today's impossible to play, this problem should be solved.

http://www.softperfect.com/products/ramdisk

Once you create RAMDISK, shutdown Huntercoin and copy it's whole data directory to RAMDISK. Then use -datadir command to tell it
location of data directory on RAMDISK, for example if it is drive X and directory name is HUC than use -datadir=X:\HUC to start wallet.

Size of RAMDISK should be at least 1.5 GB

I'm using both RAMDISK and high-performance SSD and Huntercoin still occassionaly freezes but not for long, around 1 minute maximum.

You and others can thank me on HGkEyaxqEKSPH9dVUzZAiYWa9DkfhWHcsk  

0.00000000 HUC received ... no one feels like sending some or even just reply with "Thanks", really? Community all time low, it seems.  

I just woke up and am still digesting this info. Maybe you could add in some more detailed instructions. I've never used RAMDISK or -datadir. But your info sounds great. Good suggestion.

As an aside I'm curious on how huntercoin runs on a live linux cd such as mint. Those load the os in the ram. I've tried to compile while running a live disk but it no work despite the comments from others on how easy it is to compile for linux. Wish I could just dl a compiled linux wallet.

check out first post on page 55 of this thread.

[luckygenough56]

An almost clean one

[Pompobit]

...
also small gui fix, should take 5 minutes for a good coder, anyone want to do?
Add arrows where the team names are, so many names can be added (so the map does not get smaller). This functionality is already there but for some reason does not display (it's possible the expansion of this dialog area stops the arrows from showing).
...

Tab names should now be fixed, tested under linux and it works for me, couldn't test it on windows so let me know if it is fine.

Pushed the source on https://github.com/pompobit/huntercoin

the windows wallet is here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/e49da4ni8t4eru4/imp_huntercoin.zip

I hope it is ok

[snailbrain]

Snailbrain we are very sorry to hear about thecoder.  He will be missed, particularly in the NMC.

the browser (and mobile device) based Huntercoin is at a very early stage of planning atm, don't hold your breath the ui/map etc is all easy... it's the exchange style login/security (and rawtransaction stuff?), multiple daemons(?), infrastructure etc which i will need to find a lot of help on...
if anyone has experience with this and can help, there could be $$ in it for you

We could perhaps help with this.

I'm still waiting to hear back from someone who is looking at the daemon random crash (i have the back traces if someone else wants to have a look?)

We have now found this bug!  We delayed launching our pool until we could resolve the crash, but now we have been running for 48hrs without crash!  This means we are now stable to launch (it was the last bug we wanted to resolve) and will have news today about our plan details.

The problem itself is an obscure (but known) issue in Boost, of all things!  Our patch is suitable for headless daemons but not suitable for the gui wallet - as it makes even more GUI locking.  We will make an appropriate patch for the gui wallet (instead of patching boost libraries which is less than ideal) after we finish deploying our pool.  We can discuss the details in PM with snailbrain but will not put details public because the problem could be used to DoS attack other clients and interfere with the human mining.  (We have seen little evidence that this is already happening now.)

sorry if these suggestions are not helpful, but that's all I have atm.

We also did some things to reduce disk I/O of the daemon, but it is still very heavy.  We are toying around with another patch which trims some information from being written with the blocks, but we are not sure yet if it is safe, since it means not storing full blocks.  (We know this affects many things like rescan, for example!)

Also we have some questions about the difficulty math.  We think there might be something weird there from our testing, but want to discuss this privately as well.

--HMC

Wow,

if so this is really great. myself and i'm sure thousands of other people are very much appreciative of it.

I've sent you a pm <3