Trying to test an altcoin but hashespersec is 0

[m3]

just as a disclaimer I am not trying to make the next shitcoin but trying to clone one and launch it on the testnet so I can understand how cryptos work.

I cloned flappycoin and was able to compile it after some debugging. I am using mac osx in order to launch the coin. My first question is if I connect to the coin via the testnet:
./FlappyCoin -testnet
Is it supposed to work without any other connections? I setup the .conf file to not listen to incoming connections and disabled irc. Everything seems to work and the coin runs but when I set
./FlappyCoin setgenerate true I am not getting any hashespersec and the difficulty is not rising.

In the db.log I am able to see BitcoinMiner started 4 times and it seems to run but I am not able to see the hashespersec and the blocks are not mining.

I setup the genesis block correctly and also the merkel hash. can somebody please help me. Thank you