"Proof of Work" - A game about the history of Bitcoin

[askii]

Hey everyone,

This is my first real post here — I’ve lurked for a little bit, but I’m still pretty new to this whole ecosystem.

Recently, I started building a weird little game project that I thought some of you might find interesting (or at least entertaining). Posting it on this board because it seems most appropriate I think.


What is this?

In short, it’s a single-player management/sandbox game that serves as both a tribute to Bitcoin’s legacy and (hopefully) an accessible introduction to blockchain technology, something that actually shows you what goes on behind the scenes, and something like Bitcoin actually is.

Basically, you boot into a Windows-XP style desktop, and from there, you mine coins, trade on exchanges, buy hardware, manage costs, browse forum posts, engage in ‘side’ activities, and so much more. As far as a goal, well, I guess your goal is to accumulate as much money as possible.

As the game progresses, so does the world inside of it. Hopefully you’ll gather some of this from the rest of the post.

https://i.ibb.co/WWNQYyMg/image.png


I felt like just making it a 1–1 for Bitcoin was a bit too on the nose, so the stand in for BTC in this game is Saturn, or SAT (very clever, I know). Anyway, right now, there’s three main desktop applications that you can interface with in the game’s simulated OS environment.


Saturn Core

https://i.ibb.co/qMb8nQSH/image.png

Naturally, very inspired by Satoshi’s v0.1 client  
You use it to keep track of your wallet, send transactions, and view all of your transaction history.

https://i.ibb.co/j9bZF041/image.png

In the above screenshot, you can see all the transactions to your address and open them up to see related details.

Like I mentioned earlier, one of the "software updates" you get after playing the game for a bit is the in-universe BIP32, and eventually BIP173), here’s a screenshot of that below:

https://i.ibb.co/Y4ph1gF3/image.png

A lot of this project so far has been built around the idea that there are many open ended possibilities for gameplay, and it’s something I will have to work on refining.


SATMiner

https://i.ibb.co/4gCJbcsJ/image.png

*You might notice that the hashrates are ridiculously low, this is intentional - I'm still figuring out how i want the progression to work [and if you should literally start the game by clicking like you do in cookie clicker before you buy upgrades] but I'll probably change this to start out more reasonable.

The GUI for this one is a bit of a work in progress, but this is your go-to mining software where you’ll be earning all those "SATs". It serves as the hub to check in on your operation, as well as where you can manage your devices (and temperature/electricity-costs, still working on this) and access the command console.

The command console serves a few functions (screenshots below):

https://i.ibb.co/pvTXWv4g/image.png
https://i.ibb.co/dwMsrd2R/image.png

It allows you to query stuff about the blockchain (a lot of it is just there to make it look and feel like a real console lol) and actually interact with the chain directly.

https://i.ibb.co/0R6zn7xG/image.png

The ENTIRE blockchain is fully simulated, minus some various shortcuts and liberties that I decided to take. Obviously, you can't wait around for a billion hours for your web browser to generate a valid hash under an actual realistic difficulty target, so the hash generation is skewed, with higher probabilities of finding a hash with a number of leading zero bits the better hardware that you have.

Regarding the full simulation aspect — It seems a bit pointless to me to simulate and record every single UTXO that is created and manage scriptPubKeys and scriptSigs, yada yada yada (though, I am still very much open to hearing suggestions about how to incorporate this type of stuff in gameplay). I’ve managed to compress every block into about 16 bytes (though i’ll likely be optimising this further to make space for other stuff), and everything is generated and assigned deterministically to keep the game feeling realistic/immersive but also very lightweight — which is important for the next thing: chain forking.

Still working on this, but from the command console — you can directly manipulate your version of the chain using rejectblock and restoreblock (equivalents to the bitcoin RPC’s invalidateblock/reconsiderblock). This allows you to, say, play out a 51% style attack, where if you have enough hashrate (it is a game after all, so it’s fun to include this) and can cover your costs, it is possible to fork the chain and commit some awesome transaction fraud. Naturally, if you’re not sneaky, this will have repercussions — exchange requiring deeper confirmations, peers ignoring your broadcasts, etc — still figuring this stuff out from a game design perspective.

It’s the little things like this that I think are very cool, and make creating this game worthwhile from an educational standpoint — again, I’d love to hear any suggestions for similar things to incorporate.


Fun little tangent — There are "secret commands" in the console that'll do stuff in the game, but are completely impossible to decrypt from the source code.
It’s an AES-CBC encrypt of the "message" with the key being the SHA-256 hash of the inputted secret, so i think it’s pretty airtight.

Here’s an example of one of them:

https://i.ibb.co/sdNfPGsV/image.png

Maybe a little cheesy but I think it’s fun — definitely looking for suggestions for little secrets to add to the console, really anything to do with early bitcoin culture or just things that are interesting. Obviously, not so secret once it’s posted on a public forum, but I can slightly alter the unlocking commands or something, it’s just for fun anyway.


WebKit Navigator

Okay, so this is a faux internet browser that is your gateway into the "online" world — I think it’s the most content rich and fun-to-add-to thing here.

https://i.ibb.co/HDbfNVKc/image.png

There’s 3 sites right now:

RAMRanch: (it’s stupid but i thought it was kinda funny) It’s an online store where you can buy stuff — you’ll start out with CPUs, fans, then gradually go to GPUs, cooling systems, ASICs, etc, I’m sure you get the idea.


RingNET: This is the stand in for Bitcointalk! I’ve put a screenshot below, it’s obviously all populated with fake numbers and stats, but that’s just to make it look a little bit alive since i haven’t actually made any content/posts for it yet (I definitely plan to though).

https://i.ibb.co/ZpmWTZdj/image.png

But basically, as the game progresses, the forum will start to fill up with various posts that’ll actually make the game feel alive — responses to market fluctuations (I’ll discuss this in a minute) and just other random events.

There’s some obvious legendary bitcointalk posts that I have to create parody versions of — the 10K pizzas, HODLing, consensus debates (the first mention of PoS), etc, but I’m hoping to get input from people who were around, or who know their Bitcoin lore better than I do.

https://i.ibb.co/vCMDCnh9/image.png

Naturally, I’ve made an inbox too where you can get shady messages, or actual "storylines" that push side quests or whatever you wanna call it.


SatEx: This is the exchange site the player will trade on, at least at first. I’m kinda thinking about how I want the Mt. Gox situation to play out in this, I may or may not have to make a few different exchange "sites" but it really shouldn’t be too much effort, just more HTML and CSS.

https://i.ibb.co/S4mRb7rs/image.png

The market is essentially a series of connected brownian bridges. This allows very nice control over how the market will move on a macro scale, in line with halvings and other random occurrences (as I discussed earlier with the forum posts). These occurrences and the time that they occur is generated randomly at the start of every play through - things that will cause either crashes or bullruns, say, like a major exchange getting hacked haha.


Why am I posting here?

The game is very much still early and I’m just building it because I love this stuff. But I figured some people here might have thoughts about what really mattered in Bitcoin’s early years — the kind of stuff that gets overlooked when people just look at charts or headlines.

So, if you have ideas, a post you remember, a story, any technical aspects of Bitcoin that you think should be included — if it belongs in the game, I want to know.
Also, any general feedback - is this something you'd be interesting in playing? Even if you think the whole thing is dumb, I'd still appreciate the honesty.


I know it's a long post and there's a lot of images, but thank you so much for reading this far, and extra thanks if you’ve got any ideas you’d like to throw in. I’ll keep working on this in my spare time.

[SFR10]

So, if you have ideas, a post you remember, a story, any technical aspects of Bitcoin that you think should be included — if it belongs in the game, I want to know.

In addition to SatEx, it'd be nice if you could incorporate another exchange that resembles how "New Liberty Standard ^{[first bitcoin exchange]}" was calculating the exchange rates back then.

Also, any general feedback - is this something you'd be interesting in playing? Even if you think the whole thing is dumb, I'd still appreciate the honesty.

I'd definitely spend a good hour or two playing this sophisticated game from time to time, and I really don't think it's dumb ^{[it deserves more attention]}. Based on those screenshots, I'm guessing a minimum viable product already exists... Can we try it?

*Can someone on my behalf send a lot of merits to the opening post?

[u0u]

Hey everyone,

This is my first real post here — I’ve lurked for a little bit, but I’m still pretty new to this whole ecosystem.

Recently, I started building a weird little game project that I thought some of you might find interesting (or at least entertaining). Posting it on this board because it seems most appropriate I think.


What is this?

In short, it’s a single-player management/sandbox game that serves as both a tribute to Bitcoin’s legacy and (hopefully) an accessible introduction to blockchain technology, something that actually shows you what goes on behind the scenes, and something like Bitcoin actually is.

Basically, you boot into a Windows-XP style desktop, and from there, you mine coins, trade on exchanges, buy hardware, manage costs, browse forum posts, engage in ‘side’ activities, and so much more. As far as a goal, well, I guess your goal is to accumulate as much money as possible.

As the game progresses, so does the world inside of it. Hopefully you’ll gather some of this from the rest of the post.

https://i.ibb.co/WWNQYyMg/image.png


I felt like just making it a 1–1 for Bitcoin was a bit too on the nose, so the stand in for BTC in this game is Saturn, or SAT (very clever, I know). Anyway, right now, there’s three main desktop applications that you can interface with in the game’s simulated OS environment.


Saturn Core

https://i.ibb.co/qMb8nQSH/image.png

Naturally, very inspired by Satoshi’s v0.1 client  
You use it to keep track of your wallet, send transactions, and view all of your transaction history.

https://i.ibb.co/j9bZF041/image.png

In the above screenshot, you can see all the transactions to your address and open them up to see related details.

Like I mentioned earlier, one of the "software updates" you get after playing the game for a bit is the in-universe BIP32, and eventually BIP173), here’s a screenshot of that below:

https://i.ibb.co/Y4ph1gF3/image.png

A lot of this project so far has been built around the idea that there are many open ended possibilities for gameplay, and it’s something I will have to work on refining.


SATMiner

https://i.ibb.co/4gCJbcsJ/image.png

*You might notice that the hashrates are ridiculously low, this is intentional - I'm still figuring out how i want the progression to work [and if you should literally start the game by clicking like you do in cookie clicker before you buy upgrades] but I'll probably change this to start out more reasonable.

The GUI for this one is a bit of a work in progress, but this is your go-to mining software where you’ll be earning all those "SATs". It serves as the hub to check in on your operation, as well as where you can manage your devices (and temperature/electricity-costs, still working on this) and access the command console.

The command console serves a few functions (screenshots below):

https://i.ibb.co/pvTXWv4g/image.png
https://i.ibb.co/dwMsrd2R/image.png

It allows you to query stuff about the blockchain (a lot of it is just there to make it look and feel like a real console lol) and actually interact with the chain directly.

https://i.ibb.co/0R6zn7xG/image.png

The ENTIRE blockchain is fully simulated, minus some various shortcuts and liberties that I decided to take. Obviously, you can't wait around for a billion hours for your web browser to generate a valid hash under an actual realistic difficulty target, so the hash generation is skewed, with higher probabilities of finding a hash with a number of leading zero bits the better hardware that you have.

Regarding the full simulation aspect — It seems a bit pointless to me to simulate and record every single UTXO that is created and manage scriptPubKeys and scriptSigs, yada yada yada (though, I am still very much open to hearing suggestions about how to incorporate this type of stuff in gameplay). I’ve managed to compress every block into about 16 bytes (though i’ll likely be optimising this further to make space for other stuff), and everything is generated and assigned deterministically to keep the game feeling realistic/immersive but also very lightweight — which is important for the next thing: chain forking.

Still working on this, but from the command console — you can directly manipulate your version of the chain using rejectblock and restoreblock (equivalents to the bitcoin RPC’s invalidateblock/reconsiderblock). This allows you to, say, play out a 51% style attack, where if you have enough hashrate (it is a game after all, so it’s fun to include this) and can cover your costs, it is possible to fork the chain and commit some awesome transaction fraud. Naturally, if you’re not sneaky, this will have repercussions — exchange requiring deeper confirmations, peers ignoring your broadcasts, etc — still figuring this stuff out from a game design perspective.

It’s the little things like this that I think are very cool, and make creating this game worthwhile from an educational standpoint — again, I’d love to hear any suggestions for similar things to incorporate.


Fun little tangent — There are "secret commands" in the console that'll do stuff in the game, but are completely impossible to decrypt from the source code.
It’s an AES-CBC encrypt of the "message" with the key being the SHA-256 hash of the inputted secret, so i think it’s pretty airtight.

Here’s an example of one of them:

https://i.ibb.co/sdNfPGsV/image.png

Maybe a little cheesy but I think it’s fun — definitely looking for suggestions for little secrets to add to the console, really anything to do with early bitcoin culture or just things that are interesting. Obviously, not so secret once it’s posted on a public forum, but I can slightly alter the unlocking commands or something, it’s just for fun anyway.


WebKit Navigator

Okay, so this is a faux internet browser that is your gateway into the "online" world — I think it’s the most content rich and fun-to-add-to thing here.

https://i.ibb.co/HDbfNVKc/image.png

There’s 3 sites right now:

RAMRanch: (it’s stupid but i thought it was kinda funny) It’s an online store where you can buy stuff — you’ll start out with CPUs, fans, then gradually go to GPUs, cooling systems, ASICs, etc, I’m sure you get the idea.


RingNET: This is the stand in for Bitcointalk! I’ve put a screenshot below, it’s obviously all populated with fake numbers and stats, but that’s just to make it look a little bit alive since i haven’t actually made any content/posts for it yet (I definitely plan to though).

https://i.ibb.co/ZpmWTZdj/image.png

But basically, as the game progresses, the forum will start to fill up with various posts that’ll actually make the game feel alive — responses to market fluctuations (I’ll discuss this in a minute) and just other random events.

There’s some obvious legendary bitcointalk posts that I have to create parody versions of — the 10K pizzas, HODLing, consensus debates (the first mention of PoS), etc, but I’m hoping to get input from people who were around, or who know their Bitcoin lore better than I do.

https://i.ibb.co/vCMDCnh9/image.png

Naturally, I’ve made an inbox too where you can get shady messages, or actual "storylines" that push side quests or whatever you wanna call it.


SatEx: This is the exchange site the player will trade on, at least at first. I’m kinda thinking about how I want the Mt. Gox situation to play out in this, I may or may not have to make a few different exchange "sites" but it really shouldn’t be too much effort, just more HTML and CSS.

https://i.ibb.co/S4mRb7rs/image.png

The market is essentially a series of connected brownian bridges. This allows very nice control over how the market will move on a macro scale, in line with halvings and other random occurrences (as I discussed earlier with the forum posts). These occurrences and the time that they occur is generated randomly at the start of every play through - things that will cause either crashes or bullruns, say, like a major exchange getting hacked haha.


Why am I posting here?

The game is very much still early and I’m just building it because I love this stuff. But I figured some people here might have thoughts about what really mattered in Bitcoin’s early years — the kind of stuff that gets overlooked when people just look at charts or headlines.

So, if you have ideas, a post you remember, a story, any technical aspects of Bitcoin that you think should be included — if it belongs in the game, I want to know.
Also, any general feedback - is this something you'd be interesting in playing? Even if you think the whole thing is dumb, I'd still appreciate the honesty.


I know it's a long post and there's a lot of images, but thank you so much for reading this far, and extra thanks if you’ve got any ideas you’d like to throw in. I’ll keep working on this in my spare time.

Very impressive, it looks like an experience that captures the fascinating early days of Bitcoin in a creative way that is both educational and immersive, is the game going to be browser-based, do you have a working prototype?

[askii]

In addition to SatEx, it'd be nice if you could incorporate another exchange that resembles how "New Liberty Standard ^{[first bitcoin exchange]}" was calculating the exchange rates back then.

Funny enough, I'm implementing the network difficulty as a function of the exchange price - so I guess in some weird inverse way it "appears" that the price is following the cost of mining. With so little other factors influencing price at the start of the game, it already almost naturally feels like the price is following electricity costs lol. You're right though, the more I think about it, the more it makes sense to have multiple exchanges, each reflecting the various eras of bitcoin trading.

I'd definitely spend a good hour or two playing this sophisticated game from time to time, and I really don't think it's dumb ^{[it deserves more attention]}. Based on those screenshots, I'm guessing a minimum viable product already exists... Can we try it?

Thanks for the kind words! It's a pretty niche concept, yeah, but I'm hoping to execute it well.

Also, I guess it depends on what you mean by a minimum viable product really - the game is technically "playable" but it's not really fun at the moment. It's more of just a sandbox with no real progression. I’m working on figuring out how to make it feel like a proper game - e.g. determining stats for components you can buy from the store, in terms of hashing power, electricity usage, etc, to name one of many things. Needs to strike that balance of being realistic but also fair.

Naturally, when something that can receive proper feedback is ready, I'll be sure to share it in this thread

[askii]

Very impressive, it looks like an experience that captures the fascinating early days of Bitcoin in a creative way that is both educational and immersive, is the game going to be browser-based, do you have a working prototype?

Cheers! 


It's definitely playable in-browser, so unless there's some problem down the line that changes things, I'll opt for just putting it online, or maybe also bundling it using electron or something.

As far as a working prototype goes, technically - yes, but like I mentioned in my other reply it's just not much of a game yet haha. The core fundamentals are all there, at least all the simulation stuff, I just need to go in add put stuff on top of it (and fine tune all that stuff).

[d5000]

Really cool idea! I definitely would try this out. I'm not sure if I would play this for hours, as I'm currently not so much into gaming (and when I play, I play some old first person shooters ) but I think this should definitely find a public.

I could imagine a thread (or even a "league") of this game here in Bitcointalk where people can compare their highscores I've briefly thought into suggesting a multiplayer mode but (from my understanding) this would be a lot more complex as you would have to simulate blocks and stuff more realistically (if you still want to preserve features like the 51% attack) and add networking features ...

[Vod]

It's definitely playable in-browser, so unless there's some problem down the line that changes things, I'll opt for just putting it online, or maybe also bundling it using electron or something.

As far as a working prototype goes, technically - yes, but like I mentioned in my other reply it's just not much of a game yet haha. The core fundamentals are all there, at least all the simulation stuff, I just need to go in add put stuff on top of it (and fine tune all that stuff).

Nice!   Is this going to be a real time simulation type game?   For example, are you going to require certain things be done in order to advance?  (Like a factory filling up needs to be emptied).  That is a great free to play start, and then you can sell upgrades that eliminate some of those requirements.

I can also offer you a real time view-only "interface" that could show the progress of their bitcoin operation on every page load, launching by end of month.  (They would still need to visit your site for any interaction with the game) Send me a PM if this is something that interests you, as this would introduce friendly competition between your users.   You'll need a completed privacy policy, and a basic API to return up to ten stats for each player. 

[askii]

Really cool idea! I definitely would try this out. I'm not sure if I would play this for hours, as I'm currently not so much into gaming (and when I play, I play some old first person shooters ) but I think this should definitely find a public.

Yeah, I totally get that - I don’t expect people to sink tons of hours into it. I’m aiming for something that you can poke around in for a bit, maybe learn something new, get nostalgic, and then maybe come back to later when the mood hits.

I could imagine a thread (or even a "league") of this game here in Bitcointalk where people can compare their highscores I've briefly thought into suggesting a multiplayer mode but (from my understanding) this would be a lot more complex as you would have to simulate blocks and stuff more realistically (if you still want to preserve features like the 51% attack) and add networking features ...

Oh for sure, I'll definitely bake in some kind of score/stat export that people can copy/paste (and maybe a global leaderboard accessible in the game somewhere).
I’ve also had a few vague ideas around multiplayer, but yeah, keeping everything fair and consistent across different users gets messy really fast. Maybe later on if it grows, but for now it’s strictly solo.

There's something similar that existed back in the day called VirtualMiner, pretty neat product of its time.

[askii]

Nice!   Is this going to be a real time simulation type game?   For example, are you going to require certain things be done in order to advance?  (Like a factory filling up needs to be emptied).  That is a great free to play start, and then you can sell upgrades that eliminate some of those requirements.

Things happen in real time, yep - as long as the game is open. On desktop it runs constantly, but in-browser it only updates when the tab is focused (because of timer throttling).

The idea is that you will have to consistently compete with the rest of the network as you go. For example, you might solo mine 15 of the first 28 blocks with ease, but as more “people” join the network and the total hashrate increases, difficulty adjusts and you’ll start to fall behind unless you upgrade your rig. That loop of scaling, adjusting, and keeping up is the heart of it - along with random events you’ll have to deal with as you go. So yeah, it's real time in the sense that things will happen without you, and you will fall behind if you don't interact with the game, hopefully that answers your question.

Right now block times are around 10s, and difficulty adjustment happens every 32 blocks, though it can be tweaked to offer a slower paced or more hectic experience.

I can also offer you a real time view-only "interface" that could show the progress of their bitcoin operation on every page load, launching by end of month.  (They would still need to visit your site for any interaction with the game) Send me a PM if this is something that interests you, as this would introduce friendly competition between your users.   You'll need a completed privacy policy, and a basic API to return up to ten stats for each player. 

Appreciate the offer  !  I don't think it'll be ready by the end of the month (juggling this with uni and other things), but I will definitely keep that in mind and reach out to you at some point.

[Vod]

Things happen in real time, yep - as long as the game is open. On desktop it runs constantly, but in-browser it only updates when the tab is focused (because of timer throttling).

The idea is that you will have to consistently compete with the rest of the network as you go. For example, you might solo mine 15 of the first 28 blocks with ease, but as more “people” join the network and the total hashrate increases, difficulty adjusts and you’ll start to fall behind unless you upgrade your rig. That loop of scaling, adjusting, and keeping up is the heart of it - along with random events you’ll have to deal with as you go. So yeah, it's real time in the sense that things will happen without you, and you will fall behind if you don't interact with the game, hopefully that answers your question.

Will this be a single player game, where you are competing against bots, or a multiplayer one?  If you plan for multiplayer, you should ditch all engine development on your app/webpage, and code those to interact with your world server (whatever language, framework and database you are comfortable with) via API, which must be running 24/7 somewhere obviously. 

[askii]

Will this be a single player game, where you are competing against bots, or a multiplayer one?  If you plan for multiplayer, you should ditch all engine development on your app/webpage, and code those to interact with your world server (whatever language, framework and database you are comfortable with) via API, which must be running 24/7 somewhere obviously. 

It's single-player, yes. You’re competing against simulated peers, it's designed to all be client side. This way, the leaderboard would be about determining the best strategies to optimise your mining operation while having to deal with random factors that are out of your control (market events and such factors are generated at the start of each run with a seed).

[arabspaceship123]

Games about bitcoin are fun I like your concept. Single player games novelty aren't fun it's important features should be added. More ppl get involved if it's multiplayer allows ppl to play against each other & sharing scores so it's going to be more fun.

Will this be a single player game, where you are competing against bots, or a multiplayer one?  If you plan for multiplayer, you should ditch all engine development on your app/webpage, and code those to interact with your world server (whatever language, framework and database you are comfortable with) via API, which must be running 24/7 somewhere obviously. 

It's single-player, yes. You’re competing against simulated peers, it's designed to all be client side. This way, the leaderboard would be about determining the best strategies to optimise your mining operation while having to deal with random factors that are out of your control (market events and such factors are generated at the start of each run with a seed).

[askii]

Games about bitcoin are fun I like your concept. Single player games novelty aren't fun it's important features should be added. More ppl get involved if it's multiplayer allows ppl to play against each other & sharing scores so it's going to be more fun.

Yeah for sure, but I do think there is genuine depth to be found in the concept, enough that it goes beyond being a simple "novelty" or throwaway.

Like I mentioned earlier, multiplayer just makes things very tricky. In singleplayer, every run is fresh and immersive, and the experience can be tailored to be educational and fun.

On the other hand, when the game is multiplayer (if it's global multiplayer at least) competition can potentially become pretty intense, and it would potentially be discouraging for players who end up joining later and find it difficult to catch up. Also, it's very hard to tailor the experience (especially the educational aspect, though I guess it's possible). Things would have to be a lot slower and stretched out to ensure the survival of the game - block times would need to be longer, halving intervals would have to be longer, to make sure the game doesn't end up having a short lifespan (there's not really much to do once the last sat has been mined).

Perhaps there is merit to having both a singleplayer and multiplayer mode, and multiplayer definitely sounds like it could be fun, but for now my attention and focus will primarily be on singleplayer.

[r_victory]

Congratulations on the initiative, and it seems to be a very fun game, with a nostalgic appeal. Windows XP brings back good memories (although I have used all versions, 3.1, 3.11, Windows 95). I wish you success in your project!

[arabspaceship123]

You're focusing on single player so sharing scores for a leadership board's useful to keep players excited. It's your game you'll make it how you imagine ppl playing. There's so many games we've got access to on phones & online I don't know how ppl share their time between playing games.

Yeah for sure, but I do think there is genuine depth to be found in the concept, enough that it goes beyond being a simple "novelty" or throwaway.

Like I mentioned earlier, multiplayer just makes things very tricky. In singleplayer, every run is fresh and immersive, and the experience can be tailored to be educational and fun.

On the other hand, when the game is multiplayer (if it's global multiplayer at least) competition can potentially become pretty intense, and it would potentially be discouraging for players who end up joining later and find it difficult to catch up. Also, it's very hard to tailor the experience (especially the educational aspect, though I guess it's possible). Things would have to be a lot slower and stretched out to ensure the survival of the game - block times would need to be longer, halving intervals would have to be longer, to make sure the game doesn't end up having a short lifespan (there's not really much to do once the last sat has been mined).

Perhaps there is merit to having both a singleplayer and multiplayer mode, and multiplayer definitely sounds like it could be fun, but for now my attention and focus will primarily be on singleplayer.

[askii]

Congratulations on the initiative, and it seems to be a very fun game, with a nostalgic appeal. Windows XP brings back good memories (although I have used all versions, 3.1, 3.11, Windows 95). I wish you success in your project!

Thank you! Yeah, just trying to capture the XP vibe has been really fun in itself 

You're focusing on single player so sharing scores for a leadership board's useful to keep players excited. It's your game you'll make it how you imagine ppl playing. There's so many games we've got access to on phones & online I don't know how ppl share their time between playing games.

Absolutely, there's lots of cool stats that can be calculated for the leaderboards.

[Vod]

Absolutely, there's lots of cool stats that can be calculated for the leaderboards.

Cool stats that are worthless though - can't even be compared for bragging rights.  I like your idea but I hope you realize the members here like boasting about stats - verifiable or not   

[askii]

Cool stats that are worthless though - can't even be compared for bragging rights.  I like your idea but I hope you realize the members here like boasting about stats - verifiable or not   

Perhaps I am misunderstanding but I think they definitely can be compared  . The game has soft "ending" when the last coin has been mined, and up to that point, there's a ton of performance metrics that you can compare with other players.

E.g.:

• # of coins created
• # of blocks solo-mined
• Longest solo mining streak
• Chainwork contributed to the network
• Peak hashrate achieved
• Peak difficulty achieved (and best block hash mined)
• Net profits earned
• etc

These sorts of stats can also be combined into an overall performance grade (e.g., S, A, B, C, D, F).

And, if applicable:

• # of successful forks (51% style attack)
• Deepest successful fork
• More stuff like this

Just to list some ideas.
Unfortunately there is pretty much no way I can think of to fully stop cheating, and all of it would be a hassle - though, I think obvious cheating can be filtered out by statistical improbability - plus, if players provide their seeds (or for competitive purposes, people decide to play on the same set of seeds) results can to some extent be independently verified by replication.