[ANN][MOTO] Motocoin

[HunterMinerCrafter]

This game is really hard, spend an hour and get nothing

I'd suggesting practicing in "ForFun" mode, first.  Just run motogame by itself, not through the wallet, then you will not have map resets when blocks come in.  While practicing, forget about the coin and just drive around for awhile first.  Watch replays and see how people handle different "tough" situations, and then try replicating.  Get comfortable using quick rewinds to re-try failed moves a few times.  Figure out if you're more comfortable playing in "overview" mode with the full map display, or switching back and forth, or just staying zoomed in after selecting a map.

Most importantly, work on learning how to quickly asses if a map is actually do-able or not!

The game is only going to get more difficult again from here.  At 60 seconds on TT there is actually relatively little challenge, and anyone with a bit of practice can grab coins pretty easily, even during the peak mining hours.  If I can get blocks right now I assure you that anyone can.  I'm really really bad.  I can tell that we have a couple of very skilled human players mining again, so when competition does heat up and TT starts reducing things are going to be interesting.

[MotoLevi]

The "questionable" bots might be me. I usually play on a faster speed.

At what stage would the maps be impossible to finish? You mentioned that increasing the difficulty if the bots start taking over again or if it is too easy. What would change? More polygons? Less straight paths?

[MaxDZ8]

I cannot tell if this is serious or not but WTF I love it! 

[HunterMinerCrafter]

The "questionable" bots might be me. I usually play on a faster speed.

Good on ya!

At what stage would the maps be impossible to finish?

This is hard to say, currently.  The work curve calculations were done on "scaled down" difficulty maps, and includes a probabilistic analysis over extremely low TT solutions.  It is hard to say what low TT solutions on a full map will actually look like until we get there under the new configuration.  Other factors such as the combination of path-finding times and potential warp corrections could complicate the question.

You mentioned that increasing the difficulty if the bots start taking over again or if it is too easy. What would change?

To start, we could just increase the static path length requirement.  This basically gives us something of an inflection point on our whole curve, allowing us to move the "exponential portion" of the logistic curve either direction along the horizontal (TT) axis.  By changing base work requirements (such as hashing rounds required in map generation) we can affect both the base and slope (really, growth rate) of the exponential portion of the curve, as well.  This gives us the ability to "shape" our work function requirements to network conditions over time.  (In theory, this could eventually be automated within protocol itself.)

Our goal is basically to never again allow the work curve to pragmatically "become shaped like" a full logistic S curve.  As long as it continues to be shaped such that play is only allowed within the exponential growth portion of the curve, we are fine.  If the "leveling off" of the work at low TT presents itself again, and the average work curve pragmatically shows as an S curve again, the challenge will need to be further hardened as the network would then again be at risk of a warp attack.

I hope to find some time to put together some animated graphs to illustrate this whole mess, and how "bad" it actually got.    A very simply way to think of it is like this: If you can quickly solve an ~8.7 second straight line solution, what is the work difference between a TT of 60 seconds, 30 seconds, 15 seconds, or ~8.7 seconds?  Answer: virtually none.  Once you get to a "perfect solver" for unconstrained maps the logistic curve has "flattened" so that the exponential portion is basically all the way at the left (small differences in the start of the map, etc, make it never "practically vertical" entirely) and work over your range of TTs flat-lines - it is all the same work required at any difficulty.

We actually got there.

More polygons? Less straight paths?

Less straight paths.  Even just removing one bit (50%) out of the available map nonce space seems to have made a significant improvement in balancing mining!  (None of the nonce values I've seen have been very large... "big" nonces are now back in the tens.)  There's a small performance trade-off, here, but I think it can easily be managed with simple mechanisms like background map work, as WilliamLie mentioned.

[Adapik]

Why the filter is switching? How turn it off?

[HunterMinerCrafter]

I cannot tell if this is serious or not but WTF I love it! 

It is some very serious play!

This is a question I've wrestled with since finding MOTO myself.  One way in which this project "feels" differentiated from HUC is that there is this whole question to it of how much "play" can directly be "valued" as what we consider "work" if we make some peculiar mathematical assumptions.  HUC avoids that question with it's traditional PoW hashing work.

If we embed into the practice of "play" something called "computational cycle" in order to attach both time and energy burn costs, and use it to secure some transaction log, is it still "play" at all?

if we use a "proof-of-work" that presents itself as an enjoyable "video game" for people to "play" in order to (in addition to the subsidy) attract and reward miners, without breaking any constraints of the definition of "proof-of-work," is it still "work" at all?

(What if we make that work/play thing also be a collaborative scientific discovery process? WTF is it then?  Work? Play? School? Lab? Library? )

I know which sort of mines I'd like to be toiling in over the coming years.

[ptic-1]

in wallet play to mine  doesnt work

If you use Windows, try to download and install Visual C++ Redistributable Packages: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40784

amm doesnt want to go,w ill retray
I get this on wallet exit

Can you run motogame.exe by itself, not from the wallet?

yes

[HunterMinerCrafter]

Can you run motogame.exe by itself, not from the wallet?

yes

If you try to run motogame through the wallet and then look in debug.log do you see CreateNewBlock entries in the log when you are trying to launch?  This will tell us if the wallet "thinks" that motogame is running or not.

[HunterMinerCrafter]

Why the filter is switching? How turn it off?

It is unfortunately mapped to f7, so in moments of frustration I also find myself accidentally hammering on it, and find myself staring at a black screen with minim1ner filter.  Then I just feel some regret for having ever wasted effort putting it in the wallet in the first place. ;-)

If you close and re-launch motogame, it should take you back to the default None filter.  If this isn't the case, please let me know!

[HunterMinerCrafter]

I just did some rough estimates, and we probably have about 24-48 hours remaining for minimum-difficulty blocks, depending mostly upon whether or not the weekend brings in more play.

[ptic-1]

Can you run motogame.exe by itself, not from the wallet?

yes

If you try to run motogame through the wallet and then look in debug.log do you see CreateNewBlock entries in the log when you are trying to launch?  This will tell us if the wallet "thinks" that motogame is running or not.

I clicked once to play, from wallet

Code:

2014-08-29 19:02:53 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000
2014-08-29 19:02:53 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000
2014-08-29 19:02:54 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000
2014-08-29 19:02:54 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000
2014-08-29 19:02:55 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000
2014-08-29 19:02:55 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000

[HunterMinerCrafter]

I clicked once to play, from wallet

Code:

2014-08-29 19:02:53 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000

This would imply that the wallet thinks it has a running motogame. Can you look in your task manager process list and see if motogame is there?

[ptic-1]

I clicked once to play, from wallet

Code:

2014-08-29 19:02:53 CreateNewBlock(): total size 1000

This would imply that the wallet thinks it has a running motogame. Can you look in your task manager process list and see if motogame is there?

not there

[HunterMinerCrafter]

not there

Strange.  WilliamLie2 might have to field this one, since I really don't know much about the windows build.  It is quite possible that I broke something on it, I suppose.   Did the original client work?  Try another PC, if you are able.  Perhaps there is something wrong with the OpenGL/glfw stack on that machine.

[ptic-1]

not there

Strange.  WilliamLie2 might have to field this one, since I really don't know much about the windows build.  It is quite possible that I broke something on it, I suppose.   Did the original client work?  Try another PC, if you are able.  Perhaps there is something wrong with the OpenGL/glfw stack on that machine.

Did the original client work?

yes

I think  

Try another PC

no go

Perhaps there is something wrong on that machine.

nothing wrong except

Beep Code    Descriptions
3 short            Base 64K RAM failure  

[HunterMinerCrafter]

no go

Can you still run the old motogame.exe now?

EDIT: Can you try running "motogame -schematic" from command line?

If you are inclined you could try recompiling motogame from source in visual studio express.  Or try Linux, heh.

[ptic-1]

no go

Can you still run the old motogame.exe now?

EDIT: Can you try running "motogame -schematic" from command line?

If you are inclined you could try recompiling motogame from source in visual studio express.  Or try Linux, heh.

hmm strange   from command    I ran motogame.exe -shematic     without wallet opened- play game only   worked

saw that wallet isnt opened, closed command, opened wallet,,, voila   now it works     play from wallet  on blockchain

[e1ghtSpace]

It seems that the blocks are going faster because its the weekend. This might be your only chance to win a few blocks everyone.

[HunterMinerCrafter]

saw that wallet isnt opened, closed command, opened wallet,,, voila   now it works     play from wallet  on blockchain

Strange, but I am glad to hear it.  Mine away!

[HunterMinerCrafter]

It seems that the blocks are going faster because its the weekend. This might be your only chance to win a few blocks everyone.

It begins!

The block explorer apparently still needs to be intermittently kicked, so it is not always showing the newest blocks, but they should still always be searchable and the height displayed under node information on the status page mostly keeps up to date.