The Litecoin Development Club

[markm]

I have been wondering myself whether Litecoin users are as uninterested in games as Bitcoin users. I have been trying this kind of thing over and over again and learned every time that Bitcoin people are just so totally uninterested that Bitcoin seems to be the last coin of all to bother with. Even Ixcoin garnered one player, just one but still that is more supporters than Bitcoin has.

CoffeeMUD, which is the engine used by MUDgaard.i2p has a huge range of crafting skills, plenty of resources that can be foraged, chopped, mined or dug and lots of things you can build with them. But setting its internal currency to millbitcoins was a big mistake, alienating the players who prefer other cryptocoins because not one single player actually advocates using Bitcoins. The Ixcoin player felt it very unfair that despite having actively promoted Ixcoin within the various games for a long time, suddenly Bitcoin instead of Ixcoin got set up as the default currency of the game.

So, MUDgaard.i2p is now switched back to using its own native default currency. Maybe once each altcoin has an active clan working to establish it as useful in the game the idea of making one of them the default can be re-visited. Does Litecoin have enough advocates to form and keep active a clan? We'll see, Supposedly it has more advocates than Ixcoin, but maybe they just aren't into games?

-MarkM-

EDIT: Note that done right, latecomers who bring cash should only be able to prosper disproportionately if the original settlers who did the actual work of gathering the resources, crafting them into tools and buildings and so on undervalue their own work and thus end up in effect having acted as insanely dirt-cheap labour for the money-wielders. If on the other hand they hold their work as valuable, selling its proceeds only at good prices, and charging good money for their labour, then it should turn out that actually hiring other players to work in your factories would be a lot more expensive than creating characters of your own to work in them...

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[EskimoBob]

Do not forget to use "Litecoin me!" links in your websites and comments you leave to other sites etc. https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/pull/36

Code:

<a href="litecoin:LfuaH1JTjf2dV2CDGzjNeimEnz23f9zsCT?amount=10&label=EskimoBob">Litecoin me!</a>

[MarketNeutral]

I have been wondering myself whether Litecoin users are as uninterested in games as Bitcoin users.

Personally, I'm very interested in litecoins but I have zero interest in games.

[daybyter]

Same here. I just willing to contribute to game, but not really interested in playing it...

Another idea: I learned these days, that we have more than 30 LETS (local exchange and trading systems) here with their own currency. I wonder if some of them might be interested in making their currency convertible to a virtual currency, so they could use features like mobile payment. OTOH I would add much value to those *coins, because there would be so much more shops, where you could pay with them?

[daybyter]

It seems, that there is no android wallet yet?

[tacotime]

Is it possible to make an Intel iGPU miner for litecoin?  The OpenCL SDK is out: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/vcsource-tools-opencl-sdk/

If an Ivy Bridge GPU can get 300 kh/s with the onboard video card, "CPU" mining might still be viable.

[bulanula]

Is it possible to make an Intel iGPU miner for litecoin?  The OpenCL SDK is out: http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/vcsource-tools-opencl-sdk/

If an Ivy Bridge GPU can get 300 kh/s with the onboard video card, "CPU" mining might still be viable.

Yeah. I can barely get 300 with a 5870 but you will get that with a iGPU ?

[tacotime]

Yeah. I can barely get 300 with a 5870 but you will get that with a iGPU ?

the ivy bridge iGPU has massive memory bandwidth for an iGPU, dependent on the speed of the RAM and quad channel mode

http://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/5771?cPage=6&all=False&sort=0&page=19&slug=the-intel-ivy-bridge-core-i7-3770k-review

Even if you could get 120 kh/s (CPU itself with AVX gets ~50k/s), at 140w at the wall that's still pretty decent
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ivy-bridge-benchmark-core-i7-3770k,3181-23.html

[LiteBit]

I will add Litecoin, no problem. Give me a few days.

Donate Litecoins using Propster coming soon... 

This looks promising and we're going to try using this on our community projects we're currently supporting on our site.

[cryptoanarchist]

Since the opening topic mentioned Litecoin based games I thought I would give my two cents.

I've been thinking of creating an economy based browser game where the in-game currency being used would be Litecoins (or exchanged for Litecoins). Since Litecoins are very easy generated at the moment and because of the low price it seems like a perfect blend of real-life vs game-life.

The game itself would be a mix of games like 'Transport Tycoon' mixed together with 'Sim City' elements. There would be a whole economical chain where users need to trade with other players to build their empire. For instance you transfer 100LC to the game and use half of this money to buy your first woodcutter factory. You would then need to acquire wood which you can buy (or trade) from an other player that decided to start out with a foresting service. You can use the logs you create to trade and sell on the market to players that want to build housing (or other stuff) using your logs. The idea is that the more work your factory does the better you will perform decreasing costs and/or producing more with the same amount of resources (thus encouraging specialization). There should always be resources on the market so the game itself will offer certain resources for a fixed price to make sure the circle doesn't break. The idea is that you can always withdraw your LC and thus in theory could make money playing the game (although considering the going rate you won't be making much). 

The idea itself is very raw at the moment. I have no clue how far to go with the resources. If you want to build factory do you need parts to build it? Do you need workers for your factory? Do you need food to feed the workers? Do the workers need housing? The answers to these questions will greatly determine the scope of the game as you can take this principle pretty far.

There are some possible caveats already.

• Since you can buy in-game resources you are basically turning the game into a pay-to-win system. Pool operators can probably buy loads of factories / resources to get ahead in the game. I haven't decided if this is a real problem though. Real life is just so unfair, those who get born into money (or even born in a western country) often have a leg up in life. Since this game is mirroring real life economics it might not be such a bad idea to have this aspect of the game and not try to fight it.
  
• For an economic game to work you require a large player base. LC's own userbase is very small already so in order to achieve enough traction you would require quite some marketing to attract enough people to make the game fun.
  

Before I even venture into thinking more about this I wanted to check to see if there are any things that I did not think off that can easily kill this idea. So please let me know what you think, would this be doable?

I think you're on the right track here, but have you considered a game more like 'Tribal Wars'? It's the typical browser based build-a-city-and-plunder-others' type game. It's free, but you can buy upgrades which give you an edge. I think its important for a Litecoin game to have that option to. From a marketing standpoint, you can still call it 'free' and hook the users into playing and then they want to buy the upgrades to keep up with opponents.

In Tribal Wars, you buy in game 'gold' which can be used to buy the upgrades. So the difference would be you would use litecoins instead of paypal to buy the in game gold.

Even cooler would be if you could win a portion of that gold (and in turn ltc) by beating opponents who had purchased gold themselves. It could become a giant tournament with a winner take all.

[markm]

The closest thing I have found to that that actually works is Devana, which I have running at http://villages.mygamesonline.org/

I tried a so called "Travian Clone" for a while as it looked prettier and if it had worked would have had more "features" but it turned out not only that the graphics were all stolen but also that the thing didn't actually work, thus Devana is now the sole remaining example of that type of game as all the others tested turned out to be broken.

That type of game has a fundamental economic problem though in that it gives out villages for free to anyone, there is no accounting for the resources requiired to actuallly establish a village in the first place. Thus they tend to become littered with free starter villages created by simply creating a free email account somewhere and using it to start yet another player-account as yet another free village to raid.

One thing that attracted me to HYIPs long ago and to coin mining nowadays is the idea that maybe requiring a deposit to start a player account in a game could help cut down the number of "stuff from no-where" startup accounts that never actually get played, by being able to give people back their deposits plus interest (from the HYIP or mining or something, whatever there is that actually works) at the end of the game if they are still active by then.

Another approach I have been trying is simply to have smaller scale games in which individual characters can work their way up to having enough influence (or oratory skill or whatever) and resources to be able to launch a village-building expedition. so that all players in the villages scale game originate from the smaller scale game instead of being random unidentified characters who mysteriously pop up out of no-where with enough followers and resources to create a village.

I suppose if there is demand for it though I can do like I have done with the 2Moons system: run a second server which does cater to these random passers-by, giving them free villages out of no-where like they normally expect from such a game.

Is there demand though?

-MarkM-

[daybyter]

I still think, it's way too complicated for a first game.

I would consider something like this:

http://www.storm8.com/games/imobsters/

[frisco2]

I will add Litecoin, no problem. Give me a few days.

Donate Litecoins using Propster coming soon... 

This looks promising and we're going to try using this on our community projects we're currently supporting on our site.

Hi,

I have made the modifications on Propster, and it now supports Litecoin.  For example:

https://propster.hypervolume.com/tipjar/0C73MH3

You will notice the LTC Drop address in the table for anonymous contributions. LTC is also supported if you sign-in and load funds.

Boris

[LiteBit]

Fantastic! Great work.

We'll work on creating TipJars for our community projects as we get time the next 2 weeks. If you have a project represented on the site we'll redirect donors to the Propster TipJars for contributions. At the end of each month we'll transfer ALL donations to each project's Team Leader address.  We will continue to not charge anything for our promotion of all community projects and won't charge a fee for transferring of donations.

Is there a way to embed the TipJars on LiteBit.co or is redirecting to Propster the logical choice?

Keep the Bitcoin & Litecoin projects coming!

Any news on a vanity LTC address generator?

[frisco2]

Yes, there is an embed button like Flattr, I just have to modify it to support LTC, as well as all the recent anonymous tipping added to Propster.  I will contact you again in a few days.

I have also started a tip jar for the Litecoin Project itself:

https://propster.hypervolume.com/tipjar/0C7BINK

[Vorksholk]

I think the game idea/MUD idea is interesting I personally had at one point planned to try something of a text-based MUD based on LTC as an internal currency, but I just don't have the coding skills to come through with something like that :\

[Vorksholk]

Oh and StewartJ: the litecoin faucet you have listed seems to no longer be in service. :\

Prompted by that one not being up, though, I made my own litecoin faucet, you could add that if you want. Litecoinfaucet.com

[markm]

A really nice thing about MUDs is that it is absolutely normal and expected that players will use scripts/trigger/macros, all MUD clients provide such things, and thus they are ideal for 24/7 play using triggers/scripts to keep your character(s) toiling away while you sleep, which in turn means staying connected 24/7, which itself is actually valuable in itself. (Think of all those downloadable toolbars all the marketeers try to get everyone to use so they can get messages sent out to them without having to resort to email.)

MUDs over i2p and/or Tor can thus act as a step toward using cryptocurrencies to reward people for running i2p/Tor nodes, without having to institute accounting into the i2p or Tor systems themselves. People can simply "mine" game items and game gold and "level up" game characters to sell for cryptocoins, with the actual running of the i2p or Tor node to do so being just a side-effect.

Over the long term if lots of money gets involved I expect people will start optimising their nodes to allow them to play over them without actually providing connectivity to others, but typically such networks already have some balance involved so that the less bandwidth you provide for others the less others provide you so the more stingy the players are about providing network bandwidth the more lag they should experience in the game, thus lowering the income...

Running the thing over i2p has actually turned out to be a great idea by the look of it, as it lowers the number of useless timewasters attracted and involves those who actually are interested in being part of the i2p network, which helps all i2p users; and once these serious investors/players get enough infrastructure built to be ready to bring plenty of products to the markets we can still open it up to the normal internet for the johnny come lately folk who can't be bothered to, or don't want to, support the i2p network directly by actually running i2p themselves.

-MarkM-

[Vorksholk]

This is an awesome thread, taken quite a bit of time from other things tonight

Anyhow, we seem to have quite a large focus on games, but what else digitally would people pay (perhaps a very small amount) for, such as microtransactions? Would some kind of simple software command a small price (say 15-100 LTC) but be popular enough and at the right pricepoint to make a dent? Just throwing ideas out...

[daybyter]

@Vorksholk : can you do graphics? If so, you might want to join the LTC-Projects IRC channel...