BitVector

When using my Intel i7 6700K on-board video, the ground textures were missing. When I turned off GLSL support, the ground textures rendered again with no problems. I had 60fps throughout my testing of the new unstable build. - Win10 Home 64-bit, Intel Core i7 6700K (Intel HD Graphics 530)

On Wurm Unlimited and in non-test Wurm Online, I always get tile rendering glitches, because I use my Intel i7 6700K to render (I am waiting to buy a video card when AMD releases their new cards.) When I tried out this new client renderer, I first noticed weird glitching of cave walls disappearing, so then I turned off GLSL, and WOW... it actually renders the scene perfectly and with no tile render glitches whatsoever! Whatever you guys are doing with this new client renderer, keep it up. People like me, who use only Intel on-board video, are going to benefit the most from it when you get the bugs finally worked out.

Some time ago, I mined a rare rock shard that also popped out a gem. I realize that this is like a one-in-a-million chance, so maybe it is worth something to someone. I tried to sell this rare gem elsewhere, but they never responded, so I might as well try here to see if anyone is interested or just wants to talk about the rarity of this kind of item. Personally, I don't know what it is worth nor do I know if it has some sort of special property for use with priests. I'm assuming that this rare gem is more of a collector's item. If you want to make me a decent deal before I place this in the auction section, then please do so here, and I will very likely consider it, or you can send me a tell on the Independence server.

Here are some gems, if you are interested: I'm not sure how much the rare opal is worth though. It might be more of a collector's item, although I might sell it to you for a fair price.

One of the best and busiest villages on Independence. By far this is the greatest village I've ever had the priviledge to join.

[20:45:37] A dark green, blue and black opal. This is a very rare and interesting version of the item. I was mining and saw rare rock shards and a rare opal pop out at the same exact time. Incidentally, does anyone know what a 58.37ql rare opal is worth?

Is there actually someone on Indy that could enlighten me from level 6 Path of Love to level 7? Or would I need to find someone on a different server? It does seem like there's so few Protectors around...

Has alpha testing already started? And if so, has anyone here made any in-game money from this service yet? I'm curious in knowing if there is enough processing power in the mining pool that is capable enough to solve Bitcoin blocks. (Edit: If you signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement to test CoinLab's software, then please ignore my question.)

I was around for those days when the Bitcoin price hit its max, however, I did not put money into it. I remember distinctly a lot of people on the Bitcoin forums were glowing with excitement about the recent price surges and had a mindset of "It'll never go down... the only way it will go is up!" From what I know of market bubbles, you can usually spot one when there tends to be a lot of people falling into the same kind of mentality where they believe that some new-fangled technology will guarantee that the market will forever go up. Also at the time, there were various scare tactics being deployed that showed scary graphs of market bubble pops, and the Bitcoin market was sliding into the same exact path of predicted self-destruction. Another scare was the United States government getting noticeably outraged at Bitcoins over the fact that when using this currency, taxes could easily be averted and also underground drug markets could form (and did form) around Bitcoins using encrypted peer to peer networks, like Tor. All of these scares and propaganda were largely ignored by newcomers who were only interested in the ludicrous profits that could be obtained. On the other hand, early adopters who had already millions of dollars in Bitcoins were taking heed of the warnings and were waiting for the right time to exit. I knew very well of the ludicrous profits and had even considered buying a few ATI/AMD cards to use in mining, however, the video cards I wanted were already being massively hoarded, and nowhere could you find certain cards for sale. Now you must understand - average business ventures usually do not show profit until, at least, 2 years, and usually you shouldn't expect it until 5 years or more. Bitcoin mining, however, was quite capable, at that time, of showing a doubling in investment within a mere 30 days! As expected, people were crazy with mining excitement. Those who were calmly analyzing the situation knew very well this wouldn't last long (and were ignored, of course.) The straw that broke the back of the proverbial camel was in the form of a massive hacker attack. Despite all of the various modes of encryption that boost the security of the system, the biggest vulnerability was on the side of the money changers. The website, Mt. Gox, the largest of the Bitcoin exchanges, was hacked by somebody who tried, unsuccessfully, to withdraw coins by first forcing a massive sell-off of a large account so that he could buy them at a huge discount. The hacker, supposedly, only ran away with about $1000 in Bitcoins, and Mt. Gox pushed a roll-back that restored everyone's accounts to right before the sell-off. Despite these careful security measures that helped stemmed the attack, the damage was already done, and trust in Bitcoins was lost. That is essentially the history of Bitcoins as I remember it during its craziest of times. I'm not sure if you could call it a penny stock scam, since nobody really knew if it would ever take off like it did. An interesting little trivia of Bitcoins is that in its infancy when nobody thought Bitcoins were worth anything, a programmer from Florida asked around on the forums to see if anyone wanted to buy a couple of pizzas for him for 10,000 bitcoins. Someone actually took him up on the offer, and this was the first ever real-world transaction of Bitcoins. At the height of the market, that 10,000 bitcoins would have been worth $300,000 - nobody in their right mind would have expected that buying someone two Papa John's pizzas could make themselves rich. So as I've just said, it's difficult, even now, for me to label the technology as a scam, even if that's exactly how it turned out and will probably, unfortunately, still turn out in the future.

I'm interested in joining Ultimarus. I can't stay in my old village anymore, because the leader of it is going to sell off the deed and his characters, and then he is going to quit Wurm. I've been around for a few months, so I know the game fairly well, and many of my skills are decent but not high level. Here is a list of a few of them: Carpentry - 58 Digging - 62 Farming - 61 Mining - 56 Prospecting - 60 I'm sailing over there now in my Corbita that I recently constructed. I've spent a lot of time looking at different villages, and I think yours might be good for me. Please let me know if you would like to have me. Thanks, BitVector (Independence)

On Rolf's latest blog post (http://www.wurmonline.com/blog/), he mentions Bitcoin mining (http://bitcoin.org/) as a possible source of Wurm Online income. Essentially, Bitcoin can use the idle processes of your CPU or video card to generate income in the form of bitcoins, which can be traded for products or services, and also some bank vendors will buy your bitcoins and give you real cash. How all this works is somewhat complex and not easy to describe to non-programmers. The idea is that CPUs and video cards will try to solve cryptographic algorithms in the form of Bitcoin blocks and whoever solves a block will have their cryptographic signature placed upon it to show possible ownership. Afterwards, the ownership is proven by others computationally, and that block can then be used by the owner for whatever purposes they have in mind. Since there are certain banks (very few), businesses, and individuals that accept bitcoins as an exchange, this essentially makes Bitcoin its own currency. Code Club AB is soon going to participate in a beta of CoinLab's new Bitcoin mining app which will allow Wurm Online players to "pool together" their video cards in order to solve Bitcoin blocks. I'm not sure how it will be implemented, but it's likely that everyone will receive a portion of a successfully decrypted block according to how much work you put in, and all work obtained will likely have a small fee taken from it and then converted to Wurm Online silver for our own use in-game. CoinLab recently secured $500,000 in venture capital (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/04/24/coinlab-attracts-500000-in-venture-capital-for-bitcoin-projects/) and are progressing towards a beta stage where they work with currently two MMOs (Wurm Online and another MMO called graFighters). Bitcoin has, historically, received a lot of negative attention from governments and banking establishments around the world, although lately much of it has flown under the radar ever since the big Bitcoin bubble bust (from $30 USD to $5 USD) which left a lot of people apprehensive about the new technology. Also many "miners", as they are called, have dropped away now that the difficulty for mining bitcoins has reached near unprofitable levels when electricity fees and video card depreciation are figured in. As Wurm players, we probably don't need to worry about those details, however, we may need to worry about things like video card melt-downs, not having enough miners in the pool to reliably solve blocks, and also being owners of Nvidia rather than AMD video cards (Nvidia cards are often much slower at processing cryptographic hash functions than AMD.) Personally, I wouldn't mind using some of my idle video card processes (even with a crappy card) to make some irons and possibly silvers. What do others here think?

Here is a nice screenshot of a Venerable avatar of libila that is wandering around in Independence right now: If anyone is interested in the location of this guy, let me know.

EDIT: I found a new home already. I am looking to be recruited by a settlement of good people who don't mind someone new. Although my skills may be low, I am willing to help out in the endeavors of the village/city for whatever cause they are pursuing. I have been playing for about a week and just recently paid for premium. Because of various real-life employment problems, I can easily spend 5+ hours online daily. If you like, you can try to PM me in-game at "Bitvector", otherwise if you cannot reach me, please post here on this topic so I'll see it. Thanks, BitVector - Freedom Server