I have played the actual rosetta game, the downoaded version. I have been given strict instruction not to reveal the URL, but this is actually a really fun game! I am competing with my dad on his account, and I picked up the game almost immediately. It combines computer power with human power, you can move pieces around, or use your computer to continually 'minimize' individual sections or the whole puzzle. Get ready for an amazingly fun game! If you would like to know anything about the game, please reply to this.

Thanks, Benjamin

---

So... this is the "human assist" of Rosetta? Where the two are working together to solve an entire protein? I mean it's more then just the one sidechain we've seen so far?

Sounds like fun. Must be difficult to visualize the underlaying 3D structure with so many little piece parts floating around.

Does it have like a tutorial mode where it helps you to understand what you're doing? And how all the side effects of what you do are going to be played out by the program?

What does it do if your twist causes two atoms to occupy the same space at the same time?

What dependancies are there on the PC to play the full game? Is it just a browser applet? Or a Windows application? Or flash? Or what?

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

So... this is the "human assist" of Rosetta? Where the two are working together to solve an entire protein? I mean it's more then just the one sidechain we've seen so far?

Sounds like fun. Must be difficult to visualize the underlaying 3D structure with so many little piece parts floating around.

Does it have like a tutorial mode where it helps you to understand what you're doing? And how all the side effects of what you do are going to be played out by the program?

What does it do if your twist causes two atoms to occupy the same space at the same time?

What dependancies are there on the PC to play the full game? Is it just a browser applet? Or a Windows application? Or flash? Or what?

Well I am pretty sure that the windows/mac versions are going to be the same, so I will tell you about what it is like on my mac. Basically, there are many strands (Green and blue colored) that you can move around from your perspective (the whole thing turns all around when you click and drag it) and try to fill in yellow holes, or get rid of all the red. When you get bored or tired of this, you can click Start Minimize, which lets the computer take over from there. There is not a tutorial mode yet, but there may be one. However, I am in 8th grade and picked it up in about 5 seconds, so it is very easy to understand. On a mac what happens is you go to a URL, from there you download it, and then from there my dad used Terminal to start it. However I am sure it will be easy for everyone to open. On my mac it shows up as another application on the bottom dashboard. I am not quite sure about the two atoms part, maybe you should ask my dad. A cool thing about the game is that you can go back whenever you make a mistake by clicking a certain spot on the graph that is to your bottom left. You can also press repack to make the computer repack it in different ways. You are trying to get the lowest possible score, mine was -134.15. If you repack the score usually gets worse, but then if you start to minimize it works a lot better.

What I found pretty amazing was how easy it was to visualize. The graphics are very good, and they let you visualize it a lot easier. They are planning on making it have teams, which would get people very involved in this. I am one of a few testers trying to make this game better. When we have decided it is ready to release to everyone we will let you know. In the meantime it would be great if we could have some "Hype-Helpers" as in spreading the news around to many different people. For example, Digg would be great.

---

G'day Ben

I would like to know roughly how big the programme is in MB, just a estimate would be good (I realise that Win and the Mac version will be different sizes).

Can you play with the backbone (abinito structure) or are you just playing with the AA/side chains?

Is playing this actually more efficient at predicting structures than just running Rosetta on boinc, or is it more for educational purposes and for recruiting more crunchers?

---

Self appointed chief "Hype-Helper" here. I'm ready willing and able to help hype, but I have nothing to go on here. You can really hype something you've never seen, never had completely described, and have no expected release date for. When Microsoft releases a new product, even if they don't know what it does because it's not finished yet, they at least hype a date. And they say "it's going to be really cool, come check it out on Friday September xx... here's the URL".

I mean at this point we don't even know what exactly it is that we're trying to motivate people to do.

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

Hi Ben:

Thanks for sharing your experience, and a few details, with us.

I think you're right that building "buzz" about the game will help participation. I expect that once details (and maybe a beta test version?) are available a lot of us will be trying to get the word out. I'm REALLY interested in this idea.

Tell us more about it when you have a chance!

Sean

---

Sorry about not replying for a while, I was very busy testing out the new version of the game, and finding some testers.

The game shows clashes in red circles, and voids in yellow circles. In reply to how efficient it is right now they are using models they already know the answer to, and I expect them to do this for a while. Eventually, yes, I do think that this will be more efficient. In reply to the size, I remember it being around 21 MB on the mac. Actually, I am glad you asked about playing with the sidechains/backbone. In the new trial you are able to move both sidechains and the backbone, with the backbone you drag it where you want to go, with the sidechains you mostly use the arrow keys.

About the hype. I am sorry I cannot give you more info, but I went in to a meeting with my dad yesterday, and talked to the programmers. They will have another trial for me and my friends, probably starting monday. They will see what we say, and change things around, and then hopefully it will be released. Maybe you could provide the details I have told you, and say the release is yet to be decided, but likely around a month from now.

A big part about this game is the competition. I was competing against the Baker Lab, and I beat almost all of them at the beginning of trial II. Another idea we were thinking about is having an integrated chatbox in the game, and maybe more features when you get better scores.

Some things that people had almost no ifo about got a huge amount of hype at the very beginning (iPhone). This was due to rumor, and general interest. I think as long as we can get the word out there people will get excited.

Thanks, Ben.

---