SpacePirate: Age of Rust
I thought it would be cool to talk a little about this project that I've been working on and a little about myself and background as well. I thought it would also be interesting to discuss some of the struggles as well, not just technical, but working with other people on a project too. So, as you can imagine from the title, I'm working on building a science fiction based RPG adventure game that uses Bitcoin as a not only in-game currency, but also contains hidden treasure rewards in bitcoin too. Players can earn bitcoin by solving puzzles, defeating other players, and finding it as "loot" in unexplored areas of the game
Why build a game like this? So, right, I grew up playing adventure and rogue-like games on the C64 like "The Pawn" and "Adventure" on the Atari 2600. These games captivated the imagination and got me interested in computers, which then led me into a career in enterprise infrastructure for more than 20 years. Games like Kings Quest and Space Quest from Sierra were played all night long, sometimes with a high degree of frustration. Really though, playing games like Zork and then reading the choose your own adventure books got me interested in sci fi. So later on, playing games like MajorMUD and Tradewars was great, because you would really develop a kinship with other players that drove a community narrative, so many, many years later when Bitcoin came along, I wanted to really build something on top it and weave bitcoin into the game as a currency.
Another aspect to the game that I wanted to build in was a bit of a treasure hunt. Growing up, I was fascinated with those time life mysteries of the unknown books and other mysteries with lost treasures. The thought of going on a treasure hunt and solving a mystery was often a lure that led me to other interesting works and projects. So for example, reading the book Ready Player One, or the forest fenn treasure, and also the Treasure's Trove book with jeweled bugs were fascinating to follow. So some of these things were inspiration to build those things into SpacePirate, I wanted to include a mystery and a hidden treasure into the game for players to find and solve. Bitcoin was also the perfect type of element for doing something like that, no need to pack a bag and go half way around the world. So the concept of hiding something within the context and narrative of the game was key. I didn't just want to build a "hack and slash" only game, while it is still in there, the ability to explore and seek a treasure without combat was an interesting concept that I liked.
From a motivational standpoint, I wanted to create a world setting for this concept but didn't want to write a book, while I liked writing, my technical side comes alive. So, my background is IT-based, with over 20 years of IT infrastructure experience in aerospace, starting as NASA network engineer back in the early 90's. So naturally, I liked to develop, create, and design IT systems and when Bitcoin came along, I started to mine and joined this community. At this point, all I had was ideas, so I started to jot them down and think about it and kind of build a concept of a MUD with Bitcoin integration. So I started to worldbuild what that universe might look like in that kind of a narrative. It's very much a dark post-apocalyptic distant future (~2500 years from now) where space travel is common. There's exoplanet mining, colonies, a military presence, privateers, ai-driven robots, and bounty hunters. A lot of the technology has broken down and isn't well understood due to a large pandemic that wiped out about 80% of people about 1500 years in the future. As a result, advancements in technology, science, and culture stopped. That's where the "Age of Rust" concept comes from for this first "episode" of the game. The idea being that technology is going dark, rusting, and falling apart, and that is in what is now "present day" in the game.
As you can imagine, a few people in the community got excited about this. Either through just me discussing it, or just in general when talking about bitcoin or RPG's, I would talk about "this game I'm building". As a result, some people wanted to invest into the game, so I've received some BTC to help develop and build the game. More people wanted to invest, but I didn't want to focus my time on crowdfunding right then and there, so I put it off. However, in 2017 I've decided to do a crowdfunding campaign to accelerate some of the development in the game and add additional features and extend some of the game. That being said, I'm about 70% through development, so I think that's a good thing to discuss in terms of being able to deliver a working game for people that do decide to help crowdfund it. Here's a roadmap showing what's been developed and what's left in the game to still build:
There's still a lot left to build, so I've been working on that. Recently I've just put up a basic website to share additional information about the game. Like all things, it still needs work, I plan to add a video showing gameplay and other things. Then eventually will have some early access to the game to play it for those who want to try it out, right now the game is running with testnet bitcoin. There's a lot I want to do security wise before putting the game on the live blockchain. From time to time, I'll also hire people here from the board to help work on pieces of the game. I've hired a few of you to subcontract out pieces of the development. To me, this is an important thing with Bitcoin in general, to help the community within itself and what better way to do that than build something fun. In any event, if you have questions or comments about the game, even ideas or concepts that you would like to share, i'd love to hear them.
I do not know if people will find these games 
... Batmud has it's 
