Topic: Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City) - page 244. (Read 632701 times)

Now the game is in year 1414. Sorry, no coffee, yet. Actually the present status of characters is that they are not yet created. And when they are, they get to live 200 years without need to worry about drinking. It's like Genesis in the Bible


Send me a CV if you want to be my boss! 

There is now an IRC chan opened to anyone: ##crypto-kingdom.

Who knows?  May go there is future versions.
SoCal is a gamemaker/movie/entertainment hub so I rub elbows with those guys often enough.

But at the moment the budget for such a game would be above the total market cap of XMR, give it a couple years.

Ah OK thanks, I missed that. "Virtual World" was misleading, I imagined fully immersive VR with Oculus Rift display interface, super high resolution, videorealism, hyper-realistic physics... ;-)

I don't think it would fit at all for Crypto Kingdom but talking about open source minecraft, minetest is the best.
minetest works perfectly on Linux contrary to Minecraft. Plus it is 10 times faster.
It didn't try Voxel yet. I will.

Now it is possible if you are a Bitcointalk user! And besides you get 2,000 gold for 100 XMR. And only 40k gold is for sale ( ) since the initial stash of 1,000,000 will be generated over 100 real-days, linearly, and may be much prized in the open market already after a few weeks.

So I totally urge you to reserve yours! I may put a cap on high amounts so that as many as possible can get at least some..

No I don't have people locked in for any of the roles yet, of course there are some in mind but nothing fixed.

Everyone can involve in the game in some level. This follows the principle of "1:3" (or 1:4) in that since 4 is the optimal-size workgroup, everyone involved belongs to 2 such groups, one consisting of his superior and peers, the other where he is superior. This is called cell structure. Nobody can be left out, even though he may not get to the core team, it only means that he gets to the ingame, technical or marketing subteam (or sub-subteam).

If you know forums where this could be well received, just link this thread there. Much appreciated!

Soon the rampup of the world starts! Until "Version 0: Beginning" I have given 17 days total since the start. And this may happen even sooner. 

OP is updated, and I will delete some comments to make the thread more readable for the ones who come from other forums. Please link it to the OP!

First game of luck is now designed for the Kingdom. (As a designer, I like to create something previously unseen )

- Player has a choice of 8 winning lines. These are numbered from 2 to 9. He can play any combination of lines with an amount of XMR that makes the maximum payout in one line to be 3,000 XMR (Kelly betting). Casino margin is 1%.

- The winning lines have a payout table that could be as follows:

hits   payout
6   204
5   56
4   12
3   6

This example is the line number 4.

- The game draws three single numbers (from 0 to 9) at random. What counts is whether they are divisible to the number in the winning line. In this case you make 6 times your investment (5:1 odds), if all numbers turned out to be "4", or if one was an "8" and another one a "4".

- If you play multiple lines, it is possible to win two jackpots at the same time (3s and 9s with 9-9-9), or even three (2s, 4s and 8s with 8-8-8). The game is therefore very suitable to the Chinese market.

So, the first buildings in the ancient Old Town, should be altars dedicated to dice games. Nice, like the idea:

"The Kingdom's oldest casino, estd 1402" 

I found a game that incorporates some of the concepts, but was a bit psychedelic at first glance.

Happy hours making the fundamental decisions...

I figured out that I need a 4-member team:

- Lead designer and ingame King (design, human hosting)
- Lead developer (implementation, technical hosting)
- Marketing guy (to get to game spread virally)
- Project manager (handle the 3 creative guys).



New version every 6 weeks sounds good. In the beginning, the world is empty. The initial economy for the projected first 84 real-days (168 years of "ancient" 720:1 game time), which is the "old town" building period, is tentatively as follows:

- Characters don't eat, drink, sleep, get sick, die, require shelter or anything. Thus everything you make in the game is pure profit. 

- King has financed the development and hosting from his own pocket. To recoup, he takes his 1,000,000 gold stash and sells every Sunday 50,000 gold for XMR (total 600,000 gold will be sold). Bidding happens such that it is known how much in total people have transfered to the bidding address. The lot will be divided proportionally after a certain point of time. No refunds.

- Passing certain thresholds in gold ownership automatically determines you player level, including nobility. Tentatively, buying gold worth 150 XMR gets you to nobility instantly, but this is determined by gold's value in the auction, of course.

- Gold is an income-producing asset. The more gold you have, the more you get the building materials (stone and wood) directly from the peasants, for free, for 84 real-days. This is regressive - if you have much gold, you get more materials, but proportionally less. In practice nobles get 40% of the materials that commoners do, and King only 20%.

- Later gold will start to derive income from Town Council surplus, but there is no town council yet in the 1400s. It will also be used for expensive luxury items, so the materials and titles you will get are really a bonus to the resource that should retain its value (buying gold in this stage of game is a bet for the success of the game).

- Buying gold for 10 XMR gives you enough resources (over the ancient era) to build a small house. From version 3 (after the initial 84 days), one house should cost about 10 XMR so in essence you get either a free house, or free 200 gold, whichever way you think about it.

- For comparison, the investment of 1,000 XMR into this promising game yields you 20,000 gold, the title of Earl, and enough materials approximately for a walled castle 6x4 plots in size.

- One Borough, the Old Town, is opened for play with 1350 building plots. The resources gained over the time are enough to build it to a nice township in the first stages. Only parts of the land are granted as favors, or sold to the highest bidder - in other chapelries you can claim land by building into it - making it expedient to build fast, perhaps even before your own resource stream is enough for building.

- Building costs work, not only stone. The work is paid in XMR, and money is distributed back to the economy such that characters in levels:
6-10, get efficiency rating of 350%
5,      get efficiency rating of 250%
4,      get efficiency rating of 150%
3,      get efficiency rating of 100%
2,      get efficiency rating of 50%.

This free money makes it interesting for even a curious observer to play.

In total, the mechanisms outlined provide that the "initial world" for version 3 (which is the real MMORPG game with character traits, sustenance, resource management, etc.) becomes built in an organic and not centrally planned way. This will certainly add to the gaming experience for all the future ages (ingame old buildings authority makes sure that the oldest buildings are not bulldozed).

"Pssst...  I need some CKgold to get my caviar, can you spot me some?"
"No, but if some XMR shows up at this address in the next 5 minutes, I might have what you want."

Card games with custom rules in the 1980s. I don't recall that any of the board games I designed would have handwritten rules, so early 1990s is the start, since I got the printer in 1990. Oldest surviving board game is perhaps from 1991 because it's printed with matrix printer. Card games with ordinary deck notwithstanding, I have designed perhaps 30-40 board games or card games with custom cards.

In 2011, just after purchasing bitcoins, I had decided to quit business and become a boardgame designer & publisher. The business model would be annual subscription, and games would be sent in cardboard sheet format every 2 months. They would be simple, well designed, offering fun for a few rounds. I did not have the time to fulfill this dream, though, because bitcoin started to rise astronomically. Well after less than 2 years it may become true again. This is the first computer game that I am seriously designing. Technical head developer is much needed.

Where content beats graphics(TM)

The town is composed of Boroughs. One borough is subdivided to Chapelries. One chapelry fits into a smartphone screen in bird's-eye view, so that every plot is clickable (about 10x15 plots). Thus the Borough is about 1,350 plots. Since a modest house occupies one plot, the population of a borough may reach 1,000 citizens (families will be implemented in version 5). It is possible for the population be much less also, if the borough mainly consists of castles and gardens. New boroughs are opened when existing ones feel busy.

When a borough is opened, it is governed by Sheriff (player character nominated by town council, who receives a salary), or his Deputy (a sheriff has many duties and may need to delegate). When at least 20 characters of level 5 or higher reside in the borough, it starts self-governance. In order of seniority (highest level; earliest appointment), the citizens are asked to join the Borough Court. Highest nobles or busiest businessmen may opt out, leaving their place to the next until 5 seats are filled. These convene together and appoint a Bailiff (typically a senior one among them) to manage the affairs of the borough.

A borough is entitled to collect property tax for stone buildings. (Before incorporation, buildings are tax-free to encourage migration.) The court decides the rate, and the bailiff manages the use of funds. Haws are exempted from property tax. They are areas of land that the King has donated to his chosen men, and must be walled at the expense of the owner to enforce the exemption. A borough needs many public buildings and constabulary may be appointed to help visitors and combat crime. Bailiff also gets a salary.

From the top down, Town Council is nominated in the same fashion, but with largest holders of Gold game-wide taking priority. 10 seats are to be filled. Town Council is lead by Mayor, chosen among the Councillors. Town Council's largest source of income are drink taxes. The water in the city is not potable, so all drinks must either be imported from overseas (Wine, Cognac), procured from farmers (Beer) or distilled in the city (Mead). It is handy to tax all of them, and fair, since the rich consume the more expensive drinks. The town also gets to keep the zoning income (sale of land in new boroughs for development), but King (who owns the land) has his fingers in the game also.

Even after helping the poor boroughs (via sheriffs, that are overseeing multiple boroughs and have to listen to the bailiffs' pleas for donations to projects), and running a bureaucracy, the town runs a surplus. It is distributed as dividends to the gold holders, which the councillors eagerly decide, being the gold holders themselves. (The drink taxes they, however, cannot decide. That would constitute a major conflict of interest.)

The King is another entity. His main income is the foie gras tax from the countryside. It is so healthy, delicious, and therefore, precious and valuable, that the King can arrange the sale of the surplus and live well off the proceeds. King has his own army of Knights of different levels, all well-paid player characters, ready to accomplish whatever is in King's heart.

The King also appoints all Nobles. In practice, this may be delegated to his Ministers, since the population of Nobles is targeted to be 5% of the characters. That allows for peaceful income distribution by the in-kind tax of everything that the countryside produces. The tax rate starts at 10% for potatoes and goes up to 50% for foie gras, which the nobles divide between themselves in an elaborate pyramid model so that the highest ranking ones can eat it every other day. (The poor nobles stealthily sell it in the city, though, and eat meat instead.)

City officials and other prominent people may be promoted to noble titles without actually giving them the feoff. The lowest noble rank of Baron cannot even have a feoff since the smallest one is Earldom, obviously ruled by an Earl. The number of Earldoms, on the other hand, is only 1 per 50 characters (further reduced by some holding many). The King must keep the nobles happy by granting them haws, titles, and gold instead. On the other hand, the nobles also pay a semiannual homage to the King by sending gifts out of their good fortune. I scratch your back, you scratch mine.

I am open to all suggestions. I still have 16 days to go before version 1 should be playable online. I have taken this as a kind of "3 weeks from idea to game" challenge.

I just want it to grow organically. The ones who get the idea, stick with it and receive a role in the project, and invest in / receive some early gold, and build the first houses in the town, and are the first to chat in the tavern, invite their friends, and so it goes on.

No huge development efforts or too big campaigns. The game is so good that it captivates people.

It all starts with me, and 1,000,000 pieces of virtual gold, and a rule that new gold is created only to the players, in proportion to hours played. Everything else is customizable. Even the entrance of XMR to the actual gameplay is postponed to version 2.

That said, the idea of kickstarting the game by selling the license to play + early ingame gold (in whatever quantity) sounds wonderful!

I would guess that the funding would come in XMR from the Monero community. But I'm not sure what rpietila has in mind for that.

Thanks for good points!

The game hierarchy is a pyramid, consisting of commoners (about 95% of players, some of them quite wealthy) and nobility (5%).

The game has several ingame goals and missions, the fulfilment of which grants higher levels. The nobility receives tax income, but that can be said to be a compensation of the administrating work they actually do ingame. It takes lots of real-life hours to make sure that everything is well in the kingdom, dukedoms, marquessates, earldoms, and the city. The game does not play by itself, and this is an ingenuous way to involve the players instead of paying for admins.

The well-performing nobles get promotion to higher nobles, and eventually...

...every character is mortal. After 1 real-time year of play, the current King is 58, and after 2 years he is 82. The characters don't live so long. When the King gets mortally ill, he appoints a successor, who then gets all the responsibilities, and of course the wealth.

If new gold is generated at a pace of $0.025 per total hours spent online (which is one of the game constants), and player count grows linearly to 200,000 in 2 years, and average online is 20 hours per real-month, the initial 1 million gold will have been diluted to 25 million. So the King's original 500,000 gold represents only 2% of the total gold at that point.

The King directly owns no land. (The land management is so complicated that it is not even practical.) King's share of the land proceeds is 6.3% of the foie gras, nothing else. This is about 0.5% of the total produce (edit: latest simulation shows 0.35%).

In the city, every plot of land, every construction, all servants, etc. the King has to pay in the similar way than every other player.

I would be surprised if the King was even the wealthiest character after 2 real-years of play

There doesn't. Please create your own game with a different design. From the point of view of Monero, we would like very much to see many different games using Monero.

So what I envision the game to be, is that it would be a community game, starting from very small but having the seeds to become as big as the number of players gets. It would be instant to play in intro levels, yet have all possible strategic and tactical games embodied in the ways how the farming works, how the potato speculation is conducted, what are the intricacies of shipping, of construction, ..., and more of these could be added ad infinitum, modularly.

The Noble/Commoner system that was there already when I started designing, is the ultimate social ranking. What could be more satisfying than to receive 25% of the Foie Gras laboriously preserved by farmers in your fief (actual other players), as tax payment, just on the virtue of being a Nobleman?

In real life people are only being taxed, they never get to collect taxes. Here you can, welcome!

The game will have (resource) gold, which can be used in many prestigious ways such as in shiny clothes, jewellery, and platings of statues. It has great utility value. It is quite indestructible, you can recover the gold almost fully from any application and remold it.

Since for many reasons it is expected to have a stable value (even more than that of the currency itself ), it can be used for initial funding of the development. There only needs to be rules about how gold is handled so that no new gold will be created to the company or insiders. My transparent mechanism is every 2 hours of active measured online play, one coin worth about 0.05 M at the time - enough to sustain a character for 1.25 real-days with food and drinks - and accompanied with a captcha.

The world starts with a certain quantity that is rather large so that the initial inflation is low, but if the game gets millions of players, the total amount gradually grows to 100 times or more larger.


What else valuable the game will have?
- taxing rights (produce resources) are granted to king's faithful nobles for the rest of the character lifetime.
- farms can be started by anyone (so have no initial value): after investment, hard work, and luck, they start to produce profit.
- zoning rights in the city are auctioned.
- all the other mechanisms will be based on combining resources (produced in farms) and work (character-workdays = 1h of real-time), this creates for example all the buildings in the city - whose resale value is high.


The initial sale of gold is a one-time fundraiser, because the company will not have the right to generate more of it (unless it runs a budget surplus and buys in the ingame market to release the moneritos back in circulation; this gold may be sold against a real-life payment).

Taxing rights is more of a perk for players to aspire higher, and can be given to game developers and helpers who cannot be compensated IRL due to paperwork, but they don't produce income.

Zoning right sale (buyer gets to: clearance of land => receive wood; quarry for stone => receive stone; build roads; zone for plots => sell plots) is an important item of income.

Other income sources are drink taxes and imported luxuries (price paid is removed from the game == goes to company's pocket). Most payments by characters go to various labor pools and are given back to characters in proportion to their work in the following simple way (example is from house construction):


We take the carpenter as an example. Carpentry is an artesan skill that can be learned by doing. It has 6 skill levels, and the increase of skill increases the efficiency of work as follows:

0 (no skill) 100% work
1 (beginner) 125% work
2 (novice) 150% work
3 (expert) 200% work
4 (master) 300% work
5 (wizard) 400% work.

This directly corresponds to payment as follows:

Everyone who has selected "building projects - carpenter" as their current pursuit (it can be changed anytime - 24 hours offline lets your character do 24 workdays carpentry meanwhile) will participate in a pool with his efficiency rating.

Suppose the project is the only thing happening in town and takes minimum 240 days to complete. This means that there is 25 units of carpenter work available daily. The constructor is willing to pay the guild-mandated wage for this job, 3,500m per unit. (1 unit is 1 day of 100% efficiency).

Now if carpenters with exactly 25 units of work total show up, they get their wages, and the castle progresses at top speed. If more carpenters are available, the castle owner still sees work progress at the top speed, but the income for the carpenters is lowered because some of them go unemployed. If less carpenters show up, the progress is delayed. It is possible to adjust the amount paid per unit, to make the carpenters come to your project in expense of others. (The price elasticity is automatic, all carpenters get paid equally in proportion to their efficiency = skill.)

There will be many pools to choose from, and some require certain skills to even be available. Other trades are structured as "proprietors" (tailor, goldsmith, doctor), or businesses (distillery, stables, farm).