Topic: (M)MORPG with a Bitcoin currency (Read 2282 times)

LOL. The notion is in the ocean (TM yours truly). HIVEMIND!

See my post on page 2.

Dragon's Tale

http://www.dragons.tl

Where is it ? dragonstale

Here's an idea:

Use microwallets. Like say use dobits (.001 BTC) with a wallet cap.

When people deposit their bitcoins 99.9% gets distributed throughout the game. Under rocks with challenges attached for example. They get an equal amount of dobits in their in-game wallet. As people find the distributed coins they move out of the microwallet of the user who deposited them. If the user transfers dobits to someone else they move from the place they were scattered. Coins spent at non-player character shops go back into the game.

As a result you are using the game itself as a bank making it impossible to steal any of the coins easily. As long as coins are locked or behind an unsolved challenge then they cannot be moved. If they are transferred between in-game wallets without a matching transaction any attempt to withdraw will have them sent back to the owner.

This adds a curious possibility: You can have campaigns where people can choose to play a thief character and steal the dobits but never actually own them. They can then be exchanged for items at shops but the ownership remains with the original user.

This allows the tactics and strategy of spies and thieves to be played out in a controlled way that's challenging and fun rather than allowing people to steal large amounts.

If someone were to hack into the system they would only have access to the dobits. Not worth the trouble.

If people want to withdraw their bitcoins, they will be removed from the game.
If people do a transaction of bitcoins it must be authorized by both parties, even a third (say a guild secretary).
If someone sends the dobits to their in-game wallet by hacking and tries to withdraw, the coins will actually return to the correct owner. Again not worth the trouble to hack.

In order to steal, the attacker has to move the dobits into their wallet, hack into the user's email account, hack intto the secretary's account, or create a fraudulent transaction in the database after hacking into that. And that would require modifying multiple tables.

I could draw up the code for this scheme and it would make the security of the exchanges pale by comparison. In fact, it might replace them.

I had a fun time today playing dragonstale , a free to play mmorpg with bit coins as the in game currency.

The Instawallet API (https://instawallet.org/static/api.html) must be a nice way to start testing Bitcoin games, huh? Really easy to start trading coins

I think I'll make something using NodeJS just to try it out. Anyone else here into server-side JavaScript?

They already have that, it's called Bitcoin

Given we are trying to create something in which to use bitcoin as a central currency, I think that the game should revolve around the players being able to easily make payments amongst themselves.

@CliffordM, I have never played an exciting text-based game, though I'm sure it's possible to make one. I like the parallel world-style thematics (i.e. not our past, not our future; something completely unbound from our world, used only as an inspiration for the new one) better, if I'm to start suggesting anything.

What do you think?

@N2

It would be a custom SSH shell -- which wouldn't pose any problems.  Even easier to get started could simply be an HTML form, but I have a feeling that the real-time feedback from a shell style approach might appeal more to players.

The 10 minute lag would be a complete downer, so the approach of using virtual in game BTC would be needed.  But what we could do is to provide the occasional in-game kiosk allowing the full-fat BTC fund transfer to be performed at the players' discretion, thereby making this aspect part of the game (they could be hidden, or sparsely distributed, or even mobile (i.e. an NPC forex player).

@all

the obvious unit of currency would be the Satoshi rather than the much larger Bitcoin.  This way we don't have any of the rounding problems, and can easily 'gift' new players say 100 Satoshi to get them started without having to make an initial transfer.

Any other ideas for game dynamics / themes ?  There are some very sophisticated RPG text games out there already, but I fear their learning curve may deter an initial uptake.  What we should shoot for is something simple and fun to implement quickly that can be played easily via an SSH shell, but also easily viewed over HTML.

A radical idea would be to allow the purchase of real world items (eg. mugs / mousemats) using the in-game currency, which if we can get the in-game cash-mechanics to work nicely might create a fun way to go shopping.

@CliffordM, I don't know Python, but implementing the game as an SSH shell would be cool indeed. However, don't forget the client needs to send and receive BTC transactions, so a standard shell client wouldn't do it.

@all, I was thinking that in terms of values, the transactions would be really small, so they would probably need a fee to be accepted in the blockchain (I'm still a newbie here; I do but best to understand how BTC works, but I'm sure I'll say a lot of shit for a while, please be patient ).

Also, they wouldn't really happen in real-time (there's always a delay of at most 10 mins for a transfer to succeed, right?), which would suck. So I guess we would need to use virtual BTC in-game and make transactions in batches from time to time. Am I right?

Coding is something I enjoy -- my suggestion would be to implement the game as an SSH shell using Python and the ZODB as a persistence engine.  If we used the Twisted framework it would be very easy to also offer an HTML window into the game world too.

Had the idea secretly locked away in my brain, no means to produce it...  Hope someone comes out with such a game eventually.

Like this!

@CliffordM, that would be a pretty fun proof-of-concept can you code?

What about a text based RPG game along the lines of say Eve-Online ?  This might be something much easier and quicker to develop?

I'm finishing work for a company now, and should have time for this project in a week.

My biggest concerns are coming up with a sound economy model for the game and finding artists I really like. A friend of mine (http://march0514s.wordpress.com/) can draw and paint a little and would be willing to participate, but he's a complete rookie

Another friend of mine (http://seiga.nicovideo.jp/user/illust/13453809) can draw and model and paint like a monster, but is fighting artist block for over 4 years now. I gave up on him for now, unfortunately

The idea of "splitting out" the entire store of bitcoins would be a good idea, you spread the risk of storing the coins over so many people reducing the risk of the pool being stolen.
And the cap would be a cool idea too, it would also allow you to take, say 10% for upkeep of the game (and to allow you and the game masters to actually afford to eat, cuz y'know thats important too )

EDIT:
Forgot to mention, if you are looking for some placeholder art while developing http://opengameart.org/ is the first place I usually go.
And for the Ragnarok idea there's is a very nice isometric art tileset at http://opengameart.org/content/flare (note that this art is already used in Flare, so should really only be used as placeholders until you get your own).

If you need a server host, I'm you guy.

Also, subscribing. I've seen a few of these project-ideas start up, but haven't seen them go very far. I'm very interested in seeing how this one turns out.

@Gabi, yes, something "high-tech" can be directly linked to BTC, but that doesn't mean Bitcoins can be worked in-game to be magical, steampunk, or just a normal currency.

My initial idea is to have something Ragnarok-style: http://mmohuts.com/wp-content/gallery/ragnarok-online/ragnarok-online-outside-combat.jpg

Or maybe Wild Arms 5-style (artwise):

http://www.dignews.com/legacy/screenshots/wild_arms_5_rev_06.jpg
http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2007/03/wildarms5.jpg

@mattiemus, thanks for that post, man; it really gives me a lot of energy!

One way of "securing" the working capital would be to simply make sure that there's limited money in there to keep the drops happening (e.g. having a "cap" amount adjusted to how many players are online), and move the remaining money to the possession of one (or many) game masters with password-protected wallets. They should then put the money back in as needed.