Hi Steemit, I'm an ex-NASA network engineer, legendary member on bitcointalk, developer of bitcoinstarter.com, and creator of spacepirate
Photo Credit: NASA/JPL
Building a game....
I'm working on creating a science fiction based RPG adventure game that uses Bitcoin as a currency. With enough support, I could add Steem as a currency in the game as well.
Why? I grew up playing adventure 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 (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻.
Photo credit: Jeff Easley
/attack zombie
I played D&D and that's where imagination really came in handy. You and your friends gathered around and played for hours, questing, conquering, and arguing over who's saving throw was really valid or not. As computer games became more sophisticated, I found myself drawn into those worlds, games like Myst which had a rich story and puzzle driven quest. Then, everything changed as the first-person shooter came out and gaming took a different path. I loved those games too, especially the splinter cell series. Anyway, back to the game development...
Cryptocurrency is the future of gaming
I became fascinated with cryptocurrency, I dove in head first and never looked back. In fact, I sold my star wars collection and bought a Bitcoin miner back in 2013.
From this:
To this:
People were building cool applications and the dice games were fueled with chat which reminded me lot of earlier online MUD games from BBSing. That's when it hit me... I started to dream about building SpacePirate.io, a RPG/Adventure/Strategy game that worked like the games that I grew up with at a young age, using Bitcoin as currency , with imagination as a member of the party on a long quest.
Crowdfunding...
I wanted to get a little help with it, so I had an idea to crowdfund it, but the site I wanted to use was down. So, I ran into the member on BitcoinTalk who had built it and he was telling me that he had worked with a developer to build the bitcoin crowdfunding platform (like KickStarter) but for Bitcoin (Bitcoinstarter) but all the code was... LOST! So I looked at some old screenshots of the site and started to rebuild it feature by feature and I brought BitcoinStarter back from the dead so that the community could use it... However, I made a key change, I made it so that pledges could be accepted with over 30 different kinds of cryptocurrency.
Back to the game....
With the crowdfunding site re-created, I've gone back to spending time on the game. It's getting close to being finished now. Not only is it provably fair, but it has puzzles, adventures, player versus player, and player versus environment combat. It even has a hidden treasure in crypto built into the game :)
Thank you for reading...
Anyway, I was thinking about ways to add Steem into the game and need some help from you, the community... Send me your ideas and what you think would be a great way to integrate Steem into my game.
About me:
Bitcoin Enthuasist / Entrepeneur
Personal twitter:
https://twitter.com/SpacePirate_io
“Legendary Member” on Bitcointalk.org
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=99498
“I’ve been in enterprise IT for more than 20 years. I started my career working at Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena and got to work on some great projects like Mars Rover and Cassini. Bitcoin has become a passion for me like how being involved with NASA was, I’m excited to be part of this adventure!”
Edit: 7/24/16: A shout out to Jeff Easley's amazing (!) art for his D&D work: http://www.jeffeasleyart.com/
Steemit Is Not A Casino
@cloverme! No you are no the creator of spacepirate!
Mark Watney is!
Ha! Yeah, when I was watching the movie, I was like, wtf?!?! Coincidence, but I'm staking my claim first though since the movie takes place in future :D
I would love to get into RPGS like this, but they just take up so much time and sleep deprivation. One day... One day....
Nice to meet you please support my press up challenge
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@cryptofunk/1-up-vote-1-push-up-d
RPG's and exercise are mortal enemies... :D
I used to love Adventure on the Atari..moving on as arcade games got better my first encounter with Dragons Lair blew my mind. Good luck with your game and look forward to playing.
I remember running around with that key in Adventure and trying to avoid that damn dragon :)
Yeah, dragon's lair was amazing, the animation by Don Bluth was great, it was that laser disc generation of games in the arcade. I remember the guy who ran the snack bar at the bowling alley would get thoroughly annoyed at one point and tried to unplug the game because the sound was driving him crazy :)
So far nobody has managed to pull it off a good game with bitcoin curency, bitcrystals and others are taking an age to move to a full game, I will have retired and be pooping in an old folks home before somebody manages to do this.
It's a tricky pickle for sure, I think there are some aspects that make a good game for crypto and others that doesn't seem to lend itself well to it. If you've read Ready Player One, that's kind of where I'm going with SpacePirate in a general sense. I hope people like the game, it's old school, retro, but it will be fun.
Really keen on giving this game a try when it's launched. Not sure what you could do about implementing Steem but all the best of luck to you good sir. :)
Thanks, I have the site down right now (spacepirate.io) while it's still in development, I think Steem was ready before I was... lol.
Hi Cloverme! Thanks for posting! NASA is amazing. I'm a huge fan to say the least! I just posted my own introduction with pictures and a short video! I upvoted you! https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@brianphobos/hi-steemit-i-m-brian-from-arizona-i-m-into-sports-traveling-having-fun-and-computers-here-are-some-pictures-and-a-short-video-2
Thanks man, I returned the favor. :D
Clover!!! So glad to see you on here buddy. It really is remarkable that this platform is bridging the gap between passively talking to someone in the cryptosphere and having a deeper understanding of their background. Never knew you were an ex-Nasa networks engineer man.. which location?
v1rt :) Hey bro...Good to see you here man. It's a good platform for sure to share something outside of a 5 second stream of thought in chat. It's interesting because there's so many places to share information, twitter, forums, reddit, etc... I like the format here, so it will be interesting to see what this all turns into.
Yup, I worked over at JPL in Pasadena, I was in bldg 303 :D
Now you know. I am joining you to welcome him
I dont have a lot of money to offer, but if u need game assets modeled and textured i can help out there. Love the idea of adding steem to it, thanks for this.
Nice, I am looking for a good list of resources and sound and even some voiceover stuff too :) I'm playing with turning some images into ascii which makes for a cool effect in the game, very retro! See below for an example:
We appreciate tour kindness on the matter
Stand by for boarding!
Good post, thanks)
with rcp calls and a local run full node you could use steem for everything from account verification to cash economy built into the game...
Very good, thank you... I plan on taking a closer look at how to communicate with a steem wallet. I'm assuming there's some kind of rpc-based wallet out there for either linux or windows?
@cloverme, Awesome article.
I have a friend that who use to help writing programs for NASA. He has the same idea as you. I truly believe that this will be the future of online gaming.
Good luck and all the best .
Crypto makes a good use case for things in games, tracking assets across platforms, etc. I think it's just a matter of time before large crypto systems like iota and other crypto is leveraged into games. I think it would be interesting to leverage steem for some in game things, but I haven't settled on who, what, how.... yet :D.