Building a NFT Game with BTC. Where Do I even start?

[JustAnOtherLoser]

Hey Guys,

with LN becoming more and more "a thing" and me being bullish on BTCs future as the last currency we will ever adopt,
I thought to myself: Are there any LN BTC driven NFT games? Are they any good? If not: Why?

Of course I'll google that shit, but I guess this forum could also be a nice start for my research. As a proud owner of my
cryptokitties from the last century, I know there is a lot NFT Stuff and "Games" happening on the ETH Chain.

Call me a hater, but I prefer my Games to use real money - not premined shitcoins. We already got some of these, we call
them Dollars. My Checklist for this game would be something like: OpenSource, Items are NFTs, BTC driven, LN (or else)
for Micro TXs.

Could some of you give me a List of things I should read/learn to get behind any of this? I know Games are a FUCKTON of
work, but I'm a Web Developer and this project idea boggles my mind. It feels like there should be a good BTC Game. Like an
opensource Diablo, WOW or something.

 

[1715667671]

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[n0nce]

I'm fully with you about BTC being the better money and all that, but why do we want a game 'on Bitcoin'?
It's not entirely clear what you actually want to build. Cryptokitties on Bitcoin? Or do you simply want an open source game (a game can be open source and not utilize cryptocurrency)? Do you want to build a game with microtransactions made using Lightning?
These are all very different projects combining BTC and games and it should be clear to you what you actually want to accomplish before you start off.

[JustAnOtherLoser]

Runescape + Items on LN BTC would be cool, I guess. I don't even know if something like that would be even possible. That's why I'm asking so broadly 

[BlackHatCoiner]

You don't seem self-awared of your plan.

Alright, so you want to build an NFT Game, but with Bitcoin. Do you know that Bitcoin isn't turing-complete? You'll have to work on a project that is, such as Ethereum.

Are there any LN BTC driven NFT games? Are they any good? If not: Why?

Do you mean games that accept the LN BTC as a payment method? There aren't probably many. But, here's another advantage of bitcoin; they don't have to. As long as there are people willing to exchange gift cards for bitcoins, you can use the lightning network to make in-game purchases.

This is also true for online services such as Google Play, Spotify, Netflix, Steam etc. They don't have to accept cryptocurrencies as long as there's this intermediary.

Call me a hater, but I prefer my Games to use real money - not premined shitcoins. We already got some of these, we call them Dollars.

Well, that's where these projects lack of. While they are cool as concepts, they fail in the sociopolitical part.

[pooya87]

Are they any good? If not: Why?

They are not games, they are gambles. And why would you want to build it on top of bitcoin (a payment system)? Would you build it on top of PayPal?!

but I prefer my Games to use real money

Why would a game use money at all?

[OgNasty]

You don't seem self-awared of your plan.

Alright, so you want to build an NFT Game, but with Bitcoin. Do you know that Bitcoin isn't turing-complete? You'll have to work on a project that is, such as Ethereum.

Not only is Bitcoin not equipped for this sort of usage, but fees would make it pretty difficult to build something usable.  Ethereum makes it incredibly simple to build this sort of thing, but again, fees are a major drawback.  That's why we're seeing chains like Polygon kick everyone's ass with usage suddenly.  Low fees and usability can't be compared with ETH or BTC.  I'm not familiar enough with the chain to know the drawbacks of this combination, but I know if I were building a project like this today, I sure as hell wouldn't be looking at BTC or ETH. 

[pooya87]

Not only is Bitcoin not equipped for this sort of usage, but fees would make it pretty difficult to build something usable.

Technically a side-chain can handle any kind of weird functionality like this without worrying about "on-chain" transaction fees that bitcoin has or certain functionality that bitcoin smart contracts don't provide.

That's why we're seeing chains like Polygon kick everyone's ass with usage suddenly.

Ethereum used to have very low fees at the start too. They all face (best case scenario) same scaling issues as bitcoin or (worse case/most common case scenario) worse scaling issues than bitcoin.

Low fees and usability can't be compared with ETH or BTC.

You are right ETH is useless and extremely expensive to use while bitcoin is useful with so much cheaper transactions. Not to mention BTC is immutable, decentralized and secure, the 3 main principles that ETH lacks... You can't really begin to compare the two
Here is the comparison between ETH and BTC transaction fees in USD. The red line is shethereum:

[Pmalek]

Bitcoin's very limited smart contract capabilities would make that very difficult to create. I don't have the needed knowledge to determine whether or not it's impossible though.

If I am a gamer, why would I want want to play blockchain-based games? For the potential to earn money? In that case, I am playing for the wrong reasons. Why not just buy and invest in Bitcoin? I never liked the buy-to-play model that many games seem to have adopted now. You purchase the game, then you are asked to buy in-game items to advance and get better.

Make something like Hitman or PES run on the blockchain.  

[HeRetiK]

Could some of you give me a List of things I should read/learn to get behind any of this? I know Games are a FUCKTON of
work, but I'm a Web Developer and this project idea boggles my mind. It feels like there should be a good BTC Game. Like an
opensource Diablo, WOW or something.

As far as colored coins are concerned (ie. the NFT precursor) you could look into RGB:
https://rgb-org.github.io/

No idea how active this project still is though. From the looks of it, not very.

[JustAnOtherLoser]

If I am a gamer, why would I want want to play blockchain-based games? For the potential to earn money?

Nah. Because you can own the game (items) that way. I see all these fake Gamble shitgames on ETH popping up and thought this can't be it.
Lightning would provide small Fees & fast TX times. I just don't know where I should even start. I was just curious what btc talk thought about
this.

Many seem to think I want to use the BTC Mainlayer. That would be stupid as fuck. I thought maybe a LN Wallet could be the Game Account.
On this LN Wallet are your Items for your Char. These Items can then be traded or stuff like that. Just mind mapping around.

I just want a new type of game era. Fuck this whole EA gamble shit and the Items aren't even in your hand. This CANT be the future anyone wants.

[JustAnOtherLoser]

Alternatively, you could use Liquid Network. While the network is controlled by federation board, it utilize Bitcoin/Bitcoin network which partially meet OP criteria.

I never used Liquid, but I've read a bit about it. I don't really know if using Liquid would be open enough. I like the Idea of Lightning Channels.
Seems more like something everyone can use & setup without asking for permission.

[JustAnOtherLoser]

As far as colored coins are concerned (ie. the NFT precursor) you could look into RGB:
https://rgb-org.github.io/

THIS! But it seems like in the last 12 years nothing big happend in this direction. I'll continue my research.
Maybe we'll see us in some years, when I launch a first blue print. OpenSource Bitcoin MMO seems like something
that should be done already. I wonder why it did not happen by now.

[NotATether]

Many seem to think I want to use the BTC Mainlayer. That would be stupid as fuck. I thought maybe a LN Wallet could be the Game Account.
On this LN Wallet are your Items for your Char. These Items can then be traded or stuff like that. Just mind mapping around.

I don't think LN in its present state has anywhere near the transactions per second as Ethereum has so that will be quite the obstacle for you to overcome.

[JustAnOtherLoser]

I don't think LN in its present state has anywhere near the transactions per second as Ethereum has so that will be quite the obstacle for you to overcome.

Really? That would be one of my smallest concerns. Of course it could be one, but something like missing functions would be a bigger hassle. TBH I'm running a LN Node, but just for fun. I'm just trying to get some impressions online - So thanks for your Input

[JustAnOtherLoser]

I agree Liquid isn't open or permissionless enough, i never used Liquid either. Alternatively, you could check Rootstock (https://www.rsk.co/) which have smart contract capability. It's less promoted than Liquid, but AFAIK it's more open and use merged mining on Bitcoin network.

I'll note that. I knew this won't be easy by any means, but it seems horribly hard. I'll need to research a lot more than I thought, but I still like the idea. I need to talk to some friends. Thanks for some first impressions!

[Syke]

Bitcoin community generally not interested with smart contract or other usage with high complexity, so it's not surprising you have hard time. But after short research (thanks to this thread), i found out RSK already support token, although there are few information/documentation about it.

RSK is very good at doing smart contracts. It's reasonably fast, and transactions are cheap.

[Rizzrack]

You can check out elixir: https://launcher.elixir.app/games

There is at least one interesting game there lightnite https://lightnite.io/ . Sort of a low-poly Fortnite. Right now it's open beta ...
The NFTs are on Liquid sidechain but hey, close enough I guess 

[titular]

You may want to look into some bitcoin sidechains that support smart contracts and NFTs. That would be a good place to start.

The Stacks Network allows you to do this using the bitcoin network, but I do not believe you can buy or sell on their marketplace yet.

There are many projects though that act as a sidechain to bitcoin where you are able to utilize smart contracts to their max potential.

[OgNasty]

You can check out elixir: https://launcher.elixir.app/games

There is at least one interesting game there lightnite https://lightnite.io/ . Sort of a low-poly Fortnite. Right now it's open beta ...
The NFTs are on Liquid sidechain but hey, close enough I guess 

Very cool to see that people are building out this sort of tech.  I wish Bitcoin would catch up and implement some sort of web3 login features for sites to use so we can stop relying on email/passwords to login.  That feels archaic already after getting used to using web3 applications on other blockchains.  I don't see why this hasn't been a standard for some time already.  After being strictly in the Bitcoin community for so long, it feels like I've traveled further into the future when using web3 apps to login to similar experiences like The Sandbox.

[thecodebear]

It'll be interesting to see if this sort of stuff gets popular on Bitcoin. Obviously it would make more sense to use Bitcoin for everything than other crytpos, but Bitcoin wasn't made for this sort of thing. I guess with Taproot Bitcoin can now start being able to handle simpler finance applications better. But to do this sort of stuff - games, NFTs - I think that would never be possible on Bitcoin because it isn't designed for that. So you have to rely on sidechains. But then a sidechain is sort of like using another crypto network, except you still get to use Bitcoin.

Not sure if these sort of applications will ever take off on Bitcoin because I'm not sure people will ever really bother using sidechains much. Now if there could be an open application layer built on top of LN that including NFT funtionality (have no idea if this is even possible), rather than having to go with one of these sidechains controlled by companies which is pretty much no different than altcoins, I think that could have a possibility of being something big on Bitcoin.

Anyways, yeah to build an NFT game on Bitcoin you gotta go with a sidechain but the downside is they aren't very popular.