Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City)

[djjacket]

Because of the recent developments, the King's Coinshop has reset the gold price upwards.

You can now sell your gold to us at 500,000 m/CKG. This is the all-time-high gold price denominated in XMR.

Very interesting news indeed. 

[kazuki49]

I'm certainly not the one that wil be selling any CKG (or XMR) anytime soon

[rpietila]

I'm certainly not the one that wil be selling any CKG (or XMR) anytime soon

Oh what a surprise...

I was just thinking I need some gold because I now have a subcontractor who wants to be denominated and paid in CKG, not in the volatile XMR, nor in the legacy currencies such as BTC or USD.

I think I'll have to wait until the release, and then start buying the gold by the gram from the new players who accumulate it.

Remember - It's all about the gold!

[rpietila]

Version Ultima stuff
NOT TO AFFECT THE DEVS OF V.4


Factory is the enabler of a conversion formula.

There are many subtypes, and a large number of individual Factories. For instance, a Field is a Factory, because it provides the capital goods (the tilled field) and the tools (farm tools) for conversion of nothing() to potatoes. To effect the conversion, a set of Labor points must be allocated. The skills embedded in the Labor, affect the quantity of potatoes received. The Field reloads only once per gameyear, because the growth season allows only one harvest. The Field requires much Labor during summertime, but in the winter there is slack. You can only save the Labor for 2.3/7th of a gameyear (gameyear is redefined to equal a realweek), a careful balance allowing flexible gameplay but not the accumulation of raw Labor for an extended time. If Labor is converted to Work, it can be saved for a longer time (or in the Field's case, Labor was directly converted to potatoes without the intermediate Work phase).


Health is the one single metric showing how your character is doing physically, mentally and spiritually - and it goes to zero in the end and you die

It is possible to have many character stats, but we'll aim to manage with one. The UI shows only the approximation of the true 0%-100% value. The real value takes into account everything, including how often you go to library (or shopping) and do other variable and interesting stuff. Often you experience strange symptoms, and by reciting them to the doctor, you may get a diagnosis, which sometimes is correct. Then you need to afford the treatment as well.

The health system is intensely aimed at raising the bar for character farming, which is always an issue with games where the time of the character or playing time can be converted to monetary value. We aim to require that one character is played about 10 minutes per day for it to stay alive, and you can take 2 days off in a row with (nearly) no penalty, and a week off until a significant health penalty kicks in. Giving your character to a wealth and sustenance manager for short or long time is, however, easy. The health system gives the characters Depression if they are farmed ie. never do anything interesting such as talk to people or attend activities. Talking and attending take time, which is OK for real players but the farmers see them eroding the profitability. A quick calculation reveals that an unskilled character's labor is worth $0.08 per day, of which maximum $0.03 can be saved if the character wants to live any longer without dying of slavery. This makes it $0.18 per hour, to which the $0.025 from the new gold is added. This much can be made by farming characters.


Skills are extremely important, because most Factories require some Skill to be present in sufficient quantity in the transformation, or the presence of skill makes a dramatic effect on the conversion result.

There will be at least 30 Skill tracks with 6 levels each (no skill, Beginner, Novice, Expert, Master, Wizard/Doctor). Once you get to the higher levels of skill, you start to get the entry level skills in other tracks for free or small effort only. To gain a Wizard level in anything, you need to have supplementary skills, for example a Wizard Stonemason is necessary an Expert Artist, or Expert Engineer, or both.

To advance in skill track, depending on the skill, a combination of the following is required:
- spend Labor in Studying (an armchair Doctor is 14 years of study)
- work on the profession (Master of some craft is about 23 years of work)
- pay money in some form or another (speedups available, some skills like Manager cannot be graded effectively except by selling them)
- write a thesis (yes, actual, several pages, cross checked against existing material upon grading to detect plagiarism; to make sure the "Doctor of Chemistry actually knows anything about Chemistry, and to give edge for the professional people to play)
- see a youtube video and do an online test
- attend to ingame activities

The skills core is just points which accumulate to skill level upgrade. This makes it easy to make the skills grow as part of the allocation of Labor to a Factory. If your labor is used as Skill, it feeds the skill even more. If not, there is no grow of skill and the advance in the track is slowed.


Logistics and Item localization are mostly new concepts, which are not coming in V.4, V.5 or V.6 yet. In Ultima, every Item has a location, and the location is called Space.

In the countryside, the Spaces are large tracts of land, in the urban area, the Lot owner can determine the Spaces so that at maximum, a Lot is a Space, at minimum, a Space can be the inside of some secret hole in the wall. Hollow and moving/movable objects such as closets, ships, carts and characters are also Spaces to attach the Items on. The size of the Space determines how many and what kind of Items it can hold.

Incity transport will likely be organized around a pool, which determines the courier fee, and the money is dealt to the owners of paperboys and ox carts. Intercity transport will be required to happen realistically, so that the item is given to the freight company that organizes it to move to the other place, attached to some vehicle that is going there, and after a time of several real-hours, it's completed.


Resource management is based on the material:elaboracy matrix. Just as the current Items management really.

There is a long but limited list of materials existing on Earth (and even outside). The Factories (note ingame usage: Factory is any action that changes the state of the world) are ways to raise the elaboracy of the materials so that stone becomes ore, which becomes raw iron, which becomes iron beams, which becomes a sword. For every material, there is the skill how to handle it, and different tools for handling, based on the technological level of the society.

There will be a huge number of significant stuff such as crystals and gemstones. Crystals boost your health, and who knows what uses except decoration will be found for the gems.

[rpietila]

CONCERNS ULTIMA

The Factories are investments, which must be made using other Factories. To follow the example of the Field, you can generally just go to a pacified countryside area (Kingdom->Duchy->County->Estate->Farm), and create a Farm. This gives you an empty Chapelry for building your things, and a capacity to create Fields. (Let's assume you already have built a dwelling, which itself is a multifaceted exercise requiring labor, skill, stone (which must be quarried), windows and items).

To create a Field, labor and (hopefully) tools are required. Since a Field is a productive entity providing food for at least 10 characters, we can calculate the output of the Field to be 7*10 rounded up => 100 potatomeals per year. A potatomeal costs about 0.03 XMR and the raw material cost is assumed to be 0.01 XMR per meal, so 1 Field devoted to potatoes brings 1 XMR income per 7 realdays (one gameyear). We can reverse-engineer how many units of labor (á 0.05 XMR) are required to make it happen. If we require 6 units, it means that one character can save his time (7 units of labor can be saved in the character screen) to cultivate one Field. 30% of the produce goes to taxes however, to the Estate, County and Duchy, who provide things such as roads and security.

Therefore the net value of the Field is 0.4 XMR per gameyear = 0.06 XMR per gameday. Since we want to encourage farming, the labor cost to create new Fields should have a quick payback. Bonds are paying about 0.4% per realday. Let's make a Field pay 3%. Then the cost to make a Field is 0.06 XMR / 3% = 2 XMR = 40 units of labor. One farmer is able to make a lot of Fields once he gets the thing rolling, but then he will need workers to till them, and occasionally there might be overproduction of potatoes forcing the price (in the free market) down.

The market forces dictate that Farms will be generated near the population centers, until these areas are such tightly farmed that there is no space left for grazing. The Farms further afield will be able to concentrate and compete in meat and wool production, which are more valuable per weight, with a relatively smaller transport cost, and do not spoil so easily on transport (potatoes do not stand sun, heat nor cold).

To each and every resource, product and (semi)finished good, there will exist Factories how to transform them (an example of a very basic Factory is a pen, which allows the creation of Documents from paper or parchment - an example of a very complicated Factory is something that we started to call Factory in the 1800s).

With these 3 subsystems:
Character (labor point creation, sustenance, health)
Grid (land, countryside, urban area, buildings, logistics, items)
Factory (creation and transformation, incl. science, culture, import/export)
, all the virtuo-physical work is conducted and registered.

The economic subsystems will serve as enablers how to organize the production chains most efficiently.

[sphericon]

The Field requires much Labor during summertime, but in the winter there is slack. You can only save the Labor for 2.3/7th of a gameyear (gameyear is redefined to equal a realweek), a careful balance allowing flexible gameplay but not the accumulation of raw Labor for an extended time. If Labor is converted to Work, it can be saved for a longer time (or in the Field's case, Labor was directly converted to potatoes without the intermediate Work phase).

After reading about the farmer's field usage, it got me thinking: is there nothing we can use the fields for in winter? A quick google shows the following items a farmer could be doing during the winter (I am not a farmer, maybe someone who is could elaborate on these):

1. Hauls away the previous years crop from their grain bins to be sold at the elevator..
2. Works tirelessly on paperwork, closing out the year before and beginning the new year.
3. Attends meetings offered by Agricultural based companies in efforts to learn to be better at his/her job.
4. Completes all of the maintenance needed on his/her equipment to make sure its ready for the following year.

Perhaps there could be a way for a farmer to earn income on his field when it is not in use by providing other useful services from his farm during the winter months? Say equipment repair, plant research, inventions which help the farm, to name a few.  Maybe a farmer could even participate in some sort of subgame to increase his yield for the next year (much like leveling up your character for a fight). Perhaps he could master Farming I, II, and III which would give him % bonuses on yield.

Just thinking out loud...

[rpietila]

The Field requires much Labor during summertime, but in the winter there is slack. You can only save the Labor for 2.3/7th of a gameyear (gameyear is redefined to equal a realweek), a careful balance allowing flexible gameplay but not the accumulation of raw Labor for an extended time. If Labor is converted to Work, it can be saved for a longer time (or in the Field's case, Labor was directly converted to potatoes without the intermediate Work phase).

After reading about the farmer's field usage, it got me thinking: is there nothing we can use the fields for in winter? A quick google shows the following items a farmer could be doing during the winter (I am not a farmer, maybe someone who is could elaborate on these):

1. Hauls away the previous years crop from their grain bins to be sold at the elevator..
2. Works tirelessly on paperwork, closing out the year before and beginning the new year.
3. Attends meetings offered by Agricultural based companies in efforts to learn to be better at his/her job.
4. Completes all of the maintenance needed on his/her equipment to make sure its ready for the following year.

Perhaps there could be a way for a farmer to earn income on his field when it is not in use by providing other useful services from his farm during the winter months? Say equipment repair, plant research, inventions which help the farm, to name a few.  Maybe a farmer could even participate in some sort of subgame to increase his yield for the next year (much like leveling up your character for a fight). Perhaps he could master Farming I, II, and III which would give him % bonuses on yield.

Just thinking out loud...

Well as a son of a farmer myself (of a potato farmer by happenstance), I know the summer is the Field season. The Field is unusable in the winter. The Farm does/may have other stuff to do in the winter, including the ones you mentioned. The farmer has 21 labor points per year, and may spend a max of 7 of them for the Field to grow crops. Perhaps he even has a town apartment to spend the winter in Skills are naturally involved.

At present the list of skills is as follows:
Window making
Stonemasonry
Tailor
Driver
Doctor
Business Management
Foremanship
Servant/Butler
Carpentry
Goldsmithy
Farmer
Contractor
Social
Meditation
Gardener
Archaeologist
Swordsman
Officer
Assistant
Chef
Cook
Diplomat
Sailor
Geologist
Governor
Book printer
Blacksmith
Artist
Mechanic
Scribe
Astronomer
Mystic
Architect

[markm]

That sounds interesting!

Are you a designer or developer? In what phase is the project? What are the most important lessons we should learn?

I used to do a lot of developing, but I have over time moved more and more toward using existing free open source code as much as possible instead of writing new code from scratch.

The problem was that technology moves too fast, by the time I had a universe running nicely for a single-line BBS (Bulletin Board System) on dialup, TCP/IP was coming along and everything would need to be re-written to handle multiple simultantously-online players, stuff like that.

So what I try to do nowadays is find any and all multi-user online free open source games and, if they actually work, which many do not, try to find ways to fit them into a larger schema, a metagame so to speak. So that ultimately they all become different views and interfaces into a common multiverse.

It looks like you are already addressing one of the biggest problems, which is that games tend to become holes into which you throw endless money until you run out and cannot keep the game online because there is no money to pay for bandwidth and such.

The top page of documentation of what I have been working on for many years now is at http://devtome.com/doku.php?id=galactic_milieu

As you can see from that page, part of how I discovered cryptocurrencies in the first place was as part of my search for solutions to the place where the rubber hits the road, the point at which to have a game, with accompanying in-game economy, at all you have to have some way of paying the bandwidth bills on the planet known as Earth.

If you do manage to do that, then probably you also run into the problem that even in galaxies far far away, to which Earth is considered a myth if it is known of at all, currencies in use on Earth acquire crazy proportionate value due to the "possession" of inhabitants by the minds/spirits of people (aka the players of the game) who actually live on Earth...

One way I have tried to approach addressing this problem is to try to include individual character scale play inside the same universe(s) used for much larger scale play. The idea in this is that if, say, players living on Earth are willing to pay, say, $0.01 for a magic sword this is, say, 3 pounds of metal, ought they not consider it reasonable to pay much, much more for a Deathstar that is many millions of pounds of metal?

That is, we tend to see in games that players will pay some dollars for something of a certain amount of power in the game, regardless of the actual purported scale of the game; a player willing to blow $10 on something of use in a game might equally pay that $10 for one sword in an individual-character game or for an entire spaceship in a spaceship-oriented game. Those games being entirely separate obscures the weirdness of three pounds of metal worked into the form of a sword being apparently worth just as much as many thousands of pounds of metal worked into a spaceship.

By trying to have all that exist within one over-arching metagame it is hoped that maybe some better sense of scale could result, whereby a Deathstar you need to melt down a billion swords to build might actually end up fetching a lot higher price than any one, or even several thousand, such swords...

-MarkM-

[kazuki49]

Remember - It's all about the gold!

These videos make me truly sad sometimes, because its clear we live in a prison planet, engineered to control us, its not even about money, as they can print it at will, its about power, and to control energy sources is to control modern society and us. I hope truly disruptive crypto like Monero will balance things more to our side. Its the only with significant chances so far.

[iluvbitcoins]

any updates?

it's been a week, and we're eager to know what's going on

[NewLiberty]

Remember - It's all about the gold!

These videos make me truly sad sometimes, because its clear we live in a prison planet, engineered to control us, its not even about money, as they can print it at will, its about power, and to control energy sources is to control modern society and us. I hope truly disruptive crypto like Monero will balance things more to our side. Its the only with significant chances so far.

If Bitcoin is disruptive, Monero is disruptive on steroids.
It is practically subversive and seditious.

[rpietila]

any updates?

it's been a week, and we're eager to know what's going on

All technical updates have been Riccardo's responsibility since about April. (Previously they were sXpher's.) Contacting them directly via PM, IRC or other channel might be the way to go, since they obviously don't prefer to make public updates.

(My style has been to make public rather than private communication but I am not in the loop concerning this one.)

[iluvbitcoins]

(My style has been to make public rather than private communication but I am not in the loop concerning this one.)

I hope I'm not being annoying

But you should talk to him about that since making new public updates will bring exposure and new investors

[rpietila]

(My style has been to make public rather than private communication but I am not in the loop concerning this one.)

I hope I'm not being annoying

But you should talk to him about that since making new public updates will bring exposure and new investors

No, you should talk to him. Never institute centralization in communication unless necessary  

ADD: I mean, there is enough job for me to be lead designer, the GM and the King. It is Riccardo's job to be the one responsible for communicating how the Version 4 is proceeding. There is no need for me to carry messages between you two, as he is reading his PM daily.

[NewLiberty]

(My style has been to make public rather than private communication but I am not in the loop concerning this one.)

I hope I'm not being annoying

But you should talk to him about that since making new public updates will bring exposure and new investors

No, you should talk to him. Never institute centralization in communication unless necessary  

ADD: I mean, there is enough job for me to be lead designer, the GM and the King. It is Riccardo's job to be the one responsible for communicating how the Version 4 is proceeding. There is no need for me to carry messages between you two, as he is reading his PM daily.

^^ this

Why do a man in the middle attack on yourself.
If you want the straight information, go straight to the information.  Don't delegate up, it doesn't help you.

[iluvbitcoins]

(My style has been to make public rather than private communication but I am not in the loop concerning this one.)

I hope I'm not being annoying

But you should talk to him about that since making new public updates will bring exposure and new investors

No, you should talk to him. Never institute centralization in communication unless necessary  

ADD: I mean, there is enough job for me to be lead designer, the GM and the King. It is Riccardo's job to be the one responsible for communicating how the Version 4 is proceeding. There is no need for me to carry messages between you two, as he is reading his PM daily.

^^ this

Why do a man in the middle attack on yourself.
If you want the straight information, go straight to the information.  Don't delegate up, it doesn't help you.

I don't want straight information, what I wanted is to get the thread bumping so we get more exposure

But yeah, should of asked on my own

Sending a PM right away

[sphericon]

Just got a brief list of items that were completed in CK the last 5 days...

<fluffypony> 8 hours ago   56b7efd   Adding resources for chatbox 2
<fluffypony> 8 hours ago   42043ab   Callbacks and arrows on new map screen all work
<fluffypony> 10 hours ago   395a2ea   Map buttons highlighted on overflow
<fluffypony> 11 hours ago   2793bef   Added extra needed gfx for map screen
<fluffypony> 3 days ago   537ccd2   Added buttons to map
<fluffypony> 3 days ago   cedb149   Basic map drawing accomplished
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   cf90ce3   Added first update of new map viewer
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   6f19bb9   Made new character screen work
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   7631fc4   First match up of data from ajax working
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   3fe97ab   Added ajax callbacks to extract data from server
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   693d60b   Refactored original code to OO format, partially matching other screens
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   a906172   Copied over character screen from original
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   6ba290d   Columns on special complete to BJ
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   e8dbe17   Sheet SPECIAL complete to column BA
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   d7fd63b   Restructuring complex work of emulating formulas in spreadsheets
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   ecfc3fe   Re-worked halls of fame to remove all drop-down menus
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   10ddce4   Drop down menus replaced with icon bar
<fluffypony> there's the most recent commits

[saddambitcoin]

Just got a brief list of items that were completed in CK the last 5 days...

<fluffypony> 8 hours ago   56b7efd   Adding resources for chatbox 2
<fluffypony> 8 hours ago   42043ab   Callbacks and arrows on new map screen all work
<fluffypony> 10 hours ago   395a2ea   Map buttons highlighted on overflow
<fluffypony> 11 hours ago   2793bef   Added extra needed gfx for map screen
<fluffypony> 3 days ago   537ccd2   Added buttons to map
<fluffypony> 3 days ago   cedb149   Basic map drawing accomplished
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   cf90ce3   Added first update of new map viewer
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   6f19bb9   Made new character screen work
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   7631fc4   First match up of data from ajax working
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   3fe97ab   Added ajax callbacks to extract data from server
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   693d60b   Refactored original code to OO format, partially matching other screens
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   a906172   Copied over character screen from original
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   6ba290d   Columns on special complete to BJ
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   e8dbe17   Sheet SPECIAL complete to column BA
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   d7fd63b   Restructuring complex work of emulating formulas in spreadsheets
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   ecfc3fe   Re-worked halls of fame to remove all drop-down menus
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   10ddce4   Drop down menus replaced with icon bar
<fluffypony> there's the most recent commits

Sounds fancy. Looking forward to playing the game again! Thank you for the update.

[bbreconomy]

Just got a brief list of items that were completed in CK the last 5 days...

<fluffypony> 8 hours ago   56b7efd   Adding resources for chatbox 2
<fluffypony> 8 hours ago   42043ab   Callbacks and arrows on new map screen all work
<fluffypony> 10 hours ago   395a2ea   Map buttons highlighted on overflow
<fluffypony> 11 hours ago   2793bef   Added extra needed gfx for map screen
<fluffypony> 3 days ago   537ccd2   Added buttons to map
<fluffypony> 3 days ago   cedb149   Basic map drawing accomplished
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   cf90ce3   Added first update of new map viewer
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   6f19bb9   Made new character screen work
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   7631fc4   First match up of data from ajax working
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   3fe97ab   Added ajax callbacks to extract data from server
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   693d60b   Refactored original code to OO format, partially matching other screens
<fluffypony> 4 days ago   a906172   Copied over character screen from original
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   6ba290d   Columns on special complete to BJ
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   e8dbe17   Sheet SPECIAL complete to column BA
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   d7fd63b   Restructuring complex work of emulating formulas in spreadsheets
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   ecfc3fe   Re-worked halls of fame to remove all drop-down menus
<fluffypony> 5 days ago   10ddce4   Drop down menus replaced with icon bar
<fluffypony> there's the most recent commits

Sounds fancy. Looking forward to playing the game again! Thank you for the update.

Interesting project.  I like the idea of making new real world (or virtual world) uses for a currency that previously did not exist

[ChrisPop]

Come on devs, launch this game so it can be playable online in browser. You are adding new features and developing the game for almost a year or more. There are lots of people waiting to play this game so please hurry up with the proccess.
I don't wanna push you but I'm just very impatient to play this game.