Crypto Kingdom - 1991 Retro Virtual World(City)

[generalizethis]

A simple design for a memorial chapel. The window layout should center light onto the one being honored and mourned for a few hours on a clear day--though rain pattering on glass should be a comforting effect on the mourner as well. I started with a taller design (which looks incredible) but wanted to keep the room simple and without columns or structural support to distract the eye. Feel free to use or upgrade.


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GDmmaUtFszIJrsa-xNzhZsENTF6nmZ599tq2Pc4VpGo/edit?usp=sharing

[noms]

Development updates for ck:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144860.msg12650612#msg12650612

[Roopatra]

Happy 1 year Birthday for Crypto Kingdom! 
And many more to follow.

From the Marchioness of Neverland

[rpietila]

The cold autumn day sets over the Royal Palace and surroundings. It is as if the whole center of the town were emptied to give the King quality time with family - not only the King's Park is empty and windy, but even the Central Square is less crowded than usual, busy, but quiet.

But in the new boroughs, in the research and development departments, work is continuing unabated, if not intensified. Rumors about great developments are circulated.

Happy real-anniversary

[generalizethis]

What are the design rules for fountains? Is it possible to build one on floors other than the ground floor?

[rpietila]

What are the design rules for fountains? Is it possible to build one on floors other than the ground floor?

Things that can be reasonably called "gardening", are included in such. If stone is used, add the stone.

Things that are counted as luxuries, are included there.

Bending the rules concerning available building technology, cost extra.

For instance the only way in our Kingdom to make a roof in your diameter 16 m room from 40x40x5 cm slabs of natural stone (resource "stone"), is a dome. Wooden beam constructions are not supported by the game. (Both cases would result in minimum about 6 m additional height also.) A smaller bending of the rules would be to use low-arch 5, still not officially supported. You may use la-5 without immediate penalty though...

Storytelling wise - unless it is beer you are fountaining, we have considered water in all forms to be not so good since it became smelly and unhealthy.


TL;DR: feel free to make detail in your building, when it fits the other parameters. If in doubt, just pay extra to SSP. We cannot anyway guarantee how the details will be parsed to be viewable and when, so you can as well have them

[Syksy]

Happy anniversary!

[languagehasmeaning]

Happy 1 year Birthday for Crypto Kingdom! 
And many more to follow.

From the Marchioness of Neverland

The community interest in the project seems to have accelerated recently. I predict that the second year will add far more players that the first as the game continues to develop.

[rpietila]

I predict that the second year will add far more players that the first as the game continues to develop.

Character Management

We have played enough Monopoly now - it's the time to move on to Civilization (city management == commoner character development, technology tree == skills system, Civ buildings == items). Intriguing mechanisms are being designed concerning how the player spends the steady stream of action points (1 AP comes every 8 hours, some can be held at storage).

The new players find themselves immediately in the middle of choices. Meeting girls costs both time and money, but will hopefully lead to marriage with many bonuses (though with continued time sink as well). Gardening, hunting and distilling your own mead increase self-sufficiency, but might it still be better to work part-time in a hard (but well-paid, considering no experience) job in a quarry, and learn to read in the spare time and become a town clerk instead.

Many items bring bonuses to your life, as do the various Personal, Academic, and Artesan skills in their several levels (in total, hundreds of skills will be there to be explored). Unbalanced gameplay brings health challenges. Going social and walking around the map, on the other hand, leads you to interesting buildings where bonuses to the skills-in-progress can be had without paying AP cost!

So there is the element of making the most of your "life" in the way of AP, and this is a bonanza for those who enjoy micromanagement as well.

But your success can be boosted directly by spending real playtime in exploring the environment, because that brings you upon both straight-on bonuses and interesting opportunities (+ play time yields you gold).

Indirectly you can boost your character by depositing, because while money cannot buy everything, it is very hard to say what exactly it cannot buy, indirectly at least... Having enough money quickly frees up your time from the requirements of making a living, so both the AP and the playtime can be fully spent on interesting activities! Being young and having enough money to do what you want: Yii-haa!  

Simulations are going on to determine the optimal conversion rate of "basic character economy" to RL monetary value. The concept of free-to-play + withdraw the gains, is quite difficult to balance. If the ingame money is too valuable, it turns the difficulty level up even more since there will be many farmers just hacking the game to withdraw a RL salary for themselves, and getting casual players will dry up: no matter deposit or not, they cannot even stay alive in the competitive world, and stay away. If the money is too unvaluable, even small deposits can make you a big lord and then the game is full of big lords playing from mom's basements, which makes the administration of the characters who are really-big-lords too tedious for the adults to do, and we lose the most valuable players. The AP earnings from a commoner, start=15yo, character in his lifetime are ~50 XMR, which is determined to be the sweet spot. In the lifetime simulations, about 40% goes to food and drink, 40% to clothes and rent, leaving some for discretionary spending. Here, micro-deposits of 1-5 XMR make a difference in the day-to-day challenges, and 25-50 XMR are already a sum to cause a social rise.

Tribe and Guild

Many have wondered what is the real meaning of landed nobility; what does the countryside mean when it comes, and how can it function in practice with possibly millions (or even thousands) of players moving there to find better living conditions from the cramped CryptoTown. The answer will be: feudalism. The Dukes and higher will govern a duchy, which is composed of many counties. The levels Earl-Prince have one or more counties. Below this is the Manor, and then Farm.

Now comes the interesting part: We start from the county. It is up to the Earls (and higher, since also Dukes have counties) to gain the people to his county. Counties have their own economic pools, which means that they are shielded from the CryptoTown finances, and therefore sandboxes for all kinds of ideas how to make them function. While I admire my own capability in steering CryptoTown and the whole game as aside, I am again more than happy if someone does it better and gets more people and bigger buildings in their own city.

Since only nobles are direct subjects of the King, commoners can voluntarily submit themselves to feudal lords in return of favors and protection. Free land is something that the Earls have - each county can have one central city consisting of as many boroughs as needed + thousands of boroughs of rural land ready to be turned to farms! There might become quite a competition to get the best settlers, and they will be your subjects afterwards so you can tax them. But if famine, pestilence or enemy hits, they are also dependent on you. The organization of a county includes the possibility to appoint a Viscount (manager), although not a level rank, he is generally regarded as next to Earl himself in prestige. Earls have many ways to benefit their subjects.

Guild is a similar allegiance system where city-dwelling industrialists can enrol players (characters) to his businesses and ensure the development of appropriate skills for his business plans. The skills system is very wide, and reaching the top in even one skill corresponds to Wizard level. Clearly some help is needed, and setting up academies etc. helps the members gain skills (and levels) more quickly.

I just picked 2 of the modules that are coming In the near term we see the release of API, and of course the game is back to play. But then many of the UI/visualization stuff will be given to contractors, allowing the core to proceed concurrently, so progress will soon be made in many fronts!

The possibility to steam on with the design is of course provided by the new testing coordinator Sir Noms, Naturalist Mooo, HE saddam and perhaps others. Thank you all!

[rpietila]

Tried playing Forge of Empires.

Their tutorial did not allow a single choice, or clicking anything else except what was pointed with an animated arrow. Despite that the game claims to have received 1 million players in 8 weeks, I decided that 5 minutes was enough. Now it can boast of 1,000,001 players 

Crypto Kingdom will aim in the totally opposite end in the scripting. This is designed for people who want to decide themselves what they do, even if it might require some effort to decide.

[noms]

Ultima development thread update: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144860.msg12664836#msg12664836

[rpietila]

CONSOL emission 1610

The Most Ancient Town is emitting CON perpetual bonds for circulation. It is decided that Town will have a reasonably-sized debt load to provide the economic information about interest rates in the market. The CON pays 0.1 mil per week to the holder, making it very easy to calculate the rate from the CON price.

This time we are seeking buyer for ~500 CON. The previous auction cleared at 8.8 mil/unit. This time the game DB is not open so it is demanding to arrange a full blown auction. I have buyers for the whole amount at 9.5 mil, including myself, so in no case will it go unsubscribed. Throw in better bids and I will close the round when enough buyers have shown up. I will not guarantee normal auction rules, but all accepted bids will have the same price.

The beauty of CON is that the new ones are identical to the old ones - even gold does not have perfect fungibility because it has age, form, etc. characteristics. We are seeking to raise CON to be the third pillar in the diversified portfolio, along with CKG, and unquarried chapelries in the outskirts of the Town.

[Karl Hungus]

CONSOL emission 1610

Hokusai bids:
100 @ 9.6mil

[Roopatra]

CONSOL emission 1610

Roo bids:
10 @ 10mil

(would be fun to bid 16 @ 10, since it is the year in question, but maybe someone else will do it.)

[Syksy]

CONSOL emission 1610

I would also like to bid 10 pieces @ 10 mil.

Kind regards,
Syksy

[djjacket]

CONSOL emission 1610

North Face bids - 75@10
HE The Prince of Forte Spagnolo - 100@10

[rpietila]

CONsol round has ended.


The long term plan of the Town is to get these widely owned, but this round the technical constraints prevent too wide allocation. (These are very prime investment items so definitely will be available in Agora soon!)

Roopatra, Syksy, HH of NF and Prince Ric get what they wanted and the rest 305 units will be allocated to the King and his shadow bidders.

10 mil sounds like a plan. This gives the Town 5,000 mil towards the dev milestone, recorded as soon as the DB is open again.

[rpietila]

New thread opened for game strategy and design

This one will continue to be used for announcements and gameplay related things for the time being.

Technical development and testing has its own thread as well.

[opennux]

How can I sign up for the game?

I tried signing up on cryptokingdom.me to no avail.

[generalizethis]

With the the planned changes in building (pre-fab, stat based design), does it make sense to build before the changes are made? And what is the time frame for this development?