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Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

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Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#31

Post by nibnalin »

Hey folks,

Creator here, thank you for sharing this here - it seems there’s a decent bit of misunderstandings in the comments (particularly around the security model/monetary cost) so I’ll clarify some things:

- Your main wallet is never exposed to the game tiles, only a burner proxy wallet created for in-game interactions. This limits any attack surface area significantly.

- Frontend plug-ins are decently sandboxed and cannot learn things like “what’s your private key?” or make transactions on your behalf unless you explicitly approve it.

- This runs on a testnet L2 (Optimism Kovan) so it’s free to play - this is just meant to be a proof of concept exploration. Anyway, transaction costs are on the order of 1/100th of a cent on such L2s, so it’s really not prohibitively expensive to play the game even if it was with real money!

I’m a bit disappointed that most of the comments here pose rather shallow understanding of what’s interesting about exgrasia/blockchain as a data layer for games - I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it :(

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#32

Post by NoraCodes »

nibnalin wrote: post #31

Hey folks, Creator here, thank you for sharing this here - it seems there’s a decent bit of misunderstandings in the comments (particularly around the security model/monetary cost) so I’ll clarify some things: - Your main wallet is never exposed to the game tiles, only a burner proxy wallet created for in-game interactions. This limits any attack surface area significantly. - Frontend plug-ins are decently sandboxed…

> I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it :

You don't need a blockchain with global consensus to do that.

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#33

Post by nibnalin »

NoraCodes wrote: post #32
nibnalin wrote: post #31

Hey folks, Creator here, thank you for sharing this here - it seems there’s a decent bit of misunderstandings in the comments (particularly around the security model/monetary cost) so I’ll clarify some things: - Your main wallet is never exposed to the game tiles, only a burner proxy wallet created for in-game interactions. This limits any attack surface area significantly. - Frontend plug-ins are decently sandboxed…

> I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it : You don't need a blockchain with global consensus to do that.

That’s a fair criticism - I like to think a blockchain is akin to a shared computer we all have access to (via programs/contracts) which makes it really convenient to use blockchains in such ways. Besides, the perpetual machine properties of a blockchain allow code to exist independent of an individual creator/entity - exgrasia cannot go the way of club penguin for instance.

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#34

Post by pavel_lishin »

nibnalin wrote: post #33
NoraCodes wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d think nothing would excite fellow programmers more than the ability to build their own systems and mod it into a “world” without any limits/permissions on it : You don't need a blockchain with global consensus to do that.

That’s a fair criticism - I like to think a blockchain is akin to a shared computer we all have access to (via programs/contracts) which makes it really convenient to use blockchains in such ways. Besides, the perpetual machine properties of a blockchain allow code to exist independent of an individual creator/entity - exgrasia cannot go the way of club penguin for instance.

> the perpetual machine properties of a blockchain allow code to exist independent of an individual creator/entity - exgrasia cannot go the way of club penguin for instance

Which is framed as a net positive here, but is it? What happens when my little fishing tile is surrounded by $RACIAL_SLUR-ville? What happens when the landscape becomes a sea of swastikas?

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#35

Post by PretzelPirate »

spicyusername wrote: post #24

Love the spirit of engineering here. "Let's see what we can stitch together with these exploratory technologies" Hate that it has to be with blockchain technologies. "Let's see if we can siphon off easy money from more suckers with another piece of crypto vaporware"

Since this runs in Kovan, it doesn’t cost any money to play.

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#36

Post by bradhe »

danielvaughn wrote: post #12

I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island. Think Animal Crossing meets Skyrim. I have no clue how a "contract" would contribute to that idea at all, and would in fact pose more risk to vulnerabilities and hacks than would exist from a centralized architecture.

> I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island.

That is called No Man’s Sky.

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#37

Post by arinlen »

cinntaile wrote: post #17

It's unfortunate that most comments are predictable anti-blockchain comments again. Can't we just enjoy this guy's creative exploration?

> It's unfortunate that most comments are predictable anti-blockchain comments again. Can't we just enjoy this guy's creative exploration?

If the game's whole shtick is blockchain, is it really unreasonable to comment on the blockchain aspect of the game?

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#38

Post by hresvelgr »

im3w1l wrote: post #15
hresvelgr wrote: post #3

I don't think the underlying game is fun or interesting and the blockchain shtick is the only thing it's got going for it which imho is a detractive quality. I think its only merit is that it sated the author's interests.

I get what you are saying, but I see it from a more positive perspective. I wouldn't play it, but it's a really cool tech demo and proof of concept. I was amazed that it managed to run as smooth as it did, with every action corresponding to a blockchain transaction. And how easy it was to create new tokens, and contracts for automatically exchanging them. So I did enjoy the video and learned new things. And it made m…

> And it made me think that making an interesting on-chain game is actually possible, even if this was not it.

Sure, it's possible. But I would add that any on-chain game would be equally good, if not better by not being on the chain. I dare anyone to show me a game that is only good by existing on the blockchain.

I'll wait.

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#39

Post by danielvaughn »

bradhe wrote: post #36
danielvaughn wrote: post #12

I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island. Think Animal Crossing meets Skyrim. I have no clue how a "contract" would contribute to that idea at all, and would in fact pose more risk to vulnerabilities and hacks than would exist from a centralized architecture.

> I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island. That is called No Man’s Sky.

Similar idea, yes! But I'm imagining a single planet where each players island is specified by a set of GPS coordinates. You'd only be able to travel by boat, so initially only islands close to one another would feasibly be able to interact.

Re: Exgrasia: RPG-style sandbox game where every tile is a player-made contract

#40

Post by webmaven »

jperry wrote: post #16
danielvaughn wrote: post #12

I have this recurring idea of a game where each player can construct their own islands, and players can travel around the world from island to island. Think Animal Crossing meets Skyrim. I have no clue how a "contract" would contribute to that idea at all, and would in fact pose more risk to vulnerabilities and hacks than would exist from a centralized architecture.

Long since dead but I put a lot of time into a browser-based (2D) MMO called Nowhere Else and Beyond back in the day. You could build islands and they'd be placed somewhere in the world for people to sail to, you could create quests set on your island etc. There was even an object inventor for creating equipment.

That sounds pretty cool. Was it a fork of an existing codebase such as BrowserQuest?
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