Interactive Battle Tournament - the building of a Steemit game
Where is IBT10, when is it coming? what is the delay?
IBT 10 is overdue for launch...
I continue to push it's development, right or wrong IBT was designed to support a character enrolment process and PVP - right now this is where all the energy has gone.
While IBT is fun, I've struggled to find a way to have more character interaction, I mean Steemit is about interaction and IBT runs on the Steemit platform - it bugs me that we can't make IBT more interactive.
To this end all energy is being directed towards the PVP component of IBT.
I need your help.
IBT is something that we not only play together, but build together.
Together we have continued to evolve our fun little contest, we have tried to keep it simple, fun but also challenging and random enough so that anyone can be a winner.
Unfortunately the code is complicated and it grows difficult for me to find bugs and correct problems. With no formal training in programming and making games I am trying to break this down into smaller more manageable chunks. There are a number of new features all of which have had next to no testing and despite hours of effort on my part, I have come to the realisation it will take months to finish this.. if ever!
The new character enrolment and PVP portion of the game is designed to be played more regularly and @doughtaker has agreed to oversee it when he can (If we can get it to work). @steemseph is helping me with the characters themselves, but to be honest I am struggling greatly...I just don't have the editing skills etc needed.
There are a number of artists whom would like to help with IBT, but art work takes time and effort and IBT pays nothing...I continue to handle the vast majority myself and thus, it's not to a high standard :(
How Do I play PVP?
Right now the PVP runs independently and isn't directly linked to regular IBT (outside prizes that can be achieved which will help people with their regular monthly IBT process). There is a need to make a small donation of Steem in PVP, in the form of 'credits', but these credits will also be issued for free at regular intervals (IBT is not a pay to win game). For transparency some of these credits will go to @doughtaker for his help, and anything else made will go to powerup @wizardzap for everyone's benefit. Shortly I will launch the IBT PVP in a special event. Simply keep an eye on my feed.
What does PVP look like?
ABOVE - Custom PVP players being explored - Working on ways to bring in your favourite IBT characters into the IBT world in a more permanent way.
VS.
ABOVE - there are many possible ways to display visually the many battles which will take place in IBT PVP.
ABOVE - the game needs a visual indicator while we wait for battle results to be calculated. Also we need it to be intuitive. As it runs on the Steemit platform, Steemians need to know when to refresh the browser (it's gotta be super simple, or people will get lost:)).
ABOVE - Generic characters which are cool to watch and provide interaction will be used until optional custom characters can be built.
HOW DO WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN?
The plan is to delay our regular IBT for a bit until we can sort out the Enrolment and PVP component. Once this is sorted we will integrate the two games into one (this may take several months).
The concept is the PVP can be optionally played daily and the IBT Tournament being at the end of each month having fantastic prizes.
In typical IBT fashion the best way to make this happen is to go straight in, throwing Steem around like it's going out of fashion!. In the next week or so I will announce our start with a post: IBT SPECIAL PVP tournament - event starting shortly....
Please keep an eye on your feed - you won't want to miss this!
Have you thought about having the actual battles on a specialised website front end, that posts the results of the battles back to the Steem blockchain? The problem with the blockchain is that it's immutable and static, so you can't really have fights in real time.
IBT was designed to run on Steemit.
In the early days people liked IBT because they didn't want the hassle of moving off platform to play a game, but perhaps this view has changed now as Steem has matured? Not everyone trusts Steemconnect with their keys etc, is this still even a concern?
The new PVP part of IBT is almost standalone (even though the prizes link into regular IBT) and I'm assuming wouldn't be overly intense to move off platform as a D app.
...thinking on this, I need 3 signs to make your suggestion happen.
A couple more views of regular players of IBT; to agree that shifting it off platform is better. I built it up for the community and improve it based on what Steemians want. This should be no different. Do people want an off platform -no pay to win- steem driven game? I can't do this and continue IBT at the same time, I work fulltime, study parttime...I can't fit any more in - it will be one or the other.
Just like you gave me the tips to learn Javascript and make it run here, I need high level 'points to be able to make a steem game off platform??what programming language is used? how do you make a website, what are the steps involved in making a Steem run game?...I have no knowledge of these things...You know me well enough now that I can learn these things...Who will teach me or provide me enough sample code to start?
The third sign is it has to feel right...and not sure right now. Perhaps if I hear a few more IBT player views
Cheers
While I am no expert on web programming and @aussieninja's and @culgin's arguments do have some merit, I do believe that you can keep the PvP game on Steemit and not have to resort to a separate front-end. Combat doesn't need to be always resolved in real-time.
I see this PvP game as being similar in technical complexity to a game called "Pairplay" that ran for several months on Steemit. Pairplay was a fully automated game that posted 3 games a day. Players would "activate" a game by upvoting the appropriate game post, receive 2 cards, and then reply to the post with a command to hold or change their cards. Pairplay would then change cards if necessary, and then confirm players' final results and frequently update the game leaderboard. The delays between a player decision and the processing of that decision in Pairplay were similar to the delay between a player initiating combat and the final resolution of that battle in the PvP game tests done so far.
In the event of multiple players trying to activate a game of Pairplay at nearly the same time, Pairplay would just process them all in a single batch and make one comment for them. If multiple players tried to make decisions at the same time, those decisions would be queued and then processed and replied to first in, first out.
With the PvP game, here you have the advantage of not having to deal with a leaderboard -- so you'll never need to update the status of more than two players at a time. My opinion is that you'll be okay if you have a queuing or batch system in place to deal with multiple players trying to play at the same time (which I don't expect to happen with any regular frequency).
There is one fringe case to think about though: should the PvP game catch on like a wildfire and there's suddenly a huge influx of people who want to play -- in this situation @wizardzap's RCs may not be able to keep up and having an off-site front-end could help. As it currently stands at the time of this post, I think @wizardzap can handle 55 or so battles a day (at 2 comments per battle) -- and in the current environment I don't expect to be seeing anywhere near that amount.
Thanks for the detailed and considered response.
You have mentioned at least once previously that not all games are created equally. The unique thing about IBT is it was created to work within the confides of the Steemit environment itself.
I do think aussie has a point though, there are limitations within the Steemit environment - it is predominantly a blogging platform after all. I think this in itself will always limit the number of players for anyone wanting to create games on it. I must say though games on Steemit run from bots, seems a far better use of bots then paid upvote bots, yet these will always attract the numbers and draw a profit for the owners, benefiting them few and gradually destroying the value for the many - as pay for votes is a pay to win system after all...and anything that you pay to gain, always has a cost.
IF a key objective was to get as many players as possible and/or turn a profit then clearly a game must be 'off platform' to be successful. This was never an objective of IBT. It was always just a fun thing to play on the platform.
Still, if the demand is for more games off platform that run on 'steem' then it makes sence to put more energy this way - I could be convinced :)
Lets see if any other IBT players come forward with views.
Cheers
I second the opinion of @aussieninja, it is much easier to build the battle logic and animations/effects via a web front. The battle logs and results can then be stored on Steem blockchain. I think it will be much easier this way and the user experience will probably be better as well :)
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Sounds good...how do I do this?
-if there is a guide available to developers - I'll give it a look in :)
-who do you know that has done this and would be willing to share?
Cheers
I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's how "Steem Monsters" is done. You can check it out here,
https://steemmonsters.com
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Hey @lordnigel
I really like your IBT on the Blockchain and participated a couple of times, but I have to agree with the other people here. A dedicated offsite webpage would really enhance the experience. The most annoying thing in all my IBT was that after e couple of hours the IBT post had almost 100 comments and it was very hard to even find my own comments to keep on playing.
I really think that a dedicated website isn't that hard to program. Yes you are going to need to learn JS. I myself also learned it to program some website games. The language is surprisingly easy (almost too easy). But with any new language it takes time to learn it.
Also I think you should opensource your game and your webpage. Then you can get upvotes from @utopian-io and people (like me) could help you develop the game. But I am very well aware that this is quite a huge step and requires you to put in plenty of time. But I fear that without this step IBT will never actually make it or even die pretty soon.
Looking forward what new ideas you come up with I wish the project can rise in the future! :D
I understand - thanks for the honest feedback. Will take some time to think about your comment.