TimePirates is a ChainHackers' entry for the "Autonomous Worlds 2023" hackathon. This blockchain-based game merges exploration, survival, and modularity, presenting a player-driven universe with infinite expansion potential.
Set in an infinite, square-grid world, players move around, collecting randomly appearing time packages. Encounters turn into combat, with the victor claiming the defeated player's time reserves.
Players can reserve sections of the world using on-chain smart contracts, defining their specific game rules. This creates diverse "mini-games" across the world, each varying in design and complexity.
Drawing on the principles of composable engineering, TimePirates offers a modular approach to gaming experiences that is reflective of the affordance of a world to allow for recursive composition of engineered artifacts with no limit on recursion depth.
By allowing players to reserve sections of the world via on-chain smart contracts, each player or participant effectively engineers the game rules for their specific areas. This brings a level of customization and user-driven content that is central to composable engineering. It fosters an environment of "knowledge composition" and "invention compounding" within the game, just like in our real world, leading to the constant evolution of the gaming universe.
The different game worlds, each having their unique rules and mechanics, can be seen as engineered artifacts within the larger game universe. They're not merely "features" introduced by a single central authority, but are elements of the game world that are invented from within by its inhabitants, thereby keeping the game autonomous.
Further, this arrangement enables knowledge encapsulation – players do not need to understand every detail of each other's game worlds to interact with them. This aspect parallels the principle of separation of concerns in software development, making the gaming experience more inclusive and diverse.
By enabling this level of player-driven customization and autonomous evolution within the game, TimePirates represents a perfect example of a gaming environment built on the principles of composable engineering.
All interactions, from area reservations to player conflicts, are tracked and validated on-chain. This blockchain enforcement adds a layer of credibility and transparency to the game.
With a one-week development timeframe, the ChainHackers team aims to create a few example game worlds, with complexity akin to the "Snake" game.
TimePirates offers a unique, ever-changing gaming environment. Blockchain technology facilitates composable gaming experiences, ensuring every journey in this infinitely expandable universe is distinct.