Welcome to the frontier of digital gaming! Today, we’re exploring an emerging concept that aims to bring gaming to Bitcoin: the Ord Games protocol. With its unique model and game design potential, Ord Games allows creators to mint game universes and items directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. Let’s dive in!

An Introduction to Ord Games

Ord Games is a standard protocol designed for defining Bitcoin game universes consisting of unique players and loot. Game designers and developers can use this protocol to build unique, open-source, and decentralized games using Bitcoin as the foundational technology. With Ord Games, it’s possible to mint game avatars, weapons, armor, and other essential game items in a completely decentralized fashion.

At its core, Ord Games is built on the “OG Protocol”. Each game universe bootstrapped on the protocol is defined through a ‘boot operation’, which includes key parameters like the name of the game, an avatar representing the game, and arrays defining the available loot and player types.

The boot operation serves as a unique identifier for each game universe, which can then be referenced during item minting and player interactions. The structure of a boot operation typically follows this JSON5 format:

{
“p”: “og”,
“v”: “1”,
“op”: “boot”,
“name”: “GameName”,
“avatar”: “GameAvatar”,
“players”: [
[“playerType”, “supply”],
//… additional player types …
],
“loot”: [
[“class”, “name”, “power”, “supply”],
//… additional loot items …
],
}

In the example above, GameName is the name of your game universe and GameAvatar is an optional image inscription that serves as your game’s icon. PlayerType and supply represent the class and total number of each player type available in the game, respectively. Similarly, class, name, power, and supply detail each loot item’s class, name, power level, and total supply.

Disclaimer: Minting Items Blind

One of the key challenges of this novel protocol is that it currently lacks solid indexing services. This means that, in the early stages, inscriptions have to be done blindly. Users have to mint their items without having any real-time inventory information available. This means that users could easily waste Bitcoin by trying to mint an item that’s already exhausted its supply. Until indexing services come online to tally OG inscriptions, it is highly recommended to exercise extreme caution during the inscription process.

An Example: Wizords Game Universe

Now that we have covered the basic structure and concepts of Ord Games, let’s take a look at an example game universe created on this protocol: Wizords.

Wizords serves as an on-chain battle game where you mint wizards, orcs, and other mythical beasts, assembling a war chest of weapons, armor, and magic items. The ‘boot operation’ for Wizords would look something like this:

{
“p”: “og”,
“v”: “1”,
“op”: “boot”,
“name”: “Wizords”,
“avatar”: “GameAvatar”,
“players”: [
[ “wizords”, “10000” ],
//… additional player types …
],
“loot”: [
[ “eyes”, “white”, “10”, “100” ],
//… additional loot items …
],
}

The gameplay involves players minting a specific avatar and the best loot they can secure. They assemble a “complete” player for battle by placing their avatar and five loot items in a Bitcoin wallet. This signals the Wizords game client that they want to challenge other players.

Wizords also introduces the concept of ‘dual-key avatars’ where a player is defined by a unique private key and public key pair. The public key, visible to all players, is used for identifying the player on the Bitcoin network. The private key, known only to the player, represents the player’s secret weapon.

Conclusion

Ord Games is a novel and exciting protocol that opens up a new world of gaming possibilities on the Bitcoin blockchain. Despite its experimental nature and the associated risks, it offers a fresh approach to decentralized gaming and holds the potential to disrupt the industry. If successful, it could well be the protocol that brings gaming to Bitcoin!

To find out more; Twitter: @stackatron, Discord: discord.gg/w8757JdTm2 and the docs in detail: https://docs.ord.games/

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Created with Chat 4 AI-assistance (For formatting and structure)

Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that Ord Games, and the concept of decentralized gaming at large, is highly experimental and not without its risks. These could include potential financial losses due to technical difficulties, regulatory issues, market volatility, or unforeseen technological hiccups. This article should not be considered as financial advice, but rather an exploration of this emerging field. Always conduct thorough research and exercise caution when dealing with experimental platforms like Ord Games.