Hello everybody, figured I'd make a little post so as to not leave everybody in the dark. I've been really busy recently, but I'm still working on the game as much as I can!
(to be clear, nothing in this post is live on proofofwork.gg yet, as everything will come in one major content push):

In addition to lots of bug fixing, I've condensed progress into the following main things:

Address Book and Transaction Fees

The game now has an address book feature that allows you to "generate" and use multiple different addresses, just like the original client did. I was forced to rewrite a little code to make this work, so internally, the foundations for scripting and detailed UTXO simulation have actually been set Wink

Additionally, block rewards now include transaction fees. Bitcoin's historical fee rates are really interesting to look at, and these trends will definitely be reflected in game. Transaction fees in general aren't really a key focus for me, but I think they'll add some interesting flavour to the gameplay, as you may want to optimise when you broadcast your transactions and the best fee rate for the given transaction (remember to consolidate your outputs, in real life too! Cheesy

).

Mining pools
With that done, I'm currently working on mining pools - I found a really neat paper discussing all the popular reward mechanisms that pools use and have used in the past. A big gameplay/story moment is the player's exposure to the first mining pool(s), so I really want to try and get the details right. Expect the ability to pool hop early-game! (until of course, the NPC of the pool you're abusing switches the reward system Grin

)

Tutorial

I've received a lot of feedback regarding this - so the next time you load the game you'll be greeted with a little dialogue, that, if accepted, will guide you through mining your first block, and acquiring your first device. Hopefully this'll make onboarding much smoother!

Progression, Story, and In-Game Forum
I'm using the website http://historyofbitcoin.org for a rough timeline of key story events (like the aforementioned first mining pool launch) as well as the in game market cycles, and everything will hopefully be layered nicely in with the RingNET forum. Writing fake forum posts will take up a lot of time but hopefully I'll be able to get some help from friends and such

. This (alongside mining pools) is really the key thing I want done before I make this version live.

Also, I'll try my best to start writing a sort of overarching narrative that'll see the player getting lore tidbits from the forum, and little side quests and puzzles as I have discussed, though this is definitely on the lower end of the priorities list for now. Same goes for the BIPs and in game "software updates".

Soundtrack and SFX
This is a very long term thing, but a soundtrack is potentially in the works for the game! Once some tracks are done, I'll create a little "Windows Media Player" app where you can turn the tracks on and off, and shuffle through them. The sound effects right now are also rather crude and limited, so expect improvements to this down the line.

Next Steps
For now, I'll continue working towards delivering on all of the above (and more). Once this content release is ready, if there's enough interest in it, I'll work on creating a trailer and a Steam store page, to hopefully try and get more eyes on this project, Bitcoin education, and just Bitcoin in general.

While this started as just a passion project, I’d love to eventually turn it into something sustainable... I'm thinking after the majority of the game is done (and there is enough content to warrant a price tag), I'll launch it as an "early access" game for maybe around 6-7 USD? (and, naturally, priced fairly according to purchasing power in different regions). For the record, proofofwork.gg isn't going anywhere, and a version of the game will always (to the best of my ability) be freely accessible there, but at some point down the line my content updates will inevitably be more directed to the monetised versions, and the website will stay as more of a "demo" I guess.

Also - a big thank you to whoever sent the ~6,000 sats my way. I didn’t get a message with it, but it really means a lot! Cheesy