IPC 2019: The Road Ahead
IPC 2019
Happy New Year present and future IPC owners!!!
Below is a quick summary of the year past, and some information about our goals for 2019:
IPCs 2018
Of course, 2018 has been an important year for IPCs. The very first IPC was born March 15th, 2018, at 3:49pm! Since then, over 2600 IPCs have been created.
Some of you have purchased from this genesis traunch of IPCs. You know who you are. I just want to say that you have my personal commitment that one day you will be very happy you decided to acquire your IPCs when you did.
Also in 2018, we were able to get very rough but functional IPC mobile apps out into the wild. More on IPC Explorer below.
I’ll admit that it feels like not nearly enough has been done in the last year. When you’re excited about something and believe in it strongly its development time has the uncanny ability to slow down time itself. The rest of this blog post will be about the year ahead and where we would like to be with IPCs.
IPC Cards
We are working on producing high quality cards that contain ALL information about your IPC, including the wallet info. These physical characters sheets and paper wallets can be thought of as the Pink Slip for your IPCs. Keep an eye on the IPC shoppe for availability.
IPC Explorer
The IPC Explorer is our trojan horse into the future world of IPCs. This app has been very simple so far, allowing you to explore or browse all the IPCs on the blockchain. It comes equipped with a QR scanner so its quick and easy to explore your wallet where your IPCs reside. The app will allow you to save your public address, giving you quick and easy access to your IPCs.
This year we intend to add more features that will take your IPCs to the next level…
Mobile App Updates
We have updated the apps so that they load the IPCs much faster. We have a server side caching process that copies the IPCs from the blockchain and stores them on a reliable and fast database. This works well already and makes the browsing process much smoother.
We also re-designed the interface so it looks cleaner and added attribute icons and even race and sub race symbols. Check out the current versions of the IPC Explorer here:
IPC AR
Also the next IPC Explorer update will include augmented reality (AR) functionality. Since we are already using your phone’s camera for the QR scanning, we can also use it for AR features. While only working in a limited fashion at the moment, expect some cool functionality around this new feature.
You can check out some of the IPC AR functionality now. Simply print out the IPC Shield and place the printout on a table. Select an IPC in the IPC Explorer, tap the AR button and view the IPC Shield through your camera. Your selected IPC will appear in our world.
In the future, there will be a way to interact with other IPCs by placing several IPC QR codes on the table. Maybe the IPCs will fight or make friends.
In the future, the Shield will be a ring… for combat. (See IPC vs. IPC below.)
Quests
This year IPC Quests will start to be offered in the IPC Explorer App. A quest is simple. There will be a goal and a certain amount of time in which to accomplish the goal. Easy quests, like going fishing or hunting for food will take a short amount of time while epic quests, like slaying the dragon and saving the village, will take a long time to accomplish. Successful quests will give your IPCs rewards, like gold pieces proportional to how long the quests take or how risky they are. Also, quests will allow your IPC to accumulate a history. Quest chains will form a story giving your IPC a rich and unique history.
Keep an eye out for IPC Explorer updates. We will let you know when IPC Quests become available.
Inventory
We are going to start simple: IPCs will collect Gold Pieces, eXperience Points, and generate historic log entries. When that’s all working perfectly, we will start to add items.
IPC Bios
Sooner rather than later, we want you to be able to fill out a text field called IPC Bio. This is your opportunity to create the backstory of your IPC. It’s up to you, but you can only scribe the biographies of your own IPCs. However, all IPC bios may be read by anyone.
The more about your IPC you imagine, the more real it becomes. Characters with rich histories and complex relationships tend to last for long periods of time. IPC Bios are the start of making IPCs even more immortal!
IPC City
This will be the first RPG-like game for IPCs. How this game will be different is that your IPCs will live in IPC City 24/7. They will wander around, discover new zones, have both friendly and not so friendly encounters. They will form relationships with other IPCs depending on how frequently they encounter each other and under what contexts these encounters take place.
We have the IPC City prototype working now. The city environment is primitive and temporary as we make the new IPC city map. One thing I can say is it will be HUGE.
All newly born IPCs will appear in the IPC City automatically.
IPC vs. IPC
The first versus gameplay will appear in the IPC Explorer in AR. Initially, it will work like this.
Select an IPC you own.
Find another IPC and challenge them!
If they are set to auto-accept challenges, the two IPCs will fight!
The combat events are generated by the IPCs Attributes.
The winner gets a gold piece!
Once this is working and is fun, we will begin to add more functionality. Eventually, we can have wallet vs. wallet battles that occur on your dining room table.
