DIP-75: Dope World + Roll Your Own

Summary

The Cartridge team proposes to seed the Dope Wars Autonomous World on Starknet and to build ‘Roll Your Own’ on top of it.

Autonomous World

Autonomous Worlds are modular, interoperable, and permissionlessly expansible onchain universes for games. The Dope Wars Autonomous World will provide a robust foundation for growth of the ecosystem.

Leveraging the Dojo toolchain for Autonomous Worlds, the Cartridge team will seed the Dope World through the creation of a canonical world contract and development of components and systems to represent Dope Wars hustlers, items, and paper. These characters and items will provide the foundation on top of which the ecosystem can be expanded, through the introduction of additional components and systems that interoperate with them.

The specifics of world expansion are left to a future publication.

Roll Your Own

Roll Your Own will serve as the first "mod" of the Dope World. Roll Your Own is an on-chain adaptation of the original Drug Wars game. As in the original, players will land in Dope Wars locations, arbitraging the price of drugs in an attempt to stack paper and own the streets.

RYO extends the core game mechanic of arbitraging drugs in different neighborhoods to a multiplayer environment where each player’s actions affect the in-game economy, creating a competitive and evolving environment. During each turn, a player will travel to a neighborhood, review the current market prices for drugs, and decide to Buy or Sell. After each turn is complete, the market prices will be affected by the previous player’s turn, adding a new layer of strategy to the game. Random events affect prices between turns to avoid making the game too deterministic.

Technical Specification

Seeding the Dope World and implementing Roll Your Own is an ambitious endeavor. Since the original implementation by @perama, the Starknet ecosystem has evolved significantly and everything will need to be rewritten. Through our work at Cartridge and Dojo, we believe the platform is finally in a state where such an ambitious project can be successfully brought to life.

Provided below is a more detailed set of technical requirements necessary to enable this. Please note these are rough and are subject to change as we journey down the path together.

Initial Seeding

The Dope Wars ecosystem is currently comprised of hustlers, items, and paper which will serve as the foundation for the world.

These assets will need code developed in order to represent them on Starknet and in the Dope World. A set of Components and Systems will be created to enable this. Currently, PAPER exists on Ethereum Mainnet, a bridge will be provided to make it available on Starknet.

Hustlers and Items (acquired through the unbundling of DOPE tokens) currently exist on Optimism, a bridge will be developed to claim the corresponding characters and items in the Dope World.

NOTE: In this process, we propose to remediate some issues in the existing Dope Wars item set, namely, duplicate items (such as coke and cocaine), translation of real world brand names into Dope World native brands, mapping of the original location set to a more coherent set. This is vital to ensure the long term success of the ecosystem.

Seeding the Dope World can happen in parallel to the Roll Your Own development but is resource constrained on the Cartridge side. We are likely to sequence this after the Roll Your Own Alpha.

Roll Your Own

Creation of the Roll Your Own game will involve a sequential iterative process with thorough opportunity for experimentation and feedback.

Alpha

A minimal viable game, enabling players to spawn into a round, travel between locations, trade product, and stack cash.

The alpha version of the game will not incorporate hustlers, items, or paper. It will serve as an opportunity to test and iterate on the core game loop.

Alpha will be deployed to testnet and available for testing through a web ui.

ETA: May/June

Beta

Extension of the Alpha version, incorporating player feedback into the game loop. Introduction of Hustlers, Items, and Lobbies.

Lobbies are akin to "servers" in traditional gaming, a configuration of the RYO game. For example a lobby host can configure parameters such as round duration, turn system, starting stash, max players, etc.

Items will have stats that influence gameplay. For example, rocking an ak47 could make you slow, less likely to be mugged, and more likely to be chased by the cops. In this iteration, hustlers will be able to select a loadout before joining a lobby.

Beta will be deployed on testnet and available for testing through a web and mobile ui.

ETA: September/October

Mainnet

Mainnet deployment of the Roll Your Own on top of Dope World. This version will incorporate mainnet item ownership. Buy in to rounds with PAPER, use your hustler and items to win the streets, and take home the prize pool.

ETA: TBD

Compensation

Cartridge proposes the following compensation to support development costs and participate in the Dope World. PAPER will be vested over 1 year from the date of delivery of the milestone.

Seeding Dope World - 25M PAPER Roll Your Own Alpha - 10m PAPER Roll Your Own Beta - 15m PAPER Roll Your Own Mainnet - 25m PAPER

Intellectual Property

All code to be developed for this project, that is not part of the Cartridge platform offering, will be CC0 or MIT or similarly licensed open source code upon completion of this engagment.

Future Work

There are many exciting opportunities to expand and extend Dope World and Roll Your Own through mods. The goal of this proposal is the lay the foundations on top of which the future can be built. Future contributors can introduce new game types and configurations, introduce new items, locations, random events, and market dynamics.

Future governance of the Dope World is an area that has exciting potential. The idea that the parameters for Dope World could eventually be governed by players within the ecosystem. This could be achieved by using something like streetcred where voting power is earned over time through participation.

Paper's role in the Dope World economy is outside the scope of this proposal. This proposal will make it available on Starknet through bridging. It will also set the foundations whereby a game mode could be developed so paper can be contributed to the prize pool for a round. Deeper integrations like this are left for the future.