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FAQs
When we first started Planetarium, we were frustrated by the status of blockchain tools for game development. We wanted to give traditional game developers a powerful tool to create fully decentralized, complex universes through the development ecosystem they already deeply understood. And we wanted to provide application-specific blockchains for each universe, so that developers could have full control over the nature of its economy as well as its reward structure. As development progressed, we started thinking deeper about games that are powered by the community through decentralization.
Since the very beginning, gamers were modding existing games to create fresh new experiences for others. For example, DotA/League of Legends, Battlegrounds, Counter-Strike are billion dollar products that were initially mods. Games like Minecraft and Roblox (paid $70m to 2m creators in 2019) have a huge modding community that powers their success.
Yet we noticed that in massively multiplayer online worlds, a virtual community was fully controlled by a single corporation, without an opportunity for modding and creative engagement. We realized this could change through blockchain gaming. Community-powered online game is a concept that hasn't been fully explored before, and we are excited to be among the first to dive in.
Our team is also deeply technical and we are huge believers of the open source movement. We always have been passionate about creating great software for other developers. The gaming industry is notorious for its propritary technology and ownership, and we are excited to become pioneers in this way as well.
And obviously, we love games and we're thrilled for the opportunity to create online worlds that could last for decades and more.
A centralized online game is a virtual community controlled by a single corporation. Not all games need to be fully decentralized of course, but we see a future of community-powered games that run perpetually through full decentralization. This change also presents a new unique opportunity for moddable and forkable online worlds.
Since the very beginning, gamers were modding existing games to create new original experiences. For example, DotA/League of Legends, Battlegrounds, Counter-Strike are billion dollar products that were initially mods. Games like Minecraft and Roblox (paid $70m to 2m modders in 2019) have a huge modding community that powers their success.
Yet full moddability has never been offered to massively multiplayer online games (World of Warcraft, Lineage, etc.) because in the past, a company could only make money by fully controlling the ecosystem such as server access and items, since they needed to sell content directly to the gamer.
We think decentralization and the new ways of funding have created other possibilities for online game developers. Just like blockchain ecosystems, communities will be able to power fully decentralized games open for creative experimentation. Since these community-powered worlds are perpetual, talented game designers and developers can take over a stagnant world any time and breathe a new life into it.
Mining is the act of contributing your processing power to the blockchain network to help verify data. In return for the processing power that is contributed, Miners are incentivized, and rewarded 10 NCG per block mined. The block rewards, however, gets halved every 4 years. So by 2024, each block mined will reward 5 NCG. 4 more years after that, we will get 2.5 NCG per block mined. So on so forth.
The answer to this question really depends on one's own situation. Do you want to contribute to the game network? If yes, then there's no harm in turning the Miner on as it doesn't really consume that much processing power. At the moment, the Miner is locked to only use 1 core, and for the average quad-core CPU, this is about 20% to 25% of their total processing power.
Nine Chronicles and the related repositories are/will be licensed under GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).
The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3 with one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, you must also open source the code corresponding to the modified version. This includes nodes that interact with other nodes, or modified services based on the Nine Chronicles repositories. It does not currently cover programs that talk to the nodes via GraphQL.
We created the Nine Chronicles ecosystem to be a place where moding and alterations can freely occur, as long as they benefit the whole community. We realized it is best if the modifications benefited the whole ecosystem and people could build upon the best ideas generated by the community.
Discussion on Stack Exchange: "The AGPL is a response to criticism in the open source community that many cloud operators, Internet service providers, and some HPC and financal industry shops devote enormous resources to tuning, tweaking, and improving their open source deployments, yet because they never "distribute" products based on the code, are effectively immune to copyleft."
Nine Chronicles and the related repositories are/will be licensed under GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL).
AGPL allows developers to make commercial modifications, as long as they are open sourced under the same license. There are many business models for open source projects, and we're happy to brainstorm and support project development through our grant program.
That way it's very possible that the creative direction of Nine Chronicles will be abandoned... correct?
We will be developing / updating Nine Chronicles with feedback from the community, so this will be one creative direction that we will drive forward. But we want others to be able to offer a new creative direction for the game as well. We believe this is the real innovation behind online RPGs powered through blockchain - that there can be multiple forks of the game world competing and collaborating with each other with different ideologies in mind (e.g. bitcoin vs bitcoin cash / eth vs eth classic)
What elements of the game are stored on the blockchain? Is gameplay itself on the blockchain, all items, only certain items, spells, potions?
Everything is stored on the blockchain. We've been working on a new blockchain engine to make this as easy as possible: https://github.com/planetarium/libplanet
The subtitle of Nine Chronicles is "The First Chapter", what does that mean? Is this the first game? Will new levels only be added in new chapters?
We are planning to release nine worlds (heh), and the first four will be available in the initial release. We will be releasing new levels and features for the next two years, some from us, some from the community.
How will the process of adding levels work? Like Mario Maker, on-the-go, whenever a level is finished by a modder? Or only when approved by Planetarium.
Nine Chronicle levels are very simple: waves of monsters + text box before and after the level. When we release the feature (it won't be implemented at launch because there's too much other work to do :( ) users should be able to upload "a world" to the mainnet, which will be a series of stages with story elements. To upload a level, users will need to pay a small amount of gold. But they can make the gold back if other players enjoy the content.
What happens when the centralized servers shut down? Will the "ownership" really matter if you can't access the game world?
While playing the game, gamers will be able to gather resources and make items that will be NFTs. Cool, so gamers can work and make money, basically. But when gamers design a new level, can they also add NFTs to the game that are for example super rare?
I think in this case, modders would design NFTs and then ask the players (token holders) to approve the deployment of new content.
Nine Chronicles will rely on micropayments to sell content. You at Planetarium will be making content, but also third party modders. These new levels / games, do they need to follow the same principles of Nine Chronicles.... as in, they are also side scrolling games?
Side scrolling will be the easiest to implement, but since NC is open sourced, modders can also program an entirely new feature (Pet Collection? Farming? Something more creative that isn't side scrolling?) and send a request on Github. We'll review the feature with the community and decide whether to include it into the ecosystem. The modders don't really need our approval though, since they can just launch their own version of the game.
To what extend is Nine Chronicles comparable with Dreams on PS4, or something like Game Maker / Unity?
As a studio, we want to provide an actual baseline gaming experience that is more than just a sandbox for play. In NC players don't need to create new content to enjoy the game. They may learn more about the world while enjoying the content provided by us, and then decide to expand upon the experience.
So if I want, would I be able to use Nine Chronicles to make a third person action game for example? Or a shooter?
Do not worry. If you turned off your Miner when the launcher asked you, chances are it's really turned off. The "Mining Transaction" loading page you see whenever you enter a stage in the game is really just a fancy way of saying "The Game is Loading". Since Nine Chronicles uses blockchain technology as its host, every time we do something, the game has to place our inputted data in the chain, the data will then have to be mined by Miners to be included in the block. Once the data that we have inputted ( a.k.a entering a stage or battling an opponent in the arena ) is successfully included in a block is when we see the combat being played out.
The "Mining Transaction" loading screen doesn't necessarily say that YOU are mining the transaction yourself. The rest of the miners are actually the ones doing the mining, and the loading page just makes you aware that your transaction is being mined at that point in time, and to wait until the mining is finished.
In short, it goes like this: A player enters a stage → that particular action ( stage entry ) is transformed into a transaction → transaction gets sent to the mempool → miners mines a block and includes the transaction → block successfully shows up in the blockchain and the loading is complete → your combat result is shown in the screen.
To keep it as simple as possible, Reorg ( Reorganization ) is simply when two or more miners mine the exact same block ( example: Block#500,000 ), but since there can only be one Block#500,000, the blockchain has to choose which block to include in the chain. A reorg chooses which blocks to include, and then drop the extra blocks. Those dropped blocks then become Orphaned Blocks. They are simply blocks that have been rejected by the blockchain.
My launcher is stuck on Preloading and/or My account activation is stuck on verifying. What should I do?
This is a common problem among first time players. The most common and simplest solutions are:
- 1.Restarting the launcher ( please close from the system tray or task manager )
- 2.Clear Cache ( Launcher settings → Clear Cache → Save )
- 3.Restarting the PC ( in order to make sure there are no leftover processes running in the background )
If the above solutions don't work, please don't be afraid to ask the community leads as well as the developers for more possible fix.
So we know that Nine Chronicles uses blockchain technology to run. It means it doesn't have a central server and a central authority. While blockchain technology has its pros, it also has its cons. We can't change password the same way we change password everywhere else, and we also can't just login on new devices as easily as in traditional platforms and games.
Private Key is important because:
- It is one of only two means a player can recover their account in case they had to change device
- It is the only means a player can change their password
- Private Key ownership entails ownership of the entire account, including characters, currency, and items
These are the reasons we always remind everyone to please back up their Private Keys properly, and to never show it to anybody else. Losing your Private Key is akin to losing everything you own in the game.
I know the Prosperity Meter is used to refill our AP, but how is the Prosperity Meter filled, and how fast does it get filled?
The Prosperity Meter is filled slowly as blocks are mined. For every 1 block mined, the Prosperity Bar increases by 1. The speed at which blocks are mined varies, however, so the actual amount of time it takes for the Prosperity Meter to be fully filled is not always the same. The Prosperity Meter requires 1700 blocks to be fully filled. If we assume that the average block time at that time period is 12 seconds, then it would take roughly 340 minutes, or 5 hours and 40 minutes for the Prosperity Meter to fill.
Invitation Code is a necessary component of the game to make sure that the network won't be overloaded with transactions and in-game activities. Since the game uses Blockchain Technology, and one of the biggest hurdle of Blockchain Tech is scalability, Invitation Codes are a measure put in place to make sure the network remains stable and healthy.
Thankfully, Invitation Codes can now be obtained completely free! Head on to https://nine-chronicles.com/ and press the "Download the Game" button to get your Invitation Code.
Invitation Code Private Key, Nine Chronicles ID: They all look the same to me, so what's the difference? Explain like I'm 5
They may all look like they've been randomly generated, and perhaps, they really are. What differentiates them is their purpose.
Invitation Code = Used to activate a newly created Nine Chronicles Account. You can find the Invitation CodeField after logging in from the Launcher. One-time use only.
Private Key = This is like the Secret PIN of your Bank Cards. Show this to people and you are pretty much doomed. A Private Key is used to gain access to an account, recover an account, and change the account password. Basically, having a Private Key is like having the key to a bank vault.
Nine Chronicles ID = This is widely known as a Cryptocurrency Address to many. It looks similar to Private Keys and Invitation Codes in the sense that they look like an incomprehensible set of randomly generated characters ( I mean, they probably are... Yeah ), but you can differentiate between them because a Nine Chronicles ID will always, always start with 0x. Your Nine Chronicles ID is also used to accept NCG transfers from another player, so it is safe to show to other people. Although, people who has your Nine Chronicles ID can check your account activity through the block explorer.
First, copy your Nine Chronicles ID
Bookmark it afterwards so you can easily check it for yourself next time =)
There is currently no trustless way to exchange NCG, so about the only way to exchange NCG is to do a peer-to-peer transaction. This is, of course, a little more troublesome as it requires trust from both parties. Most NCG exchange happens currently in our official Discord server. You can also request one of the community leaders to be your Middleman ( it's free! ).
Honestly, this is a difficult one to answer. There are so many factors with Mining that it's nearly impossible to really give an answer, much less an accurate one. So rather than answer this question straight up, let me give a slightly different answer that is still related to the question.
Mining a block is like lottery. Sometimes you get a block, sometimes you don't. Successfully mining a block is like winning the lotto, and not mining anything is similar to losing the said lotto. With this, we know that Mining is also largely about luck. But just because it has a lot of luck factor doesn't mean we can't increase our chances of winning the lottery ( mining a block ).
First of all, it is our CPU that determines our mining power. Consider the CPU as our lotto drawer, and the stronger our CPU is, the more lottery tickets we can draw per second. This in turn translates to a higher chance of winning the lottery.
On top of this, a stable internet connection will allow us to be synced with the blockchain as fast as possible, making it so that our CPU receives its blockchain job in a timely manner. Receiving the blockchain job in a timely manner means our CPU can also finish the said job faster.
The fourth factor would be Mining Difficulty. Higher mining difficulty means that the mining competition is stricter and harder. It simply means that there are more miners that are mining, and that there are more powerful miners in the mix. A higher mining difficulty means that mining is more difficult with the same exact mining setup.
TL;DR:
It's nearly impossible to determine an exact mining reward expectation, but it's possible to get a rough estimate based on these four factors:
- 1.CPU Power
- 2.Internet Stability
- 3.Mining Difficulty
- 4.Luck
The NCG from market tax and crafting fees aren't exactly burned. They don't completely disappear. Instead, they move to an inaccessible address we call the Treasury Account. The treasury account is time-locked, and so, the NCG that moves there cannot go out until this lock is lifted.
There are quite a few ways one can earn Gold. The following are some ways:
- 1.By being a Miner
- 2.Crafting and selling equipments
- 3.Trading NCG and/or items ( buy low sell high. Risky )
- 4.
- 5.We sometimes hold a few NCG Giveaways. Participate and you might just win some =)
Once your withdrawal request is submitted, it may take 10~30 minutes depending on the network conditions. You can find your transaction ID (Tx ID) on Withdrawal history in "My Account > Withdrawal", and you can monitor the status with it. If your withdrawal request requires an approval from Planetarium, it may take up to 3 business day.
You must be eligible to withdraw your NCG in portal balance. When you don’t meet the minimum requirements for withdrawal, you can check the reason from the portal. If you believe there’s something wrong with the system or your account, please contact via Discord(Community Menu -> Discord) on #help-request.
Last modified 3mo ago