I post a lot of Unity and Gamedev tutorials. I'd definitely be interested in linking some games into the steem blockchain. Yet, web development is not really my thing. I could spend a lot of time diverting my focus and learning the web code, or perhaps I can write a blog explaining what my needs and the needs of other game developers could benefit from and perhaps some of you already have solutions in place.
This blog post is born....
Needs of the code
In Unity the most popular language to code in is C#. This is simply because, more things can be exposed at a greater level in terms of accessibility. You also can tap into all the various libraries and other things that have been provided to the mono community. I've used things like the 7-Zip C# libraries and many others in my game development endeavors.
If I could get some code to do certain things with the steem blockchain here is what I'd like to be able to do.
TransferSBD(from account,to account,amount,memo,password) with a secure way to transfer SBD. The reason I would use this would be to reward players with playing the game. if the amount is available it can be transferred to the player.
TransferSteem() same as above
TransferSteemPower() same as transfer steem but forced as a power up rather than as steem.
GetBalanceSBD(account) - return how much sbd am account has.
GetBalanceSteem(account) return how much steem an account has.
GetBalanceSteemPower(account) return steem power of an account if you want this to factor into their game experience.
GetReputation(account) return the reputation of an account.
Using these tools it would be possible to power up an account with some SBD and reward players participating in a game.
My plans were to enable a person to specify their steem account in their game profile. If I could verify it was a legitimate account then the master account the game knows about would be able to transfer a % of the available SBD to a player whenever they complete a game.
So people would be rewarded by playing.
Concerns
The transfer is listed as needing a password. This would need to be secured some how. Preferably encrypted within the game. It would need to know the password in order to initiate the transfers for the players. If this password were compromised then the entire reward pool would potentially be vulnerable.
Yet if this could be made to work, then making games and other applications that further interact with the blockchain would be feasible.
Side Chains
I don't know if this would be more appropriate for side chains, or as an alternate implementation. My experience is with game development, and I've programmed other applications. I have not written code for the crypto-currency field, and I have only designed very basic (PERL/PHP) scripts as needed for various web applications. I have written a primitive PERL based ticketing system years ago, but I do not have any delusions about being a skilled web developer.
I could be, but that is not where I prefer to focus my attention.
Do any of you have any ideas about how to make this happen? Are there are already some C# libraries for Steem that would work?
Tutorials
Have any of you considered making some basic tutorials for writing code to interface with the blockchain? I see people making things on steemtools.com. If you want an explosion of applications for steem, perhaps you could consider making a tutorial series of blog posts. I'd follow you and I'd up vote them as high as I can. I'd likely resteem them as well.
Future
Having functions to post, vote, comment, etc would be useful as well, but I could see them easily being abused and spamming the blockchain, so from a game point of view simply being able to READ all information on the blockchain, and pass currency around seems like a good set of functions to have.
Steem On! - all images made by me.