Nostr Game
Engine

NGE will be a royalty free, open-source game engine that is designed to be decentralized from the ground up and built on top of a robust open-source foundation, with a focus on using Bitcoin and Nostr to resolving real-world issues such as:

  • Networking: with serverless P2P via RTC over Nostr
  • Monetization: privacy-first immersive in-game ads & Bitcoin micro-payments
  • Social: interoperable profiles and chat
  • Ownership: decentralized distribution and DRM
  • Matchmaking: decentralized match-making over Nostr

Every milestone delivers a fully functional platform, ensuring that even as our roadmap unfolds, developers can immediately build, launch, and evolve their projects.
Our phased transition maintains jME compatibility initially, then forks to enable deeper customization.

The roadmap contains some AI generated imagery as placeholders, as the roadmap progresses they will be replaced with actual engine screenshots and videos.

Get Started

coming soon...

RoadMap

FOUNDATION

The project starts as a series of modules for the battle-tested jMonkeyEngine.
A JVM-based high performance, royalty-free, open-source modular game engine.

a nostr client is implemented natively as an engine module
players can be authenticated via nostr keypair and remote signers
the network stack module is replaced with high-throughput, serverless, encrypted P2P using RTC over Nostr signaling, enabling easy development of decentralized games and apps
started at riccardobl/nostr-rtc

v0.0.x NGE

At this stage, the engine supports P2P networking and essential Nostr functionalities, including player authentication, event signing, and relay subscription.

The P2P network stack enables direct player-to-player connections, using Nostr solely as a coordinator, while actual traffic is P2P.

Experienced devs can already build on top of this to create decentralized games and apps for

  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Android
  • MacOS
using jvm based languages.

an in-game, immersive and privacy-preserving ads framework is implemented as an engine module
based on NOSTR-DAN draft nip
context-aware advertising support is achieved by enabling developers to create metadata areas within the virtual world of their games

v0.1.x MONETIZATION

At this stage developers can monetize their games with p2p ads that do not break the player immersion or privacy.

webgl2 based renderer and browser support
started at riccardobl/webmonkeyengine
iOS release support

v0.2.x EXPANDING

At this stage the engine can be used to deploy games and apps to a wider range of platforms:

  • Windows
  • Linux
  • Android
  • MacOS
  • Web Browsers
  • iOS

gamer profile and achievements over nostr
nip-58
match-making over nostr
player to player text-chat over nostr
nip-17
proximity and area text-chat over nostr
nip-28

v0.3.x SOCIAL

At this stage the engine provides modules with the tools and abstractions to implement social features in games.

high-level scripting language support module
sandboxed scripting language support for modding

v0.4.x SCRIPTING

At this stage, the engine supports high-level scripting languages like LUA and JavaScript, enabling faster development.

Even less experienced developers can create games and apps for supported platforms, while the sandboxed runtime also serves as a modding framework for games.

programmable pipelines
started at riccardobl/jmonkeyengine
tiled deferred rendering
improved post processing stack

v0.5.x SCHISM

At this stage the engine core is changed to use programmable pipelines, giving developers full control over the execution flow. This allows for custom optimized implementations tailored to demanding and complex games seen often in AAA titles.

The primary rendering technique is switched to tiled based deferred rendering to improve performances with highly complex lightning and 4k+ rendering.

To support the new architecture, the engine is separated from the jMonkeyEngine codebase and no longer maintains backward compatibility.

internals overhaul and cleanup
high performance hardware accelerated ui framework
immersive audio technology
started at jmePhonon

v0.6.x OVERHAUL

At this stage, more built-in features are added and the internals are improved to accommodate even higher-end games and apps.

nostr based drm
nostr based release management>
based on nip-51 sets and nip-94

v0.7.x DISTRIBUTED DISTRIBUTION

At this stage games built with the engine can be fully distributed p2p over nostr markets with and licenses are managed by a nostr based digital rights management system.

voxel engine module
based on rvandoosselaer/Blocks
world paging module
nostr world persistency

v0.8.x WORLDs

At this stage the engine is extended to support massive and voxel based world with optional nostr persistency (on supported relays).

This will enable developers to implement common modern gaming mechanics without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.

in-game bitcoin wallet
bitcoin micro-transactions

v0.9.x PAYMENTS

At this stage the engine provides capabilities to implement microtransactions and in-game payments using bitcoin.
TBD: lightning? liquid? e-chash? ark?

frame generation and super resolution
final touches

v1.0.x NGE!

The engine is released as its first stable version.

v1.1.x TBD

  • Voice Chat with RTC nostr signaling
  • Proximity Voice Chat with RTC nostr signaling
  • Virtual Reality support
  • Augmented Reality support
  • AI capabilities are added on top of the engine to assist with content generation and player interaction.