Nostr notes by NostrGameEngine

#naddr1qv…p7np

2025-09-09T12:14:27Z

quoting naddr1qv…p7np

Nostr Game Engine v0.1 has been released! This is the next milestone following the v0.0 release: naddr1qv…f7r0

For those new to the project: Nostr Game Engine (NGE) is a "nostrified" version of jmonkeyengine (npub1vwa…fqrm) .

Core components are being modernized and progressively replaced with a peer-to-peer, nostr-based implementations.

In-game Ads

This release brings many bug fixes and improvements, but the standout feature is in-game advertising.

In-game ads have been discussed for decades, yet today’s industry standard still leans on disruptive and annoying formats. With NGE, we’re experimenting with approaches that are immersive, peer-to-peer, and player-friendly.

This system is powered by the nostrads protocol, designed to bring ads to nostr in a privacy-friendly and permissionless way.

From a game developer’s perspective, integration is simple:

Set up a lightning address for your game

Mark some surfaces in your 3D models as ad-spaces

Add a few lines of code to initialize the ads system

And just like that, your game becomes monetizable.

For a deeper dive into nostrads, see the dedicated page.

As with the previous release, this version comes with a purpose-built demo app to show the ad system in action, using fake retro-futuristic ads, but you get the idea.

Experimental Android Support

The engine now builds and runs on Android. All dependencies have been ported to API level 33.

Component System Improvements

Simplified global object access in components

Deprecated all receiveX methods in favor of a single getGlobalInstance() method

More in the docs

Other Improvements

As part of the NGE development, several improvements were made to the jMonkeyEngine codebase. These are included in this release and are either in review or merged upstream:

Improved render parity with Blender

Faster, more memory-efficient glTF loading

Global illumination support for local lights

Improved tonemapping

Updates to Nostr4j

Nostr4j, the high-performance nostr client library powering NGE, also gets a major update:

Improved resilience to network issues

Blossom protocol support

More flexible fetching strategies

Wallet abstraction + NWC support (NIP-47)

Managed event deletion (NIP-09)

Proof of Work support (NIP-13)

LNURL resolution

What’s Next

Browser port (WebGL + TeaVM)

Stabilize Android support

Lay groundwork for future features

There are great things ahead, but first we need to make sure the foundation is solid!

Funding and Support

A big thank you to OpenSats (nprofile…pqk6) for supporting this work through the eleventh wave of Nostr grants.

We'd also like to recognize our first four donors, who quietly contributed to our Geyser fund even before it was officially announced. Your support means a lot!

On that note, If you’d like to support the project, contributions via the support page will directly help sustain long-term development.

It will be good for everything jMonkeyEngine is good for and some ...

2025-06-13T08:53:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…vcu2
_________________________

It will be good for everything jMonkeyEngine is good for and some more.
The main target is 3D games, but you can do 2D as well.

#naddr1qv…f7r0

2025-06-12T23:27:36Z

quoting naddr1qv…f7r0

I'm excited to announce that Nostr Game Engine just reached its first development milestone: v0.0.

What is Nostr Game Engine?

Nostr Game Engine is built on top of the modular and proven jMonkeyEngine.

What sets it apart? Its internals are being gradually replaced with Nostr-powered modules, turning it into a reference engine purpose-built for decentralized games.

This first release delivers these key capabilities:

Peer-to-Peer Networking

Forget centralized game servers. Nostr Game Engine gives you real P2P multiplayer, using WebRTC for data streaming and Nostr relays for coordination.

*Want to dig deeper? This is a draft NIP* that is a revised version of this* other draft NIP, that details how the signaling works.*

WebRTC is already a solid and reliable peer-to-peer protocol, equipped with a full set of NAT traversal capabilities, but its signaling phase typically relies on specialized central servers.

By coupling WebRTC with Nostr, we take signaling decentralized too by relying on a network of dumb public relays that are oblivious to what encrypted data we send to them and are easily replaceable.

(see the documentation for more info)

Nostr Authentication & Gamertags

NGE has a fully managed Nostr Auth flow, with support for NIP-49 encrypted local nsecs and NIP-46 remote signers.

It also fully handles metadata, including external identities: your profile picture, display name, and other details can carry over between games, and even from other Nostr clients and communities.

This release is also introducing Gamertags: persistent gaming handles tied to your Nostr pubkey. They are like Xbox Gamertags or the old Discord handle, but they’re decentralized and follow you across any game that supports them (check this draft nip for more info).

Match Making

While matchmaking is planned for a later milestone on the roadmap, this release ships with an early implementation to help test RTC connections.

This initial implementation has the APIs to create lobbies that are discoverable and optionally password-protected. Players can search and filter for lobbies using both client-side and relay-side filtering, depending on what the relay supports.

Right now, you can’t see how many players are in a lobby, and the feature is still a bit rough around the edges, but it's a solid start, and more improvements are coming as we move further along the roadmap.

The cool part? You don’t even need to know Nostr is running under the hood. The engine exposes simple APIs like createLobby, findLobbies, and connectToLobby, the developer can call them when needed, and the engine handles all the relay querying and data stitching behind the scenes.

(see the documentation for more info)

A new Nostr Client Library

The engine uses a new Nostr client library built from scratch, designed for performance, asynchronicity, and memory efficiency. It’s lean, fast, and built to be the foundation for everything that comes next.

Cross-Platform and language of choice

The entire codebase is written mostly in Java, and it builds natively for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Support for Android, iOS, and Web Browsers is on the roadmap.

What has been built so far?

Version 0.0, with the core features mentioned above

Documentation covering the key components of the engine

An app template to help bootstrap projects and experiment with the engine

An high performance and portable nostr client library

A tech demo (more on that later)

So now, you can get a real feel for the engine, see what it does, play around with it, and maybe even start experimenting with your own ideas.

Roadmap

This is just the beginning. There is a full roadmap on the website.

Upcoming milestones include ads, deeper identity features, and tools that make decentralized game development as smooth as possible.

Sea of Nostriches

This is a demo built for this release.

You start alone in an open ocean with a boat, nothing much at first.

But as soon as another player joins (another peer), your boat begins sending data directly to theirs via peer-to-peer communication. You’ll see this visualized as a stream of numbers moving between boats in game.

If you have a profile picture set, it’ll automatically appear on your boat’s sail, and you’ll see others’ profile pictures on theirs.

That’s the core of it.

It is not a real game, as there is nothing really to do, no lag compensation, no score etc… but it is a decent reference, and an “integration test” for this release.

There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes, like how the ocean is simulated or how rendering is handled, but that’s beyond the scope of this post. You can check out the full source code on GitHub, along with native builds for all supported platforms and a portable JAR.

That’s all for now! Huge thanks go to OpenSats (nprofile…5h0z) for making this possible. Their support allows me to dedicate full-time effort to this project and contribute to the growth of the Nostr ecosystem.

Check out the website at ngengine.org and browse the docs at ngengine.org/docs if you want to dig deeper.

Feel free to come up with any questions. I’ll do my best to answer.