In January 2018, shortly after Ethereum NFT projects like Crypto Punks, Ether Rocks, and Mooncat. The legendary veteran programmer and game designer Ed Annunziata announced an NFT project. This project mixes the best parts of on-chain NFT loot stats, physical RPG collectibles, CC0 art, and metaverse building lore.
On March 15, 2018, the first batch of these Pre-ERC721 tokens became available through an innovative physical Paper Wallet system.
This recently rediscovered project is Immortal Player Characters by Ed Annunziata. The person who made Ecco the Dolphin was the lead on many Sega Genesis games, including X-Men I and II, Spider-Man, Dungeons & Dragons: Warriors of the Eternal Sun, and many more.
UPDATE: On-chain minting of 2,604 IPCs occurred in 2018. There will be less than 200 coins made between now and the end of June 2022. There are currently 12,000 NFTs in the collection.
Here is a description of the project and information about the person who made it. And how to get an Immortal Player Characters NFT and learn more about the NFT Archaeology community.
Disclaimer: Not all parts of the Immortal Player Character blockchain smart contracts have been looked into or written down by the author. Proceed at your peril. Any interaction with a warranty, including this one, may have unknowable effects. Do your research (DYOR); thanks!
What Is ERC721?
Immortal Player Characters is a series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that show on-chain DNA for generative avatars. With basic stats like height and gender, as well as RPG-specific stats like skill and luck.
These loot-like statistics show that an IPC NFT token is valuable in different blockchain games. The ERC721 standard also applies to NFTs that were in use before the official start of the ERC721 with SuSquares.
Below is NFT Relic’s history of exploring ERC721 NFTs on Ethereum before March 19, 2018. Many of these projects, like Etheria, Curio Cards, CryptoKitties, and MoonCats, are now historic and groundbreaking.
When researching Immortal Player Characters, which came out on March 15, 2018, It looks like the project has been waiting for years for the community to catch up with the vision. Below is a detailed analysis of the IPC project from Crypto Currency News that came out around the launch.
These characters work on multiple platforms. Take your Immortal Player Characters (IPCs) to whichever metaverse or game platform you want.
Annunziata not only created IPCs on the Ethereum blockchain, but they also made an innovative system called a “Paper Wallet” for holding and trading your IPC.
We’ll talk more about that later. Next, we’ll learn more about Ed Annunziata, who created Immortal Player Characters.
About Creator, Ed Annunziata
Without legendary game designer Ed Annunziata, the history of video games would be very different.
“A young programmer and game producer worked at Sunburst Communications in the mid-1980s,” says Strafefox on YouTube. He helped make educational programs like “The Voyage of the Mimi” there.
Later, Annunziata worked for Sega of America as a game producer. He made licensed games like Spider-Man, X-Men, and Jurassic Park before he got the go-ahead for Ecco the Dolphin, the aquatic masterpiece he had been planning for years.
If you don’t know Ecco, you should know that this game was a financial and cultural phenomenon when it came out.
About Immortal Player Characters
Immortal Player Characters is an ERC721-compliant NFT project on the Ethereum blockchain that started on March 15, 2018. You can view the contract by reading the White Paper, and you can interact with the contract by using My Ether Wallet:
- Visit the My Ether Wallet website
- Choose Browser Extension to sign in via wallet connect
- Go to contract on the left, and then click Interact with Contract.
- Lastly, select Immortal Player Characters from the Contract Type drop-down menu in the middle.
The team did the project at Playchemy, a video game studio based in Montara, California, USA. The 2D RPG pixel art is cleverly open source (CC BY-SA) from OpenGameArt.org. Immortal Player Characters are, therefore, one of the oldest CC0 NFT projects. Ed explains:
“The art is a representation of the DNA of each IPC, but that DNA can be turned into other visuals based on the game. For example, bring your IPC to a world in Unreal Engine 5 where all the characters are real horses. The IPC DNA will change the traits of your character to fit that instance of the NFT token.” — Ed Annunziata, Maker of Immortal Player Characters.
The full text of the IPC Smart Contract is available in the whitepaper on the IPC website. There are functions in the contracts like:
- BuyIPC (purchase from a contracting marketplace)
- RandomizeIPC (mint function)
- RandomizeDNA (reroll your character)
- SetICPprice (sets the selling price of your IPC in the contract marketplace)
- You can talk to them on My Ether Wallet’s website. See IPCs on the MyIPC.io website.
How to interact with the contract?
Here is a link to the Open sea collection. The images don’t show (yet!), and the contract is awaiting its first check because Playchemy is building its viewer (IPC Explorer). Players can trade ERC721s on Opensea, Looks Rare, and others.
How to obtain a paper wallet for Immortal Player Characters?
In March of 2018, the first ERC721 was released, and the IPCs from this contract At the time, IPCs were claimed in person, primarily by mail, using the innovative Paper Wallet system.
The Paper Wallets are Ethereum wallets. Each has an IPC minted inside, with the private key printed on one side and the IPC stats published on the other. As of this writing, Playchemy still has about 500 2018-minted IPCs in stock available on PayPal.
A total of 2,833 exist, and a contract function would let the Dev, Ed Annunziata, make an extra batch (or tranche) in the IpcReleaseControl process.
Annunziata says that “he will reach out to the IPC Collector community in the coming months to get feedback on this function,” which this author does not fully understand at the time of publishing.
Mint Immortal Player Characters NFT from the Smart Contract using MyEtherWallet
Connecting your non-custodial wallet to MyEtherWallet will let you mint a randomly generated Immortal Player Characters NFT (unknown collection size limit). Follow the steps above, and then, from the IPC smart contract:
- Go to the CreateRandomized IPC function and fill in the fields below _name (string): Type in any name you want for your random IPC NFT _price (uint256): Set a price in cents for your IPC. Zero is not an option.
- It must be between one cent and one million dollars. Annunziata says, “Set the price of your IPCs at $1,000,000 if you never want to sell them” (use the number 100000000 in the contact form).
- ETH amount: The IPCPriceinCents function says that the price of an IPC NFT at the mint is $0.27. At least $0.27 per IPC must be sent (MyEtherWallet made me put at least 0.0018 ether as of publishing to complete the transaction, so DYOR.).
- The contract will send any extra back, but you must spend at least $0.27 worth of ether (or more) to mint.
- To make an IPC, you must hit the Write button and confirm the transaction. You’ll also have to pay gas fees to the Ethereum blockchain, which will likely cost you between $2 and $10 in eth.
- Go to MyIPC.io and enter your newly made IPC’s Token ID to see it.
Note: All new IPCs will be minted in 2022 on-chain right when you interact with the IPC smart contract. IPCs made in 2018 are only the first 2,604 NFTs in Paper Wallets and early digital mints. There will soon be a look at mints by year.
After the jump, we’ll talk about how to join the Immortal Player Characters community and see your own IPC in augmented reality and online.
Dapps: MyIPC Viewer and IPC Explorer
There are two very good Dapps for interacting with your Immortal Player Character. The classic solution is the IPC Explorer app, which you can find in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. That lets you see your IPCs in augmented reality or AR.
You scan your IPC’s QR code (the bottom one) and then point your phone’s camera at an IPC logo. Your IPC will show up animated in augmented reality.
We think that the button placement could use some tweaking, but other than that, this is a fun and very visual way to interact with your IPC. We have shown this app to NFT collectors, collectibles experts, techies, and kids, and it is always fun to do so.
IPC is a great way to see all Immortal Player Characters NFTs. Johnny de Alba / mode7.eth made it for Playchemy. Incredible work by a skilled Developer!
“The part I’ve enjoyed the most has been trying out new technologies and learning how other NFT projects do things. To do this, I’ve been following the NFT community and have started collecting NFTs so I can learn more about what makes them so special to people. I’ve even come to enjoy NFT collecting and the communities that have grown up around some of these great projects.” — mode7.eth
This website features IPC stats, a gif animation, XP (?!? ), and Gold (?!?!). IPC has plans for future updates that will make it easier to interact with your IPCs.
IPC City — 2018 Metaverse exe
The prototype metaverse shown in 2018 will have a version that anyone can use in the future. The Dapps and ideas are based on Ethereum Smart Contracts, which are the backbone of the Immortal Player Characters ecosystem and allow outside developers to create new ways to use it. This area has a lot to discover, which we’ll do in future articles.
How to collect your Immortal Player Characters and contact the Playchemy team?
Playchemy’s official Immortal Player Characters website sells 2018 Paper Wallets, the easiest method to get your hands on an IPC. You will receive this wallet by mail. Use PayPal to make a payment.
It is possible to get in touch with Ed Annunziata and the rest of the NFT Relics crew via Twitter and Discord. Alternatively, you may tweet Ed Annunziata at @ed Annunziata to get in touch with the Playchemy team.
