Month of Transition
Since our last Syntax Error release two months ago, we’ve seen quite a number of changes. Our core team has grown and with that, we’ve transferred over ownership of our product and development internally. It’s been exciting having new members join our journey to build a common vision of an Open Metaverse, and of the tools and platforms we need to bring to life the visions from our creator community.
But our growth hasn’t been without challenges, as we have had to spend a good amount of time on transferring knowledge, documentation, code repos, JIRA :| etc. We expect our new internal development team to continue to grow and for us to keep working with our Developer Community to build a protocol of tools we can all use!
Developer Documentation
One of our major wins from the past month has been the release of our official GitBook, including our API Documentation, Use Cases, & the first batch of Tutorials. We have always taken the approach of being as transparent as possible about what we are building, and gathering feedback from our ever-growing developer community. We’ll be continuing to add to this and build out more robust tutorials and workshops as we go. Feel free to take a look and send us any feedback or requests!
https://docs.crucible.network/
Developer Closed Beta Testing
Alongside the launch of our GitBook documentation, we have also started the roadshow of our Closed Beta Testing for the Emergence SDK. We’re now getting the SDK into the hands of developers for the first time, and walking them through where we are at today so we can start getting some Developer Experience feedback from them.
What have we learnt so far?
For those new to Web 3, some of the features in the SDK, like integrated WalletConnect, have allowed developers to really focus on their games without having to really dive too deep into the complexities of crypto wallets and how to get that data into a game world. That feature has been interesting for developers to use, as it allows them to focus on what’s most important to them: the game. But the other major learning point we’ve also had, is that many Web 3-based games being developed are SO deep in development that teams are too busy to even think about integrating new tools and SDKs. So, we have rethought our strategy for our Closed Beta. We want to push for an upcoming Open Beta so we can open the SDK up to any and all users, especially the solo-devs looking to start dabbling in the Web 3 + Game Engine space. They are the ones in a position to try something new. Expect more news soon. But if you are interested in being part of our Beta, reach out to us on our Discord!
Unity Parity
Our first drop for the SDK - and most of our prototypes for the first few months of development - were focused on Unreal Engine, but the team has come together to do a major overhaul on the Unity side to get us to parity with Unreal. It’s something that many of our developers have been asking for: Where is the Unity equivalent? We have JUST launched the SDK, as well as all the Development Documentation, so it will be great to develop our SDK with equal parity across both Game Engines moving forward.
What’s Next?
With our Closed Beta of the Emergence SDK, one of the major bits of feedback we’ve seen when it comes to reading & writing to NFTs, is that game makers need some kind of utility. They need to know what kind of assets they are supposed to represent. Are they 3D avatar NFTs? Are they Collectible items that can be traded in game? Are they weapons or items that can be used for spells? Utility is key to how and why game creators should use NFTs in Games, which is a major focus for us moving forward!
We are currently working on two major features that we’ll be talking quite a bit more about in the coming months: our Inventory Service and our tools around NFT 3D Avatar Support for game worlds. As game makers ourselves, it kind of feels like there are similar challenges to those we had when building traditional games 15+ years ago. The pipelines and workflows weren’t there to account for large amounts of in-game assets; everything was done manually. But it wasn’t something that was sustainable, as we started to build large open-world games with massive amounts of content. Now, we are looking at the same challenges with Web 3 Assets for Game Worlds.
Luckily, many of us have been down this road already, so we have a lot of learnings from our previous experiences.