Dev Blog #45
Dev Blog Summary
a) Game and Web 3 Development
- After speaking to the community we have once again reviewed our priorities for the game development team and have decided to focus on a few major features 1) Gen 1 art revamp (this requires the addition of face traits and armour 2) Creating PC client for GFC main game 3) Create social system and ability to queue with friends
- We have already started on the face trait creation and are now working on integration and in-game optimization with this added level of detail which will be the bulk of the work
- Besides preparing the GFC Battle Royale Trailer we also added a number of new system features which includes a new Battle Royale Bot System, new UI management system, reworked weapons sell well as some backend improvements such as the implementation of SRP batching to speed up CPU rendering times
b) Business Development & Marketing
- We believe GFC has done well in terms of marketing and exposure from a traffic standpoint, in fact from our Cross-IP finals we got over 330K views across different influencers and platforms including Instagram, Youtube, Facebook and Telegram
- What we want to improve on is the conversion aspect, how can we convert this traffic into real players or participants in our ecosystem? and not just viewers or players who stay for particular one-off tournaments and leave immediately
- We believe the solution consists of two parts 1) further streamlining the onboarding experience across all customer touch-points from the Discord onboarding process (expect some degree of revamping this week) to in-game tutorials 2) Create additional incentives for players to stick around (improve retention) through integrating social features and expanding the GFC ecosystem and giving existing in-game resources more utility
- As part of these efforts, we are looking to revamp the art for Gen 1, and we are sharing this process and our progress live within the Battlepass owners channel
- In other news we also got listed on Blur but that meant a separation of Death Robots away from our main Gen 1 collection on Opensea; if you are in Europe stop by BerlinWeb3 where Yas will be speaking at
c) Community
- Throughout our development cycle we have had to balance between developing what we believe are of the highest priorities internally and of developing features requested by the community
- For the past 12 months or so most of our features have been suggested by the community or community-driven, for example adjusting matchmaking algorithm, reworking forging costs structure, adding in weapon breakdown feature/un-forging system, creating option for custom team and friend matchup, Battle Royale game mode, tournament points system integration in game, AI bots rework, new maps, breaking out the collections to get on blur, running qualifiers for each tournament partner
- As we move forward we want to continue down this path of engaging with the community and implementing features suggested from the community that we feel fit into our wider roadmap. As part of this effort, we will start conducting periodic calls with doctores to gather feedback
- What a couple of weeks post Cross-IP Championship! The GFC Team handed out HUNDREDS of NFT prizes and tokens to about 100 players so far!
- New Discord #start-here sections to make our eco system more accessible to new members with several new categories added.
- Wrapped the February twitter comp with 20 TOTAL WINNERS and dished out prizes with our usual draft and NFT Rewards pot. March Event now open use #MarchMadnessGFC to enter
- Held test run for a Holder Only event with BetrayThePaca taking the win from the Losers Bracket
- Weapons Points table will be updated for the rest of March events, please check in with guru gcoin with thoughts about any changes needed!!
- Hoodie Run will be shipped out this week!
A: Game and Web 3 Development
GAME
- We started building out face traits and armour, and are testing this system. Significant work will need to be done on optimization to make this possible
- As we develop Battle Royale we want to make this fit into the overall GFC lore and storyline
Added a number of new system features:
- Battle Royale Bot System: We’ve tweaked the bot’s new behavior system to match the Battle Royale game mode.
- New UI Management system: New UI management system to optimize performance and implement animation handling system. In the near future, the team will redo the UI with the accompanying animation system to bring freshness and vibrancy to the game.
- Reworked weapons:
To keep up with the project’s pace of development, several in-game elements were included in the shortest amount of time and now it’s time for the team to tweak and optimize most of the weapons in the game: mesh, textures and materials to optimize the game’s memory and performance before the upcoming major update. - Implement SRP batching to speed up CPU rendering times by optimize the connection between objects, materials and shaders
UPCOMING FEATURES
- BYOPills cooldown feature
The implementation of this feature is complete and our testers are currently testing the feature, it should be ready with the next couple of builds.
2. Backend Service Restructuring
Couple weeks ago we implemented a backend monitoring service for our dashboard API server and it has been working well. We are able to get logs and notifications when something has gone wrong and react to it, which is good but we think we can still do better.
As our ecosystem develops, it gets more complex and the chances of something going wrong within the system also increases. We wouldn’t want a single point of failure, and therefore we have decided to split up our backend services into individual modules and host instances on separate servers. That way even if one or multiple modules goes down for whatever reason, the others are unaffected and can run on their own.
The current plan is to extract individual features from the current logic and group them together according to their respective aspect of service. For example, the dashboard APIs and game mechanics like forging, gen 2 training etc will be grouped as one module, while the NFT authentication API and energy system which are responsible for our PvP game will be grouped as another.
BATTLE ROYALE GAME MODE
As the smart contract development comes close to an end, we are starting to work on the server side logic and features.
Update on essential tasks on BR mode:
- Smart contracts
No further update
All of the BR related smart contracts have been reviewed and tested. It will be deployed on the Mumbai testnet to be tested alongside the backend services later down the line.
2. Server (Record to endgame state)
No further update
We are still in the process of testing out the new logic with the isolated game databases for BR mode, as mentioned in the last update this process is time consuming and it is essential that these are tested thoroughly before going live.
3. Server (Key vault that can call to smart contract)
No further update
The key vault acts as a crypto wallet that has permission to interact with the game master contract, it will be in charge of transferring and burning the ticket NFTs via the GM contract. The private key and seed phases are generated on the server itself and never to be accessed by anyone, the key vault will run on its own through predetermined logic without any manual operations.
4. Server (Providing API endpoints for the game)
No further update
There will be API endpoints used to check whether a player is qualified for participating in BR. We will start development on this feature after the other server-side tasks, as we won’t need it until later on in the development process.
5. Frontend (For players to interact with the game master contract)
While the endgame state logic is still being worked on, the frontend for BR mode is being developed. At the moment, we are thinking of implementing another tab on the dashboard page and adding the features to it. By doing so, we can ensure that the page is easy to find and reduce the risk of clicking new malicious links.
The logic flow and error handling will come shortly after the layout design of the page.
B: Business Development & Marketing
We are excited to announce that we are officially on Blur. To find our collections on Blur, please visit the following links -
Blur GFC Gen 1: https://blur.io/collection/galaxy-fight-club
Blur Death Robots: https://blur.io/collection/gfc-deathrobot
Please note that we had to separate our Deathrobots away from the genesis GFC collection for this integration to function.
For those of you living in Germany / Europe, stop by BerlinWeb3 this summer, June 10th — 11th.
Yas will be speaking at the event and we are currently discussing an activation/tournament, potentially with some of our gaming partners.
We will try our best to facilitate our community with free tickets to the event, so make sure to keep an eye out for upcoming announcements.
To wrap up our Cross-IP Championship, we hosted a Twitter Space featuring some of our biggest partners — CyberKongz, NeoTokyo, Lost Realms, TheDogePound and more.
This was a super interesting Twitter Space, so make sure to listen back to the replay if you haven’t yet!
Furthermore, we are almost done with the prize pool distribution. We gave out over 900 NFTs, several tokens including APE, merch and more.
For those of you interested, all the transactions of the prize pool distribution have been shared publicly in our Discord.
Additionally, one of the KOLs who supported us throughout the Cross-IP Championship published another video on GFC -
The KOLs who supported us included but were not limited to -
https://www.instagram.com/triciaadato/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/stellangelaa
https://www.instagram.com/p/CpCgAOwLeOv/
https://www.instagram.com/christopherdevin/
In total, these KOLs had our content seen by over 300k people on various platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram.
Last but not least, we are in the process of reworking our Discord server. The onboarding experience, especially the ‘Start Here’ section needed to be updated and we wanted to take this chance to revamp the entire section.
Over the next two weeks, you will most likely see several changes to our Discord server as we will be experimenting with different features, layout options, and more, to find the best ways to provide a smooth and enjoyable experience for new people joining the server as well as retain already involved community members.
C: Community
Upcoming Events:
Players may pick one tournament on each day. There is a Holder only event on March 17 that scholars are not eligible to participate in.
March 17 Signup: https://forms.gle/HfN6ya1817PLc3h59
March 24 Signup: https://forms.gle/kqjqe1CxjQQ4Lhop7
Cross IP Wrap Up:
Please check the #championship channel for all the prize send transactions and details.
Huge Thanks to ser Yas aka Mx for sending out HUNDREDS of NFT prizes and tokens to about 100 players so far!! There are a handful of teams still yet to receive rewards, this will be taken care of ASAP — please reach out to guru gcoin with any questions, comments or concerns.
Discord Updates:
We continue to update Discord #start-here to make our eco system more accessible to new members with several new categories added. Please reach out to guru gcoin with any questions or ideas about the layout. Over time we will continue to build out these sections with video and new graphics.
Twitter Competitions:
We wrapped the February twitter comp with 20 TOTAL WINNERS and dished out prizes with our usual draft and NFT Rewards pot. You guys did an AWESOME job creating content this past month, thank you for featuring the Cross IP events. We have tons of Cross IP tournament content ready to be clipped and shared to socials and encourage you to do the same. If you need access to any past events we have downloaded to create content we highly encourage that and ask you reach out to guru gcoin for access.
We are opening up the March Twitter Comp starting NOW! Use #marchMadnessGFC and #marchmadness
We are setting the bar a bit higher with this competition and will be looking for high quality video assets, tweet threads, unique art, and streaming events. We have a pretty LOADED prize pool so far with high level GEN2 and a LIGHTNING BLADE up for grabs/
Holder Event Test Run: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1763167198
Held test run for a Holder Only event with BetrayThePaca taking the win from the Losers Bracket. This was more of a pop up event but ended up with some extremely competitive games.
We will be looking to hold more of these events hosted in the #holder channel to give some OG GFC holders a legit shot to win prizes. We learned a bit from this test run and will be running strict wallet checks before events to ensure all players purchased GFC GEN1 fighters themselves and were not sent the NFT from guild owners. We want to work this in as part of our regular routine to give everyone a shot to compete at a high level and feel the pressure of high stakes.
Reminders: Hoodies will ship out this week!
General Notes:
Twitch has updated its video storage policies and our past events will no longer be permanently stored there. We will be uploading these videos to Google Drive and sharing out the links.
The Weapons Points handicapping table will be updated this week, please reach out to guru gcoin with your input.
