Battle for Blockchain: Dev Notes #3

Welcome autonomous world enthusiasts!

This time, dev notes #3 will start with a more personal touch from our team. It came to our attention that the overall crypto space is getting grim and pessimistic. That’s why we will begin with giving you a more optimistic view, with practical examples. After seeing them you should think “If this is what we can achieve now, imagine things we will run on blockchains in 6 months!”

Today, we’re able to model and process maps, battlefields, and different units, with a variety of strategies. We can auto-run them, with smart contracts, making the game nearly autonomous. We can create upgradable, consumable items. We can create social strategy environments, like kingdoms, with building that you can upgrade collectively, and which have a lot of influence over the battlefield and all units. We can create more and more complex digital physics modules. We can use a decentralized consensus for a multi-agent warfare simulation, inside a social-strategy game. Moving crypto beyond just financial applications.

Complexity of features we can run onchain grows exponentially. If AI is having its “exponential growth of intelligence” moment, blockchains are having its “exponential growth of computing” moment. It will lead to results that will surprise everyone.

Now, let’s dive deeper into the progress of Battle for Blockchain development.

New Units and Enhancements

1. New Units Introduction: We have expanded our unit pool with the addition of five new units — Mage, Barbarian, Alchemist, Butcher, and Shaman. Each of these units comes with a unique abilities set, capable of altering the dynamics of the battlefield when utilized proficiently. You will unlock them gradually, as you progress through the war campaign. This set of 10 units will be initially presented during the first public playtests, and then iterated upon.
2. Crit Mana Regeneration: With the introduction of Mage, a new feature was added. Upon dealing critical damage, Mage regenerates its mana. Adding a completely new path of structuring your army!
3. Cross Lane Buffing: Alchemist brings more cross lane buffing options to the table.
4. Reordering of Units: One of the most important battle mechanics we’ve been working on is reordering of enemy units. Despite being the hardest to play, Butcher and Shaman unlock the ability for you to move enemy units, if the right set of conditions is met.
5. Ability System Optimization: We have streamlined the ability system, significantly reducing gas costs to facilitate a smoother and more efficient gameplay experience. In other words, we develop new solutions to improve gas costs of gaming related features that you run on smart contracts. Daily.

It’s getting cheaper and cheaper to build digital physics and gaming components onchain. It’s a reason to be even more optimistic about the future of crypto. Reducing the costs associated with using onchain applications, initially within the gaming sector, will pave the way for a new generation of more accessible decentralized applications available at lower costs. If you are interested in learning more, we recommend getting yourself familiar and proficient in MUD, a completely new framework for ambitious Ethereum applications, requiring complex onchain features. It helps us achieve such top-tier performance and cost optimization.

Game Infrastructure and Economy

1. Autonomous War System: Good news! Following on our initial Battle for Blockchain announcement, we have successfully implemented an autonomous war system. It handles all possible war campaigns automatically, orchestrating movements on the battle front, concluding existing wars and initiating new ones seamlessly. It’s fully permissionless, and made in accordance with cypherpunks values. Meaning, anybody can run the processing of the battle(s)! Showcasing blockchains as computing platforms, and slowly moving beyond finance, while still maintaining financial perspectives, through our novel, activity based, token distribution system, and in-game utility token integration.
2. Token System Integration: We initiated the integration of a monetary system in-game, consisting of our tokens. More on the integration will be revealed in the upcoming months. Also watch out for the physical and online game testing announcements, to try it yourself before the official launch.
3. Upgradeable Kingdom Buildings: Adding depth to the kingdom management aspect during the war campaigns, we introduced upgradeable kingdom buildings that will strengthen your units (and much more!), paving the way for more strategic planning and development, by large groups of players. It’s going to be a fascinating experiment, and we look forward to seeing how it plays out in practice. Will players coordinate over offchain or onchain messaging layers? Will they develop completely new forms of communications, suitable for the medium they are operating within? We will see!
4. Kingdom Currency Contribution Register: To foster a transparent and community-driven ecosystem, we have added a kingdom currency contribution register. It will show how much of the in-game currency you’ve put to boost and build the structures inside your kingdom. Are you worthy of being called a noble Lord, or are you nothing more than just an ordinary peasant?

Gameplay Enhancements

1. Unit and System Testing: We undertook comprehensive testing of the new units and their respective abilities, alongside the newly implemented war system, building system, and the currency system to ensure seamless functionality and integration.
2. Camera Movement Improvements: To enhance visual tracking and engagement, we implemented further improvements in the camera movement mechanism.
3. Transition Between Battle Phases: Players can now experience a smooth transition between various battle phases, enhancing the continuity and immersive experience.
4. Board Cleanup and Queue System Improvement: We have enhanced the board cleanup system and refined the queue system to promote a fluid and orderly gameplay experience.

We’d like to finish this week with the quote from our CEO:

“Things that used to be impossible in 2021, and then take weeks to develop, when we were starting in 2022, now take hours. Part of this improvement is because of MUD, so to whoever is reading this — I recommend trying the engine. We are aiming to do something absolutely ambitious, crazy, some would even say. With Battle for Blockchain, we are making the world’s first autonomous war simulation in the form of a video game. Run on the permissionless computing platform. Things that you can now do with smart contracts, at consumer friendly costs, are starting to amaze me personally. From the engineering perspective, it (autonomous world) seems to be the most interesting problem to be working on in crypto. I’m looking forward to our public testing during the AW Summit, this November in Istanbul.” — stokarz

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mintersworld

Visit our website: https://www.mintersworld.com/

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Play Rhascau: https://www.rhascau.com/

Previous Dev Notes #2: https://medium.com/@stokasz/battle-for-blockchain-dev-notes-2-6f27fad49bf3

Our open source MUD x Godot integration template: https://github.com/Digital-Avatars-and-Robotics/MUDxGodot

Contribute to MUD engine for autonomous world: https://mud.dev/

Disclaimer: This communication is intended for promotional purposes. We encourage recipients to validate the information contained herein prior to basing any decisions on its contents.