Author: ck
Preface
PixeLAW is another major advancement in the field of fully on-chain games after fully on-chain game development frameworks such as MUD/Dojo, from on-chain databases to on-chain development frameworks, and then to further subdivisions of the development framework (separation of front-end and back-end), the evolution process exudes engineering aesthetics and instrumental rationality. Although everything is still rough, who has not gone from being rough and drinking blood to being delicate and elegant. These improvements are not like some hot spots that make people instantly ecstatic and stinging, but they are important infrastructure like water, electricity and coal.
PixeLAW’s Distinctive Features
From a player’s perspective, PixeLAW is a pixel-style playground that contains many fully on-chain games. Currently, in addition to drawing games, rock-paper-scissors, and snake games, there are also treasure hunt games, minesweeper games, circle-punishment, etc. for everyone to experience.
From the perspective of game developers, PixeLAW is a fully on-chain game development platform that provides developers with only write smart contracts (Or just only write front-end code) to complete the convenient experience of game development.
Thanks to PixeLAW’s highly abstract and minimalist design, composability between games becomes very easy, “Emergence” will be born here, PixeLAW is building Autonomous Worlds. PixeLAW inherits the excellent characteristics of blockchain (openness, immutability, composability), further explores open and co-created community games Development mode is expected to solve the interoperability issues that have been plaguing Metaverse field.
“What defeats a carriage is never a better carriage”
Fully on-chain games should not take the path of putting Web2 game logic/data on chain and then superimposing the Token mechanism, because this is essentially still a certain form Web2 . Only what grows out of the soil of Crypto Native is real Things belonging to Web3, such as encrypted artworks “CryptoPunks”, “Greed is good”, “Crypto Art Driver”, such as the AMM of DEX, and For example, the issuance mechanism of Bitcoin, etc.
PixeLAW starts from the immutability and composability of blockchain, and maximizes the potential of composability between games through the minimalist design of the front end and the separation of the core layer and the application layer. This is a very crypto-native approach. In the current atmosphere of fully on-chain game roll play and roll experience, it is a breath of fresh air. This kind of native innovation is likely to lead the fully on-chain game to real “Land of Milk and Honey”.
PixeLAW’s engineering aesthetics
Genius idea + perfect implementation = great invention.The development of infrastructure follows a development path from simple to complex, from overall to partial. If MUD/dojo is a combination of database + front-end and back-end development framework, then PixeLAW is based on this Preliminarily implemented the separation of the front and back ends of the development framework. This is just a small step in software engineering, but it is a big step in the development of application chain infrastructure.
Three aspects of PixeLAW’s engineering aesthetics:
The first is the layered architecture.
Computer scientist Butler Lampson has a famous saying: “All problems in the computer field can be solved by adding an intermediate layer”.
PixeLAW also adheres to this philosophy in its architectural design. PixeLAW is generally divided into two layers: Core Layer and Application Layer, each of which performs its own duties.
This division allows game developers to swiftly create games based on the Application Layer without concerning themselves with changes in the Core Layer, ensuring clear boundaries in roles. Specifically, game developers use the “App Template” provided by PixeLAW for game development. The “App Template” encapsulates the interaction with the PixeLAW Core Layer and establishes the foundational logic for game development.
The Core Layer is maintained by the PixeLAW team and primarily encompasses the fundamental components and logic of pixels, as well as the game frontend shared by all games. Another consideration for this approach is to maintain the simplicity of the game frontend for ease of expansion, as elaborated in the following sections.
Second is the front-end simplification.
PixeLAW’s UI is a “canvas” composed of 2 to the power of 32 (approximately 4 billion) pixel blocks. Each pixel block has coordinates and six properties (application, color, owner, text, alert, and timestamp), maximizing versatility and simplicity so that developers can create novel games by adjusting the aforementioned properties in various ways.
For instance, consider two games: Rock, Paper, Scissors and Snake. When the Snake encounters pixel blocks of the Rock, Paper, Scissors type, it exhibits different behaviors. If the pixel block represents a rock, the Snake dies; if it’s a scissor block, the Snake shortens; if it’s a paper block, the Snake lengthens. Due to the shared foundation, interactions between games become more straightforward and cohesive.
The last, Game deployment containerized.
In PixeLAW, the deployment and integration of the Core Layer and the Application Layer are completed using Docker. This will be very impressive to developers who have dealt with complex application deployment or integration, especially PixeLAW is built based on the Dojo framework and Cairo language, whether Dojo or Cairo are not familiar even to the Web3 developer community, let alone the majority of Web2 developers and game developers. Through Docker, encapsulates all the complexity of game construction/deployment, greatly reducing the use of developers the threshold for PixeLAW.
Benjamin Bratton, in “The Stack”, reveals the impact of global-scale computing on the physical world from an interdisciplinary perspective, “These different types of computing, smart grids, cloud platforms, mobile applications Programs, smart cities, the Internet of Things, automation, cannot be seen as many self-evolving speciesspecies, but form a coherent whole: a name An accidental megastructure for ‘Stack’. It is both a computing device and a new management architecture. We are inside the stack and it is inside us”.
The “Stacks” are structures ofthe real world as well as digital spaces that PixeLAW is building The digital space shows a “structure” that is similar to the real world, which is a coincidence or a necessity.
Gradually approaching the holy grail of fully on-chain games
In PixeLAW, games can be likened to city-states, islands, or nations in the physical world. Players navigate through them, as if their physical presence is traveling between different city-states, islands, experiencing adventures, encounters, and farewells. At this moment, the boundaries between the physical and the digital, the real and the virtual, gradually dissolve. The distinction between material and spirit tends to unify. In this sense, PixeLAW may be closer to the holy grail of fully on-chain gaming, approaching the ideal of Autonomous Worlds.
