Going Down The Rabbit Hole
A project that you have been following for a long time and that you think has potential is just minutes away from its sale. You have taken your place from the front seat with your whitelist spot. Maybe the NFT you are about to buy will be just a piece you want to have in your collection, maybe it will be a cool-looking investment tool. The time has come and the sales have begun.
If you are reading this article, you were probably in the above situation and you have tasted that excitement. You are now in the world of NFT as an investor or collector. So what’s going on on the other side of the veil? Do developers feel the same excitement when developing a project?
Long story short, absolutely yes!
cryptoText
cryptoText is an NFT collection consisting of 202 special pieces in ASCII text art content and HTML format, which we have prepared specially for the ICP/BTC-ETH integration, to express our appreciation and admiration for the retro days of the computer and technology world. What makes this series special is the nice and eye-catching animation that welcomes you in the first place, and an HTML file that will amaze you with its details after clicking and interacting. You can visit our website for details about series’ features. The subject of this article will be more about how we achieve these qualities.
How Did it Begin?
Interesting ideas often come up at the most unexpected times. For us, this was no exception. The cryptoText project sprouted at exactly such a moment. We were originally working on a play 2 earn NFT game that teaches people the basics of coding as a concept and introduces the beauties of the coding world by making use of the opportunities offered by the Internet Computer platform with an unique art-driven NFTs connected to it. Dealing with letters and punctuation was inevitable when developing the concept due to the nature of the coding and as children of the 90s, when we started seeing letters and punctuation marks everywhere as a team, we had a “Eureka” moment and the idea of creating an NFT designed in ASCII art format in a retro fashion arose. Since ICP-BTC/ETH direct integration that everyone is talking about is on the horizon, we decided that it would be a good idea to prepare a uniqe ASCII art collection that reflects a snapshot of the crypto world in 2022, the year when this big development will take place.
We started the cryptoText project, thinking that would be professional and logical approach to develop the project as our kickstarter point. With this approach, we would be able to expand our possibilities in order to develop our coding game in the best way possible without limiting the project’s potential. Even though cryptoText is a crowdfunding project for us, we didn’t want to give people anything ordinary. cryptoText had to be different both in terms of art and the advantage it would provide to its investors.
We think that an interesting idea is never enough on its own. Ideas reach their true potential when matured and finalized with time, effort, and knowledge. This mentality and knowing that we will contribute to the ecosystem in the long run, have been and will continue to be the biggest motivation for us.
Development
Although the development phase was tiring for us, we enjoyed it very much. It was a period when we learned new things about the ecosystem and improved ourselves. In order to do what we want, we talked at length about the basic structure and details of the NFTs to be produced and we decided that we should first produce our own generator in order to do this.
Our genius coder worked really hard for this and produced our unique generator. After the first prototypes we produced, it became clear to us what we should do. We spent countless hours trying hard to finalize the project, with countless iterations, countless combinations and countless details integrated over time, both to specify the NFT details and to give it an appropriately artistic aesthetic.
Technical Challenges
Of course, we knew that we would encounter obstacles during the development phase. What is important to us is how we will overcome these obstacles; how to identify the source of the problem and take the necessary action to correct it.
One of the most challenging obstacles we faced was to achieve the collection having optimum quality and the same experience on every device; mobile or desktop. We decided on the most suitable version by trying more than one method and running tests in order to solve the display and loading problems due to differences between devices, screen sizes and different device powers. In particular, the problem is that the text characters, which form the building block of the details in NFTs, are not displayed as they should be on Iphone safari; we have overcome this by producing device-specific solutions.
The text elements we mentioned above have unique details for each NFT. If we open a little more, every crypto logo we turn into art; is formed by rendering self-describing technology terms as ASCII art. For this, we looked into the websites and whitepapers of 200 cryptocurrencies one by one and examined them for days. We filtered the words describing their technology and used them in our art to be descriptive in every sense. This not only broadened our horizons by enabling us to better understand the technologies in the crypto world but also renewed our belief in the superiority of the Internet Computer Protocol over other chains.
Not Finished Yet
As we mentioned above, we started to develop a very fun p2e NFT game that teaches coding even to someone who has no coding background. In our next article, we will talk about our plans and vision for our game. cryptoText is our first project on web3 and crytoText holders will be entitled to airdrop for NFTs, tokens and various cool accessories from our next project and all our future projects.
Developing bonds of trust by establishing a strong and effective community, contributing to the ecosystem in the long run and developing NFT art and technology, are subjects that need to be thought through, labored, and consolidated. This will always be our next and permanent goal. Like you, we have full faith in the ICP ecosystem. We look forward to sharing with you what we want to do in this ecosystem and getting your feedback.
For more detailed information about the cryptoText project, you can visit our website, follow our Twitter page to be informed about events and updates and join our Discord channel to be with our lovely community.
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