Mavia Community January 2023 Update

Published in

Heroes of Mavia

12 min readJan 10, 2023

A much anticipated update from the Heroes of Mavia development team. Updates on features, timelines, staking and more!

A shot from one of our recent Mavia short-films “Finders Keepers”

This article will cover some of the major milestones accomplished by the development team in recent months, as well as some exciting new features being added to the game. We will also discuss the Heroes of Mavia release plan, and the timeline moving forward.

NOTE: This article will feature less sneak peeks of battle footage than the previous article, as we near the rollout builds to the community and want the first experience to be very special! We want everyone to have the “full experience” without spoiling many of the small details we have worked hard to implement.

Game Functionality

Most of our development resources have been focused on developing the core functionality of the game. This includes the building and troop balancing, backend synchronization, and battle logic.

We have implemented a new type of view called “perspective view”, which provides a unique and more natural view than isometric view (what most mobile base builders use).

Mobile Optimization

When we set out to make Heroes of Mavia better than any other mobile base builder game on the market today, we decided that we wanted a full 3D experience for our players.

By having the game in full 3D, we are able to expand our technical capabilities for visual effects, skins and customizations in the game. No other base builder strategy game has ever taken this approach, and it has been one of the most difficult feats for our engineering team.

Building Behavior

It is important that buildings animate and behave appropriately, according to their nature and purpose. This applies to both in battle, and also while at home in idle mode.

We have also begun adding fun idle animations to some defensive buildings, giving them more personality and life. These behaviors are contextual, and change based on the environment setting, time of day, and other nearby buildings. This makes everyone’s base even more unique and special, and is something not done before in other mobile base builder games.

Civilians will be walking around your base and interact with the buildings, making for tons of fun idle animation interactions for all buildings and civilians.

Turret behavior is important when programming the battle logic. From this demonstration, you can see some behavioral patterns of the turret upon detecting units, or changing firing directions.

Mortars have a “playful” idle animation on the home base. We have added personality to the buildings themselves, to give your home base more life and fun. This image demonstrates how the mortar plays with the cannon ball while he is bored waiting for enemies to attack.

When air units are finished training, they will be deployed from the airpad launchpad. This video demonstrates the detailed mechanics that our engineers must animate and program inside the game to make the airpad open when an air unit is finished training.

Building and Troop “Status Effects”

Status Effects are a very exciting new feature we have added to battles. They are secondary ailments or boosts that temporarily change the stats or behavior of a unit or building.

Some examples of Status Effects in the game are “Frozen”, “Cold”, “On Fire”, “Hot”, “Invisible”, “Damaged”, “Electrified”, “Stunned”, “Enraged” and many more!

The “Frozen” status is caused by being hit with an ice bomb or ice tower, and takes some time to shake off. Brr 🥶

The “Cloak” effect placed on buildings makes them undetectable by troops. This effect can also be placed onto troops. The Cloak effect can be activated by Hero powers or special types of air-support. 👀

“Transport” ability will be able to quickly move a group of troops to another area of the battlefield. This animation shows how they will appear when they appear on the other end of the map. 🛩

Wallets and Sign-In

As we have stated many times in the past, we are intent on onboarding millions of Web2 players to the Mavia game. In order to allow users to register as easily as possible, we will be using Web3Auth to allow seamless wallet creation without the need for entering a seed phrase in the app.

Mavia implements Web3Auths unique Multi-Party Computation (MPC) enabled key infrastructure.

This integration allows Mavia to register users in a fashion familiar to all Web2 players — using Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google or their persona email. The wallet will be created without the user needing to complete any additional steps, using Web3Auth’s unique key reconstruction technology.

By allowing users to create a wallet without even knowing it, we are making it easy for the masses to experience Heroes of Mavia without needing to be educated on Web3 or anything Blockchain related.

Sound Effects

A few months ago, we hired a full-time sound designer/unity engineer focusing on sound effects for the game.

Our sound engineer uses an advanced plugin called Wwise to create audio feedback in a way not implemented by most mobile games.

By leveraging something called “spatial audio”, we are able to simulate more realistic sounds and “dynamic mixes”, which allow us to modify the state of the sound effects based on the user’s camera location, context in battle, and activities occurring at any given time.

This map demonstrates the “sphere” over the base for measuring the player’s camera, and creating spacial audio effects.

One specific implementation of this technology used in Mavia is our spatial audio globe for “ambient noises”. When the user is zoomed into their home base as close as possible, you will be able to hear sounds coming from the various buildings and troops, such as the noises of a turret rotating, or the chatter of troops in the rally point waiting for battle.

However, when the player zooms out from their home base slightly, the noise from those buildings and troops are now reduced, replaced by the noises of nature (birds, trees, rain, etc.)

When the player zooms out to the maximum level, they hear no troop or building noises, and the ambient nature noise is replaced with wind noises, as the camera is now high up in the sky.

We are just beginning to scratch the surface of the creative potential that spatial audio and dynamic sounds will allow us to reach.

We will begin posting some of our sound effects on Mavia and Skrice Twitter pages for everyone to hear!

Map Size and Customizations

We have made significant progress in the technical art of the Mavia map, giving even more customizations to the user while also saving GPU performance. All of this was done while also increasing the size of the map, increasing the opportunities in the game design department greatly.

We have increased the size of every player’s home base map, to make way for new exciting side quests and adventures outside the realm of your main grid. Simply zooming out with your camera will expand your view so you can view all of the exciting adventures on the Mavia island!

Trees and scenery now are now placed as individual objects, which allow troops (and other characters) to enter/exit the map — zombies? 🧟‍♂️👀

Additional Game Modes

There will be several game modes in the battle screen available for all players.

Ranked and Alliance:

These two game modes have already been described in previous articles and made public to the community.

Ranked matches are standard player-vs-base battles, where the player can use trained troops to attack enemy bases and loot resources.

Alliance battles are clan-based wars where teams of players compete in battles for resources.

Firefight:

Firefight is a unique game mode that allows you to setup a “Firebase” which is separately designed from your regular home base, and battle players in 1v1 and 2v2 modes.

The buildings and troops are balanced differently than traditional ranked matches. All players will have identical options to choose from for buildings and troops, but they must strategically pick the buildings and troops for their loadout, making each player’s base and army unique in selected options and placement of the buildings.

The exciting new 2v2 battle type in Firefight allows players to battle live with 1 teammate against another team of two. The bases are organized in a “four square” fashion, with teammates bases being diagonal from each other, and troops are deployed against enemies in either direction, requiring both defensive and offensive skills.

NOTE: Live 2v2 gameplay is still experimental and will be tested later in Beta for feedback and metrics.

Missions:

Missions are PvE challenges that pre-define the player’s troops they can use, the base they will attack and the terms of the challenge.

Every mission rewards the player with resources and other items upon completion.

Some missions are time-restricted, while other missions have unique limitations set, such as the ability to only use a single troop type, creating fun and interesting trials for players of all skill levels.

Practice:

Practice mode allows the player to use their troops, air powers and special abilities against pre-defined bases of varying size and strength to practice their skills on.

This mode is particularly helpful for when players wish to increase their skills for certain battle strategies, or if they simply want to try out a new special ability they have unlocked.

Practice mode does not deplete trained troops from your rally points.

Hero Powers

Concept art for Mira’s many special powers which can be used during battle. Every Hero will have their own unique special powers which can be strategically timed and chosen in battle.

Some heroes have the ability to heal troops near them. This video shows the animation of the “healing” effect on a Marine. The Marine himself is not a Hero, but in the game he would be receiving the healing effect from a nearby Hero.

Color Schemes for Buildings and Troops

Every building skin set also comes with “color palettes” which can be chosen, allowing an extremely high degree of customization for your base.

Red, Blue and Yellow color palettes of the gold mine.

Red, Blue and Yellow color palettes of the turret.

Red, Blue and Yellow color palettes of walls.

We will release the Beta of the Mavia game in several phases, starting with a private release and eventually growing the user base to include the entire community and outside users.

It is important that we release builds of the game in a controlled manner to be able to quickly respond to bugs, issues, and feedback without it disrupting the experience for thousands of users simultaneously.

What has changed about this release plan when compared to previous release plans is that the scope of the game has increased significantly. We have re-prioritized essential gameplay features and functionality (battle logic, troop AI), separating them from other non-essential game functions such as 2v2 multiplayer modes and Firefight battles.

Each release will feature a more comprehensive game, with more stunning features, troops and effects than the last.

We predict that the game will remain in beta designation for many months as we continue to add and test new features, characters, game modes and effects.

However, our priority remains to get the core game into the hands of our community as soon as we can, while not sacrificing the quality of the experience.

Phase 1: Private Release

The first build release phase will be made available to a privately selected group of individuals who will be testing and providing initial feedback for the game. This group is already completed, and they will remain anonymous for the time being to prevent leaks.

This phase has already begun, with additional testing ongoing until the game is deemed appropriate for the next phase of release.

Closer to the end of this phase, we will also show the community footage of the gameplay in a controlled setting. This will be done through Discord live streams, and the demonstrator will be able to take questions and show different areas of the game upon request from the community.

Phase 2: NFT Community Release

This release will be for NFT holders only. Land NFT holders will be able to gain access to this build by registering their Land ID and their TestFlight email or Android device on the Mavia website, and a download link will be sent to their mobile device.

The registration page will be available at register.mavia.com closer to this release (link currently not live yet).

The exact date for when phase 2 will begin will be announced within 30 days from the release of this article. We want to avoid any future delays so we want to have enough time to give exact milestone dates for releases.

Phase 3: Invite-Only Beta

This release will be open for the entire Mavia community on an invite-only basis. All Land NFT owners will have a fixed amount of invite codes that they can choose to share with individuals of their choice to join the beta build.

This will allow us to release the game in a slow and controlled manner, keeping feedback iterations fast without overwhelming our infrastructure, bug reporting and analytics.

Phase 4: Public Beta

The final phase of the beta will be available to all users to download using a download link from our website.

Additionally, as part of this final phase of beta testing, we will be publishing the Mavia app to iOS and Android app stores in a select few regions, to test several marketing campaigns and also begin testing our deployment infrastructure before making it available worldwide.

Global Release

The final phase of our rollout will be making the Mavia game on iOS and Android available to all countries and regions, marking our official “Global Launch”.

Season 3

Season 3 of Mavia Land NFT Soft-Staking is now live!

If you already had your Land NFTs staked for Season 2, then no further action is required. Your Land NFTs will automatically be staked in Season 3 without any action required.

If you are a new Land NFT owner and wish to soft-stake your land, please read the guide here.

Season 3 Mavia-Match Rewards

The rewards for Season 3 will be similar to Season 2 Mavia-Match. If you do not know what Mavia Match is, please read this article.

Soft-Stakers will earn free MAVIA tokens in the form of “Mavia Match” ranging from 0.75–2.25 MAVIA per Land NFT Staked, depending on the land type.

Common Land Mavia-Match: 0.75 MAVIA earned every 24 Hours

Rare Land Mavia-Match: 1.5 MAVIA earned every 24 Hours

Legendary Land Mavia-Match: 2.25 MAVIA earned every 24 Hours

Season 3 staking rewards will accumulate until the release of Mavia to the land NFT owners, with no cap. We are dedicated to getting the game in your hands.

Visual Effects

We will share a few in-game visual effect sneak peeks below. Please note that these GIFs are for demonstration purposes only, showing individual effects, and may appear different during battle and final gameplay. All of the below footage is real in-game rendering. Enjoy!