Dev Diary #1: The Sandbox Alpha Visuals & Gameplay Preview
This is the first edition of our new Dev Diary and Feature Preview series! This new series will give you a glimpse into what the team is working on under the hood at The Sandbox.
The team is currently working on the next big step in the metaverse — get ready for The Sandbox Alpha, the first time you can get your hands on the game client of The Sandbox. This update offers a first glimpse of how we’re bringing our vision of an inclusive and entertaining metaverse to life. In this post, we want to show you some of the things the team has been working on.
First things first, let’s address the elephant in the room: the Alpha is coming. We had to delay it from our initial release date earlier this year as we weren’t fully satisfied with the level of quality of the client. We thus made the decision to postpone it to later in 2021 until it met the level of quality we are striving to achieve. As you can imagine, releasing a game is no easy feat, especially if you are trying to re-invent UGC gaming. We know that all of you are eagerly waiting for the playable version of The Sandbox and let me assure you, so are we! Once we are happy with the internal version of The Sandbox, you will be the first to know.
Until then, follow along with our journey as we let you in on the many aspects and features that are being implemented, tested, and improved. To shorten the wait time until the launch, we wanted to take a moment to showcase some of the features we’ve been working on over the past months. Let’s give the mic to Thibault Simar, our Head of Art, and have him discuss what you will be able to build with the Game Maker.
Following this presentation, we’ll reveal a few of the features that the team is currently working on. Now let’s dive in!
Here is what we are covering in this first edition:
- Game Client: Skin colors, chat bubbles, mini-map and more
- Marketplace improvements that are making your life easier
- Game Maker hit 0.6.5 and a bunch of cool features were added
- Multiplayer is coming!
Game Client
As a player, you will be playing with an avatar that represents you in the metaverse. As such, we’re giving you tools to express yourselves and give your avatar a unique look. That is why we will introduce a wider range of skin colors for you to experiment around with as well as additional customization features.
Thanks to the introduction of NFT wearables, you can fashion your avatars with the style that fits you best when you’re strolling around the hubs. Simply customize your avatar to look like a voxelized you, or create your unique warrior or fashion icon — it’s up to you!
Chat bubbles
The main hub will be the place to hang out, to chat with other players, visit artful NFT museums, and join factions to play through various stages in teams.
So for the multiplayer experience to feel just like you are socializing with multiple other players, we have revamped chat bubbles!
This way, when you are in the hub, you can visualize and chat with the other players who are closest to you without having your screen cluttered with too many conversations happening at once.
Mini-map
Each LAND offers a huge area to cover. To make sure you don’t lose your way around while playing, we have implemented a mini-map. Let the compass guide you through your experiences and provide you with enough contextual information to navigate the worlds of The Sandbox. On the compass, you will see your position inside the current LAND as well as the type of LANDs that are next to it.
Marketplace
Marketplace improvements
We launched the Beta of our marketplace roughly two months ago and have been blown away by the feedback we’ve received. Based on what you have told us, and what we had on our roadmap, we have made several improvements to our NFT marketplace.
Improved NFT pages
We greatly revamped the product page to display all important information at a glance. You can now quickly find information about the number of minted copies, the number of unique owners, how many are left for sale, and gameplay information and attributes.
You can also find other related NFTs from the same creator below the description:
OpenSea LANDS for SAND
Now you can purchase LANDS directly from the marketplace if a LAND has been listed for SAND. No more leaving the website to do the transaction on OpenSea; you can do it directly from the comfort of our dashboard. In the future we will list all currencies there as well, making your life even easier!
LAND location preview
When linking a LAND on OpenSea or another secondary marketplace you will now be able to see the location of the LAND on our global map. This feature will help you to better estimate the location of the LAND and how it is positioned relative to our partner ESTATES or your friends.
In addition to all of the above, we will also soon have a shopping cart feature, and we are working hard on opening up the minting of ASSETS for anyone, and hope to have this rolled out soon.
Game Maker
To top it all off, the dev team will be launching a new version of the Game Maker filled with lots of cool new features. As always, each update will come with its share of gameplay improvements to offer a fluid game experience. Improved VFX, better combat UI, improved animations, and many more are among the Game Maker features you can expect when the Alpha rolls out.
There will be more updates to the Game Maker before the release, but here are some of the new features brought by Game Maker v0.6.5.
Transportation Changes
We are preparing various systems for upcoming new releases in order to enable new and exciting features regarding how players can move from an experience to another. Look out for some architecture level changes into our current transportation and waygate system.
Gameplay Improvements
As part of our constant improvements to the gameplay and combat system we have added the following features to the Game Maker:
Improved Attacks and Defense Systems
Heavy Attack Damage Zone UI: We have updated the Heavy Attack damage zone UI, which gives you a new way to charge your attacks. We will keep on improving this feature with every releases — so enemy hordes, beware.
Parry System UI: Have a run-in with some enemies? Don’t you worry, you will now have a better defense and escape thanks to our new UI indicators that give you the chance to parry attacks.
Improved Gameplay
Run over Blocks: Characters will now automatically hop over immediate blocks, instead of the player having to jump over them manually. One less step to take while playing.
Camera Distance Adjustment: You will be able to adjust the experience camera distance using the mouse wheel so you can get extremely close to your avatar and locate any potential threats or zoom out to have a bird’s-eye view and see where you are going.
Multiplayer
You can’t build a metaverse on your own. Multiplayer is the key feature of The Sandbox, bringing creators, artists, gamers, and anyone else together to experience the variety of experiences on our platform together.
The team is doing weekly play-tests to iron out all the quirks and ensure that the multiplayer experience is smooth and, most importantly, fun for everyone. Below you can see some of the experiences that will be available, from Wipeout-like races to story-driven experiences to just explorating with friends.
Going forward, we will also introduce more social hubs, co-op game experiences, and new game modes.
Disclaimer: Everything announced here is still work in progress and as such, it is subject to change. This is strictly informational. As the team is still working on new improvements and brainstorming ideas, some may forever disappear before we even launch.
