Jul 31, 2020
Project update: LAND Presale 4, Game Maker Alpha release and VoxEdit Beta update (July 2020)
Another month has come and gone, and brought lots of new updates for The Sandbox!
In July we released new info regarding transportation within the Sandbox, our mystery Treasure Hunt has finally been resolved, we’ve updated both the Game Maker and VoxEdit, and we are announcing a new presale with more perks included! All of this and much more on our recent project update.
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Game Maker Alpha Version
The Game Maker received a makeover. In July we added more features and improved on the existing ones to create even better game experiences.
Avatar improvements
Avatars are the characters that you will play with in your game experience. When playing you will now have a better game feel with your avatars, upgraded movements, for a smoother game-play. On top of that, avatars now have the capacity to wear a sword and use it to fight.
Your avatar is now a real sword wielding samurai, ready for sneaky combat!
Fight system
Talking about combat, when creating enemies’ fight mode settings you can make them detect the avatars within a set radius and have them attack avatars or other entities if you choose so. Enemies will also restore their health in-between attacks so be on the lookout and be quick or suffer the consequences!
Objective system
As a game builder, you are the one to choose the rules of your game. The Objective system allows you to decide the conditions that make a player win or lose the game (reaching a specific area, picking a specific item, killing a certain enemy…) by using the associated behaviour. Creators will also have the ability to set a time limit to complete the mission to make their quests time sensitive.
New collectible behavior
Within the objective system we now offer new possibilities with the collectible behavior. When starting to create your experience you can now set one of the objectives to trigger the victory to be this collectible behaviour (gather 10 mushrooms — retrieve the lost sword)
Biomes / blank areas
When starting your experience and deciding its size, you can now pick a specific biome to thematise it (desert, snow, nature…). By popular demand you can now also decide to start from scratch and begin building with a flat tile and thematise this blank canvas with only your imagination!
Rarity Component
The rarity component will help creators visualise their most precious ASSETS in a glimpse in The Sandbox world. With the help of visual cues, creators will know if their ASSET is common, rare, epic, or legendary.
Various improvements
As always the teams have also been working on upgrading behaviors for quicker interactions. The less hassle you have when running your game, the smoother the overall experience becomes. Some of these improvements include, but are not limited to,
- Live Sync to have a better flow between the Game Maker and the ASSETS on the dashboard.
- Terraforming tool preview and multiple selections to ease your building experience.
- Save file size optimisation and LAND loading improvement
If you want to create games, share your gaming experiences and be part of the first game developers of The Sandbox, you can apply to join our Game Maker Fund and receive a grant of up to $30,000 USD.
Apply to The Sandbox Game Maker Fund program today
The next update of the Game Maker is coming in mid-september, while you wait for its release, you can visit our youtube channel to catch the latest game experiences created by our talented artists!
VoxEdit
The newest version of VoxEdit is out with a dynamic news section, a new dialog folder and bug fix!
We are already working on the next update scheduled for release soon! Want to know what is coming next? Keep on reading!
New Timeline
A new timeline is in development! Animating your rigged voxel models will now be easier since VoxEdit will provide more options when it is time to create animations.
The type of animation each frame has (like linear, instant, quad in, etc.) will now be displayed on the new timeline. It will also offer an option to limit the loops of the animations and a new window to keep track of all the animations a single rigged model has, while keeping the options to create a new animation, duplicate and delete them.
Facial Expression Templates
New templates are coming to VoxEdit, this time around the new templates will be an addition to the human templates currently on VoxEdit that will provide a wide range of facial expressions that you can use to customize your voxels.
Weekly VoxEdit Contest
This past week’s VoxEdit contest theme was also a great success! The week’s theme was “Pirates” inline with the treasure hunt. We received some awesome submissions from all our creators. Congratulations to the below winners!
1st Place: Chimpbastian’s Malakkar the Pirate
2nd Place: Sisapi’s Juggling Pirate
3rd Place: Krad_supersoldier’s Pirate Ship
Make sure to vote on the current VoxEdit contest running now! This week’s theme was “Giants” using the new giant humanoid animation template. Voting closes Monday, August 3rd! HERE
We are also running weekly VoxEdit contests over on our forum page. Each week a new theme is announced and everyone can submit their creations. 3 winners are selected via votes to win a LAND. If you want to try your hand don’t hesitate to participate for a chance to win a parcel of LAND!
How to be transported around the metaverse?
This month we’ve finally had the chance to explain more about the way players will travel through the use of portals localised all around the metaverse. This is a great advancement in the development of The Sandbox as a whole as we grow nearer to its launch by the end of Q4.
We’ve published our article detailing The Sandbox Transportation System.
In a nutshell, players will have different ways to travel from one LAND to another. One option will be to go to the edge of your LAND and jump to the next one, another option is to use portals that will be scattered throughout the map. Take the time to read the full article for an in-depth explanation of the system, to learn how to visit your neighbors and much more.
Past Events
MoonSale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uchl0JpQtf4
The MoonSale came to an end with the successful sale of 7,254 LAND equating to 1081.3608 ETH, or more than $245,500 USD (at current exchange rate). The Waxing Gibbous round, which launched and sold out on July 2nd, concluded the 6 back-to-back waves.
For reminder, The MoonSale was a lunar-themed LAND sale that lasted for five weeks following the lunar calendar. Launched on Thursday, June 4th at 1PM GMT (the day before the full moon) it ended on July 2nd.
We’d like to thank all those who participated in this event and welcome the new landowners to the Metaverse.
We’ve published a thorough recap of the event that you can here: https://medium.com/sandbox-game/the-sandbox-moonsale-is-sold-out-1127f7ff7d49
Treasure Hunt
The MoonSale was not the only event that went on in July, our Treasure Hunt was running alongside it. To become the ultimate winner of a 12x12 ESTATE prize worth USD $5,000, hunters had to scour our metaverse map and our diverse social media platforms to find clues and riddles that we had disseminated. This two-months long event, had many scratching their heads over the mind-boggling riddles that we concocted. Ultimately one smart participant finally cracked the code and claimed the prize! If you want to read all about this breathtaking race for the 12x12 treasure, what the explanation was behind each riddle, what these 12 words were and the story of how our winner uncovered them check our Treasure Hunt recap.
It was a pleasure having you at our side and discussing theories, hopefully you’ve had as much fun as we did! 🌝
Next event coming next month is the Presale round 4!
Upcoming Event
Presale round 4
We are back with another round of LAND presale starting on August 4th at 1PM GMT. This presale will be divided into several small rounds that will launch throughout the upcoming weeks.These will be the last rounds that will have a 10% discount and will be the LAST discounted events before public sales begin. During this presale we are also introducing Premium LANDs that come with a set of 4 exclusive ASSETS at prime locations. A total of 4,536 LANDS will be for sale, including 1134 Premium LANDS. To read the breakdown of the presale and learn more about Premium LANDs and ASSETs read our dedicated articles!
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Join our community
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Linktree: https://linktr.ee/sandbox
