The Sandbox — A look back at 2019
The major developments of The Sandbox gaming platform over an amazing year.
Since the July 2018 start of our most ambitious projects to date, The Sandbox, we have overcome many challenges in the process of moving to the blockchain ecosystem while developing key elements that will help us reach a decentralized blockchain gaming platform.
Despite the challenges in 2019, we have accomplished major milestones for the project as we move even closer to our main goal of creating a community-driven gaming platform that empowers creators, game makers, and players to create, publish, and monetize a myriad of unique experiences on a decentralized platform with cryptocurrency payments.
Read on to learn about the challenges we’ve overcome and progress we’ve made on the project thus far — and the landmarks we’ll be following in another exciting year for The Sandbox gaming platform.
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We are redefining the meaning of user-generated content (UGC) through blockchain. Join our metaverse of gamers, creators, and crypto-enthusiasts as we move toward launch.
Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/vAe4zvY
Telegram: https://t.me/sandboxgame
Game Maker
As the core of our gaming platform, The Sandbox Game Maker is the most ambitious element of our project. Creating a game builder capable of handling thousands of UGC elements (which anyone can create thanks to VoxEdit), the — not to be overlooked — addition of visual scripting tools to design amazing game experiences, and of course, the possibility to monetize them in the blockchain is a substantial task.
But yet, here we are, sharing just a portion of the major developments that were only possible thanks to an incredibly capable game development team.
The Sandbox metaverse
LANDS, the individual blocks of the world that players can purchase and own, are the building blocks of our metaverse. They can be used to create monetizable game experiences with a handful of tools designed to provide new players a way to create intuitively while also giving experienced creators the necessary tools to come up with amazing games.
Thanks to the latest integrations, the game maker will be launched from the marketplace once the player logs in. It also will allow the in-game verification of LANDS and ASSETS to later be identified in-game for creating game experiences, selecting the correct amount of LANDS, and displaying the assets that you own.
Getting ready for UGC
In a UGC-based blockchain gaming platform like The Sandbox, a key selling point for most users are the freedoms offered to creators and players by the metaverse for when it comes to building games and customizing avatars. However, the challenges behind these freedoms are as demanding as the idea’s ambitions.
We have been focused on the performance for creating environments capable of holding thousands of assets while being able to terraform, customize and create game experiences with the various tools that will be available soon. In addition, the possibility of combining as many as 24 LANDS to create large districts and the future multiplayer features of The Sandbox are one of the most important factors of the Game Maker.
Marketplace
It’s been a year of key changes, improvements, and important developments for The Sandbox Marketplace as we work to offer crypto-enthusiasts a true sandbox gaming experience within the blockchain where they can create, buy and sell original and amazing games and assets while providing familiar blockchain experiences. We’re also working to introduce the blockchain ecosystem to gamers new to this technology by providing straightforward experiences to reduce the friction of traditional and blockchain games.
Artists, creators, and crypto-enthusiasts will be able to exchange ASSETS, LANDS, and GAMES for our cryptocurrency, SAND, through \the various smart contracts that we have developed. After our very successful first LAND presale event, we can start to see the effects and possibilities of our decentralized gaming platform that is only possible thanks to an amazing Web Development, Design, and Blockchain team working side to side to redefine the meaning of UGC through blockchain.
LAND Presale
A LAND is a digital piece of real estate in The Sandbox metaverse that players can buy to build experiences on top of. It’s the key that can open the doors to an entire metaverse capable of containing thousands of different game experiences and assets generated by users. Our very first presale event showcasing a map filled with more than 3,000 LANDs that were sold in just four hours was the most important milestone reached of 2019 for our project.
After the creation of the different smart contracts meant for LANDS and ASSETS that were developed and updated over the past year, the design and development of The Sandbox map integrated with the smart contracts was an exciting accomplishment. The addition of features that led five of our best voxel artists to upload and sell their exclusive ASSETS on the marketplace at the same time our LAND presale took place, was another big step forward.
Despite the success of the presale event, we have to keep improving the experience we want to provide for our next presale events. We have gathered feedback from the community toward this goal, so you may want to keep an eye out for future announcements.
The Sandbox Map
Creating the design, marketplace implementation, and integration of the smart contracts containing the information of each of the LANDS of The Sandbox metaverse may sound simple in comparison to the other aspects of the project. However, when you consider there will be more than 160,000 parcels, it underscores how demanding this key element is for our team.
After our first LAND presale that only showcased 2.5% of the total parcels, our team is working on improving the overall experience for our upcoming presale rounds while taking the community’s feedback into account.
VoxEdit
Over a year has passed since the first alpha release of VoxEdit, our gaming platform’s free voxel editing and animating software. The great advancements over the past year have taken place alongside the rest of the project’s progress. We have gone from a tool that offered modeling features for creating voxel models and basic animations, to a fully functional voxel software app that offers familiar and intuitive tools that can be used to create high-quality voxel assets and fluid animations.
The stand-alone software can be used to create voxel models and animate them, and is the main tool that creators will be using to upload their assets to our marketplace, and where the main content for the game experiences will come from. As such it is yet another highly important element of our gaming platform. Being developed with the help of an amazing dev team being led by the creator of the original Sandbox, VoxEdit is preparing to launch its Beta version very soon.
Animating Voxels
Animations created with VoxEdit are possible thanks to the advanced tools provided the software ranging from simple animations that can be used to trigger actions in The Sandbox game experiences to amazing and fluid animations that will bring life to NPCs and assets within the metaverse that can also be exported to use in other platforms and software.
While the most important features allow advanced customizations for creating animations, thanks to the user interface, VoxEdit offers experienced creators a familiar workflow while keeping it simple enough for players and enthusiasts of voxel art to get started creating for The Sandbox.
Modeling your voxels
While not a game-changer, the modeler tools that VoxEdit offers went from being the very basic ones, to a wide selection of important elements that help artists and creators to build more complex user-generated content.
In addition to providing the tools that will be needed to create amazing voxel assets, the elements for those new to voxel art is meant to provide a user experience that offers everyone the chance to create what they want, without limiting the tools that experienced creators and artists can use.
You can check the last developments of VoxEdit on our project update section here on medium: https://medium.com/sandbox-game/updates/home
The Sandbox plans for 2020
2019 was an amazing year of hard work and challenging encounters with the blockchain ecosystem as we keep integrating all the elements of our gaming platform while launching our first LAND presale. In this new year, we’ll be able to showcase and publicly release the most important components of The Sandbox metaverse.
LAND presale events & Public sale
Since the success of our first LAND presale event, we’ll be releasing the next rounds beginning this first quarter of 2020. They will not only contain more LANDS available to be purchased (and feature important partners filling key locations of the map), we’ll be adding new features that we have developed thanks to your feedback. Check out our LAND token economic article to learn more about this.
The public sale and the release of The Sandbox full metaverse map will be also happening this year, so keep an eye out for additional news.
If you haven’t already, this is the best time to Pre-Register for our upcoming presale events: https://register.sandbox.game/land2
Game Maker public release
The Sandbox Game Maker will soon launch an internal release with the tools needed to start terraforming, place assets from our marketplace, and create amazing dioramas.
Containing game-changing elements like the ability to create game experiences and give your game entities properties, visual scripting will allow to create unique game experiences that can be shared on our gaming platform to users to play, rent and buy, the official release of our Game Maker will be coming to light this year.
In preparation for its release, you can already start planning the experiences you want to create. You can even get a chance to earn an amazing grant up to $30,000 USD by joining our Game Maker fund here: https://gamefund.sandbox.game/
VoxEdit Official version
While preparing for its Beta version after a full year of remarkable developments, VoxEdit will also be releasing its official version this year, containing key components that will help players and artists to create assets for The Sandbox. With features as Avatar and Weapon creator systems, the upcoming version will ensure a wide selection of tools and features that will help creators to design amazing pieces of voxel art that can be monetized on the blockchain through our marketplace. ASSETS created in this manner can be placed on The Sandbox Game Maker to give life to unique game experiences and exported to use in other 3D software.
With the improved version that will soon be released, experienced artists will find familiar and advanced tools that will enable them to create high-quality assets, at the same time that those who are new to Voxel art will encounter intuitive features that will help them begin creating. If you are an artist or just interested in this art style, you may want to give our Creator Fund a chance to get the possibility of working with us!
Join our creator fund here: https://fund.sandbox.game/
