Table of Contents
- Studio Update
- Development Overview
- Unreal Team Update
- Blockchain Team Update
- Social Media Update
1. Studio Update
Staffing
Netvrk added two new members to the team.
In order to further develop the growing metaverse into a world with a unique visual style, we added a dedicated foliage artist to the environment team. Her work brought her many accolades from her teammates after just a few short weeks embedded.
The second new team member is an additional game producer. His role is to assist in coordinating the various development teams, Gaming, Metaverse Creation, Social Spaces, with their schedules, resource balancing, and focus. Past credits include titles such as Red Dead Redemption and Grand Theft Auto, and Netvrk is excited to have him onboard.
2. Development Overview
The philosophy stated in the previous blog remains our guiding principle. We are building foundational technology underlying foundational experiences and are working to build outward from that steady base.
With the release of the Mine Runner experience, we tested our ability to receive and interpret player data and feedback in order to iterate in a meaningful way. Beyond improvements to the experience listed below, the reporting and bug fixing pipeline are also under evaluation and receiving attention.
With the addition of production staff, we are also able to do a second layer of high-level planning in order to prioritize features and experience in the backlog of options, weighing in the goals of our customers, the goals of our investors, and the goals of the team. These conversations are ongoing, and you can expect more details as we cement our path.
The Gitbook White Paper site received an update on August 19. The document is accessible to the public here:
3. Unreal Team Update
Mining Game
Alpha 2 Release
We anticipate releasing the Alpha 2 of the Mine Runner experience within the week. This would mark the end of our first upgrading cycle, which the team felt was crucial for a variety of reasons. First, we are proving out our ability to do rolling updates on a live project. Second, we were able to pull feedback and analytics from a release and create an effective backlog of upgrades against which to execute. Third, we were able to multitask across various other important aspects of the metaverse while accomplishing the live update. These are important foundational processes other studios struggle against, and our team is rightly proud of this accomplishment.
Basics
The flow into and out of the Mine Runner experience had several upgrades made based on player feedback. We added instructions when a player enters the mines for the first time. These instructions are also available in the Esc menu. Features like selling stimpacks and ammo are now enabled at the vendors where they are purchased. And the menu for crafting a pickaxe now shows when you return to the lobby after receiving coin rewards.
Abilities
Since the release of Alpha 1 we have spent a lot of our effort on improving the viability, fun and usefulness of abilities. The first change we made was to remove the right-click heavy attack as it was not feeling worthwhile to use in most cases. We also modified the attack to be a new melee ability. Since abilities have a cost to use, we are able to make them much more powerful and satisfying to use.
We added two new melee abilities as well. This gives the player options between elemental abilities and now three melee attacks that use the pickaxe. The first melee ability attack is a whirlwind attack, where the player spins rapidly in place dealing damage to all creatures close to the player. The second ability attack causes the player to spin forward in a rapid somersault, dealing massive damage to creatures directly in front of the player. The third attack does a smaller amount of damage, pushing creatures out of the way and rushing the player forward, with a burst of damage at the end of the run. This third option allows the player to rapidly reposition if surrounded.
To view these new melee abilities, click here.
The other significant changes are to the elemental abilities; visuals improved, and perhaps more importantly, all fire off within half a second, speeding them up by a factor of 3 or more. Additionally, each elemental type now causes different effects on the enemies. Lightning effects push enemies away from the player a considerable distance and briefly hold them in place. Ice effects cause enemies to have their movement slowed for a few seconds and finally fire abilities focus on dealing higher overall damage.
To view these new ability animations, click here.
Enemies and Encounters
There were tuning and iterations upon combat encounters following the release of Alpha 1. Enemies are now smarter and have additional attack/defense move sets to make each enemy feel more balanced and distinct. We also populated an additional 10 levels, which will offer unique combat encounters and introduce creatures not yet seen in the Alpha 1 phase. These additional levels will be part of the Beta release.
With the addition of significant improvements to the behaviors of enemies, we expect these changes will allow for more exciting and dynamic combat in those Beta builds.
Graphics and Performance
Performance improvements continue in the caves, optimizing the environment to increase framerate and make the game more accessible to more systems. We have also improved and have begun to fully implement our mine shaft alignment tool. This allowed us to realign all 25 levels to solve clipping issues, all with a single click. We expect this tool to be essential as we continue to build the larger world.
In addition, the graphics settings menu has been expanded to allow players to adjust their experience based on the system they are using and the performance they prefer.
We have also added depth of field to our rendering, a significant addition to the visuals of the world.
All of these graphics additions will carry over into the greater Metaverse.
Unreal Snapshot Tool
We built and tested our 3D Asset snapshot tool that allows our team to batch render the NFT images. This was created with the pickaxe in mind for the first series and is made to be expandable to future NFT releases as well as the snapshot feature planned for the Social Spaces.
Metaverse
Procedural Building System
Our Procedural Building Tool is just underway and making major progress already. This tool, when fully realized, will allow the creation and population of large urban areas efficiently and with flexibility to be creative with the aesthetics. Developers will be able to craft buildings, internal and external features, through simple parameter menus. This will be used as a powerful starting point for creators to bring these areas to completion.
Social Spaces
The foundational multiplayer interaction falls under the umbrella of the Social Spaces vertical. This group of features, tools, and environments continue construction from an aesthetics perspective. The team is working on the underlying structure that allows things like World Instances, multiplayer environments, and transportation between sets via a portal system. Other features planned before release include world, group, and direct chatting, voice chat, emote expression, and other player-to-player interactions.
Venues
Venues, a subsection of the Social Spaces, are themed areas with the feature set outlined above and with a theme that matches the venue’s utility. This will include things like a concert venue, a storefront, and a player’s customizable apartment. The venue system is currently in design iteration, building on the features constructed for the Social Spaces category.
4. Blockchain Team
Mining Game
Alpha
To prepare for the snapshots required for wave 2 and wave 3 eligibility, we’ve deployed subgraphs for Netvrk NFT smart contracts, staked Netvrk NFT smart contracts and our current partners NFT smart contracts.
These subgraphs were designed to be one way for our ecosystem to read blockchain information. They will be used next during the Beta to support avatar eligibility functionality. If you own an NFT from one of our partner collections, then you will be able to use a featured avatar from that collection.
Beta
We are busy building the implementations for linking your web3 wallet to your web2 game account and the NTVRK token transactions to interact with the Mine Runner economy.
As with our subgraph solution, these implementations were designed to support future parts of our ecosystem as well. Linking your wallet to your game account will be used next in Social Spaces.
This work involved a lot of coordination between us and the Game Team. Together we’ve brainstormed, iterated on and co-developed solutions to add blockchain support into UE5. We’re pretty amped up about the use cases for the solution we’re creating together.
Netvrk Reserve Staking Rewards Distribution
We’ve been focused on the smart contract component of the solution. We recently deployed a version on the Goerli test net to evaluate the reward distribution implementation.
5. Social Media Update
The Social Media suite for Netvrk has been updated! Please be sure to connect with these accounts to continue to get the latest updates on the project.
About Netvrk
Netvrk is an immersive metaverse that empowers users with robust creation tools and a versatile infrastructure, enabling them to seamlessly craft, share, engage with, and monetize their digital masterpieces. Anchored in the realms of gaming, education, and virtual workplaces, Netvrk fosters a vibrant ecosystem centered on the ownership and exchange of virtual land and assets.
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