Devlog 4

December 5th Update

Netvrk

Dec 06, 2022

Devlog Graphic

Studio Update

Staffing

Art Producer

Netvrk continues to add support staff to the project in order to maintain and make more efficient our task tracking layer. We will be onboarding in January an Art Producer who has recently accepted our offer. This role will help to manage the considerable amount of art tasks in the years ahead. His acceptance will allow some of the people who are currently serving in the capacity more time to focus on other areas and in some cases create the art they themselves are passionate about.

Help Desk Manager

Another recent addition to the team is an experienced Help Desk Manager/Technical Writer. Her role will allow us to build, deploy and sustain our customer support platform and assist the team in documenting and refining our internal processes. Be on the lookout for our support platform releasing soon!

Development Overview

Mine Runner Beta

Much of the focus for the primary development team has been moving the Mine Runner Beta release to the finish line. This included, not surprising to development teams, a steady supply of bug fixes ranging from Blocker to Minor. There remain a very small number of hurdles to cross to get to our release in December, one that requires coordination with an outside service. We continue to monitor these remaining issues closely and as of this writing, expect that we will land where we want to prior to the end of the year. With the completion of this cycle, those team members who have been bringing the Mine Runner experience to release are now able to join the others on the team who are building features into the Multiplayer/Metaverse social spaces.

Roadmap Adjustments

The vision for the metaverse has been getting clearer with each milestone we hit, with each conference we attend, and each design session we hold. The feature list both expands and each feature in the list gets more depth. All of this creates challenges to the original roadmap, both in terms of what we considered priority features and what we allotted in effort to accomplish them. The Mine Runner release certainly taught us quite a bit.

To this end, we are adjusting our roadmap for the first Alpha release of the Metaverse into Q1 of 2023. Our current plan is a series of Alpha releases, like we did for Mine Runner, with each release adding major functions to the first release. The metaverse will be expanding each time until we get that first feature list all implemented, which will lead to the first Beta release of the project. This series of Alpha releases with the core of the metaverse should take us to the end of Q2 of 2023, leading to that first Beta midyear.

The features we expect to see include avatar customization to match NFT metadata, driving of NFT vehicles, personal space customization, exploration, and all of the social interactions players would expect in a multiplayer open world experience. We consider these features the bedrock of the Netvrk metaverse, upon which the full experience will be built.

Social Spaces Concepts

Our concepting team partners have brought forward more fantastic renders of spaces to be added to our city center area, including the below building facade, possible Partner Projects building, and the interior train station concepts.

Partner Relations

We continue to enjoy the support of our various partner projects and are continuing to look for ways to build on our relationships and on the cross promotions of their work. We have said it a number of times, but it is worth repeating, our project will be most successful when all of their projects are equally successful. If you are interested in expanding your community list, we highly encourage all of the Netvrk community members to seek out and join the communities you see as partners in our metaverse.

Unreal Team Update

Mine Runner Beta

This month was the final deadline for our Wave A partners to get in all of the assets needed to have a representative avatar available in this beta release. Bringing in avatars from so many different, eclectic partners taught us quite a bit about the need for a full pipeline to bring in assets from the outside. This was a goal for this feature in Mine Runner, determining what the challenges would be as a step toward a smooth process. We can safely say we’ve learned lessons. And we will have a full selection of avatars, based on wallet contents, for that first beta release.

NPC Concepts

The art team is working on building a homogenous look that will merge all elements in our universe together, from environment to characters to creatures. In the concepts shown below we see some future humanoid cyborgs for our future NPCs, focused on a few elements that we have established so far. From hollow shapes to layered stepping panels, the desire is to display depth and negative space while keeping our signature look of fluid flowy shapes throughout the design. The goal is to present a modern high end and sophisticated look.

Action Wheel

We have begun work on a way for players to express themselves to others through emotes, displays and gestures that can be selected in the action wheel. Players can customize their wheel by adding up to 10 actions within it. This feature is just one of the ways players will quickly communicate in social spaces.

Party

The Party feature allows players to create organized groups within the metaverse, with private text and voice channels. So far, we have created the core of the party system with multiplayer functionality. Each Party has an adjustable max number of members and a Party leader. While this will initially be used to keep groups organized in the Social Space, it is being developed in a scalable and extendable way to allow for extra functionality for more specialized party requirements, such as in community spaces.

Matchmaker / Multiplayer

We have made some good progress on the matchmaker system, which will enable users to join their friends and other users seamlessly as you travel through the metaverse. Our matchmaker system will allow us to define the latency, maximum number of users and several other parameters when you are joining an instance. It will immediately find the best session for you or spool up a server and join you to that instance instead. Our main focus is now on balancing joining you with your friends on the highest populated server, all while maintaining an acceptable latency rate.

Blockchain Team Update

Mining Game Beta

Blockchain integration complete!

Over the last month, we spent a majority of our time addressing edge cases related to synchronization between our database and the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. This involved deep conversations around questions including:

How will our internal systems handle failed blockchain transactions?
How will we prevent bad actors from exploiting our financial systems?

We also upgraded the feature for linking your blockchain wallet to your game account. Instead of only allowing 1 wallet to be linked, you will be able to link up to 3 wallets! This will allow you to spread your NFTs for avatar eligibility across multiple wallets, thus following web3 security best practices.

Marketing Department

The team is working to bring you a whole new experience when viewing the umbrella of Netvrk websites. Changes coming to our main web presence, Mine Runner and Partner sites. The NFT marketplace is also in transition and will soon be hosted locally. Everything will be getting a makeover with our new branding and visual language!

We have been developing more digital photography lighting sets to generate new visuals for marketing graphics and inside the Netvrk metaverse. These graphics will range from livestreaming motion capture of dancers to video and image libraries for media publications. They will also be utilized for live concerts, showcasing avatars and other game UI purposes.

In preparation for the metaverse launch, server room banners for Netvrk and our partners have been created! We will be showcasing concerts, new releases, fashion and available NFT’s in our immersive environment.

Netvrk is holding an art contest for community members. There will be a cash prize of 500 USDC for first place with a public display in the metaverse server room. Keep watching for more news and opportunities to get involved!

Social Media Update

November saw the first of many AMA’s we will host on a monthly basis. We’re very excited to keep this going as it’s extremely valuable to us to understand what questions and thoughts the community have. To make your voice heard, please join our Discord and drop your question in the #ama-questions channel.

In every AMA we will go through and answer as many questions as possible, with a focus on the most popular ones. And even if you can’t come up with a question, have a look at what other members have asked and react to the ones that are interesting to you, as this will help us determine which questions we should prioritize.

We are also working with our various partners to attend more of their AMAs, as we did with Dino Dawgs this past month, and having them join our AMAs. Their voices are always welcome at these events.

Compliance

Compliance work continues, informing our team around the areas of regulations and financial markets. Their counsel is helping to direct the plans for staking and distribution, ensuring that our project does not fall afoul of interventions that would damage the long-term goals. In addition, we have been introducing this firm to a number of our partners who are trailblazing the road into IP and web3. There will be more from these partners and how they will be leveraging the Netvrk metaverse in the near future.