We are excited to announce that the StarCrazy Halo Grant, Milestone 3 has been approved by IoTeX. Read about it here!
StarCrazy’s growth has been supported in part by a Halo Grant from IoTeX. The grant program requires that the project ‘build in public’. That requirement makes the company fully accountable for what we build and makes us deliver on the promises we make in the grant proposal. In our case, we’ve had to achieve three milestones in order to comply with the terms of the grant and receive payments — again outlined in the grant.
The Third of Three Milestones
This third milestone had two parts.
- The first — to grow the number of addresses holding GFT to 2,500. We’ve reached that goal and blown far past it.
- The second — to have the Total Value Locked of GFT reach 2.5 million. We’ve done that in a very challenging market.
Milestone One
To get to this point we first had to lay the groundwork with the first two milestones. Looking at the proposal, it looks so simple because it’s only a single sentence:
“Writing and output of in-game basic UI and blockchain contracts, development of display functions”
What this means in practice is to design the game logic, that is, what will be sensible, engaging for players, and incentivize them to invest the time and expense to play the game and come back day after day and week after week. That takes an understanding of human behavior that comes with years of working in the game industry.
Writing the blockchain contracts involves mastery of a relatively new area of software development, writing smart contracts. Since this involves financial transactions you need to get this right or people will lose money. If that happens you’re done. No one will play your game. Close enough is not acceptable.
Finally, the visual design and functionality of the game has to be designed, button click by button click and moving from page to page. More specialized work is required for this.
Milestone Two
Again, a single deceptively simple sentence hides the skill and effort required to build a complex game that feels simple to play, is rewarding, and fun.
“Development of game synthesis, auction, output and other functions”
is the original term we used for fusing two Starz (cards) to produce a new Starz with different properties. The challenge for this was to recreate in software code a rule set that is analogous to basic genetics. That is — when you have dominant genes and recessive genes, what will the combination of those two sets produce? These are mathematical questions and also questions of user experience. You want to find the right balance between rewarding users for the risk of combining (fusing) Starz and disappointing them when the newly created Starz is not an improvement.
Likewise for auctions, there has to be careful thought given to the logic behind what kind and the number of Starz will be offered for auction and at what price. Simple right? Simple like hitting a tiny ball with a club so it flies hundreds of yards and lands in a tiny hole. (golf) or kicking a ball down a field and into a goal, past other world-class athletes determined to take that ball away from you. (soccer/football)
What’s next?
The team is far from done adding features to the games. We’ve come this far, we don’t want to slow our progress! So without going into detail, here are a few of the features you can look forward to.
- As we’ve mentioned earlier, we’ll be setting up an Item exchange shop where players can exchange their items
- We’ll give you a way to travel between planets and other places.
- In Q3, we will be building a Starcrazy metaverse with numerous facilities where players can interact with each other. And, (no surprise!) facility owners can collect fees when others use their facilities.
- Buildings on planets will have different functions. For example, there will be training grounds for players to learn skills through skill books. There will be apex arenas, star vein through which players can mine ores in five different elements, and departure stations that allow Starz to travel.
We hope you are as excited as we are at how far we’ve come and for the coming developments!
Stay crazy!
Steps to enter the game:
Option 1: Metamask
Step 1: Install the metamask: https://metamask.io/
Step 2: Add a custom RPC/Network In the METAMASK browser extension, open the “Networks” drop-down menu at the top, and click the “Add Network”:
Step 3: Input the respective network values for IoTeX Mainnet:
Network Name: “IoTeX Mainnet”
RPC URL: See Babel API Endpoints » (Example: https://babel-api.mainnet.iotex.io)
Chain ID: 4689
Symbol: IOTXExplorer URL: https://iotexscan.io
Step 4: Click the Save button and make sure IoTeX is selected as the active network
Step 5: Click the link to enter the game: https://game.starcrazy.com/?cid=nov
Option 2:
Using Iopay Wallet you can download though this link:Iopay.me
