[DAO:3a70282] Dark Dungeons game

[dao]

by 0x2e09a10eaace1ef3a66fbf6f1f782c8c0cb8c942 (Soulsinger)

Should the following Higher Tier grant in the In-World Content category be approved?

Abstract

Dark Dungeons is a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons played worldwide by an enormous range of players. And it is no less intriguing to watch others play, as evidenced by the great success of organisations such as Critical Role. We believe a good implementation of this concept has the power to introduce many new users to Decentraland!

Grant size

54,000 USD

Beneficiary address

0x2e09A10eaAcE1Ef3a66FbF6F1F782C8c0cb8c942

Email address

cenmodelscontact@gmail.com

Description

Goal

The main goal in creating this game is to expand the user base of Decentraland and showcase it as a place to have fun! Decentraland has many casinos and other establishments that require financial investments from players. Thus, for an ordinary user Decentraland looks like a place where everyone wants to get money from you - but it is and can be much more than that!

Demo

Proposal Demo

Discord Demo

We believe the main thing missing in Decentraland is the reasons for an ordinary user rather than an investor to join Decentraland. The main goal of our game is to become such a reason and thereby attract a large number of new users to Decentraland.

The game we want to create will be inspired by Dungeons and Dragons but won’t be its copy. We plan to fill the game with popular memes and other humorous content. There will also be cameos with famous pop culture characters. We decided to simplify some mechanics so that the game fits better into Decentraland and is easy to understand for all users regardless of their experience.

Scope

The scope of this grant proposal is ~8 months, until about the end of September 2023. Our goal is to release a game in several steps until we have, by the end of this time, a fully working v1 of our game accessible to all Decentraland users.

Game mechanics

As we mentioned, we decided to build a roleplaying experience specific to Decentraland. Some of those modifications are:

● A session in D&D lasts, on average, 2-3 hours; in our game, we want to reduce the time of one session to 15-20 minutes.

● An AI (Artificial Intelligence) will perform the role of the gamemaster (host). Players will have a limited number of action options in a given situation.

● Players will play for their avatars.

Specification

How we see the final result:

1. 1-4 players in total in one session.
2. Each character has characteristics (strength, charisma, etc.), specific items
   in the inventory (crossbow, potion, etc.), and other differences.
3. The characters find themselves in a situation where they need to solve a problem or
   receive a task from a non-player character in the story. (We expect that the comicality of some situations and the integration of memes and pop culture characters will have a positive impact on marketing.)

For example, a simple scenario might be that players start their journey in a tavern, and they need to find a villager-werewolf.

The main gameplay will lay in the fact that players will choose options for actions, such as: “Inspect the tavern,” or "Start talking to the quiet villager”

Some actions’ success gets determined by a dice roll. For example, to “Sneak attack the guard” you need to roll the dice to test your dexterity. The required number for success is a 10; if you get ten or a lower number - you miss, greater than 10 - you succeed.

In total, the player will change up to 5 locations during the game. The game ends when the players have completed the task, failed it, or when all the players’ characters have died.

Due to the variability, the game has great replay value. Play as another character, take other companions to your team, and the game outcome will be completely different. We also plan to release new scripts regularly.

Budget Breakdown

Total: 54k

Team Salaries:

● 14k SDK Dev

● 12k 3D Artists

● 8k Game Designer

● 4k Game Master

● 4k 2D Artist

● 3k Sound Designer

Marketing: 4k

Servers and infrastructure: 3k

Land Rental for 6 months: 2k

Tech Stack

Most of the game will be built using the Decentraland SDK, but part of the infrastructure will be external. For this, we will use a custom-built backend server to store player scores, preferences, gaming history, and more.

Revenue plan / Sustainability

We plan to create some wearables and advertising banners, but making a profit is not our main goal.

Personnel

Core team

○ Soulsinger - manager of the CEN studio, game designer

● The ideological inspirer of the project

● Over 5 years of game development experience

○ Alven - SDK Developer In Decentraland since 2020

● 6 years of software development experience

○ casuallvl & orina - 3d artists

● Specialists in 3D modelling of low-poly objects

○ Master Eador - gamemaster.

● Longtime TTRPG player

● 3 years experience as a professional gamemaster

○ Mia - 2d artist

● An art student with experience in building game assets

○ Alexander - sound designer

Relevant experience

● Dark Dungeons Demo

External Image

● CEN studio office - Demonstration of low-poly modelling

External Image

● Tower Master - Roblox game with more than 2 million views in the last year

External Image

Roadmap and milestones

Estimated Timeline: 8 months

2023 Q2:

-Prototypes of the main game mechanics (action selection, dice roll, etc.)

-Adventure scenarios and building the world

-Concepts of characters, locations, items

-Rough 3D models (characters, objects, etc.)

Main goal: Alpha version of the game on testnet

2023 Q3:

-Development of all game mechanics based on Alpha feedback

-All 3D models (scenery, effects, etc.)

-Images (player cards, location backgrounds, etc.)

-Audio (sounds of objects, etc.)

Main goal: Beta version of the game in Decentraland

2023 Q4:

-Collect feedback from beta version users

-Implement remaining features and polish the game experience

-Marketing (payment to Twitch and YouTube channels, inviting famous bloggers to play our game)

Main goal: V1 Live

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

[Soulsinger]

Open source: GitHub - daxadax/d-n-dcl

[dogman]

hello. I like the demo and can see a fair amount of work has been put into this project already. I would like to see more from this demo before voting yes as right now it is just some simple Ui interactions and loading an additional scene. In its current form it is a little difficult to image what actual gameplay would be like.

[Soulsinger]

Hi dogman! I understand what you mean. Follow the link on Discord, where you can learn more about the work progress. While there, you can also see we received almost half as much money as we expected due to the MANA exchange rate. Troubles happen, and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. 5000 is not a lot of money, considering that 7 people worked on the project for 3 months. But we received half a much - this could not but affect the quality.

This grant will not be in MANA but in DAI currency. Hence, the budget won’t get halved by the work’s end. You can look at an example of our work that cost 2500. Imagine what we can do with 54,000.

What do you think about it? We will be glad to hear your opinion/advice.

[dogman]

Thanks for the reply! I understand building a game is a difficult task and it seems like the quality is high just wish there was more to see! Will be voting yes to support this game.

[dax]

just want to add my two cents here since i worked on the demo - i think the idea of this proposal is solid and since i worked with the team on the demo, i can also endorse @Soulsinger and their team as being professional and above all passionate about making games.

I’m not joining this round as the SDK dev simply from an overload of work, but I would love to see this get made. Personally though, I think it also has a lot of value as an opensource toolkit, maybe not exactly in the style of the tower defense kit, but in the sense that libraries of character avatars and examples of building a TTRPG clone could be super helpful for anyone else doing this in the future.

[AwedJob]

Vote: YES

Very nice demo game. I appreciate your persistence in completing what you could with the resources you had considering the $MANA value crash. Regarding land rental, have you considered deploying to a 1x1 and teleporting to a DCL Worlds? This may reduce that expense considerably.

Respect Dax’s and dogman’s comments and questions.

[Soulsinger]

Hi AwedJob, thank you for the question. We need a space where we could place portals to different stories, boards with information, a store of wearable devices. We need lands not only for a large area, but also to increase the limits of the scene.

[dogman]

the space for DCL worlds is much bigger. I would agree with AJ this is a good route to take

[Soulsinger]

We’re really going to use Dsl Worlds for stories. But a good hub is also important to us. A 1x1 land plot will obviously not be enough. We could consider reducing the size of the land plot to 2x2 and thereby save ~ $600. The question is whether it’s worth it. In any case, we are ready for suggestions and are glad that you are actively participating in the discussion. Together we are a force.

[NikkiFuego]

Hey Soulsinger. The demo link did not work for me, however, I trust others who said they tested it and enjoyed it. I also agree with the room that DCL Worlds is absolutely the way to go for projects like these. Especially if you are not receiving more than 100 concurrent users. Even if you are, there are far more affordable options to tailor a world’s server to handle more than 100 concurrent users. Seems like a waste of $2k to rent when you can have unlimited land for free/cost of a NAME. $2k can go a long way in a lot of the other areas. Much further than LAND renting.

I also worry that there was mention of heavy UI mechanics. Has your team familiarized themselves with SDK7? It will be much easier to develop UI mechanics with SDK7 rather than SDK6. Here is the blog post about SDK7: Announcing SDK 7 Beta | Decentraland

It is in beta so anyone can tinker and learn the new systems.

[esteban]

Dear proposers of this initiative,

I voted NO on this to offset the other whale voting YES. I have not evaluated the merits of the proposal, but could you please re-submit it this proposal again? Thank you and have a good day!

[Soulsinger]

Hi Nikki Try to wait a little longer, the web page does not open quickly. How many LANDs do you think is enough?

[Soulsinger]

Hi esteban! Thank you for arguing your decision. My answer turned out to be voluminous, but I will be glad if you read it carefully.
I ask you to take a closer look at our offer. You can see that we have been striving for this grant for a very long time. The first offer was made in the summer of 2022. Since then, the offer has undergone many changes. Go to our Discord, there you can learn more about the process of working on the demo version. We finished working on the demo on time, and then waited until March 1 to submit a new application. The preparatory work was done with my personal money. Working on the demo version did not bring us the expected profit (for more information, see Discord). All employees received less than expected, personally I spent more money than I earned.
I am writing all this in order for all members of the community to understand that the team and I are really inspired by our project and are investing in it the maximum of our capabilities. Many members of the community also speak very positively about our project.
Our first grants didn’t get the right amount of VP. We have come a long way to submit the current application. I think that in this particular case, your decision to equalize the number of votes is not the best solution. I once again ask you to familiarize yourself in more detail with our project and with the path that we have passed. It will be difficult for us to postpone development again.

[NikkiFuego]

Hey there, if you have a DCL NAME then you don’t have to worry about “how many LANDs” because you can deploy to as many parcels as you want. The only limit to Worlds right now is 100 concurrent users and 100MB capacity. However, there are services that Atlas Corp can provide to increase these capacities at a very affordable rate. I would suggest reading the documentation provided on Worlds to get a better understanding: Worlds Overview | Decentraland Documentation

[Soulsinger]

Did I understand correctly that you think we need to deploy the project only in Dcs World and not use LANDs at all?

[NikkiFuego]

That is my perspective yes. If worlds existed when I started my project that’s where I would have started as well. It provides a much more affordable option for deployment without the risk of thousands of dollars. Great proof of concept grounds.

[Soulsinger]

I think this is a good topic for discussion. I would like to know the opinion of other members of the community. If this decision is positively received by the community, I think we will implement it and figure out where to distribute the money that was calculated for the lease of the LAND

[dao]

Dark Dungeons game

This proposal is now in status: REJECTED.

Voting Results:

• Yes 40% 4,581,279 VP (82 votes)
• No 60% 6,823,418 VP (98 votes)

[jar0d]

Honestly, people need to start making awesome things in worlds so the land barrons start realizing they need to do something besides exist if they want to monetize DCL off the hard work of others.

You put this in a Worlds I am sure you will find users happy to play it.

Decentraland is more than Genesis City.