by 0x270722b5222968603e4650c3b70a7dfb971ed5b6 (frantufro)
Last week we released 2dcl, a 2D alternative client experiment for Decentraland funded by the DAO.
The development was not without challenges, but we made it. You can read out last grant’s update for more details.
The original vision is that of creating a whole ecosystem of tools that will aid people of different technological levels to develop content for Decentraland.
The experiment proved that this can be achieved, but there’s a lot of work ahead. This cannot be achieved, for now, without DAO support.
I wanted to open up the discussion to the community to know if you think a follow-up proposal makes sense.
Here are some things that identified that need to happen:
Integrating the client with metamask for login and deployment (currently deployment is done through the official dcl sdk command).
Creating a drag and drop editor to simplify scene creation.
Evaluate the use of ECS7 vs. a custom scripting SDK for 2D. Implement interactivity through 2D-specific components.
These will take a lot of effort to get done, and we estimate this will be more than two years of work. That’s why we’re wondering if you’d prefer a one-year grant or multiple smaller ones.
I’d like to hear your ideas and suggestions too, not only a yes/no response to the question if possible. Please commend down below if there’s any feature you’d like to see.
Our goal is to create a new grant proposal in the coming weeks, with your input taken into account.
Judging from how you missed nearly every update on your previous grant + that you went ghost for a small amount of time, I dont think you have the credibility to take another grant.
Just wanted to add that when things got harder for us we agreed to pause the grant, and that we used our own money to finish it before asking the DAO to resume it. We were OK and ready to hear the DAO say no, we will not give you the rest of the money. (And, it has not been given to us at the time of writing).
I’ve also tried to be very careful with where DAO money needs to be spent on. I mentioned it several times in updates: for example, not using DAO money to reverse engineer ECS6, not spending time/money in features that were easily provided by the existing SDK (like deployment), etc.
So yeah, my communication skills suck, I’ll try to enlist some help for that if we get a new grant, because I’m clearly not the right person to carry that (on top of running a company, that is).
So, please, consider that we also delivered (even if late) and that we’re trying to do something that is not as easy as creating a game for the official client. There are a lot of unknowns unknowns in this path, and I hope the community understands that, we’re charting new territory.
That said, if you still think we can’t deliver (even if late) and that we have no credibility, I understand where you’re coming from, no hard feelings.
Where I agree with @InJesterr that communication and structured updates are of the utmost importance, and should operate pretty strictly, I commend @frantufro and team for the work done and would love to see further development of 2dcl.
Further, I’d like to get opinions on an idea I had regarding 2dcl development. What about funding 2dcl development with a land claim in 2dcl? Whitelist current land owners’ wallets and allow them to claim the land at a fixed per lot price. Unclaimed land could possibly be open to the public? I’m sure there may be technical or administrative obstacles but thought I’d throw the initial thought out here. Cheers.
We cant really verify how hard you tried spending the DAO Treasury, you missed more updates then posted so i dont know what your subjective opinion is about several.
With such an amount you have to be responsible enough to atleast post an update, dont talk but post simple text just to keep us updated.
Yet I believe if the community trust you enough by voting here you should really work on these factors this time, if your next proposal is reasonable enough I will also vote yes for it but really want to see if this one will pass or not.
This has always been a really cool project. I just don’t see how developing a 2D client is useful. Who would use this or benefit from it? How far do we want to continue to develop it and for what purpose?
While I believe this is a time for building, 2+ years is a long time for a completed project like this. A lot can/will change in that time frame. What are some steps/features that you think will keep a 2D platform relevant in such a market that is moving so quickly and will advance exponentially in that time frame?
Besides it being a client that doesn’t depend on the foundation (which I think is valuable per-se), a lot of tech that we developed and will develop can be used by anyone to create different kinds of experiences on top of the protocol.
For example, we created an open-source catalyst client in Rust that can be used by anyone to communicate with catalyst from Rust (or C, or Ruby or any language that supports external libraries).
One of the things I’d love to work on to ease the creation of experiences is a visual language that can be used by non-programmers to mix and match behavior. My goal is to make this language as compatible as possible with ECS7, so that it has the potential to be used for 3d lands as well.
Again, I think creating tooling that can be reused is essential for the long-term survival of Decentraland, and that’s at the core of this project.
The 2 year timeframe I mentioned is for the vision of an ecosystem of tools, is not that we wait for 2 years and suddenly release a lot of stuff, it’s an iterative process. The goal is to work on the most important things that we can work on during a 3/4-month period.
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying. If I understand correctly these 2D tools being built will be applicable to 3D scenes as well yeah? If that’s the case I’m all for the continuation of development in smaller chunks.
I’d like to encourage you and your team to try again in the future. You finished a majority of the work you set out to do despite the challenges encountered during the process. You enumerated some of them on one of your updates as " Lack of documentation, The Foundation is making a pretty big change regarding how scenes work, and a difference in philosophy. Were you in communication with the DAO committee and with DCL Foundation along the way as you encountered trouble? Were the delays discussed and options agreed upon? It’s not like you were given funds to create a 3rd party client and a 2D protocol of DCL but suddenly and without any communication used the money to throw yourself and your friends a party.
I have just begun to review your repository on GitHub and I look forward to installing and trying out 2DCL on my own. This was an ambitious project that achieved a qualified success. I
