[DAO:e214941] Monster Hall Roguelike Game

[dao]

by 0xb7637542279e38fadbcdf7298aa381aafd157795 (MonsterHall)

Should the following $120,000 grant in the In-World Content category be approved?

Abstract

The mission of Monster Hall is to develop a diversified IP project on Decentraland. Focusing on gaming as its core, Monster Hall will additionally feature musical performances, art exhibitions, fashion showcases, and immersive virtual spaces. The first game to be launched by Monster Hall is an unpredictable roguelike game, where each section of the game offers players a unique experience. Leveraging the enhanced capabilities of SDK 7, Monster Hall will feature rich, original special effects and dynamic UI to elevate the Decentraland gaming experience and visual aesthetics to new heights.

Grant size

120,000 USD in DAI

Project duration

10 months

Beneficiary address

0xb7637542279e38fADBcDF7298aA381AAFd157795

Email address

astorirwidin@gmail.com

Description

Background

I joined Decentraland in late 2021, initially without any specialized development skills. Like many community members, I was attracted by the limitless possibilities of the Metaverse. Through learning the rich resources provided by the community, I gradually acquired a range of skills from 3D modeling to programming. I began to work on Monster Hall in my free time. During the SDK 6, I created a four-land scene and a four-land shooting game, which have not been released yet. Due to various reasons, I had to make many compromises in the game development process. However, the release of SDK 7 and Worlds solved many challenges I was facing before and prompted me to fully transition to a new game project. During the development of the new project, I invited several members to join. We determined to achieve our goals and are pround to grow alongside Decentraland.

I released the previous scene designs and game videos, as well as a demo for the new game. Although these works are still developing, they offer a preliminary showcase of Monster Hall’s artistic design and gameplay mechanics.

External Image

Previous Game Video
Previous Scene Demo
New Game Video
New Game Demo

Short-Term Plan

Within the framework of this proposal, our objective is to complete the alpha version of Monster Hall’s game in the next ten months.

• 3 Randomly generated maze maps with unique styles
• 1 Battlefield designed specifically for a boss fight
• 1 Mysterious hidden map
• 40+ Multifunctional game items
• 5 Different types of enemies
• 1 Boss enemy
• 15+ Unique player skills
• 4 Weapons
• 15+ Environment buffs
• 10+ Player buffs

We will also introduce leaderboards to incentivize player engagement. In addition to game content, we plan to enhance Monster Hall’s main scene through improving visual art, character designs, and feature optimizations. During Decentraland’s MVFW in March 2024, we intend to construct an interactive stage within Monster Hall’s main scene. This will provide high-quality content for community events and increase user traffic and visibility for Monster Hall. This will mark our first endeavor to integrate the Monster Hall IP with community events.

What Monster Hall Aims to Bring to Decentraland

We are dedicated to delivering games with exceptional artistic design and events to Decentraland. Monster Hall is more than just a game, it will also serve as an open IP within the Decentraland ecosystem. We aim to extend Monster Hall’s influence to a broader audience, attracting more users to Decentraland and encouraging them to stay in this imaginative virtual world for the long term. Through ongoing community engagement, strategic partnerships, and high-quality content, we aim to make Monster Hall an important symbol in the Decentraland community.

Twitter
Discord
Wearables&Emotes

External Image

Roadmap and milestones

2023

• October - November: Refine Monster Combat System and Game Items
  Will focus on refining and optimizing the monster combat systems and game items which are crucial for player character progression.
• December: Refine Environment Buffs and Player Buffs
  Will focus on environment and player buffs to increase the complexity of the game and offer dynamic challenges.

2024

• January: Main Scene Construction
  The main scene will serve as the visual core of Monster Hall and will be the future hub for player social interaction and community events.
• February: First Event Production in Conjunction with MVFW
  Will prepare for an event related to Decentraland’s MVFW, including wearables and virtual fashion shows related to Monster Hall IP.
• March: MVFW Event and Refine Weapon System
  The MVFW event will take place. At the same time, we will complete the weapon system to enhance the player’s combat experience.
• April - May: Refine Game Music and Sound Effects, Develop Backend Features, Balance Game Values
  Will focus on the game’s music and sound effects. We will also work on developing the game backend and adjusting game values for balance.
• June - July: Create and Release Rewards, Optimize Game, Alpha Test
  Will start crafting game rewards in the final two months, optimizing game performance and user experience. Once the alpha test is launched, we will collect player feedback for further improvement.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

[Quorra]

Long-Term Plan

Detailed and Rich World-Building

We aspire to create a credible universe. Thus, when designing a fictional planet, for instance, we will carefully craft its origin and development history according to the rules of its universe. This extends to designing the planet’s climate, natural resources, and the ecosystems of its indigenous life forms. This would include logically coherent evolutionary processes, behavioral habits, and more. If the species on the planet develop intelligent civilizations, we would further imbue them with unique cultural norms, technological advancements, and so on. Characters from these different worlds will bring their stories to life within Monster Hall.

Game Content Expansion

We will continue to enrich the game content, revealing the intricacies of the world through the medium of gameplay. We plan to add more maps, environments, weapons, items, and creatures to the existing game. These expansions will include logically coherent behavioral models for creatures with different habits, incorporate clues related to the story narrative into the game, and integrate wearable attribute bonuses into the game system. Additionally, we aim to enhance the game’s reward mechanisms, adding quests and achievement systems in conjunction with Decentraland’s Quest System, which will feature a variety of prizes and will be continuously optimized based on user feedback. Moreover, we’re considering adding new gameplay features in future updates.

Home System Development

We’re introducing a user-friendly home system where users can have their own private space at no cost. We’re crafting an intuitive interface for furniture placement and interaction so users can effortlessly decorate their Monster Hall homes without any coding skills. We’ll roll out a range of functional furniture and Monster Hall-themed decor. Through various events, users can either earn or buy unique furniture items, allowing for further personalization. For example, they can use a phonograph to select and play their preferred background music. In their space, users can showcase their achievements and rare items, and even invite their beloved Monster Hall virtual characters to reside with them. Furthermore, these spaces can be displayed to everyone. Users can organize events, host parties, and choose real players they prefer as neighbors.

Community Engagement and Events

We aim to make Monster Hall an influential IP within the Decentraland community and actively participate in the community’s monthly events. Gradually, we will integrate gaming elements and interactive features into various types of community events, including music, art, fashion, etc.

Design Principles

While ‘Play to Earn’ is trending in the world of Web3 games, Monster Hall firmly believes in “Play for Fun” as the core philosophy behind its game design. We believe that the heart of gaming should offer a joyful and pleasing experience.

Revenue Model

At present, we have launched some wearables and emotes, and we plan to add in-game functionalities or other added value to all NFTs associated with Monster Hall. As we expand the Monster Hall IP, we are exploring additional premium paid content, which will serve as a principal source of revenue, including a range of offerings, from special NFT items and exclusive wearables to subscription services and more.

[Malloy]

Yes This is a no brainer

[Canessa]

I love the graphics and overall vibe of Monster Hall, and I’m glad to see you’ve come back after a long absence.

I’m reluctant however to award this sum of money to a game being developed in the alpha stage. I personally would prefer to see projects apply for a lower tier grant first, prove that your team can deliver on what is promised, then come back in 6 months to ask for a larger sum. This is what successful projects like Vroomway have done. Since revocation of grants for projects that are not delivering on what they have promised is proving to be exceedingly difficult, I’m afraid we as a community must be more selective of what grants we approve.

Like I said, I really like the overall aesthetic of Monster Hall, but I think a smaller grant would be more reasonable to request.

May I please ask: Since your roadmap leaves you testing your alpha game in 10 months, what will you do if it still needs more development at that time?

Will you ask for an additional grant in 10 months to continue development?

[Canessa]

I actually need to pause and get some clarification… Above are the wearables you created in the past, WHICH I LOVED. Your original build was amazing, lots of steampunk/Harry Potter vibes and very well detailed. The below pictures are the current monsters you show in your game. To me this is a stark difference in aesthetic and quality:

Are these pictures indicative of the level of art aesthetics you will be producing? They are very different from the Monster Hall I saw and wished someone would finish in 2022.

I mean this in the kindest, but most honest way possible, the graphics above do not reflect what I feel like a game that we spend $120,000.00 should look like.

[grimey]

This is one of the most professional looking games I’ve seen in DCL. I’m super excited to see where you take it with a grant like this. You’ve got my vote. Good luck!

[Shiny]

The game has a very nice art style and also you have left a very good impression with your video of gameplay. I was very hyped after seeing it on Twitter.

But I went in the world, played it and after 5 minutes I was bored.

For me it is No currently, but I would support a smaller grant to start with.

[TheCryptoTrader69]

The art for the previous game looks great (I’m a huge fan of the Monster Hunter series). Canessa brought up a very good point: will you be maintaining that level of quality/polish as the previous game? I know art/models in games usually go through many iterations as they progress from being a proof of concept/prototype to the final result. Is the style currently visible in the new game demo representative of the final style or are those just place-holder/rough-up assets until further development is done?

I’m not trying to harp on the style, Risk Of Rain was able to pull in millions using a very similar style, I’m just looking for some clarification

I’d also like to touch on this quote:

“Monster Hall is more than just a game, it will also serve as an open IP within the Decentraland ecosystem.”

Could reiterate on what you mean by ‘open IP’? I don’t see any mention of open-sourcing any code/opening up the ability for players to host their own game scenes (I got a little excited that this might be the case), so it might just be another way of saying ‘actively maintained IP’.

Thanks!

[Quorra]

Hi @Canessa , I’m glad you like our overall aesthetic and appreciate your continued support of Monster Hall. I appreciate the time you took to read through our proposal.

In response to your second question, I have utilized hand-drawn textures for all the wearables in my previous releases, and extensively employed this style in smaller scenes. While this style is rich and expressive, it has a limitation: the textures demand a significant amount of computing resources. This isn’t an issue in small static scenes or wearables with independent computing resources. However, in our new project, the planned scenes are considerably larger, and the battle scenes require numerous special effects and model animations to enhance the player experience. These elements will demand a significantly greater amount of computing resources compared to merely considering static 3D models.After thorough consideration, we decided to prioritize the current style in the new project, utilizing a blend of gradient and solid colors. We believe this style not only retains richness and expressiveness in crafting large scenes but also ensures that we can incorporate more special effects, models, and model animations.

In our setting, players can travel to different worlds, so we are not limited to a particular artistic style, which is also the charm of Metaverse. In some specific scenes, we will adopt more artistic styles, including but not limited to the style of highly detailed model texturing that you prefer.

Regarding your first question, I am not sure if you have tried our scenes and games. It’s possible that I didn’t mark it clearly. If you haven’t tried it yet, I hope you can spend some time experiencing it.

Decentraland

Upon entering, you can see that our game can now go through a complete game process. I want to highlight a few key points that I think are crucial:

• Maze scene generation: This is a very important part of the roguelike game, with random maps generating scenes, every level offers a different experience, which we have managed to achieve. Players can even generate infinite and non-repeating level maps within the same game.

• Dynamic UI: We are currently considering more on dynamic UI, where the majority of our UI elements are not static or suddenly appearing, but are constantly moving with player interaction. This is a point we believe to be very important, and SDK 7 has been able to implement it well.

• Monster AI: Each type of monster in our game has its own unique behavior pattern. Even the same monster can have more than one skill, and there are special effects coordinated with the monster’s skill release. Flying monsters will change their movement trajectory accordingly when they encounter doors or openings while chasing players. Some monsters attack when they detect players approaching, while others only attack after being attacked by players. These details are what we hope to present to the players, we have also initially implemented a more complex monster AI system.

I want to apologize in advance for the various issues that might arise in the current Demo. Apart from a large number of features that have not yet been developed, there are some known issues that we haven’t had time to resolve and optimize. Currently, a feature that significantly impacts performance is the algorithm of the unknown map UI that players activate while exploring. This can cause brief stutters when you venture into unknown areas.

Regarding the grant issue, this grant will cover the development of all short-term plans mentioned in the roadmap. We define the Monster Hall alpha version as a complete game with refined functionality and aesthetics. For the maintenance, operation, and iteration of this roguelike game after the Alpha version, we promise not to apply for additional grants.

We will continue to work on our long-term plans later on, which is to create an IP project in Decentraland. While we are not yet profitable, we will request grants for the development of new large-scale features beyond the short-term plans. We hope that this game and more future features will be open and community-oriented, but whether it’s worth implementing will be decided by the community.

I understand that applying for large grants may pose a risk to community finances, and we are willing to be supervised by the community and DAO at any time. Last year, I spent my spare time doing independent development, and earlier this year, myself and newly joined team members quit our original jobs to work full-time on developing Monster Hall in Decentraland. This year, we have not worked on other works and have no other sources of income and developing Monster Hall on Decentraland is also a venture for us. If we cannot get the grants, we will start with working on some outsourcing works and continue to develop Monster Hall in our free time. We will not give up on this project.

Please feel free to let us know if you have more questions, and thank you again for your interest in our projects.

[Quorra]

Hey @Shiny ! Thank you for your attention and experience. I am sorry that this demo could only showcase the art and conduct technical verification for the combat. Roguelike games require more props and skills to allow players to enhance themselves in the game, which is the fun of the game. There’s still a lot of development work needed, and we haven’t completed it. We welcome you to continue following our progress.

[Quorra]

Hey @TheCryptoTrader69 , thank you for your interest!

The art in the demo is what we have settled on for now. You mentioned Risk Of Rain, a classic roguelike game. Unlike traditional games which can adjust the rendering pipeline from the engine level, Decentraland, being a virtual platform, has its unified rendering pipeline, which restricts us from making more detailed modifications. If you observe closely, you’ll notice that we added fog models bound to the player to create effects of vision and fog in the demo. This example shows that we can only explore a more suitable and delicate art style under the platform rules. As you mentioned, the models in the current demo are not the final version. We will continue to iterate. I’ve also shared some thoughts on the art in my response to Canessa. If you have more discussions regarding the art, feel free to share your views anytime.

Regarding the open IP, I am very willing to discuss this further. Some of our team members have participated in fan art of well-known IP projects. We are envisioning an IP world co-built by the main team and community players. This idea requires more technical validation, and we have already seen some possibilities by certain features in SDK 7. We have such a vision, but how to implement it requires more consideration.

I want to elucidate more about Monster Hall’s ideas. In fact, whether game, the smart wearables we are currently developing, or the future home system, we have always been considering freedom and extensibility, striving to allow anyone to create things in our project. In our long-term plan, the current game is just a part of the entire Monster Hall game system. The rewards obtained from the game can be exchanged for various free creation tools and wearables, and it will ultimately serve functions of creation like the home system. Our ultimate goal is not just to let players experience our game but to let players find their own game within ours. We hope to co-create with everyone. We will listen to the community’s voice, provide possibilities for free creation for everyone, and this game is just the first step. Compared to traditional games, metaverse games have more possibilities.

By the way, your Vroomway project is excellent. I am delighted to discuss with you. Good luck to your team

[Shiny]

Changed my vote to Yes, from all the current proposals this one I would like to pass the most (even though I stil think it would be better to start with smaller grant)

[tomasu]

Voted yes but like others suggested it would be way easier to approve if you break this down into different stages and request a smaller sum of amount initially.

[goddamm7it_f3c8]

The artistic style of the game is so good, UI is slick, enemies are smart, lots of abilities to choose in game, music in comfy.
I like this game a lot and it’s already the best in decentraland, what else to say…
I don’t know how no other game is this good looking or feels this natural to play, finally some high quality gameplay, still in early stage but if you continue like this, the game will be top 3 by players so quickly.
I have few mana to vote but it’s a yes, switched from no after seeing the trailer, i thought it was typical bs trailer good looking then the game would look poor, but i was surprised. Then remains to be seen what difference there is when taken in the main game instead of worlds, but i guess it would be about the same?

[SugarClub]

Hello @Quorra , you mentioned the difference between hand drawing textures versus more simple gradient colors textures for your upcoming game having significant computer resources needed . Can you explain more ?

From my understanding as long as you use the same amount of textures per model (2 set of 512/512 for color and emissive ) it shouldn’t matter wether they are hand drawn or simple gradient colored or baked on the texture map .

Am I missing something? Thks for clarity

[Quorra]

Hi @SugarClub . Indeed, there are tricks in optimizing models. More detailed explanations can be found in DCL’s documentation. We are working on having more models share the same texture. You might want to read this section first.

Textures

[SugarClub]

@Quorra I am aware of the docs since I have been creating wearables with baked PBR textures before on my models , so I was wondering why such pipeline wouldn’t be possible with your hand drawn textures without having to impact resources , specially if you are sharing texture sets across different models .

[Quorra]

@SugarClub In the method of hand-drawn textures, to achieve higher levels of detail, a model requires one or even multiple textures. These textures cannot be shared among other models.

In our scenes, hundreds of models are using the same texture.

Hand-drawn textures is OK in wearable development, however, the problem becomes apparent in scene development. This is because, in our game or scenes, we may eventually have thousands of models. Additionally, we have to consider special effects, sound, and animations, which are not concerns in wearable development.

[SugarClub]

Thanks for the explanation.

AFAIK In game development there is often a mixture of higher details and lower details texture sets depending on the assets . For example assets that are much more prominent to the players camera view vs models that are background or secondary in nature . I’m thinking for example of the use of LODs .

I know that DCL is much more limited in that respect but there may be some assets that have higher definition than others in order to compensate for resources as well as give a appearance of higher graphics for the player . Maybe there is room to explore in that area .

In any case good luck

[SugarClub]

@Quorra Also just to add to this since it is a recurring complaint in the DCL community.

Everyone complaints that DCL graphics and games look like crap from the gaming community at large and for new users that are logging in first time .

A part of it is simply the limitation of the DCL rendering engine . But maybe it is also in part due to a lack of expertise by gaming developers to find creative ways for their game to look good even with the limitations. Just food for thought .

( most games that have been developed in DCL were made by amateur studios it seems , so maybe it’s a skill issue … ) I don’t know