Development, Team and Phase 1
This article walks through the, game development process, future team expansion, and phase 1 of launching the collectibles and the first mini-game.
Emoticoons is focused on providing value and utility to the game and its token on the WAX blockchain. This is done through rewarding players with golden tokens, items, and potions for completing games & quests.
The core of the future game revolves around collecting gold tokens and upgrading your NFT characters, buildings, competing in daily quests, single player games, multi-player games, events and much more. Players need an emoticoon character to play the games. Levelling up their emoticoons by training and equip their characters with potions and gear to enhance chances of winning in multi-player events.
Emoticoons are 3D collectibles compatible with AR/VR technology and will be playable in an open world full adventures and mini-games on the wax blockchain.
PRE-PRODUCTION:
The most important stage of our game development, is brainstorming on how to give life to the many ideas. This is where emoticoons project started. Essentially, pre-production defines and planning what our game is about, why it should be made, and what it’s going to take to make it.
In pre-production, we found answers to questions like:
- What is our game about?
- Who will be the audience?
- Which blockchain platform will it be launched on?
- How will it be monetized? Will it be play to earn, or free to play with in-game purchases?
- How long will it take to develop?
- What staff and resources do we need?
- What are the costs going to be?
- How will it be financed?
- Do we have the technological capabilities to build it?
At this point our team is very small and consists of a group of 3 students with quite some experience, creating the basic structure of the game, creating the characters and resources, and developing the mini games. The team will of course be expanded as soon as the budget allows.
The information gathered during this stage of pre-production forms the basis of the Emoticoon game white paper document, that can be found on our website.
THE PROJECT WHITEPAPER DOCUMENT:
The Emoticoon white paper document is essentially the project and game’s base document. It’s a living document which helps everyone understand and get on board with the greater vision of the project. The Emoticoon whitepaper includes things like:
- The idea or concept
- Story and characters
- Core game mechanics
- Gameplay
- Art and/or sketches
- Monetization strategy
- Blockchain earn model
- Tokenomics
As a living document, the whitepaper is continuously updated and refined throughout production. This is because of technical or financial restraints, or simply realizing that things just don’t look, play or work as well as we had initially hoped.
The whitepaper keeps us organized, helps us identify potential risks, and lets us see ahead of time who we may need to hire/outsource to, in order to bring the project to life. The game idea may seem fairly straightforward, but once we lay it out in a whitepaper, we soon realized just how big and resource-heavy the project is.
Another reason for our whitepaper is to help pitch and find collectors to finance the game. Potential investors will want to see a solid plan before investing.
Finally, the whitepaper helps us market the product’s to create a community, and let people know what it’s all about once it’s ready to be released.
CREATING CHARACTERS / PROTOTYPING (NFTs)
During this stage we created the model prototype’s of our characters, resources and all RAW future in-game assets is a test that checks functionality, mechanics, and art direction.
Prototyping happened in the pre-production phase, where we tested, whether or not the idea will work, and if it is worthwhile to pursue. Many of our ideas did not make it to this stage.
The team started with paper designs to create simple characters and buildings, that we later re-created in different software programs, until we had simple but effective assets that worked perfectly in Augmented Reality.
The goal was to get a prototype up and running to test if our ideas really work and if the game is as fun as we’d hoped. Prototyping can also reveal challenges, such as ensuring perfectly working 3D models and the visuals in AR, this challenge could potentially change the entire course of a project, and was therefore an extremely important phase. After the prototyping, we created the final assets.
PRODUCTION
Production is the longest stage of our pipeline. Ranging anywhere from 1 to 2 years, production is where the game really starts to take shape. The story is refined, assets (characters, recources and buildings) are created, the rules of earning are set, levels and worlds will be built, code will be written, and so much more!
We develop a complete online play2earn game that includes crypto transactions.
- Implementing a mechanism of blockchain in online games.
- To propose virtual transaction in-game experience.
- Provide security from scammers and prevent online frauds.
- To develop a solution that runs our game using Blockchain network- WAX.
- Allowing players to earn NFTs and crypto coins by playing games
However initial ideas don’t always translate so well in reality, so as the work is being done, the game is being build, continuously tested and refined, in different stages until we full release the DAO version of the Emoticoons mini-games within the Coonverse(meta-verse).
We want the emoticoon collectible NTFs and the entire game to add value and create a great way for players and investors to enjoy and earn money while spending time in the game. This requires more financial resources, a team expansion and a lot of patience.
Production milestones
There are a number of milestones to hit throughout the game development process that happens before and when phase 1 is live.
Prototype: This is the initial test of the mini-games game by the emoticoon team. Some games may never make it past this stage.
First playable: The start of phase 1. The first playable mini-game (Coon Runners) gives a much better idea of the look and gameplay. While it is still far from the final open-world, investors are able to play with there assets, gain experience and start earning during this test phase. When we hit this milestone the trailer and demo are ready for public release!
Pre-alpha: During the pre-alpha phase 1 period is fully operating. The majority of the content is developed in the pre-alpha stage. At this point in game development, some big decisions will need to be made. Content may get cut, or new elements will need to be added to improve gameplay.
Alpha: Once the phase 1 period is fully evaluated and completed, we continue with phase 2. The game is “feature complete” meaning the main features have all been added and the game is mostly playable. Some elements, such as art assets may still need to be added, but controls and functionality should be working properly. The team and player testers will be making sure everything is running seamlessly and reporting errors back to the team.
Beta: At this point, all the content and assets as written in our first version of the whitepaper are integrated, and the team should be focused on optimization rather than adding new functions or features.
Full Launch: The coonverse and their mini-games are fully operating, players are earning and all features are live. During this period our team is upgrading the white paper, implementing the DAO, and working towards a fully community driven game world.
EMOTICOONS DEVELOPMENT TEAM
Our experienced team ensures that all game project and community needs are met. Emoticoons will grow into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO). An integrated on-chain open economy, driven by on-chain decentralized player governance. When the full launch stage is completed, the team will be much larger and will be building new features, that are requested by the DAO voting system. We will hire talented people to build the future of Emoticoons
Project manager
The project manager will makes sure the game development process runs smoothly, milestones are met, risks are anticipated/mitigated, and team members are doing what they’re supposed to. The project managers are the centre of communication between the dev and design teams and executives.
Game developers / programmers
We will need more developers. Game programmers help develop the emoticoon project by turning design concepts into code to create the fully playable mini-games in open game world.
There are many different aspects of programming, for expample:
- Building a customized base engine for the game
- Scripting functions, events, interactions
- Developing and modifying 3D graphic
- Simulating artificial intelligence in opponents
- Adding sound effects
- Implementing game logic and mechanics
- Creating the user interface
- Developing custom tools
- Porting code between platforms
- Identifying and fixing bugs
Game designers
The game designer(s) in our team are the creative driver of the game, and generally a cross between a writer and an artist, with some knowledge of programming. The game design production involves creating, characters, goals, rules, and quests/challenges that drive interactions with other characters, users, or objects.
Designers are responsible for example:
- Developing gameplay, rules, and the scoring system
- Building environments, obstacles, and objects
- Level and world design
- Programming/scripting
- Digital editing
Game artists
The game artists work, will include for example concept artists, animators, and 3D modelers, This group is responsible for bringing color, movement, and life to the game.
While the concept artist is mostly active during pre-production when we designing the initial look, we bring them back again later in the game development process if new elements will be added or the game changes course.
Additional roles
Besides the game development roles mentioned above, we may bring on a number of additional specialists, such as:
- Animators & Modellers
- FX artists
- Audio engineers
- Quest designers
- Interpreters and translators
- Marketeers
Read white paper & Learn more at: www.emoticoons.com
EMOTICOONS PHASE 1
The start of phase 1 from Emoticoons is going to be a milestone moment for how we think about the Coonverse and Emoticoons ecosystem. It is time to lay the fundamentals to create the emoticoon metaverse future!
Starting Q1/Q2 2022, after the founder’s sale event of emoticoons season 1, you will be able to connect your WAX wallet to our players-hub and login to a limited section.
Your journey will begin with unpacking your Emoticoon character(s) or City plot buildings packs. After unpacking, the assets will appear in your inventory in the players-hub. Once your click on place building(s) within the players-hub, the players city plot building(s) will be randomly dropped on the coon city map, from this moment your building will have a permanent spot on the map.
During phase 1 of the coonverse we will be introducing NFTs, the player-hub, and later during phase 1, only one mini-game will be accessible together with a few other features. During phase 1 the game will be available in single player mode. We are focused on security and stability primarily, so we will be rolling out more features over time as we evaluate the activated features.
Features activated during Phase 1:
- Display Collection
- Play Coon Runners single player (P2E game)
- Upgrade emoticoons attribute levels
- City Plot map
- Download unlockable files
- Buy, Trade and Sell NFTs
Community will be the primary foundation emoticoons is built on. Coonverse will be a virtual world where players earn, meet up with friends, family, and co-workers. Friends lists, spatial voice chat, and text chat enable players to easily connect and communicate with each other.
This social aspect of emoticoons is what will drive the heart of the virtual world. Whether players join to chat with friends, explore the coonverse, play games or host a business meeting, emoticoons will provide the ideal environment. This ability to communicate without boarders is a necessity when the community is global.
We would love to hear your feedback in Discord.
Join our Discord at: https://discord.gg/daRZrSFXMF
Twitter: https://twitter.com/emoticoons_
Medium: https://emoticoons.medium.com/
Atomic-hub Collection: https://wax.atomichub.io/explorer/collection/emoticoonwax
