Original Title: "Crypts and Caverns: A Giant Awakened by CheDAO"
Source: AW Research
AI Summary
This article provides a comprehensive review of Crypts and Caverns (C&C) as a programmatic generated map NFT project and its history and role in the Lootverse ecosystem. The article explores the reasons behind CheDAO's acquisition of C&C, highlighting the enormous potential they see in its adaptive map generation capabilities. CheDAO plans to integrate C&C into Lootverse and other areas, with the aim of establishing it as a widely adopted on-chain game map standard. The article also traces the feedback from early C&C community members. Overall, this article discusses the prospects of community-driven on-chain games, which will enter a new era with C&C.
Crypts and Caverns (C&C) is a project that generates NFT maps programmatically on the blockchain. Recently, it was acquired by CheDAO, which has sparked interest in C&C within various communities in the Lootverse ecosystem. Many people want to know what C&C is, its development direction, and how it aligns with CheDAO's vision. This new attention provides an opportunity for CheDAO to relaunch C&C.
Lootverse is an ecosystem derived from Loot, which is a core text-based random equipment NFT created by Dom Hoffman in August 2021 (loot is about to celebrate its second anniversary!). Despite its simple appearance, it has inspired unlimited creativity and imagination within the NFT community. People have started to expand various aspects based on the world implied by Loot, such as stories, games, art, and so on. Lootverse covers all of these derivative works and builds an open metaverse.
There are four core projects in Lootverse:
The following image shows Atlas, a world map that includes a total of 16 countries, such as FOX, Power, and Giants. All of these countries originate from the metadata of Loot. From the perspective of complex political patterns and diverse nations, Atlas has many similarities with "Game of Thrones". In addition, NFT projects such as Realms, Loot, Genesis Adventurers, Crypts and Caverns also follow the basic settings of these countries in Atlas.
Realms are randomly generated lands and kingdoms in the form of NFTs. It introduces a grand gaming environment to Lootverse. Players who own Realms can build structures, collect resources, and wage war against others in the game. This provides a backdrop for strategy games and conflicts. As the core land and territory, Realms provide adventurers in Lootverse with space to explore and conquer.
Loot, as mentioned above, was created by Dom Hoffman and is the beginning of the entire Lootverse. Loot consists of 8000 randomly generated equipment presented as NFTs in text form. Although the appearance is simple, these mysterious items have sparked infinite possibilities. Loot provides the basic components and offers a broader world for other projects to build upon through expansion and derivation. It is the core DNA that generates the Lootverse.
Genesis Adventurers uses legends, rarity, and other mechanisms to create upgraded adventurer characters in Lootverse. It interprets deeper meanings from the original Loot contract and builds complex background stories. Genesis Adventurers adds identity, progress, and richness to the world through its developed characters. As advanced adventurers, Genesis unlocks more complex storytelling and gaming possibilities for Lootverse.
Created by Threepwave, Crypts and Caverns generates underground maps on-chain. The layout, doors, points of interest, and other elements of each map are randomly generated and fully stored on the chain. These map data can be interpreted by games in text, 2D, or 3D formats. By providing these "seeds," Crypts and Caverns allows game creators to easily incorporate randomly generated dungeons. The project enables games like Heroes and LootMMO to quickly build Rogue-like dungeon gameplay on top of loot items and characters. In particular, Heroes integrated C&C into the core Lootverse theme over a year ago, becoming a showcase of C&C's versatility. By using C&C for procedural dungeon generation and incorporating heroes, items, and mechanics, Heroes demonstrates the potential of C&C as a diverse blockchain game element. In this way, Crypts and Caverns adds "locations" to Lootverse and creates randomly but structured environments for adventures.
Crypts and Caverns fills an important gap in Lootverse for those in the encryption industry. While Loot provides items and Genesis Adventurers create characters, Lootverse still lacks the environment and background for adventures to take place. This is precisely the gap that Crypts and Caverns cleverly fills. The randomly generated maps that are completely on-chain create endless possibilities for game developers.
These maps also have a high degree of composability. Data is stored on the chain in a standardized way, allowing any project to access and build on top of the Crypts and Caverns map. We have seen this idea realized in games like LootMMO. As more creators realize the potential of building on top of Crypts and Caverns, a variety of gaming experiences can emerge. Games that combine elements of survival, dungeon exploration, puzzle-solving, and role-playing can all leverage the foundation of Crypts and Caverns.
Just as Loot provides the basic items for the Lootverse world, Crypts and Caverns provides the fundamental building blocks for adventure - random adventure spaces. This perfectly aligns with the spirit of Loot - open, generative, and composable. Crypts and Caverns helps to translate the vast potential of Lootverse into tangible gaming experiences. Although still in its early stages, with imagination and foundational components like Crypts and Caverns, the future looks bright for creating an engaging metaverse. We eagerly anticipate seeing what creative minds will build with the puzzle pieces available today. Crypts and Caverns helps to turn these dreams into reality.
The four NFT projects mentioned earlier have shaped the basic worldview of Lootverse, but to realize Lootverse, a powerful game development framework is essential. And this framework is DOJO.
Dojo is an open-source verifiable game engine built using Cairo. As an important tool in the full-chain game, Dojo represents a significant milestone in on-chain gaming. Its breakthrough proof system enables new possibilities in gaming, such as verifiable random number generation (RNG) and private inputs. Dojo provides core infrastructure such as ECS, networking, and tools to help developers quickly build high-quality blockchain games. With Dojo, the promise of true ownership and interoperability in crypto gaming can finally become a reality. By providing scalable and affordable computation, Dojo unlocks previously infeasible game complexity. As a community-driven open-source project, Dojo fosters permissionless innovation among on-chain game developers. While it supports many Lootverse experiences today, Dojo's goal is to empower the next generation of players with all the game universes across chains.
With the DOJO game engine, game development will be simplified. We are also committed to advancing the core project of Lootverse and forming its foundation framework. This creates a path for developers to create games consistent with the Lootverse framework and use DOJO in the future.
After the birth of C&C, it now has a loyal community of holders who still appreciate its visionary premise. Early holders discussed its huge potential in Lootverse and on-chain interoperability. However, the lack of progress has led to fatigue, and many are wondering if the initial promises will be fully realized.
However, after hearing the news of CheDAO's acquisition, the community's interest was reignited. The community holds a cautious and optimistic attitude, hoping that this marks a restart of development, but not wanting previous work to be abandoned. Many people support the core vision of the project's adaptability mapping module. They emphasize that creative applications are more important than commercial motives.
Overall, under the leadership of CheDAO, the C&C community is excited about the prospect of its revival, but at the same time strongly hopes to maintain the founding principles that initially attracted them to participate. The insights of community members provide valuable perspectives for CheDAO's future planning.
According to interviews with early C&C holders, they mentioned that a key motivation for their participation was the promise of integration with Realms Eternum. This reveals the community's expectations for the applicability of C&C in the Realms Autonomous World. When progress stalled, it triggered some disappointment among the community.
In the proposal, CheDAO expressed confidence in the huge potential and strong community of C&C. The main motivations for acquiring C&C include: developing a fully on-chain C&C game to showcase its utility; collaborating to build a multifunctional C&C mapping module; taking on community management responsibilities; and establishing partnerships to expand C&C's game integration.
The overall vision of CheDAO is to build a fully on-chain ecosystem through community governance. By leveraging the generative mapping capabilities of C&C, CheDAO can enrich the autonomous world it is building, thereby accelerating the realization of its vision.
The C&C community largely welcomes the proposal of CheDAO to revitalize the project. They hope that CheDAO's resources can unleash the potential of C&C on a larger scale. It is crucial to maintain close contact and participation with the community throughout the entire transition process.
Loot, with its algorithm-generated virtual item packs, has created a new form of NFT art and collectibles. By envisioning a community-driven collaborative world on the blockchain, Loot showcases extraordinary imagination. It has spawned the "Lootverse" and sparked a wave of derivative projects in gaming, art, fashion, and more. Its emphasis on openness and community autonomy embodies the decentralized value of blockchain technology.
Building on the concept of Loot, Realms has further developed a vast autonomous world that encompasses a variety of experiences from legends to games. By sharing characters, assets, and environments, Realms is closely integrated with other Lootverse initiatives.
Realms provides tools and conditions for experiments, nurturing the creativity of developers and builders. It also inspires the passion of the community by allowing participation in building a continuous on-chain world. The spirit of collaboration and growth cultivates a vibrant ecosystem.
As a programmatically generated map NFT project, Crypts and Caverns seamlessly integrates into the on-chain worlds of Loot and Realms. By contributing unpredictable and unique maps, C&C brings new possibilities to these environments. C&C can also integrate into games independently developed by CheDAO and others, showcasing its versatility across different projects.
Loot envisioned a community-driven ecosystem, Realms expanded it into a collaborative autonomous world, and C&C provides adaptable and combinable components to enrich world building. The synergy between them pushes the evolution of participation economy and creativity in blockchain gaming to new frontiers.
In order to fully unleash the potential of C&C, CheDAO plans to develop in three directions in the future:
Deep collaboration with the Realms team will seamlessly integrate C&C generated maps into the core Realms gameplay loop. This will solidify C&C as a key component of the flagship core of the Lootverse project.
On this development path, C&C plans to integrate into Realms Eternum by the end of the year, while also developing a map version of Loot Survivor (please refer to our Realms Grant Application for more details).
Loot Survivor plays a crucial role in Lootverse and has important connections with Realms. In this context, it was decided to launch integration with C&C in Loot Survivor, which was subsequently expanded to Realms and the wider Lootverse, presenting a natural process of development.
The following is a demonstration of specific game scenes that emerged after integrating CC NFT into Survivor.
Overview of Functions
Before embarking on an adventure in Loot Survivor, players who own C&C NFTs can choose to enter the map, while players without C&C NFTs will follow the original game process.
About Resources
We will align the search events in LOOT SURVIVORS with the data structure of C&C NFT, including resource output, encounter scenarios, and escape situations. For example:
0 - Stone Temple (30%) → XP(8,15) Enemy_1(level)
1 - Mountain Deep (25%) → XP(10,20) Enemy_2(level)
2 - Desert Oasis (20%) → XP(2,6) Enemy_4(level)
3 - Forest Ruins (12%) → XP(25,50) Enemy_5(level)
4 - Underwater Keep (7%) → XP(35,60) Enemy_9(level)
5 - Ember's Glow (5%) → XP(50,100) Enemy_10(level)
Reward1 (12%) → HP(1,20)
Reward2 (40%) → WEAPON(X,Y)
In short, different types will be assigned different output reward coefficients, including the type and level of encountered enemies.
About Exploration
We will include map information in the exploration results.
For example: encountered XXX (monster name) in XXX (map name).
In addition, we will enhance the narrative of Loot Survivor by adding unique descriptions to each map. This will include special events that occur on the map and their impact.
In addition to Realms, other game experiences will be actively developed around the Loot theme to highlight the adaptability of C&C. The integration of C&C will enrich these new game universes and expand its presence in various Lootverse derivative projects.
In this direction, the C&C plan is to integrate into 5 Loot-themed games by the end of this year. Looking ahead to next year, this number is expected to significantly increase, possibly reaching 20-40 games.
According to the recent plan, C&C will integrate with DevilCell (details can be found in our Realms Grant Application), while integrating Loot items and $LORDS. This plan is expected to be completed by the end of 2023.
DevilCell:
The development plan for DevilCell game will be completed in three stages. In the first version, DevilCell will use C&C as the game map, and the initial version is planned to be tested in September 2023. The second version will integrate Loot items, and the third version will integrate $LORDS.
Here is a brief introduction to the functions of C&C, Loot items, and $LORDS in DevilCell.
Users begin by crafting their own cells at the start of the game. These cells maneuver across the dungeon map, which is represented by CC NFTs, acquiring resources, competing, reproducing, and engaging with a variety of events.
Players can create their own cells at the beginning of the game. These cells move on an underground dungeon map represented by CC NFTs, gather resources, compete, reproduce, and interact with various events.
The role of Loot items in the game.
Integrating C&C completely into a game project that is completely different from the Loot theme will fully leverage C&C as a universal and scalable mapping primitive for building autonomous worlds. To pursue this direction, C&C will drive the integration of more types of external games.
In this direction, it is expected that C&C will be integrated into 5 non-Loot themed games by the end of this year, including Heroes and Cellula. By next year, this number is expected to expand to 30-60 games.
In order to better achieve this goal, we will continue to develop C&C into an advanced map editor. This development aims to make C&C compatible not only with Dojo, but also with Mud and other future game engines. On the other hand, we will also actively expand the developer community. For example, we plan to organize various types of grants, hackathons, game creation competitions, as well as online/offline conferences.
Our overall goal is...
Our comprehensive goals include Realmpire, Lootverse, and C&C Era, which aim to be integrated into a total of 10 games by the end of this year, and to expand this number to 50-100 games by the end of next year.
By pursuing these three directions, CheDAO aims to showcase the diversity of C&C and integrate it into blockchain games such as Lootverse and other games. This will move them closer to their vision of an autonomous world. Other plans include collaborating to optimize C&C as a flexible mapping module for game creators. By expanding the toolkit while respecting the community-driven spirit, the goal is to empower developers to build immersive worlds through generating NFTs (such as C&C). Throughout the integration process, continuous community participation and participatory design are crucial. Despite facing challenges, CheDAO remains committed to unlocking the full potential of combinable NFTs such as C&C.
The future of community-driven on-chain gaming is full of hope.
CheDAO envisions building a thriving developer ecosystem, initially centered around the Loot theme and C&C, empowering developers to build Loot-themed gaming experiences that include C&C. The ultimate goal is for C&C to become the standard for generative mapping in the entire on-chain gaming space. In the long run, CheDAO aims to enable most on-chain games that require procedural mapping to adopt C&C, even those unrelated to Loot. This will achieve CheDAO's broader goal of unleashing the full potential of composable NFT primitives, such as C&C, and empowering the community to drive innovation in the on-chain gaming space for the next generation.
The key points of Community Call.
CheDAO recently held an engaging community meeting with members of Crypts and Caverns on July 31, 2023 at 14:00 UTC. The meeting featured a direct dialogue and can be viewed at https://youtu.be/Q5wIXVGW1Dk.
CheDAO expresses deep gratitude to early believers and shares progress on game integration and the StarkNet bridging plan, as well as support for C&C as a flexible mapping module evolution. In addition to CheDAO, other major participants also shared their thoughts.
Luke and Yao introduced themselves and their projects. Luke talked about Web3MQ, which is a trustless relay network that provides infrastructure for autonomous worlds like C&C. They aim to provide seamless and trustless interactions for users within these worlds. Yao focuses on building communities and governance tools for crypto projects with Metaforo, emphasizing the importance of community governance in decentralized gaming.
Taylor reviewed his journey with C&C. He explained that initially he was attracted to the ubiquity of C&C because it could be a part of any dungeon game. He mentioned that he has been supporting the project since its launch and hopes to see C&C integrated into a wider Loot ecosystem. Taylor also revealed that he believes Damien and Rex, with their experience in operating companies and launching games, are capable of controlling C&C. He mentioned spreading information about C&C through domain funding and contributions made through the domain ecosystem. Finally, he expressed confidence in Damien and Rex's ability to further drive the development of C&C.
During the Q&A session, the community raised thought-provoking questions:
Question 1: "How do you connect maps in the game?"
Answer 1: "CheDAO is designing a map generation module that will receive data from C&C and output an integrated map. More updates will be provided this week."
Question 2: "Which types of games may be most suitable for generating procedural maps?"
Answer 2: "CheDAO currently believes that real-time strategy games may be suitable, as these games require less on-chain strength. However, more exploration is needed."
Question 3: "How can non-developers contribute?"
Answer 3: "CheDAO welcomes feedback on game design, community management, promotion, etc."
Question 4: "How to solve the problem of lack of exits in closed-loop maps?"
Answer 4: "Adding new map properties such as doors is a great suggestion."
Community members are excited about the prospect of C&C's revival under the leadership of CheDAO and hope that resources can fully realize their commitments. The emphasis on preserving core values is also highlighted.
The two parties promise to cooperate on the vibrant C&C ecosystem and communicate regularly. This meeting has taken a hopeful step towards restoring development momentum.
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