In brief
- The upcoming Solana-based game Star Atlas just released a playable demo through the Epic Games Store for NFT owners.
- Developer ATMTA has also released a toolkit that will allow other studios to connect Unreal Engine 5 based games to the Solana blockchain.
Star Atlas is perhaps one of the most ambitious NFT-driven games on the horizon, although it could be years before the Solana-based strategy game in space is fully taking shape. Avid players won’t have to wait that long to get a taste of it, though: a limited demo has just been released through the Epic Games Store.
Launched today as part of a live-streamed event, Star Atlas: Showroom is a pre-alpha demo of the Unreal Engine 5 technology powering the game. It allows Star Atlas NFT owners to explore a 3D environment and view the ships and vehicles they have invested in.
Star Atlas currently only allows access to people who own the NFTs: they can earn an access key by owning a ship and joining one of Star Atlas’ in-game factions. Michael Wagner, CEO and co-founder of Star Atlas developer ATMTA, said: decode that the demo will also include a single non-NFT ship to explore, and some access codes will be given to select non-owners.
Later this year, the Showroom demo will be expanded with additional features, including multiplayer capabilities, chat functionality and the ability for NFT holders to take their ships for a flight. An NFT is a blockchain token which represents ownership of a unique item, in this case digital spaceships and other vehicles that can be used in a video game.
In addition to launching its own first playable version of Star Atlas, the developer today also released a toolkit to make it easier for other developers to bring their own Unreal Engine 5 games to the Solana. blockchain.
The Foundation Software Development Kit (F-KIT) is an open-source SDK that allows Unreal Engine 5 developers to integrate the Solana blockchain, allowing users to sign transactions to complete in-game actions. Unreal Engine comes from Fortnite creator Epic Games and is widely used in the video game industry as well as for TV shows and movies.
Releasing the F-KIT as an open source tool means that “mainstream studios,” as Wagner put it, “now have a faster path” to making games on Solana. He said other builders could also take the kit and expand it to other networks, such as: Ethereum. For his team, however, it’s also a way to encourage others to “build experiences that expand the Star Atlas universe.”
Star Atlas made a number of other announcements today, including governance structure updates via a DAO and the path to complete decentralization of the game’s economy and ecosystem, as well as an upcoming digital graphic novel that captures the lore of the sci-fi game.
Wagner explained that ATMTA is developing two different customers for Star Atlas: the glossier Unreal Engine 5 version that the company only plans to release through the Epic Games Store — though not in a formal exclusivity deal, a spokesperson for the company said. Epic Games decode-and a simpler web-based WebGL version. All game functionality is available through both versions, but the Epic Games Store version requires a PC with gaming functionality.
The Epic Games Store is a popular PC games platform, with over 194 million users claimed as of late 2021. And unlike its main rival, Steam, the Epic Games Store OK with games that use NFTs and blockchains, as long as they follow the platform’s regulations.
Recently, Mythical Games launched the first NFT based game on the platform: Blankos Block Party, an online coloring playground that the studio claims had over 1 million total users before it reached the Epic Games Store. Another NFT-based game, Gala Games’ shooter GRIT, is also set to release through the same market.
The Star Atlas: Showroom demo is just a taste of the future, a complete gaming experience that sounds like a much more robust affair than your average crypto game today. Big games take time to develop – and in this case Wagner foresees another five or six years of development on Star Atlas.
But Showroom’s launch suggests the kind of incremental release schedule ATMTA has in mind, Wagner said. The Showroom itself will get more features by the end of the year, and by the end of 2023, the team plans to release a full “vertical portion” of the game, i.e. a fully functional (but limited) one. piece of gameplay showing what the full game should be.
“We still have a long way to go,” he said. “But the idea is to continuously release these iterative features so that you constantly get more engagement.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated after publication to clarify that Star Atlas does not have an exclusive deal with the Epic Games Store.
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