Tag: Decentraland SDK Hackathon

The Winners of the Decentraland Game Jam Have Been Announced

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Carnival (the ninth-place winner of the Decentraland Game Jam)

Yesterday, Decentraland announced the winners of their recent Game Jam contest. While there are still approximately 14,000 people waiting for their opportunity to enter the current closed beta of the blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland, the company has thoughtfully included links in their blogpost that will allow any readers to visit the winning scenes without having an account or an avatar set up!

There were a couple of bugs I did encounter yesterday, however. For some reason, the link to the first prize winning entry, The Farm, did not work for me, no matter how many times I tried to reload it. Eventually, someone gave me the in-world coordinates of the entry, so I just signed into Decentraland with my own avatar (which already has access to the closed beta), and I teleported to The Farm to be able to take a few pictures of it to show you here. (The coordinates are -3,-33 if you are interested and want to visit it yourself.)

The first place winner is The Farm (all links were taken from the original blogpost, so this one might not work for you, either):

Another bug that kept coming up is the pop-up message that you see at the top of my screenshot above: a message telling me “You received an exclusive wearable NFT (non-fungible token) mask! Check it out in the avatar editor.” I was told that this is a bug that DCL is aware of and is working to fix as soon as possible.

The Farm appears to be some sort of gathering and manufacturing game around food. If you click on a book in the farmhouse, a series of recipes pops up:

Second prize went to Enchanted Wood, which reminded me of a brain teaser from the venerable puzzle game Myst:

Third place winner Koko Jones had an Indiana Jones adventure theme:

Here’s a list of the remaining Game Jam winners, along with links to visit each one:

Congratulations to all the winners! Have fun exploring! I haven’t even had an opportunity yet to visit all these locations myself.

Also, I have decided to finally create a new, separate category for blogposts about Decentraland on this blog. I may or may not have time to go back and assign that new category to every blogpost I have written about DCL in the past, though. (The old category is Blockchain-Based Virtual Worlds.)

The Decentraland Game Jam Is On!

This morning, Decentraland posted an entry to their official blog:

After much anticipation, video tutorial series, guest blog posts and a global SDK bootcamp, the 2019 Decentraland Game Jam has finally kicked off. Over 2000 digital creators are currently flooding into the Metaverse for two weeks (Sept 16–30) of intense creative development and collaboration, competing for over $250k USD in prizes. Their efforts will form a lasting contribution to the evolution of Decentraland.

Register to join the Game Jam here (this is an affiliate sign-up link; full details here). There are some seriously sweet prizes up for grabs, including:

  • First Place: 350,000 MANA (worth approximately US$21,000 at current exchange rates), plus LAND (Decentraland’s virtual land parcels)
  • Second Place: 200,000 MANA (worth US$12,000), plus LAND
  • Third Place: 100,000 MANA (worth US$6,000), plus LAND
  • 4th through 10th Place: 50,000 MANA each (worth US$3,000), plus LAND
  • 11th through 20th Place: 25,000 MANA each (worth US$1,500), plus LAND
  • Every qualifying scene wins 1,000 MANA each (approx. US$60), plus LAND

Please note that prizes above 50,000 MANA are subject to an irrevocable six-month vesting schedule (in other words, you have to wait 6 months before withdrawing the money).

So, what are you waiting for? Register today and get cracking!

Join the Decentraland SDK Game Jam! SDK Workshops Run Sept. 8th to 15th in Three Languages!

The Decentraland SDK Game Jam runs from Sept. 16th to 30th, 2019! This is a content creation contest for the blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland, where you have an opportunity to win a share of 2,500,000 MANA cryptocurrency tokens and 200 LAND virtual land parcels, prizes worth an estimated US$275,000 in total value.

Register to join the Game Jam here (this is an affiliate sign-up link; full details here).

Even better, Decentraland has announced that they will be running SDK workshops, both online (via Twitch) and in various physical locations around the world, from Sept. 8th to 15th, 2019! Attend a workshop and improve your building skills before the contest starts!

Sessions will be held in three languages: English, Spanish and Chinese (Mandarin). I do not speak Spanish or Mandarin and I used Google Translate to translate from English.
Las sesiones se realizarán en tres idiomas: inglés, español y chino (mandarín). No hablo español ni mandarín y utilicé Google Translate para traducir del inglés.
会议将以三种语言进行：英语，西班牙语和中文（普通话）。我不会说西班牙语或普通话，我使用谷歌翻译来翻译英语。

Here are all the details (please note that all times listed for real-life physical locations are local times; please use a tool like the Time Zone Converter to see what time these events take place in your time zone). All times for Twitch streams are given in Eastern Standard Time (EST). Here is the Twitch channel: https://twitch.tv/decentraland

Sunday, Sept. 8th, 2:00–6:00 p.m. Guangzhou Time – Guangzhou University (Guangzhou, China) Roy from our Chinese community will deliver a 30-minute presentation on Decentraland, followed by an SDK Workshop by Stephen Zhou, winner of our June Hackathon. (in Mandarin).
来自我们华人社区的Roy将在Decentraland上发表一个30分钟的演讲，接着是我们六月黑客马拉松的获胜者Stephen Zhou的SDK研讨会。 More details at: https://www.meetup.com/TheMetaverse/events/264024907/

Monday, Sept. 9th, 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Online (Twitch). Nico Earnshaw from Decentraland HQ presents 101: Decentraland SDK Workshop. (in English)

Tuesday, Sept. 10th, 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Online (Twitch). Interweaver from the Decentraland community presents Building Blocks – Decentraland SDK Workshop. (in English)

Tuesday, Sept. 10th, 7:00–10:00 p.m. Shanghai Time – Neutrino Coworking Space (Shanghai, China). Roy from our Chinese community will deliver a 30-minute presentation on Decentraland, followed by an SDK Workshop by Stephen Zhou, winner of our June Hackathon.
来自我们华人社区的Roy将在Decentraland上发表一个30分钟的演讲，接着是我们六月黑客马拉松的获胜者Stephen Zhou的SDK研讨会。 (in Mandarin)

Wednesday, Sept. 11th, 7:00–10:00 p.m. Shanghai Time – Neutrino Coworking Space (Shanghai, China). Roy from our Chinese community will deliver a 30-minute presentation on Decentraland, followed by an SDK Workshop by Stephen Zhou, winner of our June Hackathon.
来自我们华人社区的Roy将在Decentraland上发表一个30分钟的演讲，接着是我们六月黑客马拉松的获胜者Stephen Zhou的SDK研讨会。 (in Mandarin)

Wednesday, Sept. 11th, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Online (Twitch). Carl Fravel, the District Leader for Aetheria and The Decentraland Conference Centre, presents From Builder to SDK: A No-Frills Art Pipeline Decentraland SDK Workshop (in English).

Thursday, Sept. 12th, 9:00 am–12.30 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Time – Multimedia University (MMU) (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Leelin will deliver a 30-minute presentation on Decentraland, followed by a Decentraland SDK Workshop by Tak. An introduction to blockchain by the CEO of Blocklime (in English). Please register for this presentation at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decentraland-x-bitcoinmalaysia-cryptocurrency-meetup-worq-subang-tickets-70875116381

Friday, Sept. 13th, 6:30–10:00 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Time – Komune Coworking Space (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Tak, a winner of our June Hackathon, will deliver a 30-minute presentation on Decentraland at the Blockchain Gaming Meetup, followed by a Decentraland SDK Workshop (in English).

Friday, Sept. 13th, 11:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Online (Twitch). Spidymonkey from the Decentraland community presents a Decentraland SDK Workshop (in English).

Saturday, Sept. 14th, 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Kuala Lumpur Time – Asia Pacific University of Innovation & Technology (APU) (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia). Tak, a winner of our June Hackathon, will deliver a 30-minute presentation on Decentraland, followed by a Decentraland SDK Workshop (in English).

Sunday, Sept. 15th, 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Online (Twitch). Nico Earnshaw from Decentraland HQ presents 101: Decentraland SDK Workshop.
Nico Earnshaw de Decentraland HQ presenta 101: Taller de SDK de Decentraland. (in Spanish)

Sunday, Sept. 15th, 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time – Online (Twitch). Scott/Baus from Decentral Games presents an SDK Workshop (in English). This session is going to be focusing on blockchain interactions with scenes. Our team will answer any questions you might have! This blog post would be good to check out beforehand: https://decentral.games/blog/tutorial-4-using-the-ethereum-blockchain-in-your-scene

There’s still time to enter the contest and win some serious prizes! Register today!

Decentraland: An Update

Decentraland has published an update on their blockchain-based virtual world project on their official blog. Apparently, I was lucky enough to be one of the first 200 people invited to visit and explore the platform!

The first of Decentraland’s World Explorers – 200 pioneers including district leaders, moderators and content creators – have been sharing their first impressions. In short, they’re loving their time in Decentraland.

While we continue working to fix performance, iron out bugs and stability issues, we’re letting in 50 more people a week, with a goal to increase this to 2000 weekly active users by the end of September. By this time, we hope to have the user-facing features in place that will make World Explorer the complete experience – like being able to create and edit your Avatars inside the client, wear NFT items from your inventory and crucially – so you know where you are in the world – access a navigation map.

Unfortunately, it would appear that the open public beta has been pushed back until October 2019 at the earliest:

As we round into Q4, we’ll be ready to open World Explorer to the entire community. Once we’re satisfied with the stability, scalability and performance, we’ll then turn our attention to the fun and social sides of the experience. Users will:
– Get proper on-boarding
– Experience better content
– Express themselves with Avatar animations
– Travel to popular and trending places thanks to an advanced World Map; and
– Enjoy a set of social features

While the delays are disappointing, I can understand why they are necessary. Decentraland is up and running, but in my opinion it still needs a lot of work and polish before they can open the doors to everybody! If you missed the photos and videos from my first in-world tour, you can see them here. It looks as though thousands of eager DCL investors are going to have to rely on second-hand reports for at least the next couple of months.

In addition to my blogging about Decentraland, the platform is also capably covered by the dedicated blogs DCL Blogger and DCL Plazas. Matty from the DCL Blogger (another one of the first 200 allowed in) has even posted a couple of videos of his visits to Decentraland:

As you can see from Matty’s videos, there is still a lot of empty space in Decentraland. Hopefully, that will start to fill up as more people deploy their creations! There should be some interesting contributions as a result of the upcoming Decentraland SDK Hackathon. There’s still time to enter the contest, and you could win MANA (DCL’s cryptocurrency) and LAND (DCL’s 16 m by 16 m square plots of virtual land) as prizes.

And I will continue to report on developments as the project moves forward. Stay tuned!