Ladder Caster

Inspiration

I used to play games like Diablo 2, trading forum gold on a website called https://d2jsp.com and Tribal Wars as a kid. I've always wanted to create a game, and earlier this year some friends and I earned a lot playing rplanet and other games on the WAX blockchain. Many had obvious flaws, and ultimately it was obvious to me these games were still centralized, just with an automated market built-in. I thought I could move the decentralized gaming industry forward a generation or two by showing what a decentralized game should actually look like.

What it does

LadderCaster is an MMO that aims to pave the way for a new generation of blockchain games on Solana. Gameplay is simple, like playing a board game online, just with thousands of other players at the same time.

The goal of the game is to level up your spellcasters, from level 1 to level 30, before the next ladder (season) begins. Each character is an NFT, which can gain skills, find and equip items, or craft using materials gathered each turn. Players can have as many characters as they wish.

It is the first immutable blockchain game, because once the rules are set for the next season (fully governed by the community) they can and will never be changed. This means players can poor time and money into the game without getting hit with a ban hammer, nerfs, or buffs.

There is one main currency players will want to earn, which is called LADA. It is possible to mine 3 different resources in the first season, and LADA gets distributed every in-game tick based on how many of these resources were not mined, but burned. Each in-game tick in season 1 will last 20 minutes, and depending on which tile of the map players are on, they will mine the available resource or burn resources to craft chests. Each tile will have 5 different tiers, and chests will drop based on luck derived from items equipped on the character. Resources can be burned to create chests, and both moving and casting some spells will cause a player cooldown on mining. New tiles between level 1 to 30 procedurally generated throughout the short season of 60 days.

How we built it

I'm a React developer, so I'm building the entire front-end in React. Unlike most blockchain games, the front-end source code will be public, and eventually maintained fully by the community. It is simple for now, but every season could add new vast new mechanics to the game, and who knows, in a few years we could be playing it in VR.

Challenges we ran into

Well, as I am the only developer working on it, and my goal was to get a Demo and landing page ready for Solana Breakpoint originally (started working on this about a month before the hackathon was announced) I couldn't get around to writing Rust code so I don't expect any prizes although some would be nice.

I also became very sick during the last 3 weeks of the hackathon, so the demo isn't fully working just yet. I worked on it all alone, and between that and my fibromyalgia causing brain fog and lack of energy at times, well lets just say I work better with a team.

I invite you to admire my code and use it in your projects (I know a little website that could use some better React code and design over on FTX.com cough cough SBF you're my hero please fund me).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud of the design and workflow for the project, I think I will have a solid MVP that doesn't need to be overly complex, as each season can bring new features without breaking the structure or economy. Every few days yields on resources and XP will be reduced for all existing ladders, meaning players are incentivized to reach level 30 with their spellcasters, and bring them over to the new ladder where none of their gear or resources transfer over to keep earning LADA tokens which is the only thing you can buy (or eventually breed) spellcasters with and transfer level 30 spellcasters with at a reduced rate to buying a new one in the new ladder.

What we learned

I needed a lot more refactors than I would like this early on to dial in a look, but I've greatly improved my design system and workflow so I can easily start other Solana projects in the future that I have lined up.

What's next for Ladder Caster

Demo, landing page, and whitepaper/roadmap ready by Solana Breakpoint is the plan. All of this was done alone, but now that summer is over I'll be getting help from my friends/team to bring things to the next level before raising money to hire them all.