Starfall Galaxy

Immerse yourself in an epic space RPG. Experience thrilling space battles, limitless exploration, and endless customization. Forge alliances, wage war, command fleets, and sway a dynamic economy

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Tracks we are submitting to

Metaverse and Gaming, NFTs / ThetaPass

Inspiration

The THETA hackathon served as a catalyst for our team, inspiring us to fulfill our vision of crafting a fun and nostaligic 3D top-down space game for Web3. Our diverse interests range from various gaming genres and Web 3 to cryptocurrencies, NFTs, literature, and multimedia. These influences all contributed to the creation of Starfall Galaxy. Our initial game design process began with a strategic planning session in Miro, enabling us to craft an engaging, user-friendly game design. After an impressive second-place finish in the thirdweb hackathon with Unity, we opted to transition to the Unreal Engine, given its enhanced capabilities and superior graphics. Our dedication to innovation and attention to detail have been instrumental in creating a game experience that we believe players will find thoroughly enjoyable.

What it does

Starfall Galaxy is an action-packed, top-down RPG space game where players can customize almost everything including but not limited to their ships, crew, and in-game soundtrack. Explore the galaxy, mine resources, terraform planets, and build your own fleets to conquer the galaxy and defeat rival factions and celestial bodies. With a focus on player autonomy, players can make strategic decisions, form alliances, engage in real-time space combat, command their fleets and shape the in-game economy. The game objective is to explore, combat, and customize your way through a persistent and dynamic metaverse.

While we intended for the game mechanics and controls to operate in a certain way, we were unable to fully implement everything for this competition due to the challenges that life presented.

Platform

Operating system: Windows 10 64-bit. Processor: Quad-core Intel or AMD 2.5 GHz or superior. Memory: 8GB RAM. Graphics Card: Any DirectX 11 or 12 compatible card.

Control Scheme

Aim with your cursor - Cursor determines the direction your ship travels Hover over Planets, Ships, Space Stations, Asteroids etc.

Action Key
Primary Fire LMB
Secondary Fire RMB
Shields MMB
Move Forward / Back W / S
Strafe A, D
Dodge Left Double Tap A
Dodge Right Double Tap D
Speed Up Tap W
Slow Down/ Reverse Tap S
Activate Short Burst Warp Drive (has a Cool Down) Left Shift
Inventory I
Star Map M
Use a Utility item F
Interact E
Exit ESC

In case the web3 interactions do not trigger Pressing 1: Launches the minting process to get GCRs into your account. This behaves as a reward, for example, after destroying an enemy ship or achieving something in the game.

Pressing 2: we get and print all the metadata for the corresponding (tokenId) NFT. We could put this metadata in a box and display it when pressing the NFT in the inventory.

Pressing 5: Will display the price of the NFT, this is however not working yet because UE doesn't have a native method to read the data coming from the contract.

we have two main contracts deployed into the Theta Network:

The Galactic Credits contract - 0xC1FFA1e5009A16e5bd8DA3CF17Ba506e859C1e2F

The Starfall Galaxy NFT collection - 0xcA18442995Cd77C37c00e2E848E687484AeBE7eb

How we built it

Starfall Galaxy was brought to life through a combination of advanced technologies and the passion and dedication of a small team of professionals. Our journey began by utilizing innovative AI generation tools such as Nightcafe, DALLE-2, Leonardo.io, Scenario and other image generation platforms to create stunning concept art that set the game's visual direction. With a clear vision in place, we used MIRO to layout the general gameplay and objectives for the project.

To bring our ideas to life, our team collaborated to create modular 3D models using Blender and 3Ds Max. The models were then skillfully integrated into the game, allowing us to build and deploy the initial concept to GitHub. Open AI's Chat-GPT and free Unity Asset store assets and sound effects served as placeholders to expedite the initial development process. One of the game's standout features is its seamless integration of blockchain technology, with the aid of thirdweb and Emergence, a testament to our Blockchain expert, Miguel's, expertise and skill.

After securing second place in the Readyplayer3 | thirdweb hackathon, we were inspired to take our project to the next level. As a result, we shifted our production to Unreal Engine, opening up endless possibilities for our team and enhancing the game's potential and visual quality.

Transitioning to Unreal Engine was a game-changer. It provided us with a more robust set of tools prebuilt into the engine, offering greater freedom for our artists and designers to create without needing to know how to code.

Our team has been actively seeking funding to support the continued development of our IP, and participating in the THETA hackathon was a fantastic opportunity for us to build our game in the our preferred engine and refine our skills while adapting to newer technologies. This experience expanded our horizons, enabling us to explore innovative ideas to take our project to the next level.

Overall, the development of Starfall Galaxy has been a labor of love, utilizing cutting-edge technologies and our team's hard work and dedication. We are proud of our achievements so far and thrilled to continue building and improving the game for players to enjoy.

Challenges we ran into

During our participation in this hackathon, the team faced a number of challenges that significantly impacted our performance, morale, and personal lives. The purpose of this writeup is to share our experiences, the obstacles we faced, and how we continue to overcome them.

Limited team size and resources: As a small and dwindling team, we struggled with handling the workload of migrating a game from Unity to Unreal. As time progressed the workload would fall onto 1 or 2 individuals throughout the development of the Unreal Build. Thankfully we had many online and AI resources to provided help and guidance, but we were still stretched thin, which contributed to burnout and affected our personal and professional lives.

Lack of sleep: In order to meet deadlines and complete the game, we found ourselves sacrificing sleep and neglecting our health. This led to a decrease in productivity, as well as a negative impact on our relationships and day jobs.

Low morale: Since there is no guarantee of financial compensation for our efforts during the competition, our motivation began to wane, as the only potential monetary reward was dependent on winning. This uncertainty made it difficult to justify the cost-benefit of our participation, and balancing the project with our daily lives became increasingly challenging as exhaustion set in.

To overcome some of these challenges, we implemented the following solutions: Prioritizing tasks and setting boundaries: We reassessed our goals and prioritized the most critical tasks, setting boundaries to protect our personal lives and maintain a work-life balance.

Focusing on intrinsic motivation: Despite the lack of monetary rewards, we reminded ourselves of the value of the learning experience and the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded individuals. This intrinsic motivation helped us maintain morale and stay committed to our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We've successfully created an engaging game that we believe will captivate a wide audience due to its innovative elements. The development process allowed us to acquire new knowledge and hone our current skills, aspects we take immense pride in. Our achievement of securing the second spot in the third web hackathon with our Unity build is another milestone we're delighted about. Consequently, transitioning to Unreal engine was an intuitive and obvious choice.

What we learned

Our latest hackathon experience was a lesson in resilience and the importance of teamwork. By addressing our challenges head-on, we not only emerged stronger but also gained valuable insights into managing projects and maintaining a healthy work-life balance.

What's next for Starfall Galaxy

Regardless of this competition's results, we're poised for a dynamic journey ahead. Starfall Galaxy isn't just a game; it's a revolution in the web3, metaverse, crypto, and the larger digital ecosystem. Our ambitious future plans include setting up a Kickstarter and GoFundMe page to fuel our vision.

But we're not stopping there

We are committed to raising the bar in gaming. We plan to reengineer the project to support multiplayer and introduce several transformative gameplay features that we believe will redefine the gaming landscape. Starfall Galaxy isn't just a game - it's a leap into the future of gaming.

Check it out on youtube: https://youtu.be/jRSOkzQj55s

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