gm everyone, I’m derio, ethereumnavi’s owner.
In this issue, I would like to introduce and describe Influence, an on-chain strategy MMO game built on Starknet.
Recently, the development of “on-chain games” seems to be accelerating in the Starknet ecosystem, and Influence, the project I will discuss here, is well known as one of its core projects.
The details will be explained in the following sections. This on-chain game is about expanding one’s Influence in the asteroid belt by mining resources from the asteroids, gathering crews with different professions, traveling and fighting battles, while representing the “asteroids” as land NFT.
I would like to explain why this game is interesting and what kind of ripple effects can be expected by embodying it on-chain.
In this article, I will introduce Starknet’s on-chain game, “Influence,” and discuss the overview and highlights of the project, as well as the general situation of on-chain games at Starknet.
First, let me explain the structure of this article.
First, I will explain the actual situation of the on-chain game “Influence,” which is the main theme of this article, touching on the worldview and the NFTs that appear in the game.
The purpose of the next section is to give you a better understanding of what kind of on-chain game Influence is, playing the test-net version of the game that is being launched at the time of writing to give you an idea of what it is like.
Finally, the author will discuss the development potential of Influence and on-chain game development in the Starknet ecosystem, including his personal views.
I hope this article will be of some help to those who are interested in understanding the Overview of Influence, its games, and examples of on-chain games on Starknet.
If you wish to place an ad, please contact us here.
thanks for sharing this @ethereumnavi! always awesome to see content from ethereum + DF community from around the world + in many different languages https://t.co/nkmQc0U8Sq
— dark forest (@darkforest_eth) September 26, 2022
What is “Influence”
Overview
Influence is a “space-themed strategy MMO game built on Starknet.
As will be discussed later in the story section, the setting of the game is a space strategy MMO game set on an asteroid in the Adalia star system that is reached after an ill-fated journey aboard the Arvad, a generational ship that fled from a dying Earth.
“Colonize Adalia asteroids, build infrastructure there, discover technology, and fight battles.”
The main concept of the game is to “expand your Influence in the Adalian asteroid belt.
Players will compete in a variety of means: mining, construction, trade, research, and combat.
The game is played in full 3D mode from a third-person perspective, and players interact with each other to acquire appropriate resources and items, which are then used to create and operate buildings and ships that drive the economy, and to achieve goals either alone or in cooperation with other players.
Incidentally, Influence is essentially a free-to-play game, but players can buy and hold the 250,000 asteroid NFTs (the little lights on the left in the photo above) in “Adalia”.
I will put some of this into practice later in the “Let’s actually touch the game” chapter.
The asteroid belt in the Adalia system, where the game is set, is a “player-owned (can be held by FT/NFT) open economy,” and the fact that such a complex MMO strategy game is built fully on-chain is, in the author’s opinion, one of the key points of interest. The author believes that one of the key points is that such a complex MMO strategy game is built on a full-on chain.
Story
The story and worldview of this game can be very easily understood by watching the 2-minute video posted at the top.
In addition, for those who are too lazy to watch the video, the author’s interpretation of the game’s story is described below for your reference.
Our ancestors wanted to escape the dying Earth and make a better life for themselves. They made their escape from Earth aboard the generational spacecraft “Arvad” to a habitable exoplanet 14 light years away. One hundred and fifty years later, they arrived at “Adalia,” a new habitable planet, although not the destination they had originally sought. Later, after dismantling the generation ship “Arvad” and developing mines, refineries, and factories, a new life in “Adalia” appeared possible. But with every shining light comes a shadow. Our ancestors could not leave envy, greed, and even ruthlessness on Earth. There are fears that conflict may occur in “Adalia” in the near future.
About each major NFT
Asteroids
Influence represents Asteroids as land NFTs, a format that players can own.
Every asteroid NFT can be “mined for resources” as each has its own composition beneath its surface, which is a key item in the foundation of the Influence economy.
I will not describe all of them in detail here, but the general flow of the game is as follows:
- The player holds the asteroid NFT.
- Use extractor to extract raw and unrefined materials from asteroid NFT
- Using ②, the player creates new items using refineries and factories, and uses them in-game or trades them on secondary markets, etc.
Also, the total number of asteroid NFTs issued is 250,000, but only 11,143 have been minted at the time of writing.
Crew
Crew members are characters in the game and have one of the following five classes (≒ jobs)
- Pilot
- Merchant
- Engineer
- Miner
- Scientist
It also has one of the following three attributes, with prices at OpenSea increasing from top to bottom.
- Citizen
- 6,771 pieces（※Quantity at time of writing）
- Specialist
- 1,393 pieces（※Quantity at time of writing）
- Leadership
- 13 pieces（※Quantity at time of writing）
Each class offers its own unique skills and boosts, making strategic factors such as which class of Crew to place on members of one’s asteroid a strategic factor.
Ships
Ships are key items for moving through the asteroid belt.
The premise is that there will be a period of Exploitation scheduled in the future, at which time the ship will be “used to travel to and from planets owned by others.
Ships allow for flight planning, resource trading, and combat to nearby asteroids and distant destinations.
There are many other interesting elements, such as SWAY, a coin that rewards Play-to-Earn, built into the ecosystem, but this is a long story, so I won’t go into it at this time. If you are interested in token economics, please refer here.
One major point of interest is that Influence employs real-space trajectory dynamics and fuel consumption systems, which are implemented on Starknet using the Cairo language.
Let’s actually touch the game
If you are not interested in the content of the game itself, you may skip to the next chapter, “Discussion and consideration by the author.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, at the time of writing, Influence is available on both the main and test nets, but the feature set is limited because the game is still under development. The author will be playing the “testnet” game on a PC (Mac) environment.
Preparations
First, I will prepare various wallets, testnet tokens, which are necessary before game play (testnet).
- Starknet Wallet Account
- I will be using Argent X.
- Goerli (L2) testnet token
- Get it from Starknet Faucet, etc.
- You can also get a Goerli (L1) testnet token from Goerli Faucet, etc. and bridge it to L2. (I will do this later)
Once the wallet and TestNet Token are in place, click on the “Launch” button from TestNet Game.
You will then see a third-person space screen in full 3D mode, as shown in the photo above. First, connect the wallet from “Account => Argent X” in the upper right corner.
When the wallet connection is complete, a “Login” button will appear, so click on it to Sign.
Buy Asteroid NFT
At the time of writing, the “mint of asteroid NFT” in the test-net environment has been closed, so it must be purchased through the secondary distribution market. However, since the mint option is available on the main net, I will explain the mint procedure and then proceed to purchase the asteroid NFT from the secondary distribution market in order to obtain it in the test net environment.
Hover over the “MAP” tab at the bottom of the game screen and click on “Filters” to display the asteroid filtering panel.
As shown in the photo above, after entering each numerical value in ①, click the wallet icon “②Filter by Ownership” and remove the check mark from “③Owned”.
Then, move the cursor to the “MAP” tab at the bottom of the game screen and click on “① Mapped Asteroids” to display “② List of Asteroids Hit by Search”.
From there, “① Select one asteroid at random (move the cursor and click Select Asteroid),” and click the “Detail” button ② as the details of the asteroid are displayed on the bottom side.
Then a large detailed screen will appear on the left side of the screen, where you can (essentially) mint the target asteroid NFT from “③ Purchase in Manage Asteroid”.
This time, I will click on the latter, MintSquare.
Then the screen shown in the photo above was displayed. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any NFT owner currently listed, so I go to “From Influence Asteroids” to look for other NFTs.
The floor price is 3 ETH, which is a very high price for the exhibit.
derioUnfortunately, the author did not have 3 ETH of testnet tokens on the Starknet side, so he used StarkGate to transfer about 5 ETH to “Goerli(L1)=>Goerli(L2)”.
After the transfer is complete, purchase the asteroid NFT that was listed at 3 ETH.
You have now completed the purchase of the asteroid NFT. You can check your asteroid NFTs from the Activity Log on the game screen.
Adalian Recruitment
Then, through a process called Adalian Recruitment, Crew members are created who will become members within the asteroid.
As mentioned below, at the time of writing, there seems to be a problem in the process of creating Crew for Testnet, so test play is only available up to the halfway point. This will be fixed from the “Test to Earn Phase 3,” which is scheduled to start at a later date, and I will add an update as soon as that phase is held.
Hover over the “ASSETS” tab at the bottom of the game screen and click on “Crew Members”.
Owned Crew” will appear on the right side of the screen, and click the “Crew Details” button there. Then the “Adalian Recruitment” description screen will appear as shown in the photo above.
Here, as explained in the Overview, the decision is made as to which profession Crew will be placed on the spaceship.
- Miner
- Engineer
- Merchant
- Scientist
- Pilot
As a trial, select “A: Miner” at the top, and then select “A” for all subsequent items.
When you have completed the last step (5 of 5), you will see the Create Your Adalian button.
Here you can give it a name, or if you don’t like the way it looks, you can press the “RANDOMIZE APPEARANCE” button to make random changes to the visual.
At the time of writing, I was only able to play the test so far due to a problem in the process of creating the Testnet Crew. This will be fixed from the “Test to Earn Phase 3,” which is scheduled to start at a later date, and will be added as soon as that phase is held. (Reference: discord)
bttw, originally, the visual is displayed as shown in the photo below.
Manage Crew
Once you have completed the creation of your crew in Adalian Recruitment, you will be able to organize your crew from “ASSETS => Crew Members”.
Incidentally, the flow of the game after this is to acquire appropriate resources and items while creating and operating buildings and ships that will drive the economy based on these resources and items, aiming to achieve goals alone or in cooperation with other players.
However, due to the sheer volume of content, if there is enough demand, I will create a separate series of articles and pick up the topics there.
Discussion and consideration by the author
Now, based on the above, I would like to share the author’s thoughts on Influence.
The first thing that struck me when I looked at the game’s wiki was how intricate the game’s characters, worldview, and specifications are, and the fact that they are trying to embody this in an on-chain game.
Since it seems to the untrained eye that it would be difficult to build the same on-chain game using only Ethereum (L1), I believe that this is due to Starknet’s unique “high computational efficiency” and other soil.
なるほど
— でりおてんちょー｜derio (@yutakandori) October 12, 2022
今まで「何故StarkNetエコシステムではゲーム開発が盛んなのか」について分かっていなかったのですが、STARKのpoly-log検証というものにより計算コストが大幅に削減され、オンチェーンゲームとの相性が良いというところが一つ要因としてあるのだと理解できました。https://t.co/tnxVkv3kN3 pic.twitter.com/dh1EkkEUkf
And the fact that these Crew in-game actions are recorded on the Ethereum blockchain and become part of the Influence storyline is another exciting aspect of the on-chain game.
For example, when you touch a DeFi such as Uniswap (≒ generate Tx), the proof of the action is recorded in the Ethereum chain, and this proof makes it possible to conceive of “on-chain play” such as acquiring objects with Phi.
In the case of Influence, too, all player actions are recorded in the infrastructure (Starknet/Ethereum) that makes the transaction happen, and players pay for their actions, thus making the entire network viable.
However, it is also true that these on-chain games have been cited as having challenges at this time, such as “difficulty in monetization” and “high barriers to entry for users.
However, one point to keep in mind is that the former is being resolved by MatchboxDAO and the latter by cartridge, and that game development is proceeding concurrently with these foundations.
As mentioned earlier, Influence uses realistic orbital mechanics and fuel consumption systems in real space, but it also shares the same philosophy as Isaac, an on-chain game on Starknet, in that it embodies the physical laws of the earth in an on-chain setting. (In the case of Isaac, the game is called “Three Chain”. (In the case of Isaac, the theme is the “three-body problem.”)
In addition, the famous on-chain (Ethereum L1 / Gnosis) game “Dark Forest” is a “MMO space conquest game”.
As to why the people building the “on-chain game”, the smartest (academic) people in the world, are using space and physics as their subject matter, it is a subject that the author is very interested in.
This is only speculation on the part of the author, but perhaps they had long wanted to put the laws of the real world onto the blockchain, but were unable to do so due to capacity limitations, computing power, and other problems. However, with the birth of Starknet (Cairo), this problem has been solved, and I believe that they are working hard every day on development, not for business or immediate monetization, but with the pure motivation of “wanting to create a game” and “wanting to embody it on the on-chain.
Keep an eye on the future trends of “on-chain games,” including Influence, which I picked up this time.
Summary
If you wish to place an ad, please contact us here.
This time, I introduced Starknet’s on-chain game “Influence,” giving an overview of the project and its highlights, as well as an overview of on-chain games at Starknet.
I hope this article has been helpful to those who are interested in understanding more about Influence, its games, and examples of on-chain games on Starknet.
The on-chain game area is a subject that is often relatively avoided because it is so esoteric, but there is definitely meaning and reason why smart people from around the world have gathered in the on-chain game area and continue to develop it steadily with a strong focus on execution.
True discovery is not in going out to find something new, but in seeing it with new eyes.” said the French writer Marcel Proust once.
There are already many examples of “games” being developed using blockchain/crypto, but those who are stretching the on-chain game area tend to think about “what games can only be realized with blockchain/crypto” rather than “how to incorporate existing games into blockchain”, The author surmises that this is the case.
The author believes that on-chain games are interesting in that they are designed with the eyes of a cryptographer in mind, and one of the author’s main motivations is to share this tasteful aspect with as many people as possible. One of the author’s main motivations is to share this interesting aspect of on-chain games with as many people as possible.
And it is the author’s current impression that the epicenter is Starknet.
Although I’m currently in the midst of a bear market, I would like to express my utmost respect to those who continue to develop such meaningful products, and I would like to contribute to the Japanese-speaking world by sending out information and writing articles, even if only in a small way, and at the same time, I would like to continue to actively report on the notable cases in the on-chain game area. I would also like to continue to actively report on the notable cases in the on-chain gaming area.
Finally, if you find this encouraging and helpful, I would appreciate it if you would share or comment on Twitter.
🆙posted an article in English about Influence.@influenceth https://t.co/Xxf6GhtzQ6
— でりおてんちょー｜derio (@yutakandori) April 4, 2023