Development Update June 2022

Published in

MNet

9 min readMay 31, 2022

Development Updates

A multi-metaverse project is complex and powerful. It requires a lot of concentrated development effort to enable its wonderful features. The platform will be built to handle multiple users globally and it performs to users’ complex needs. The good news is most of the technical challenges have already been addressed by the tech team, and the first version of the alpha feature set is well on the way to completion.

Through our partnership applications and community feedback, we found the narrative of user-created metaverses continues to flourish. We have an engaging community that supports our network development. We believe that user-created metaverse projects will bring greater adoption of the web3 technology stack. Bit.Country metaverses will bridge web3 adoption from web2 by educating its users within their community and will share its benefits in a fun and interactive way.

Four Phases in the Builders’ Season — AlphaTestnet

Right now, our primary focus is to continue to ship features to the alpha-testnet and onboard more users to participate in testing and feedback.

Looking forward here is a sequence of events that we envision will take place with the rationale behind this being to ensure the product’s readiness. Given the recent incident happening in the web3 space, the team is more conscious about security checks, and testing while the market dynamics and users’ behaviors are also under our close observation.

Phase 1 — Alpha-testnet Exclusive Access (Late Apr 2022 & Now)

In this phase, the goal is to test the initial infrastructure and features of the platform. The team has built the minimal viable product of Bit.Country to test functionality. Evangelists were given access to initial public testing. They excelled in the testing of the building feature. Testers were confidently creating interesting structures using voxels, 3D props and importing 3D models in the Sandpit and Bunker. They were able to mint NFTs collections, customize their avatars with different skin colors and try on wearables. Evangelists also confidently created their own metaverse and were able to carry out NFT trading transactions on the local metaverse marketplaces.

If you like to participate in the next slot of test user recruitment. Please check out how to get involved in the alpha-testnet release log.

Phase 2 — Alpha- testnet (Public Access Testing — July)

Once the development team is confident that all of the features of phase 1 have been evaluated and tested, we will make it open to the public. Everyone will be invited to log in to Bit.Country to join our journey. Users can enjoy launching their own metaverse or creating a personal space in the Bunker. With more active users it will be a great opportunity for the team to do more stress tests.

With wider alpha-testnet adoption, the team will get a chance to gather more user feedback, execute enhancements and iron out potential bugs. We will continue to push updates within this phase as we optimize the platform.

Phase 3 — Go live on Pioneer Network

In this phase, we will push alpha-testnet stable features to Metaverse.Network pioneer which is currently running as a parachain on Kusama Relaychain. Users would be able to use tokens to perform interesting activities on the live app.

*Token transfers will be enabled on mainnet once the alpha-testnet is fully released and accessible to everyone and the token has true utility in our network.

Phase 4 — Polkadot Crowdloan

The continuum narrative starts here, given most of the feature competition, once we will participate in the Crowdloan followed by its cousin pioneer going live. There will be a great set of the utility of token NUUM after the launch.

More land blocks will be deployed and metaverse capacities will be enhanced on this network. Existing metaverses on Pioneer would have a chance to be among the greater capacities on the Continuum.

Here are the recent development updates from various teams

Metaverse.Network Team (By Justin)

Multiple Metaverse Marketplace
Rolled out the Metaverse Marketplace Listing Fee, which allows metaverse to earn transaction fees for trading activity in their marketplace.
Allow Metaverse owners to set up the transaction commission on their metaverse setting.
Support Bundle listing, users can create and buy/sell NFT items as a bundle.
Support Trading Activity on Metaverse, users can track the activeness of every metaverse marketplace.
Update and optimize Marketplace robustness on the blockchain.
Metaverse Marketplace UI revamp to ensure a great user experience.
Implement a Network fee and reserved mechanism when new listing on the marketplace.
Support total supply limit on NFT collection, max supply will stop new NFT token minting.
Allows NFT owners to transfer “Bound to address NFT” to other wallets.
Support NFT class fund withdrawal, NFT collection owner can withdraw the Royalty fee earned from trading activity.
Raw Land Block
Revamp the raw land block logic on the blockchain, support a flexible number of land units under each raw land block
Allow displaying raw land block on user’s wallet with multiple utility e.g sell, transfer.
Allow raw land block listing on the Global Section of the Global Search, and support multiple raw land block listings in a single view.
Implemented deploying raw land block on Bit.Country map system.
Land Unit and Estate.
Redesigned and implemented the latest version of the Estate system on Metaverse.Network blockchain
Support Land unit verification process on blockchain and forming estate.

Revamp the Estate Map feature that allows creating Estate from the user’s own land unit within some simple clicks on the map.
Implemented network fee for Estate minting and Raw land block deployment.
Notification System
Designed and implemented the first version of the notification system for Bit.Country application.
The system can send notifications to wallets, metaverse or global when subscribed event triggers.

Bit.Country Metaverse Team (By Shannon)

Physics and movement — improved experience when travelling upstairs/ramps, or blocks.
Rendering — improve HDR experience, exposure changes more steadily, performance improvements.
Device Compatibility — new settings menu and initial set up to increase the supported range of devices with a variety of graphical settings that can be configured.
Tooling updates
Better environment customisation, ability to configure sun color, intensity and direction.
UI/UX improvements
Ability to close tooling while building to return to block building.
Better BIT calculation while building with blocks and assets.
Updated menu for accessing UI and leaving the world.
Brightness controls for devices with dim screens.
Advanced placement of assets keeps the previous position for rapid building of scenes.
More notifications and visual cues during tool usage.
Fixes and improvements
Resolved rare edge cases with asset previews, placements and more that could lead to unexpected behavior.
CPU usage improvement related to some post processes.
Robustness of tooling in specific cases could prevent their correct functioning.
API improvements — better throughput, simplified logic and faster responses.

Bit.Country Tech Lead Team (By Daniel)

Avatar customizer

Allow Avatar to change the skin color of the whole body.
Added validation on avatar customizer to check if they own a particular NFT wearable.
Bug fixed for not loading the wearable if only changed 1 wearable.
UX improvement — showing a list of wearables that are not saved because of not owning them.

Land distribution

Research and develop a way to distribute lands for Crownload participants.

Map enhancement

Implemented an estate layer on a map to show the data for the different estates.
Integrated map engine with blockchain, and updated the map engine to support new data structure.
Improved the drawing performance on the land block level.
UX improvement — Pack the estate on the map into groups and differentiate itself from other land units.
UX improvement — Updated map menu, show different menu items based on the selected land unit/ block.

Community & Operation

Participated in the recent event of Polkadot and the Web3 Foundation at Davos Switzerland. Here are some excerpts from the event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HknZJOhstUU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epGI9_4yS30
Creation of Bit.Country Discovery Podcast on YouTube introducing Gardi Rigby, Keira Nesdale, and Chris Carmona, The new podcast tackles blockchain technology, NFTs, cryptocurrency, metaverse, tokens, and Bit.Country. Together they simplify complex ideas and discuss real-world use cases.
Bit.Country Discovery (EP1): NFTs and their Utility.
Bit.Country Discovery (EP2): What is Bit.Country and what are the features available on Alpha Testnet.
Published 9 articles on Inside the Metaverse.Network Blog, highlighting the following:
What is BIT ? | Bit.Country Alpha Testnet Features
Fashion in the Metaverse | NFT Wearables
Architecture in the Metaverse | Building in Bit.Country
NFT Utility | How Does Bit.Country Use NFTs To Give Users Value?
Activation Pass | Bit.Country Alpha Testnet Feature
Creating an NFT Collection | Bit.Country
Why Should You Use Bit.Country? | Looking into the Possibilities of the Metaverse
How to Create a Metaverse on Bit.Country
Purchasing and Deploying Virtual Land in Bit.Country
Introduced the Alpha Tester role for most active members on Discord:
https://github.com/bit-country/bit.country-website/blob/main/app-release-notes.md
Incorporated fun daily challenges among the evangelists and selected Alpha Testers on the Discord sneak peek channel, allowing them to test their creativity without having 3D Design nor Technical Skills.
Here are some of the creations:

Hosted the first live tutorial on Discord featuring Blender Beginner’s Guide, headed by Alchemist, one of Bit.Country evangelist with the goal of creating a wooden plank at the end of the tutorial.

Creative & 3D team

In World Asset optimization
Bunker environment
Sky Designs

Past Development Updates

About Metaverse.Network

Metaverse.Network

Metaverse.Network is the blockchain protocol on top of which Bit.Country is built. Designed and developed to support metaverses and related ecosystem projects. Providing an ethereum-compatible smart contract platform and protocol to build metaverse-native experiences.

Create projects to support the platform’s metaverses, or start a new metaverse directly on top of the protocol.

About Bit.Country

Bit.Country is a platform for user-created metaverses and games with opportunities to earn.

Launch your own individualized metaverse for your friends, family or members; with your own sky and dedicated world. Let your community be perpetualized on our metaverse machine, and share in the value created.

Customize your metaverse to match the culture of your community, and let them share in the ownership and governance of your world.

Need more information about Bit.Country Metaverse Network？