Wizard Wednesday Recap, 2022-03-30

Early sample of some Runiverse game combat animations released by Bisonic, circa February 2022.

An Interview with Bisonic's Jeldor

Preview of some player housing design options, released by developer Bisonic circa April 2022.

We got a lot of new tidbits about the Runiverse game! Jeldor from Bisonic (Runiverse game studio) gave an update on the game. He says its heavily influenced by classic games like Everquest and Ultima Online, but with crypto on top. Those games had player-driven economies, but the game developers weren’t aligned with this activity, and took measures to shut it down. In the Runiverse, every resource is a token and every item is an NFT. Essentially, it uses blockchain tech to enhance what would already be a great game, and allows players to benefit from the time they are spending and the value they are creating in the game.

Gaming loops: In the game, you can go on encounters (including real-time multiplayer) to go on quests, fight monsters, level up and get items/resources. Wizards will have access first (to play in-game with your character), with Souls, Warriors etc. coming a bit later. The NFTs will basically be custom skins that you can use in game, but the levels won’t transfer with the NFTs (in a sale); that works separately. However, anyone can play with the generic character creator. The game is classless with levels, but the different abilities can be combined to create class archetypes.

Runiverse Land Sale details were later released by Bisonic.

2nd game loop: The land tokens give you ownership of land in the game, and this presents an additional gameplay aspect. There are many types of land and assets that you can build and acquire for your land. You can build a customized structure on the land, and other players can visit it. You could even pool resources with friends to build larger scale structures and communities. And you are free to trade all the resources in the game to help accomplish this. These are the two big loops in the game, although there will be others that will be revealed later. The game will be developing along with the players, and will be ongoing, to be a living creation.

In April 2022, the Forgotten Runes Twitter account announced the Top 20 vote-getters in the Honorary Warriors competition. A subset of these + Magic Machine selected recipients would receive custom-made Warriors.

Runiverse game art: Elf says the game artists have consulted with him on how best to combine ancient and modern elements in the environments. For example, there is a grounded fighter jet, overgrown with vines, in the world. Elf: "The art has such a great storytelling component. It reveals so much of the history, the people and their background, just through the set pieces in the landscape. It’s going to be so much fun to explore it all." The animations are being developed with emotes. Each character is up-rezzed from the original look, which allows for more secondary motions to hair, walk cycles, etc.

Runiverse land sale: The public land sale will allow you to have a unique minting experience, and then immediately be able to walk around on your land with other ppl in real time. Kel's Editorial note: I find the above to be refreshing in the NFT space, where typically you pay first, get the token, and then need to wait some period of time before you can do anything (possibly forever). Continued land sale info: There will be a special event at that time too, where you can go out into the world and search for something special, and people will be rewarded if they can locate all the items in the scavenger hunt. Elf: A lot of other land sales place the plots kind of randomly, or using an algorithm. But the Runiverse land plots are being hand-placed with purpose, to enhance the world-building and story elements of the game. This will lead to a better product, but it requires more time and more people (which Bisonic has elected to do). Land plots range from 8x8 all the way to 128x128 in size. Bigger is not always better, but it DOES give you more room to build. The plots do not come with structures, you need to use in-game resources to build up what you want. Jeldor: I’m excited about the city-building tools we are creating. On your plot of land, you can use a permission system to set conditions, so only members of your guild or group can perform different actions on your land.

Warriors Updates

Elf, Dotta and Bearsnake had a discussion about the effects of adding Warriors to the community. Although there will be overlap, the sort of people who might be interested in representing themselves as a Warrior, might be different in some ways. Elf asked the community to lean in to any drama that comes from this new faction, and become shepherds to them rather than hiding away in our white towers, much as that might be attractive at times.

Sample of a pony walk-cycle (with Wizard)

The Warrior Honoraries contest was also made formal. Everyone could submit Warrior nominations until the deadline of April 1st, 3 PM PST. The top 20 nominees will appear in a poll, and the community will select a top 10 from those options. See the Discord announcements for further details. The honorary winners will be announced during the next Wizard Wednesday (WW).

Elf Becomes a Celebrity

Elf made a few media appearances recently. He was on a Creatokia podcast talking about the project and decentralized world-building. He also interviewed with an indie film about NFTs, "Nifty", which will be released in Q3 2023. The movie is partly sponsored by Coinbase. Many other well-known NFT people will be in it, and many of them will remain anon (repped by their avatar). Elf will appear as himself.

Other Cult News Items

In case you had heard about a special guest to today's WW and are wondering what happened, it's because that guest had to postpone until next week. The anticipation builds...

Bearcave update: LachnessMonsta is visiting the Bearcave, and in a couple hours they will have a dinner with wizards attending NFT LA. At the same time, they are actively planning for NFT NYC, where wizards will have the opportunity to experience the Runivers "IRL".

Pony walkcycles will be available this Friday! Souls turnarounds and walkcycles are now in production, with the help of 0xCosmo.

Legend Maps is integrating Forgotten Runes wizards, the first project to have this honor!

In the FRWC Discord server, there was a moderator change - Arad has stepped down, and Jitcy has assumed the role. Many thanks for both for their various contributions to the Cult!

Lore Reading

Lore readings this week were Zizzle reading about Shadow Mage Nixie of the Riviera (3467), and redrobot reading about Hydromancer Quddus of the Keep (723) and his unfortunate Sun Cat.