Battle Racers update: Q1 2020 Roadmap
Welcome to our Battle Racers Update! In these updates, we’ll share with you the status of the game and how development is going. For this special edition covering October to December, you’ll get the latest on our game and website development, a summary of events during our recently concluded Season 1 crate sale, and a preview of what’s to come in the next few months.
The update is divided into the following sections:
- Build Update
- Website Update
- Press and Events Roundup
- What’s Next
- Development Roadmap
Build Update:
After two rounds of closed multiplayer beta, we finally opened the game to the public at play.battleracers.io! Our Early Access went live on November 25, 2019 and can be played on Desktop browsers with MetaMask enabled such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. This is a standalone web version that will be available to everyone until Decentraland’s public launch in February.
To recap, here are the Early Access patch notes:
- Added support for upcoming Season 1 cars
- Added background music and sound effects for the user interface and race animations
- Rebalanced weapons, including an updated shield type that can withstand two hits but with a longer cooldown
- Updated several UI such as the new loading screen, race results screen, a shield HP indicator, and functionality for changing display name
- Reworked race completion to sync with a car crossing the finish line
- Fixed several bugs such as allowing players to join an ongoing race and font-compatibility issues
We also launched our first-ever Battle Racers tournament where we gave away $1000 USD worth of prizes! We had a total of nine (9) participants who checked in for the event proper, and they were broken down into brackets of three. Players competed in a 3-race set on Track 2, Fossefall Freeway. Review our mechanics here to prepare for more upcoming tournaments.
Thanks to player feedback, we were able to discover some bugs and points for improvement, and have started addressing most of them.
Website Update:
Our first update for the quarter was the launch of parts trading on OpenSea! Players are now able to buy and sell car parts that they own to both existing players and newcomers, and a portion of the transaction fees are used to fund future tournaments of Battle Racers.
We then switched to a new sidechain built by Matic Network, a blockchain scalability platform which provides secure, scalable, and instant Ethereum transactions. All of our non-fungible tokens are automatically migrated to the Matic sidechain. Due to this ongoing process, we had to temporarily pause parts transfer from the sidechain to the Ethereum main network to ensure a smooth migration of all NFTs. In the meantime, parts that have already been transferred beforehand can still be traded.
Migrating from one sidechain to another is a major change, and we’re sure you are wondering why we’ve made this decision. Matic Network already has several DApps and blockchain partners working with them, but here are our personal reasons:
- Switching to Matic makes Battle Racers compatible with the upcoming Decentraland Marketplace that is being built on Matic.
- Players will also be able to trade car parts and use MANA (Decentraland’s own token) directly from the Matic side chain.
- Matic is not only a technology partner, but also a business partner dedicated to growing the Battle Racers community.
We have been receiving tremendous support from Matic, especially during our Season 1 Crate Sale which took place last December 3 to 20, 2019. This sale introduced 52 new sets of cars with Japanese inspired designs, such as our one and only Legendary, the Python Oni.
Our top-selling crate was the Season 1 Silver crate, as players searched for parts of special cars such as the Binance SafuBolt, Guerilla Cyber, and Vista Cartel.
Though our Season 1 sale was not as successful as our pre-sales with only a combined total of 110 ETH in sales, we have picked up a lot of insights and will be applying our learnings by improving the meta of Battle Racers and adding more value to our NFTs. We also grew our community and have earned new friends and partners in the blockchain space!
We collaborated with CryptoKitties for an exclusive event where 192 limited edition crates containing RoboKitty car parts were sold! These crates were available for purchase on the Battle Racers website, and were also obtainable by playing CryptoKitties and consuming a Battle Racers Kitty Trick.
In the course of the sale, we had some users encounter some issues during crate claiming and opening, and our team was on stand-by to resolve these issues as they came. Thus, improving the crate opening process is one of our most important tasks at the moment.
Meanwhile, our parts viewer web tool was updated with SideChain and MainNet options! You can easily view and share images of cars built with your own parts.
Press and Events Roundup:
Three months is a long amount of time to cover, but here are the highlights for Battle Racers from Q4:
October
- October 21: Parts trading finally launched on OpenSea! A portion of the transaction fees will go to the prize pool for our future tournaments. One of our most active community members and player council Chris Bell prepared some guides on how to transfer parts from the sidechain and navigating the OpenSea website.
- October 29: Player council member Napoleon was able to collect 10 out of 22 Legendary parts from the Prime edition by trading with other players on the marketplace!
- October 31: We celebrated Halloween through an NFT giveaway on OpenSea.
November
- November 1: We announced our partnership with Klaytn, Kakao’s global public blockchain project, and was even featured in Yahoo! Finance.
- November 11: Light Trail Rush unveiled a Battle Racers skin for their Firebird ships, which is currently available for sale on OpenSea.
- November 15: Our migration to the Matic Network sidechain was announced. Find out more about Matic Network and how they are working with Battle Racers here.
- November 25: Battle Racers Early Access went live! You can now race against other players at https://play.battleracers.io, a standalone web version available to everyone until Decentraland officially launches. Our friends in the blockchain space were very supportive during the release. We’re thankful for the support on the release from 0xzx.com, AltCoinBuzz, DappOnline, DappRadar, EGamers.io, NFT World, and many more!
- November 25: Now that we have a publicly available build, we also launched our Season 1 edition of the Bounty Campaign! Notable submissions include articles by our community members ChrisBell and Ledeir, plus informative videos from Siddharta and Blockchain Gaming Network.
- November 29: #CyberTruckOnBlockchain became the #1 Twitter trending topic in India and was featured on DCL Blogger, Sludgefeed, CryptoGamingPool, Decrypt, Invezz, and in various outlets worldwide such as those in Russia and Turkey.
- November 30: We revealed another special car, the Vista Cartel, inspired by the community-led DAO, Meta Cartel.
December
- December 2: Together with Matic Network, we welcomed questions from the community during two AMAs happening on the same day, on Dapp.com and DappRadar.
- December 3: After another AMA, we launched our Season 1 sale with an early bird discount of 15% for the first 48 hours (and later extended for another 48 hours) courtesy of Matic Network! Affiliate links were also available on our partner websites: Plus, we receive lots of support from crypto and gaming media such as AMB Crypto, BitPinas, BlockchainGamer.net, CastleCrypto, Crypto and Gamers, DCL Blogger, EGamers.io, JBB, SludgeFeed and more.
- December 3: Battle Racers Early Access was included in BlockchainGamer.Biz’s alpha and beta games list!
- December 4: CZ of Binance showed some love for another special car, the Binance SafuBolt!
- December 5: We became proud owners of LAND in The Sandbox metaverse, a week before our partnership with them was officially announced!
- December 6: Battle Racers giveaways hosted by Matic Network and DappRadar were being listed on Coindreams!
- December 6: Altitude Games CEO Gabby Dizon was interviewed on AltCoinBuzz.io’s ShardTalk!
- December 10: It was a momentous day since we reached some social media milestones: 2K Twitter followers, 1K Discord members, and 250 Telegram members. We celebrated with a couple of crate giveaways a few special announcements, such as additional prizes for our SafuBolt promo and our collaboration with Neon District!
- December 11: We answered questions during an AMA with the Game of Bitcoins community.
- December 11: One of our biggest supporters for Season 1, Sabinpro, was the first to complete the Binance Safubolt!
- December 12: The CryptoKitties exclusive event launched, with 350 limited edition crates being sold through the Battle Racers website.
- December 12: The Neon District Loot Box Sale went live on OpenSea! Players who find a Legendary Radiant Blade will be able to activate an undercarriage lighting in Battle Racers and a special ship in Light Trail Rush..
- December 13: New community member Waltmester3000 was the first person to complete a Robokitty car!
- December 14: Battle Racers was featured on Dapp.com!
- December 16: Community developer DSM was able to deploy his car assets on Decentraland.
- December 17: Battle Racers was included in the list of Best New Collectibles on Dapp.com!
- December 19: We launched our first-ever Battle Racers tournament with Franken emerging as our champion, taking home the largest chunk of the prize pool! Thank you to 0xzx.com, AltCoinBuzz.io, SludgeFeed, TokenNews Asia, and other partners and friends for spreading the news.
- December 20: Gabby Dizon, our CEO, was once again interviewed, this time on ZENZO’s Beacon series. Their giveaway was also ongoing from December 11th to January 7th.
- December 20: It was also the last day of our Season 1 sale and unsold crates were to be burned.
- December 26: We were mentioned on the MTN Korean channel during a feature on The Sandbox!
- December 30: A great way to end the year — Battle Racers is one of the 28 Blockchain games to keep an eye on in 2020 according to Nederob.
What’s Next: Decentraland Launch
Blockchain-based virtual reality platform Decentraland has announced its public launch on 20.02.2020, so we are working on getting Battle Racers ready by then! And that’s not all: we are already planning our next tournament to welcome new racers on Decentraland. We are aiming for a smoother implementation for tourneys, with improved mechanics and more prizes to bring in more participants! Watch out for more details which we will be releasing soon.
Development Roadmap
With the Decentraland launch just around the corner, the team is ready to announce the Battle Racers roadmap! Check out all the upcoming features planned for the game:
Hot off the press: here’s what to expect from Battle Racers!
Immediate (Early Q1 2020)
- Enable parts transfer from and to Matic: Players will be able to transfer parts between sidechains and trade Season 1 and CryptoKitties car parts on OpenSea
- Garage: Improve the inventory page (including car parts visuals) and introduce car assembly functionality on the website, allowing players to save loadouts that can be easily selected in-game
- Neon District collaboration: We will be activating the undercarriage lighting effect in the game for those who simultaneously own a Body from any of our special car sets and a Legendary Radiant Blade from Neon District
Soon (Late Q1 2020)
- Scrap: Introduce mechanics for earning Scrap and destroying/upgrading parts
- Competitive races: Players can race against other players to earn medals and trade those medals for Supply Crate rewards.
- Crate trading: Now that ERC20 tokens are supported on OpenSea, we can allow players to buy and sell crates that they bought from our previous sales
In the pipeline
- Rotation system for test drive cars: We’d like people to be able to try a different car each week.
- Car tokenization and recorded history: Your token cars can record race history and earn buffs the more you play.
- Car trading: After parts and crates, you’ll be able to trade your tokenized race cars on OpenSea, too.
That’s what we have prepared so far! We are revving up on development in the next few months, and all of us are very excited to see these plans come into completion.
Thanks for reading our update! Follow us here on Medium or join our Discord to get the latest news on Battle Racers. And please clap or share if you like this article.
Battle Racers: https://battleracers.io
Discord: https://discord.gg/gfEPSra
Telegram: https://t.me/battleracers
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/battleracersgame/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BattleRacers
