(originally posted here: https://medium.com/star-atlas/the-atlas-star-issue-5-60af7ed85101)

A tale about building a new world…

Destruction and Creation — The Emergence of a New World /// Triple-AAA Metaverse Work in Progress /// Immersive Unreal Engine 5 Experience

Attention, Deep Space Explorers!

We are so excited to bring you the legendary Atlas Star ✧, the official Star Atlas newsletter wherein you will find a treasure trove of recent developments in the making of a metaverse as well as our vision for the future, our values, achievements, and exciting content emerging in the common dream we share with our community.

It’s been a while since we took you on our latest Atlas Star journey, so to make sure you are up to speed with the state of the metaverse, we want to share a refresher on our vision for this extraordinary world in the making.

Our Vision

The DACs of Star Atlas — Our Diamond at the Center of the Galaxy

Star Atlas is the tale of a shared dream, a dream of a decentralized Metaverse built horizontally rather than vertically, with governance dispersed across the different philosophies that compose our community. It’s also a tale of teamwork and rallying together under a shared purpose. In essence, it’s a tale about our guilds.

Community gameplay is a core feature of the Star Atlas Metaverse.

This becomes clear in the different instances of proposed gameplay disclosed in the white and economic papers of the project.

From the various layers of political governance to the sophisticated economy that requires different and specialized skill sets to function appropriately, whenever we think about any macro objective in Star Atlas, we are thinking about the coordinated efforts of a group of players and a variety of inhabitants in the future metaverse.

It’s not just any kind of coordination, though. The innate economic nature of the assets in Star Atlas takes the central value of human relationships to a whole new level when we are talking about groups of players.

Trust.

It’s possible, especially in your early days of Star Atlas, that you might cooperate casually with different players that you will encounter in the safe zones of the cosmos. But, in the long run, especially in gameplay of the medium and high risk zones, it’s advisable to find a group of players you can trust.

Hence, the DACs (Guilds) are necessary for the Star Atlas Metaverse ecosystem to function properly.

In the long history of online MMOs, the Guilds have become a haven for their members, a place where like-minded individuals share experiences, victories, defeats, and, most of all, fun.

Star Atlas plans to take this concept to a whole new level, providing the Guilds with structural tools never before seen in the history of our industry. Those tools will enable the different organizations to leverage their gameplay capabilities in a permission-less manner.

This document will detail our vision regarding the guild gameplay structures and features.

The Deep Dive: Guild Governance and Customization

The cornerstone of guild gameplay design is based on the understanding that every guild is one of a kind, in the same way that every individual is unique. Therefore, the Metaverse of Star Atlas will offer an extensive range of tools to enable players to construct — in-game and on-chain — their Guild structure of governance.

You can expect most of the classical features that most MMOs offer in their in-game structure, like implementing taxes on the player’s earnings to fund the guild, different roles inside the guild structure to enable or disable certain governance perks, etc.

We’re also developing new aspects of gameplay. First of all, we want our guilds to be able to choose how their governance will work. This means the players in a guild can choose how power will be distributed among guild members.

Every model, from players in the guild having the right to vote on any use of the guild treasury to guild representation determination by the possession of guild coins acquired from activities that benefit the guild or any other criteria, will be valid and in-game supported.

We want our community to have the most freedom possible in designing the rules in their own homes to reflect their values and gameplay styles.

From the most anarchical pirates to the most centralized corporation, Star Atlas will provide the tools to build your ideal guild.

Political Power and Guild Roles in the Metaverse of Star Atlas

One of the most exciting structures in Star Atlas is the political framework that permeates the whole Metaverse.

After a bloody war that wreaked havoc across the galaxy, the three main factions, MUD, ONI, and USTUR, laid down their weapons, creating the Council of Peace (COP), an organization responsible for maintaining peace and order throughout the galaxy.

Yet, how long will peace last?

Many factions, like the Jorvik and Echos, openly defy the mandates of the COP, not abiding by the status quo set by the large coalition of Star Atlas and recruiting players and Guilds to join their ranks.

Also, even the factions are not monolithic institutions. Each of them has their apostles of war, ambitioning for their agendas, the treasures at the center of the galaxy, where exotic dangers also lie in wait.

The critical question is, how will your guild engage in this complex, multi-layered political game?

Will your DAC strive for one of the prestigious seats of the COP advisories? Will you side with the ‘outlaw’ factions in the hopes of dismantling the order created by the COP? Will you be politically agnostic?

Those are just the first answers that you will need to give since this is just the beginning of the Political Gameplay in Star Atlas.

Aside from the macro politics, Regional Daos and Faction Daos will significantly impact the guild’s activities in each solar system. Finding enough support to control one of them might be the key to your success in Star Atlas.

We will also develop a system where the guild members will be able to vote on any given proposition as one to maximize the political power of its institution according to the guild design.

Be careful though with what you say and do because other players and institutions of Star Atlas will always be watching, ready to capitalize on opportunities…

The Economic Role of the Guilds in the Star Atlas Metaverse

The Guilds in Star Atlas also play a significant role in the economic organization of our Metaverse, especially on two fronts:

a) The creation of enterprises focused on one or more in-game economic activities, employing human and in-game resources to develop the many different segments of the Star Atlas ecosystem.

b) A link between the off-game enterprises that want exposure to the Star Atlas Metaverse, companies and brands looking to acquire lands and sell their goods or services inside Star Atlas, and the in-game world.

Let us explore those two points.

The In-game Economic Role of the Guilds

We could say that the first one represents the most direct and vital function of the Guilds of Star Atlas, developing the game ecosystem through the advancement and improvement of their activities.

The economy in Star Atlas works similarly to real life. For example, suppose the guilds, regions or factions want to prosper and expand their influence and economic power. Therefore, they need to invest in infrastructure and efficiently deploy their assets to acquire revenue and bring development to their people.

Guilds are the foundation of this system in Star Atlas. It’s the primary institution in the organization of our community as part of the economic system, coordinating efforts to acquire resources and transform them into goods and services for the rest of the ecosystem.

This coordination is especially vital to Star Atlas due to the skill progression system. Most meaningful activities in Star Atlas generate experience points for players, which through accrual helps them progress in the skill tree path of that activity.

The farther you progress in any given skill tree, the more proficient you become in that task. Let us use the mining skill as an example.

At the beginning of your career as a miner, you won’t be particularly efficient in finding and accessing the treasures of the depths.

In the beginning, the nodes that you will manage to identify will be the most simple ones, the time required to extract the ore will be long, and the quantity and quality of your work will be low.

As you spend more time doing your task, you will naturally hone your skills, becoming more efficient while also acquiring perks unavailable for players who have not grinded the long hours in the mines.

Here is the key: there are only so many hours to play, and the skill progression system is being built in a manner to reward the dedication of the players to their career paths, which means that you won’t be able to be good at everything. That is ok.

This is where guild coordination becomes necessary. No single individual will be able to craft the exotic ships of the Photoli; a whole supply chain depends on many specialized individuals to build our most complex assets.

Every single aspect of the economy of Star Atlas is interlaced with different types of specializations, so you will surely need the expertise of other players to build meaningful things in Star Atlas. That’s why you will need your guild with you.

The Economic Role of the Guilds in our Metaverse

The second point is just as crucial as the first, but it’s focused on another angle of our project experience: the Metaverse.

We are focused on delivering a wide variety of tools for our gaming experience. Star Atlas is like a vast canvas and we plan on offering our community an expansive palette of colors, brushes, techniques, and materials that they can use to make their most epic paintings.

Yet, even if we developed tools day and night for Star Atlas for a decade, it’s nothing compared to the potential contributions that third parties will make to the Metaverse.

We are talking about our community contributions and those from companies, businesses, and members from the many different industries who want to participate in the vibrant ecosystem that the Star Atlas Metaverse will become.

Take, for example, Fabricant, a Metaverse exclusive fashion company, which already launched its first collection for Star Atlas.

Imagine the fashion industry’s role in a Metaverse focused on emulating the complexity of social relationships in a worldwide digital environment. We foresee, for example, different guilds hiring different brands and companies to design their members’ uniforms, a way of branding their presence in our Metaverse, and a mechanism of social cohesion.

The art industry is another example of endless possibilities. Star Atlas will be able to create worlds within worlds.

Should you want a quiet afternoon after a day of work, enjoying the relief of a live show performance in a bar while watching through your ship window the birth of a Star, our community efforts will make it possible for you. For the right price in Atlas, of course.

The parallel services focused on entertainment across Metaverse features are the kind of economy we hope to enable together with the in-game economy.

To make this work, we are building a toolset that, once deployed, will allow for permissionless, or DAO-permissioned, development of extra-game economic activity. At that point, extra-game companies will need to find a way to bridge their capital and assets into the game to rent land, acquire the game coins, create their operations, and hire personnel — all in a decentralized manner.

This function will be, in our vision, filled by the guilds. Therefore, the off-game companies will naturally seek the most structured guilds to work as intermediaries in their Metaverse investments.

They might even sponsor those aligned with their company values in a professional esports game manner.

It’s also worth noting that Star Atlas DACs could, in a decentralized manner, mint their own coins or take other steps to raise capital to maximize their gameplay impact in Star Atlas. We, the Star Atlas team, are building flexible and decentralized software infrastructure to enable such activities in a permissionless manner, although naturally any DACs engaging in these activities will need to comply with their respective legal obligations when doing so.

It takes time to build the software infrastructure to enable the permissionless entry of assets from third parties inside Star Atlas. Still, we will indeed be providing modules and tools that allow, for example, you to order your favorite pizza inside Star Atlas and it will reach your home still hot!

Functionalities for guild gameplay

To create a robust guild ecosystem, the Star Atlas team is developing the following structures for its community:

a) A secure in-game platform that will allow for guild customization regarding its governance, treasury management, and POLIS voting.

b) A framework that would empower DACs to issue their own governance tokens.

c) A guild competitive ranking which will reflect in gameplay structures such as participating in the lower chamber of the COP meetings in the lore of the Star Atlas Metaverse. We will strive to make this high-level competitive content with different forms of rewards for the most successful guilds in the many other Star Atlas gameplay styles.

Updates

The team has been moving quickly on multiple fronts. Our community has provided valuable feedback, including questions about the development of our many exciting projects, such as the Showroom, the DAO, SCREAM, and many others.

Communication

The Atlas Brew

Every Wednesday our team members Santiacc and ZeSKK and members of the community bring their favorite ‘brews’ (optional) and hang out together. Through this live and informal discussion via the Discord voice channel, we chat about the most exciting features of the Star Atlas Metaverse. In addition, the Atlas Brew crew often invites extraordinary surprise guests from the team to talk about their epic projects. So if you are looking for more Star Atlas content and more ‘alpha’, make sure to tag along!

Star Atlas Twitter Space

Our epic team member and hostess Ashley is also weekly engaged with the Star Atlas community in Twitter Spaces! She brings the latest intel, keeping our community updated with the wide range of content produced in Star Atlas and the rest of the crypto world. The mood is fantastic, and the community is always bringing some entertaining content as well!

Roadmap Reports

Recently, we introduced the Ustur Executive Surveyor Report: Star Atlas Roadmap Scan #01, a document that encloses the development of our most relevant projects in detail while also providing some stimulating lore background to the community.

The community quickly embraced the initiative, so we published a second report: the ONI Shadow Ops Mission Report Star Atlas Roadmap Scan #02 in which the community learned about the roadmap progress and the dangers that lurk in the different worlds of Star Atlas.

Another highlight of this month was the Showroom module gameplay video which you can watch by clicking here. Again, it’s satisfying for us to see our Metaverse unfolding, piece by piece, in the beautiful Unreal Engine 5 environment.

These two initiatives generated positive feedback so we’ll continue to share the adventures of ATMTA Industries and its employees regularly while supplying our community with reports, videos and the arts of our evolving world.

This week we will be distributing our weekly report here within the Atlas Star, so we will let Lieutenant Wenn and Agent M4 rest for a while before taking on their next mission.

Here we will highlight the main progress of this month, including the latest developments of the roadmap. If you want to jump right there, please click on the following link: full roadmap update.

Summary of developments

First of all, let’s have a look at the following information that we disclosed over the past few months:

GAO Phase 2

We started a new wave of ship drops, filling our universe with more beautiful creations from different manufacturers! We’ve also started giving the community the power to determine the order of new releases via voting windows.

We recently delivered the following ships:

*Seat belts not included.

Fimbul Air Bike

— An entry ship racing ship from the Fimbul manufacturer that is born to be wild.

It will be too late by the time you hear the whirring Sound.

Ogrika Mik

— An agile and deadly fighter with elegant aesthetics, a combination that can only come from Ogrika Industries.

Boom!

Fimbul ECOS Unibomba

— Also known as the Ball of Death by our community, this single-pilot ship packs quite the punch with its single but deadly bomb bay. The good news: you most likely won’t need to fire twice.

Let’s take this beauty for a ride!

Fimbul Lowbie

— If you want to stand out in a crowd while riding in comfort, the Lowbie scores high in style points and is sure to turn heads. Cruising the galaxy will never be the same.

Photoli magic at its finest.

Rainbow Arc

— We can always expect uniqueness when talking about Photoli designs, but the Rainbow Arc is a notch above your usual freighter. It comes packed with an engenius defense mechanism which allows it to combine its natural energy shield with deflecting plates, increasing your safety while lowering your stress levels!

The Symphony of war

Vzus Ballad

— The first Capital Ship of its manufacturer. A fighter focused on dominating the battlefield through the strategical deployment of medium and small ships from its hangar.

The Thrill of Life — and death.

Busan Thrill of Life

— The first of the Busan armada is a testimony to the exceptional shipbuilding craft of the Sogmians, this vessel is built for stealth strikes in tactical offensives.

Also, by clicking here, you will find the full GAO Wave 2 brochure! On this wave, we continue with our plan to have 51 different ships launched by the end of 2022. The reason for this production push is to cover all of the various gameplay proposals for our project. We also aim to prepare our community with a steady supply of vessels as we strive to reach our target of 1 million players by the end of the year.

Unreal Engine 5 Showroom — Weekly Update

As mentioned in the introduction, we’ve made good progress on the Showroom front, and we were thrilled to share this 2:02 minute video with our community! Step by step, we’re getting closer to enabling your interactions with your vessels in a gorgeous 3D UE5 environment as you can see below!

Life flourishes

Also, we have some fresh news regarding the Showroom module directly from the press! Check out the current stage of our roadmap development:

Project: Showroom Alpha — Weekly Update

Concept Art: DONE /// Art: BUILDING /// UX/UI: BUILDING /// Game Design: DONE /// Blockchain: PROTOTYPING /// Core Gameplay Development: BUILDING

Updates: Started to prototype VFX part for core interactions on the level. /// UX is locked. First integrating pass of UI mockups in progress. Started to work on Title Screen /// UX is ready, wireframes are done. Engineering dept. to start working on wallet and authorization flow.

Upcoming activities: Working on Save/Loads and Loading of the level, player interactions with objects, terminal system and UI implementation.

The Ship missions — SCREAM — Weekly Update

One of our main goals in Star Atlas at the moment is to introduce entertaining ways for you to engage with your NFTs. First, SCORE was about introducing the framework of resource management and reward reclaiming. Now, we want to bring you the experience of playing the game of Star Atlas in a 3D structure that will enable you to make strategic decisions and experience the impact around you and inside our Metaverse.

Check out the latest developments of our roadmap:

Project: SCREAM v1.0 — Weekly Update

Game Design: PROTOTYPING /// Blockchain: PROTOTYPING/// UX/UI: PROTOTYPING /// Economy Design: R&D /// Front End: PROTOTYPING

Updates: Continue to define explicit requirements for core gameplay mechanics and game systems. /// Continuing to refine blockchain architecture based on gameplay requirements. Polished an existing prototype and started prototyping a new program./// Continuing to refine user interaction flows after eliciting feedback from key stakeholders. Started low-fidelity wireframes. /// Started to assess the economic implications of net new gameplay loops. /// Adding more high fidelity functionality to WebGL

Upcoming activities: Continue to define explicit requirements for core gameplay mechanics and incorporate feedback from SCREAM stakeholders./// Test and refine prototypes across all SCREAM teams and stakeholders. /// Prototype the game views and all of the interactive elements. /// Continue to analyze economic impacts of SCREAM /// Continue to add additional functionality to existing WebGL prototypes.

The High-Risk Zone (HRZ) and Medium-Risk Zone (MRZ) gameplay article

We also released a report about how the gameplay in Star Atlas HRZ and MRZ is currently envisioned. The article was produced with the collaboration of our community members, especially the Pirate Guilds, who brought invaluable insights! If you click here, you will find all about some of the dynamics we are planning to introduce, like:

Bounty Hunting — One of our community’s most desired in-game activities, you will learn everything about how bounties are placed on players and NPCs and how to erase or collect them!

PVP and Looting — The article also details how Player vs. Player combat will work in the different zones of Star Atlas and how it will allow players to acquire loot!

Galactic Marketplace — Weekly Update

Our Marketplace is going through some changes. The original design was pretty much like a typical crypto marketplace. This caused some degree of hardship for our users unfamiliar with the crypto market, so we updated the design to make it work as an actual game auction house. Keep your eyes open because we are constantly improving the marketplace experience. Check out this week’s progress:

Project: Galactic Marketplace — Weekly Update

Blockchain: BUILDING /// UX/UI: PROTOTYPING /// FRONT END: PROTOTYPING

Updates: Atlas Staking specifications were approved, and we started architecting the program. /// Currently assisting front-end engineers with prototypes and ready to start preparing for user testing. /// Ongoing prototyping of the core user flow (3rd week).

Upcoming activities: Once ATLAS staking design is approved, we’ll start implementing /// Strategize for user testing the prototype /// 3rd week of prototyping core user flow (ongoing iteration with UX / UI).

The POLIS DAO

The POLIS DAO is the top-level governance (universal for all players) that regulates the overall well-being of Star Atlas. This is a constant in the in-game economy and — in the long term — the Metaverse as a whole. Creating it is proving to be a worthy challenge. It’s one of the essential pillars of the project and the most security-sensitive one so far. Unfortunately, there is no roadmap to creating something this new and secure, but we continue to make great progress. Here is the latest:

Project: DAO — Weekly Update

UX/UI: PROTOTYPING /// Front End: PROTOTYPING /// Blockchain: BUILDING

Updates: Finalizing wireframe and handoff to UI/UX integration with Solana./// Integrated reward snapshot program./// Building component libraries.

Upcoming activities: Finish prototyping wireframes and start high fidelity design. /// Build chain indexing services, deploy the front-end prototype./// Complete Typescript bindings and the interface between the web app and Solana.

Closing thoughts

March was an inspired month for Star Atlas. We’ve grown stronger as we’ve onboarded new personnel. We’ve adapted our procedures to welcome dozens of new friends into the heart of our company. It has been an awe-inspiring journey, as they brought new insights, experiences, and perspectives to the projects we are currently developing.

Also, this was an exceptional month for innovation. We are working on multiple new frontiers, and the next time we meet here in the Atlas Star you will learn about them…

Have an inspired weekend.

ABOUT STAR ATLAS

Star Atlas is a next-gen gaming Metaverse emerging from the confluence of state of the art blockchain, real-time graphics, multiplayer video game, and decentralized financial technologies.

Real-time graphics technology using Unreal Engine 5’s Nanite allows for cinematic quality video game visuals. Blockchain technology using the Solana protocol establishes a largely serverless and secured gameplay experience. Non-fungible tokens obtained and traded within Star Atlas create an economy that replicates the tangibility of real world assets and ownership. To learn more, visit StarAtlas.com, join a faction at Play.StarAtlas.com and send your spaceships on a deep space mission by enrolling them into a Faction Fleet.

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