Decentraland Builder Contest Submission #2

Decentraland Builder Contest Submission #2

The Ruins of Nautilai

This was actually one of my first ideas, before I really got a chance to play with the Builder tool much. The shape of the nautilus is gorgeous and mathematical, so I tried to create something built around that shape.

I love that even though you are in the middle of the structure looking up, you can still see the shape of a spiral shell above you. 

I wanted a somewhat ethereal and ancient sort of feel. The insta-fog supplied exactly that! I also tried to use a color palette of yellow trees flanking the borders to prevent anything from obstructing the view of the ruins.

I created an archway which invites the viewer to stand in, and thus gives them the best, straight shot of the ruins. 

From above the shell sculpture can be clearly seen. I wonder if the judges get to see it from this angle?

I'm really happy with how this turned out, because I never knew what a nautilus-shaped structure would really look like. It was fun to walk through, with the blocks slowly forcing you tighter and tighter until you get to the middle. It was fun to make, and I hope you enjoyed the little tour!

Decentraland Builder Contest Submission #1

The Decentraland Builder Contest may have come to a close, but the new builder software is still up and running, and I just LOVE seeing what I can create! The software is pretty basic with options of what it will allow you to do, but in a way I love that you have to be that much more creative to make what you want to!

Here are a few pictures of a castle I created. The parcel is the max size allowed, which I had to do in order to bypass the triangle limits. Each brick tile is almost 200 triangles, so I kept hitting triangle limits as I built, and had to get a larger parcel size.

The castle is furnished inside, and you can walk through the entire thing. 

I wanted to create a medieval market of sorts in the front, but I didn't have enough triangles to build much. I wish I would have made a castle that wasn't as wide to preserve tiles.

The gate was made with bridges and fences

There is a sky light with dragons framing the tall dance hall. 

I love the fog effect! Even from a short distance, you feel like you are looking at something far away. 

In the end, I was pretty happy with my castle. I didn't have any plan or sketch when I started it, so there was no comparison with how the final product turned out. I just wish (and hope!) that we will have more triangles someday to work with so we can create similar structures without having this much land to work with!

Thanks for reading!

Decentraland Virtual Reality

Our reality is different from one another, even though we may share the same soil, the same house, the same sun in the sky. Sometimes we long for another reality where our dreams are a bit closer to our grasp.

Decentraland seeks to be a new online gaming/building platform that offers the user a virtual reality experience. There are forests, casinos, distant lands, and more. Sounds similar to other virtual reality realms, nothing really groundbreaking here, until, that is, we talk about the underlying technology that Decentraland is built upon. Decentraland uses the blockchain to verify each transaction, making sure that the "real" money each user spends is purchasing something that cannot be duplicated in the digital world. That doesn't sound like much of a big deal, unless you like to collect rare online items, like this extreeeemely rare directors chair, http://www.webkinzinsider.com/2011/ask-creative-director-contest-win-ultra-rare-directors-chair (which the author happens to be the 11th person in the world ever granted one).

And there's one more thing that Decentraland offers that other VR platforms don't:

You can own your own piece of the game.

Not like an award or a high score list, but real, actual digital land! (insert chuckle at the sound of what I just wrote) Through the technology of the blockchain and it's online ledger, users can buy parcels of land, which then belongs to them. They can build a house on it, build a casino on it, they can even build a giant middle finger on it, I suppose...if they wanted to. The point is, it belongs to them, and they can do with it what they like. Imagine exploring a world where everyone could be as creative as their imagination allows them to be. Well some of it would be quite scary I suppose, but a lot of it would be pretty dang awesome too.

So here's to the dreamers, the radicals, the risk-takers who have stuck along with the project long enough to see it to the current state. Decentraland was, oddly enough, the first alt-coin that I ever bought. I sold it to buy some other coin, but later bought back in. This blog is dedicated to the progress of my own land on Decentraland, as well as other projects that are breaking new ground.

Only time will tell if we are lunatics buying pixels, or visionaries who braved the nay-sayers. Either way, the journey will be an interesting one...