First things first. For every story there has to be a setting. We need a world. We need maps. Contest time!
Build a world
I'm calling on artists from around the platform. I need your help!
Build a map of the world. It's incredibly open ended, but here's what we know. There is a white team which represents astral and protective aspects of the world. Black which represents dark sorcery and necromancy. Red, blue, and green which represent the elements of fire, water, and earth. Lastly there are the dragons of gold.
We may change the map over time and allow the story that unfolds to reshape the map, break it, heal it, add it to. We'll zoom in and out of regions as we discover new cities, new cultures, and new tribes. None of that is possible without a starting map.
Contest
Create a fantasy map of the Steem Monsters World. You're welcome to incorporate art from the game into this. Try to stick with the theme of the game to the best of your ability. If your creation is selected we may have some edits so hopefully you're using some layers in photoshop. This contest will run for a week. When this post expires so does the contest entry time.
How to submit
Make a post that has your artwork in it. Put that post as a comment in this post. If you want to create art and not let us use it that's find, but if you leave your post as a comment to this post you are agreeing to allow us to use your creation for commercial aspects of Steem Monsters.
What you promise
By submitting a picture you're giving us the copyright to use. You submit it only by linking a post that you've created with the art embedded into the comments below.
What we promise
The winner will receive 50 booster decks.
Second place will receive 30 booster decks.
Third place will receive 20 booster decks.
20 booster decks are up for grabs for lower places and for good comments regarding submissions.
More importantly is promotion. This game is already getting people super excited. Your map is going to be built into the steemmonsters.com website and we'll link to your original post and your steemit profile page. As we grow this is going to amount to some of the best exposure on the Steem Blockchain. Hopefully you'll see the art you create for us will serve as a fantastic promotional tool for you.
What may happen
If you win or place or just have some cool ideas it's possible we'll merge some of this stuff together. We hope that this is less of a final product and more of an evolving map that can twist and turn. It'll be fun to have more than one person that can contribute in such a way. The main point is that we'll likely ask you to tweak some work to fit in with game play, future visions, new cards etc. We probably want to include some inside jokes to the Steem community to other steemians through names, graveyards, tombs, objects etc. Let's start by building some hints of that into the map too.
Hi! I cannot draw very well, but I have an idea for a map!
You can divide the map into 6 islands, 5 small islands for each of the elements and 1 main one for gold.
The gold island can be the big one located in the north, they are like the gods of the realm.
Life and death and opposite each other (one on the left and one on the right just under the gold island), being like good vs bad. Earth and fire are under life and death respectively as they're quite similar (earth = life, fire = death). This leaves water, a master of somewhat both of those elements (bringing life to earth and death to fire) so it gets its own special spot on the bottom of the map.
Around each island can be features of the respective element, for example dark water and dead fish around death. Clean water and bird around life. Trees in the water/mud around earth and molten lava around fire. Of course, there's water around water. Perhaps make the water island under water if that makes sense! The middle of the map can have some epic whirlwind thing where the elements all clash.
Hope you guys like this idea @aggroed and @yabapmatt
(self upvoted for visibility)
Do you plan to publish the probabilities involved with getting an epic or legendary? Are there any limitations you're thinking about in terms of how many booster packs will be created via market forces (payment) or by you? As this post demonstrates, you're creating a separate economy of value and being able to create 50 booster packs as a reward with a couple key strokes introduces some interesting concerns about the scarcity (or perceived scarcity) of the cards themselves.
I'm really excited about the potential here, but without the game dynamics being known or the scarcity of the cards involved, it's hard to know how it will turn out in the long run. Part of me wonders if it will be another example of whoever pays the most money (or has access to the special key strokes), might dominate the game play. I'd love to see a card explorer of some kind because this stuff is on the blockchain so there could be transparency like never before, up to and including the transparent probabilities and scarcity of various card types. Promotional giveaways like this are great, but (IMO) they should be highlighted as anomalies and demonstrated on the blockchain so that all cards are accounted for via payments or via direct creation by the steemmonsters in a way the community supports (such as contests like this which add value to everyone).
Either way, keep it up and keep innovating. I'm really stoked about this project.
@lukestokes you bring up some really good points, and I think we're getting a little overly excited with the response to this game and may need to tone it down a bit. I will discuss this with @aggroed.
You're absolutely right about the increased transparency from using the blockchain. In fact, an intrepid developer should already be able to discern the drop rates of the cards by looking at the custom json transactions being posted on the @steemmonsters account.
For the moment my focus needs to be on developing out the game but I would be happy to help anyone who wants to develop something along the lines of a card explorer based on the blockchain data!
Also regarding promotional packs - all of that is still recorded on the blockchain as well. Promotional packs are those "purchased" by the @steemmonsters account. So still fully transparent, but please continue to keep us honest!
Matt, you have done a wonderful job on the backend tech here. I am blown away with the ability to transfer the cards and the gifting of packs. I think you have done a great job and if you are fully transparent as @lukestokes mentioned, the sky will be the limit on the success of this game! Keep it up!
Awesome! This is what I love hearing. :)
Yeah, I figured someone could build an explorer right now, if they wanted to dig in a bit more. And I agree, you focused on the actual system, game-play mechanics, etc is the highest priority.
You are doing some great things here, and I'm sure a lot of people are watching. I'm really excited for your success. :)
Edit: Oh, one more thing I forgot to ask, when I combine cards, is that on the blockchain? I didn't see the transaction for that, but maybe I missed them? I was curious how that works or if it's just a visual representation based on settings in a private database for how the cards are represented?
Ok you caught me - I released the combine cards feature before the posting to the blockchain part was ready because i was still thinking through how it should work.
But it's ready now and just released so here's what I ended up deciding on (will probably make a post about this stuff too at some point). I welcome your feedback.
The site now requires the posting key to log in, and when you combine cards or gift packs it will post a custom_json transaction to your steem account which is proof that you initiated the transaction. The transaction is signed/broadcast on the client-side and the keys are never sent anywhere.
Another custom json will then be posted from the steemmonsters account with the details of the combine or gift or whatever and include a reference to the transaction posted on the player's account in step 1 above.
This has two benefits (in my opinion):
Users "own" their cards and they must publish a transaction to their account on the blockchain to move or change those cards. If we were to move cards or change them in our private DB then people could see that there was no associated transaction posted to that player's account and call us out on it (we won't do that of course!).
You can still get the current "state" of the game by just going through the steemmonsters account history and not the entire blockchain.
Here are screenshots of both transactions so you can see what I'm talking about (note that the second references the trx_id of the first):
Nice! I'm a little hesitant about logging in with a posting key, but I can see the need for it. As long as the key never leaves the browser, cool, but it is a concern the more we create interfaces that teach people to give out their posting keys, the more hacking incidents we're going to have.
I prefer using Vessel. Could it be done that way instead? That way each action could be done via Vessel securely. Either that or steemconnect which is an official product of Steemit, inc and trusted (for the most part).
I really do love where you're going with this and putting everything on chain though. That's what I was hoping to see. :)
Yes I agree with you that we shouldn't teach people to put keys in the browser at all. From that perspective it's not different than SteemConnect though. I also don't really like SC because I don't like having to give another account posting authority to use it.
The Utopian hack really made me think twice about using SC. I know we wouldn't be storing access tokens like what they were doing, but SC could get hacked and then the hackers would have posting access to all the steem monsters' players' accounts.
I think Vessel is the best option - and it is supported currently for purchases as I'm sure you've seen using my SC2-pay library (which is mis-named now that it supports other options than SC). Practically speaking though very few people use Vessel, especially the ones who don't know how to protect their keys.
The best option of all (in my opinion) would be to have a metamask-style browser extension for managing steem keys and signing transactions. That would be the best mix of security and user-experience (again in my opinion). I have talked to @jesta about this a couple of times but he doesn't seem too interested in it.
I would absolutely love for someone to build that though, and would definitely help fund and support that project.
Anyway - this was probably a much longer response than you were expecting, but the point is that I put a lot of thought into the authentication and I thought that using the private posting key on the client-side only was the option I preferred to use based on all of the above.
I've used Vessel every time when buying monsters, and I greatly appreciate the Vessel support.
I understand the concerns with SteemConnect but the way I look at it, the Utopian hack actually demonstrated the value of SteemConnect. Instead of all those posting keys needing to be reset, the SteemConnect OAuth tokens were revoked and no one had to change any keys. If SteemConnect itself ever got hacked, then Steemit could also be hacked. I figure we have to put trust somewhere and right now that's with the core Steemit, inc developers.
Right now, unfortunately, there's no easy way to ensure "This only happens in your browser and doesn't get sent to our servers". That's why I like Vessel. It makes that separation clear. A browser extension, to me, still feels a bit shady. I've never really trusted MetaMask. I wonder sometimes if those extensions are spying on pages or capturing key strokes... I don't like them running all the time in the background. I do agree they are more user friendly by far though.
No worries about the long reply. It's a really important discussion, IMO.
Keep up the great work.
I'll put out a terms of service at some point that will indicate our promise to not inflate the shit out of the game. At the very start of this it's important to get the game built. We just hit 10k in sales. i think a lot of that will be eaten by dev work to tget the game up and running. We've sold 4300 booster packs. I think I've given away 200 or so. So, we're at 5% in promotional stuff. Promotional stuff won't scale with the game. Bceause I can't see managing 1000 deck giveaways.
So, I'll likely keep it at 10% or less in the first 6 months and then scale back. What I would really like to have happen is code in a number of packs as promotional as they are sold. So, it's a set limit and I don't have to think about it.
That said, the map is going to define the starting point for all the lore adn it's important to get going on a great footing. Hopefully a few hundred dollars worth of game material is worth it to get a good starting point for immersion.
I love the response so far. Transparency is key, and it sounds like you're thinking along those same lines.
I hope the game dynamics are really good. :)
I was lucky and opened a Legendary card. :D
Do you plan to put daily quests(with some rewards) into the game? It works really well in online games.
only get doubles, not gonna spend another dime on it Xd
Maybe create a similarity to it.
Map is from the game ChronoCross.
ENTRY - WORLD WITHIN A GIGANTIC CRATER
Check out my BlogPost (link below) for all the explanation and Lore. Im totally up for contributions towards this concept!
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@basilmarples/steem-monsters-cartography-challenge-a-world-within-a-gigantic-crater
Woah, flat steem monster earth. It’s a hoax!
Lmao flat eart baby just ask Kyrie.
flat AAAAND hollow perhaps?
This is a really great idea! :D Very well put together, Basil.
ah thanks chris! I see you already checked it out :) So excited for this game! Its genna be BIIIIIG
Dude, your idea is awesome! I hope it wins. :D Can't wait to play!
Woww that's would be an amazing contest
This is an amazing contest, by this it can enhance more of our imagination and widen our perspective about art.
Hello, I would like to submit my low poly 3d map for the contest. My post is here.
The river splits the aggressive types from the peaceful types. I like that!
I bought the starter pack yesterday evening and I am very excited to see how this project will evolve.
However, don´t you think that you should have some concepts about your game´s lore before you create a map?
okey , i will not participate but i start to make this for give some idea to other who want to try
im too exaust for continues but i take some fun for do this :D if i can inspired some people :D gl every challenger
I think you've talked to @drawingly in the past! She's created some wicked character for the @IFC and I think you could definitely work with her and get some of our characters involved in a booster pack of some sort!
Please support my Crypto Project
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This is my 2nd entry where I'm trying a new ideas, pirates'attacks while we are traveling for another island https://steemit.com/steemmonster/@j3cesar/steem-monsters-cartography-challenge-my-2nd-entry
This post has been resteemed from MSP3K courtesy of @aggroed from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ).
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Awesome! I can't to see all the Art!
Sounds like the perfect thing to do. A cool story along with artwork and some historical events would be an awesome addition to this. I look forward to see the future changes and how everything will unfold.
Wow this is an amazing contest @aggroed
I need to tag my friends that may want to participate in this
@mickeyscofield and @cherylsonyy check this out
This is not an entry, this is a picture of an idea of a world map from DD. Just putting a visual to what I think it is you are looking for.
I have learned a lot about this post through your post, which means that I will build steam monster.com website and link it to the main post and my Steam's profile page as we are going to the blockchain best exposure, hopefully we have created a nice promotional hand for the industry you have created. But there can be many obstacles in this case that we have to overcome and this will result in our future Stibhangi compatible with the new tax, etc., will be asked to do something new, so we will try this byabasaguloke
I'm so winning this contest. Let me set to work.
why not use google maps api?
Yes good luck steemit men
Knowing myself I have a feeling I might become addicted to this game, still I can't wait! Unfortunately I dont have experience in artwork, but one thing I think would be dope to incorporate some elements of mythical places/legends/weapons from all over the Word. Some from Africa, Asia, Europe etc. I think the familiarity could incentivize some who wouldn't normally partake to play and could even end up being a bit educational to others.
Love this initiative btw! And I tip my hat to you and @yabapmatt for creating it.
I´am not skilled with photoshop and programs like that, so I won´t be trying to win this contest, but while I was reading I had some ideas (some maps) that passed through my head.
I immediatly thought of a smaller portion of the map dedicated for the dragons of gold, of course with touns of yellow and gold around it; Something compared with the UK in the real world map.
Then in opposite sides, to represent the dark and astral we must have black and white, I would personally do very basic, and on the top side of the map, I would use white, and effects representing their cards. In the bottom of the map, with the same dimension, the dark with some cool colours (purple and gray).
Finally, but most importantly, one big piece of land combining the last 3 type of cards "red, blue, and green" (divided according to the creator/designer criteria), but with salient differences between the three elements...
If you read this until the end, hope you liked the idea, simple, but a good point to start making a dream come true, and as @aggroed said very easy to edit and personalise, along side with the development of the game.
Sadly i'm not a designer :-( Good luck to everyone !
Super project ;-) !
I really like the idea in your post, which can make me add science, I really support you, thank you.
Oh my gosh, I know who you want designing your maps, it's @derekvonzarovich, who I've just tagged in hopes of inviting him over to this post to check it out :D
Besides that, today's the first day I'm hearing about steemmonsters and I really need to check this thing out, it sounds potentially awesome!
Thanks for your review! @aggroed ! very good work.:)
Wow .....this is an amazing contest
hey mentor. you're really a professional I hope you are like my video please up-vote my video and comments for my next future post!
I like the old-school style maps. :-) @ironshield
I can imagine "moving map", living on its own and moving areas depend what story happened in the world. Areas could be connected to some famous Steemian names.
I know this is kind of magic but polymorphic world would be a Thing.
Do you have templates to work with? I am interested in contributing.
nice contest! i will try to draw one :D
I love that the community is able to help with certain aspects of the game!
Nothing fancy, but here's my entry: https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@surfknasen/my-entry-for-the-steem-monsters-cartography-contest.
Here is my entry :)
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@dksart/steem-monsters-cartography-challenge-my-map-entry
I made one more, just because I came up with another idea... :)
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@dksart/steem-monsters-cartography-challenge-my-second-map-entry
Most excellent.... going down to the dungeon to work on some maps.
Hello.
Why not do it on real ground and prepare several layers with Open Street Maps ??
Do not ask me how, the programmer is you.
Regards.
!steemitworldmap -20.4455326 lat 159.7549458 long SteemMonster World d3scr
I think almost anything can eventually be mapped onto google api. Even a fantasy world can be broken apart and mapped onto a world map. I think the main caveat is that steem is international, so having realms on literally different continents would mean people couldn't find monsters on a real map outside of their realm.
Ah !! Okay. Thanks por the light. !!
Regards.
Greetings, I hope you like my entry to the contest. https://steemit.com/steemmonster/@j3cesar/steem-monsters-cartography-challenge
The massive "tree" in the middle of the earth land is perfect concept. No fantasy map would be complete without the elder tree. ♥️
Full Post
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@omitaylor/steem-monsters-cartography-competition-submission
Here's my entry: https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@carn/map-submission-to-the-steem-monsters-map-contest
The Gimp file is neatly split up into several layers so it shouldn't be to hard to mess with it if you wanna go with it (and you can have the Gimp file if you wanna have someone else run with it)
I don't think a week is enough to create something worth while. Also I just show it after I hear of the steem monsters... I bought a starter pack and it is awesome the art style and all. Who was the artist for the characters by the way?
I agree. If I were to do the 3d model I wanted (example above) it would take a month for the landmasses and mechanics, save any "village" level detail. But well worth it.
Here is my entry: https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@wholeself-in/steem-monsters-map
I wanted the world to be unified, instead of separate lands for each element.
I love that your map has a "hollow earth" built in. I had a similar idea that each continent have an underground, which makes sense so that mermaids live "inside" the sea which pirates are "on" ships and frost giants "inside" cold mountain caves. So this makes a lot of sense regardless if it's one continent or multiple. Love the color depths too. Looks like you know a thing or two about shading and pallets.
Thank you! The app I was using is really fun. It's like using real pastels but without the mess, and with an undo button!
Let the Tournament begin!
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@bitpizza/the-tournament-of-steem-monstersI love the name devils gorge and the big whale in the ocean. I still think they need to design a whale boss card. :) The neutral zone is a wonderful idea. I didn't see that in the instructions but it makes perfect sense.
Your balance is below $0.028. @dustsweeper is now disabled for your account until you transfer new funds.
Floating Islands Map That Travel Through Time!
Hi
I am new here and found out about the contest yesterday and thought it was too late to enter until Mr @Aggroed motivated me with his positive influence that I still had time and here I am.
My proposal and presentation are floating islands that travel through time as they have the ability to move, appear and disappear and very difficult to destroy as they could leave remnants as a mirage in different parts of the world where they have battled insuring your investment.
The layers are in Adobe Illustrator because it makes it faster to move around, streamline as vector to any size or change as per your request and they could easily be exported to Photoshop.
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@berniesecretary/steem-monsters-cartography-competition-submission-as-floating-islands
btw
My name is Eve,
I just finished High School with good grades and
have been motivated to become a developer thanks to genious Mr. @NextGenCrypto,
and am very pleased to meet you all.
Very nice illustration and wonderful markup there as well. I am surprised you are just out of high school! Illustrator is such a big investment too. So that's awesome that you've made such a big investment at such a young age! Whew! The tablet and adobe cloud I'm buying is upwards of $800usd total together. I couldn't imagine that kind of money at 19. Are you going to go to college for design? If so, you have a knack for it!
If selected, I'd be interested in how your map will scale. Or is this just concept? The dinosaurs, trees and mountains being the same size, it feels more like a poster. I like the pallet and colors a lot too. Looks like the original illustrator style! I wish I could have done this nice a job texturing, but no stylus yet.
I absolutely love that you and others went with the floating islands too. When I posted it was all flat maps. I agree that the dimensional look makes much more sense.
Very polished!
I had very little time to work on it, was mostly under the pressure to make it on time. At school they taught us how to use layers in photoshop so it was easy when we had to design sample billboards and we used illustrator as vector layers which takes very little ram memory to process to any size.
Wish also I had a wacom tablet, mostly I use a light box to draw on and then I scan the images and with streamline is very easy to export to illustrator as vector to fill the colors.
Will be here everyday before going back to school and hope to get to talk to you again and very soon congratulate you.
Thank You for being nice.
Eve
I have not used Adobe Illustrator in years, I admit. I thought Streamline was discontinued. I've been using Blender and Unity 3D awhile and I guess I got spoiled. But like you said, it was a rush. I don't think a week is really enough time for anyone to finish a whole universe or think things out. But it's a start and it wonderful to see everyone participate. I honestly think it would more fun to coordinate efforts with various talents adding where they're strongest. But I think they will have to pick a core vision as a starting point. No matter who is selected I'll be making some time to contribute as my children are absolutely insane about this game. My 9 year old has set up folding desk next to my desk now, officially. Ha-ha!
Thank you for the compliments. Yeah I'm good for being "all over the internet." I suck at being low-key. 😆Yes, I will follow you too and add you to ginabot! I don't have a massive vote but I'm a good cheerleader! :)♥️
Yes, you are right, luckily one of our teachers has streamline and let us use it in class.
I like it though is old and very precise and easy to use. I 've tried some other software but by the time I figure how to use it, I just go to streamline and get it done.
My teacher said there is some other awesome software to make 3D maps that is available at discount for students and teachers and is the one Google uses to make its virtual reality maps, as soon as he replies I will let you know the name of it., ok dear Miss @omitaylor.
Mine is here.