Pixelmon: A Look into the Latest Updates in Game Development

Overview

Over the last few months Pixelmon’s game development team has been hard at work on two projects: the Arena and the Hunting Grounds. As LiquidX has been expanding its team, Pixelmon has been able to add experienced game industry professionals in areas such as programming, art, and game design. The company has also been updating its website, UI, and various other deliverables, including Trainer Adventures.

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Team Expansion

In recent months, Liquid X has carefully crafted a new team of experienced game developers who are actively helping drive development in several areas, including programming, art, and game design. This has resulted in a more comprehensive and well-rounded approach to game development, with a wide breadth of expertise and experience from which Pixelmon is benefiting extensively.

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Arena - Update

The Arena has made significant progress since its first Vertical slice release in December. The focus has been on improving and polishing the current product, with a few new features also being released.

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Bug Fixing:

The team has fixed several major critical bugs with high priority, making the game stable in both practice and PvP mode. Minor bugs are currently being worked on and are expected to be completed soon. The community closed testing groups have been instrumental in the quality assurance process by reporting issues and providing feedback on a constant basis.

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Performance optimization:

To improve the game's performance on mid-tier computers, several actions have been taken in the backend, including optimizing fps and resolution specs, and moving from a client-host to a server-based PvP technology.

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AI System:

The main new feature released in January was the AI system, which allows for PvE gameplay. This is a basic version of the AI applied to all 6 characters, and more complex and customized logics will be developed in the following builds.

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Development and Design Roadmap:

The team has finalized the Q1 development and design roadmap, defining all the new features and improvements to be delivered within this first quarter.

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Hunting Grounds Update

HG - Overview Production

Work on the Hunting Grounds project has begun and is steadily increasing. The team is in the early stages of development and has been focused on design, defining the vision of the game and what it will become. Over the next few months, the team will be working on the first prototype, demonstrating core mechanics and testing the world environment. Some of the features that players can expect to see include parkour-style character movements such as climbing and jumping, hunting Pixelmons through different clues, and resource gathering.

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A set of improvements planned for the next builds including but not limited to:

• Polishing the VFX and animations of the Pixelmons skills and ultimates
• Improving the combat feedback systems from characters’ recoils to UI VFX
• Balancing and customization of stats for each character
• Improving  the existing power-ups, with better graphics and status effects, as well as new power-ups
• Finalising  the AI for PvE gameplay mode
• Adding switching coins mechanics as a secondary game objective
• Improving SFX

The team has also been renovating to build a server room to be able to build out some on-premise build and development infrastructure.

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Hunting Grounds Development (Main Game)

Pascal Luban, the lead game designer, has announced that the design team has entered a new phase of detailed design and implementation. During the previous months, the team focused on the high-level concept for the main game mechanics. Now, the team is transitioning to implementation, using the Agile production method. This iteration-based method is the best way to ensure the quality of the game's gameplay. The team has started with the basics, such as the camera and default movements.

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Design

The design team on the Hunting Grounds project has been working diligently to define the development roadmap for the year and beyond. The focus for the first quarter of 2023 will be on the prototype currently in development. The goal is to demonstrate the core mechanics of the game and test the world environment.

• Polishing up and reiterating character movement and basic parkour system definition.
• First proposals of Workstream 5 designs: advanced parkour climbing, sprint and dash, climbable/not climbable, crouch.
• UI/UX proposals for safe zones and buttons.
• Internal QA and playtesting pipeline is progressing in preparation for receiving feedback on the first builds next week!
• Started the first exploration and development of climbing puzzles.
• Started working on parkour, jumping, and climbing workstreams.
• Early proposals have been made for the  hud, resources, and inventory.
• Kicked off discussions between the Game design and Narrative teams.

Development

• New systems include: Health and Death v1, Stamina v1, Stats v1, and Crouch v1.
• Iterations and improvements: Camera stability and UI tweaks for the first build
• Continuing with code maintenance and splitting the build into client and server.
• Focus on character movement, camera, stat system, and client/server
• Continuing on code maintenance, migrating code from the old project over, and ensuring that it meets project standards.

Art

The design team working on the Hunting Grounds project has been diligently defining the development roadmap for the year and beyond. The focus for the first quarter of 2023 will be on the prototype currently in development. The goal is to demonstrate the core mechanics of the game and test the world environment.

• Concept: vine and skybox explorations, exploring trees, dangerous variants, first concept of gear on the new trainer, small vegetation, and rock prop exploration.
• Environment: small rocks and bushes, vine exploration, tree variants, cliffs, trees, and leaves.
• Pixelmon: work in progress Kevin, R7N3, Droot, and Goloid. Second Skeleton Type for small flying body shapes.
• Technical Art: Grass shader, ground shader, sky shader, character dither, environment shader, fog shader.

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Pixelmon Release Notes (Pixelmon updates)

Key Updates

• The Unknown 1 attribute in the Pixelmon metadata has been renamed to Level. The level attribute will be used to track Pixelmon’s unique qualities and will be used for gamification. Also, Unknown 2 attributes will be renamed to Unknown.
• The new metadata attribute Trainer Claimed can now be used to identify whether the Trainer NFT has been claimed for a Pixelmon or an egg.
• Trainer Adventures has been released as an incentive-driven staking system for Trainer and Pixelmon holders.

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15th December

We are delighted to announce the launch of a brand new website that  is accessible to everyone, regardless of whether they  own a  Pixelmon NFT or not. Using this website, users can simply enter the Pixelmon ID to check whether the Trainer NFT has been claimed for thatparticular Pixelmon. Since it takes some time for Opensea  to update Trainer Claiming Status, this site will  provide  up-to-date information to the users. 

The URL for this website is - https://checktrainer.pixelmon.ai/

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21st December

Trainer Asset Downloading Feature

Trainer Holders who have owned the trainer for at least 30 days can now download Trainer Assets from both the Pixelmon Staking site& Pixelmon Profile site. However, before downloading the assets, permission from the Trainer holder will be obtained.

Unstaking Awareness

If a user tries to unstake a Pixelmon before its scheduled day, a warning message will pop up,  making the user aware of the situation. 

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16th January

We deployed two configuration-related infrastructural level changes in our system to add more security and minimise potential vulnerability. The first one involves moving all database access secret credentials from the configuration to AWS secret manager. The second one involves blocking public access to trainer metadata internal service. From now on, the internal trainer metadata APIs will be called from Pixelmon internal services.

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25th January, 2023

Pixelmon Staking Site update 

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Egg Hatch Button

Previously, Pixelmon owners could only see the Egg hatch button while staking their egg into the affinity pool. From now on, there will be no restrictions on that. The Egg hatch button will always be visible to all holders as long as they have an egg.

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Infrastructure level update 

Updating the Log Provider

We are updating the Log Provider to write only Application-type logs. Currently, we are writing multiple types of logs in our system, but writing only the application-type log fulfils all of our necessities. As a result of this implementation, we will be to write only application-type logs, reducing our our infrastructure costs.

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Trainer Adventure 

On February 13th, 2022, a completely new pool was introduced for Trainer Holders called the "Trainer Adventure Pool". Holders can send their Trainers on  different Adventures by soft-staking their Trainer into the Trainer Adventure Pool. If a user continuously stakes their Trainer y for 7 days, they will receive  1 ticket. Users can also stake their Trainer along with a Pixelmon of the same origin. In that case, the Trainer and the Pixelmon are paired up, and if they are staked continuously for 7 days, the user receives 2 tickets! Users don't need to unstake their Trainer after 7 days. They can stake in the  "Trainer Adventure Pool" as long as they want. The more weeks that pass, the more tickets users get. The draw happens every Monday after 12 pm SGT, and each week, winners receive different treasures as a reward. We’ve spent a lot of time refining and developing UI and EOA updates for Trainer Adventures and will continue to do so. 

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Outlook (What to expect in future updates)

Arena

A set of improvements are planned for next builds, including but not limited to:

• Polishing of VFX and animations of the Pixelmons’ skills and ultimates
• Improvements of combat feedback systems from characters recoils to UI VFX
• Balancing and customization of stats for each character
• Improvements of the existing powerups, with better graphics and status effects, as well as new powerups
• Finalisation of the AI for PvE gameplay mode
• Adding switching coins mechanics as secondary game objective
• Improving SFX

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Upcoming Release 

Pixelmon Evolution 2 

At  the end of March, we are expecting  to release Evolution 2 pixelmons. Currently, all the Pixelmons we have are Evolution 1 Pixelmon. But now, users can evolve their E1 Pixelmons by burning a serum and then obtain an  E2 Pixelmons. 

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Conclusion

This marks the end of the first  development blog for Pixelmon and its current and upcoming releases. Stay tuned for monthly instalments and updates, and don’t forget to follow our Twitter and join our Discord to stay  informed on our developments and plans.