IPFS IPFS Camp 2022 - Gaming & Video & the Metaverse, 31 Oct 2022

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From YouTube: Hands-on: Integrating web3 with Unity - Taivo Pungas

Description

The NFTPort team will give a hands on workshop demoing how you can use web3 tech natively with Unity.

A

Let me do a quick survey to see who is awake so uh who has ever minted an nft, raise your hand, okay, uh who has read the erc71 interface, spec, okay, fewer people uh who has deployed the contact themselves and like uploaded the metadata, so basically create an nft collection and nft contract.

A

Okay, a few people um I'm hoping this is not too simple for you guys so uh I'm, my main fear was uh making it too too simple, but let's see so. What energyport does essentially is there's this whole lot of infrastructure that you need to interface with, to launch your uh nft contract, to mean to be able to maintenance essentially and to use nfts in your game, and what densityboard does? Is we abstract that the way so and nft Port offers an API, a rest API?

A

Where you can do simple things or like these concrete actions with single API calls, you can deploy a contract, maintenance, nft transfer or burn nft? Each of these is a single API call, and these all of these are like writing. Two different chains, or you can read from different chains, uh get get the wallets nfts get a collection.

A

Nfts get the details of an nft Etc and we we try to make it as simple as possible to use entities so that it can become the sort of like standard, very easy to use broadly used technology that that we imagine it to be on top of the API actually have the the unit, the SDK as well.

A

It is mostly uh kind of a relatively simple password layer, so every action maps to every every unit, disk action very clearly maps to one of the API actions except deploy contract, which we didn't really see a use case for, but essentially I'll, be talking through the API examples. But in the latter part of the talk, I'll share the unity SDK link and essentially it's like one-to-one using the SDK versus using the API.

A

So why should you care um I spent the year a bit more than a year of my life, trying to build products and, failing uh you know several times in a row and one thing: I I very quickly learned with the first failures. Is that it's you don't really know whether what they're building is useful.

A

If you don't ask money for it, so someone's saying they might use it or someone even using it, but not having to pay for it. It's not really a strong signal.

A

So even if it is not sort of like critical for you, if you don't need to make the revenue, then to figure out whether people are getting value from your application or whether people are enjoying your game, then adding a business model or trying to monetize in some way it can be a very, very strong signal of um of value to your users or to your players, uh and the typical, like the standard, webto business model for for games are one of the standard ones is ADS right and we as a community.

A

We have sort of decided that we we don't really like that, so we would rather use something else, some other model and the basically the other main model there is. Someone has to pay right like so. In the end, there has to become money coming from somewhere, and uh if that is the user, then there's like direct alignment between the user and the source of money.

A

So if the user is paying for the game, that's sort of the ideal now the question is: how do you actually integrate that or how do you actually use nfts to do that? Because in the web 2 world you can like the models are relatively clear. So you could uh you could sell the game like buy the game for 50 bucks and then you sort of own it or you can you can at least play it in perpetuity or uh there may be some monthly subscription you can sell boosts.

A

You can sell some unlocks extra content Etc and the question is like what what how do you use nfts to implement user payment models in your game and I think there are two aspects of entities that actually make it easier or like where entities are unique and allow you to build the business model that you can't really do as easily in web2 and the two things are: first, you can pay for permanence and the example I I want to share here.

A

Is um there was a time like I think 10 years ago, not eight nine ten years ago, where there was this mobile game called Hill Climb Racing, um essentially, like you have a car, you try to go up a hill try to reach as far as you can and uh that's pretty much the game mechanic like upgrade your car, uh more difficult levels, Etc and I spent I'm sure I spent like hundreds of hours on that game, even though it's very simple and at the end when I uninstalled, the game is all gone like there's, nothing left and I'm I am very sure.

A

I would have been willing to spend like I, don't know 10 euros, 20 euros to sort of memorize this somehow so maybe mint this as an entity or bring it out of the game so that I am left with a memory or of the achievement that I got from the game, and it's it's weird because then it's sort of I would have voluntarily paid for uh sort of meeting and achievement and I think this is actually a model that not many people have tried and one that I would actually like to see.

A

More is uh everything being free, but if you might want to make it permanent, if you want to take the data, the Milestones, the achievements out of the game, then you pay um and that's that's uniquely enabled by nfts, because you know it's uh off chain. You can't really it's not really permanent on chain.

A

It is, and the other thing about nfts is they are instantly interoperable and what I mean by this is, um if you saw a couple of months ago, Instagram released support for nfts, so you can connect your wallet and and sort of like showcase. Your nfts in the Instagram profile, unfortunately not in Europe because of gdpr, but uh you know like that's the trend we're going towards and if you imagine the world, where um you know a user has their wallet connected to Instagram, and now they come to play your game.

A

Then the moment you give them an nft or the moment they receive an nft or buy an nft in your game. It is instantly a social experience. They can instantly show it off on Instagram or, if Reddit, that supports for nfts or SnapChat or whatever the social platforms um when they adopt nfts and I. Think this this is happening, then there's this interoperability, which again you just don't really have with a web tour of chain solution. Right, like you, could give some tokens or Milestones or whatever of chain in your app.

A

But you will have to convince Instagram to integrate with your particular Achievement System and energy is just like resolve. All of that for you.

A

So that's the second pattern uh that entities I think sort of a reason: I'm optimistic about 10fts as a source of monetization for for games and the main, like the the very obvious, the most I think the most commonly talked about pattern for how to monetize with nfts is token getting so tokenating essentially like. uh If you hold the token, then you can unlock something. If you don't hold it, then you can't- and it's very I think the metaphor is actually pretty good. Like you walk up to your gate, the token is the key.

A

You unlock the gate to get in. If you don't have a token you don't get in and there are many ways there are many things you can actually tokenate. So you can token gate access just like being able to access the game uh season, pass, subscription or monthly pass whatever you can tokengate particular functionality. So if you hold the nft checks as a particular part of the map, only then you can get there or entities for particular levels and at least for functional items. You can only use a particular sword or car or whatever.

A

If you have that relevant entity, this is more common. You can also tokengate non-functional items so nft avatars, nft apparel on the avatars entity, skins Etc, so like the design space is pretty broad here, because, essentially token gaming is just like a form of authorization and the users can sort of hold the entities and trade them as means of moving the authorization between users um and essentially talking heading is like. Do you integrate it into your application?

A

You need basically two steps, one, the user needs to get the entity from somewhere, and this is where like this is uh where you can build your business model around. You sell the nft to the user, that's where you make your money and then, um when they come to your application at runtime, you need to check whether the user has the nft or not.

A

So you can tell whether you should allow them to access or not um and I'll, go to you through uh through two different ways to do it and the ways you can use nft part to implement those. So how do you sell an ft2 user? uh The standard way people do it today? If you like people who launch nft collections, is you deploy a smart contract, uh you build uh minting the app or essentially a website around it. That makes an RPC call and the user goes to. The website connects their wallet signs.

A

The transaction pays a fee and they get the nft. So essentially, that's the the flow here like the once. uh You know like you, don't really need a website even as well like you could just use a polygon scan or ether scan or something uh the user makes the RPC call the get back to nft. This is a very simple, um uh simple approach, and you can do that within a few minutes with nft Port, so I open up the documentation website for the endpoint, where you can deploy an entity, collection, contract and I prepared.

A

The parameters as well, so we don't have to write them from scratch. So essentially, what do you need to specify to deploy a contact with entity uh chain will be deploying it on polygon. This is the name of the contract. This is what will show up as the collection on openc, for example, and other marketplaces. So my game is called, let's say: test land Tesla season, one um I'm I'm selling passes here.

A

uh Max Supply could be anything I'm saying only 100 people can get taxes, I mean price, half a Matic, so that's like 50 cents um owner address. This is both of these are my own. uh My own address. uh Some of these other parameters are not as important but the uh pre-revealed token URI. So essentially, this is what will Define how the nft will look like when people meet their passes, and this is actually where ipfs comes in. How do you actually Define the token? How the token looks like the the image, the metadata?

A

So essentially, you need to make upload the image to ipfs, then upload the metadata job ipfs, which refers to the image and then you'll be able to deploy the contract. We have endpoints for that, so one API call is upload. The file to ipfs literally attach a file to the body of the post request and it's uploads ipfs pinned by filecoin.

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This is by our our friends at web3 storage, so they take care of that and then the second step is to define the metadata and upload that to ipfs I've done both of these steps before um Let me. Let me show you the the metadata here.

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So this is the metadata name test on season. One pass description gives access to test land and the file URL refers to the iPad file that I I already uploaded on ipfs, and this is what the what the file looks like.

A

So let me go ahead and um and take the contract which I deployed last night. So essentially you can use this endpoint. We went through the parameters Wonder API request and within, like 10 to 15 seconds. The contact is deployed on polygon. You can also do it, but obviously the costs there are are higher in the contract so going back to where we started. Actually um in, like you make the RPC mint call uh I, don't I didn't set up a meeting website, but I can write the contract on polygon scan, collect my wallet.

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Call the mint function, Alpha Matic, one token.

A

Submit transaction uh it's pending and it should show up on openc in a few moments, so this is one of the main or like one way to give nfds for tokenating Content later this is sort of the the least least Central way, I would say so. The only thing that you actually have control over in that case will be the um the contract that you deploy. If you want, and in many cases you might want more control, so you might want to take an API approach, and this is something that we enable as well is.

A

So this is your app the game. You're building. This is the name of the nft API. This is the the contract that you deployed on chain, this user, so the user pays, or maybe they come with uh um with uh like a coupon or something or maybe they do something that you like, and you want to drop them an nft.

A

Your application makes an API call to nft Port the API call like the semantics being, please maintenance nft into that contract. Then we on our side. We do all do all of the gas handling. uh The token like costing the the coins need that you pay for transaction Etc. We make the RPC call to the uh to the contract and the end of these. We, like the RPC call we make, will have the user's address in it and the user receives the nft.

A

um The reason you might want to do that is it's essentially more flexible because in the case on the left you either have to have the user mean directly sort of either in your app. You need to make the integration yourself or they need to leave your your game um or you need to do a lot of work to essentially build what or replicate what we have built, which is the like simple interface for minting programmatically and the approach on the right.

A

Let me see how we're doing for time the approach on the right, um I'll show. You I'll run you through how we can do that as well. So we have different kind of contract for that you can deploy a contact for empty products and I'll do that live as well. So let's do it right now uh chain polygon name. So, like the imaginary scenario here is like: let's, let's have a contract where each nft represents a car in the game that we have or in the test land game. So let's call it test length.

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Cars I'll, be the owner of the contract.

A

Erc701 token and the roles are not that important right now.

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My Json has an error somewhere.

A

Okay and with one API call I got back my transaction hash. Let me go go ahead and check it on pulling scan pending right now, including to block and within, like usually within 5 10 15 seconds. It is on the chain. The Next Step from here is once I've deployed the contract. This I did this via the API. Now I can make the minting calls so again to do that. I need to upload the image and the metadata to ipfs before I. Do that? So let me go ahead and and do that here.

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So let's have this thessalorean. This is the image we're attaching to the nft.

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Getting back to my ipfs URL immediately create the metadata for it.

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And maybe let's add some attributes as well, so um let me find the attributes.

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So I add some attributes which you might want to use in your game, and these will also show up on on marketplaces.

A

Okay, metadata is in ipfs, and all the domains now is to actually make the main thing called. So let me go ahead and customize a little mint paste in the metadata URI contract address. So this is the contact I just created.

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And let's mint this to myself,.

A

Okay and again, with one API call: I got back the transaction hash. Let me go ahead and find it on polygon scan.

A

Into block you should be able to yeah, we can also see it in the in the contact. So again one API call the NFD is there and it was minted to the user that I specified in the uh in the in the API call. Let me see if I actually opens the it has already indexed it so uh is going to be in the hidden tab, most likely.

A

Yep and and it's here, it also shows up on opposey, so essentially, I I went through these two approaches, and now the user has an nft. All we need to do is figure out. So once someone around the person shows up at the gate when you figure out whether they have the right nft, and we also got you covered here. So essentially the approach is the user. They have an nft, your application, the user connects their wallet to your application. You need to you, can ask for an MX support. Api.

A

Give me the list of nfts that this user has and we'll come back to you with the list they own and also the the image is 3D assets, attributes everything that you might want to use to actually display or render it in your game and based on this, you can authorize the user and maybe actually render the nft in some way.

A

I'll just show very very quickly with this is just one API call or to give an FD is owned by account. Let me get my account address and take a polygon.

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This will have a you know, a long list. These are all the tokens that I have, but you can restrict it to your your particular contract, so in general, enough support indexes the whole chain right. But if you want to look at only the contact or the contacts that are relevant to you, then we can filter it down to that as well.

A

And I include the Metadate as well, and now you can see so with. Second API call at the time that the user connects their wallet. We can figure out. Do they have their relevant nfts, so you can essentially ask for this user. Give me all the cars that they own all the nfts, that they own in the CAR contract, and you can get back.

A

You know the all of the data here, which is essentially all of this allows you to render the viewer that you can see on openc and you can actually also render the 3D versions if you attach a 3D asset instead of just a 2D image. You can also render that and fetch that one thing that we that I want to highlight here.

A

One thing that we do is um I'm sure you have seen the if you've like worked with the nfts at all people store their assets and and metadata in various places, so can be an ipfs link. If it works well, that's great, but it could be dead or it could be. uh You know stored somewhere, where the response time is like 60 seconds or 200 seconds times out of the time, or it could be on an off chain storage. It could be a Google.

A

Drive could be a link that is down and what we do is we essentially catch you on our side. We pull in all of the metadata all of the assets so that, when you make sort of act as a kind of as a CDN or as a cache layer for energy data, so when you, when you want to get the image you can get it, um you can see it's in a Google bucket, which is uh sort of more consistently arrival and lower latency than you typically get from, like the the average NFD.

A

um If you go directly against the storage that they have specified there, okay, and uh with these two steps so giving user energy and checking whether they have an entity, this essentially allows you to talk and get anything anything that makes sense within your game within your app.

A

um The second, the second main pattern I wanted to share um is Milestone drops or that's what I named it I'm, not sure if there's a standard name, but um this is what I alluded to earlier with the hill climb car game right, like the user, has reached some point in the game. There's some achievements a milestone and you can give them the option.

A

They don't necessarily have to do it, but you can give them the option to Mint that Milestone um into their wallet and again like if you tie it all together with what I said before, like the flow could be, they achieve something cool in your inner game, the minted in generality and like five seconds later, it's on Instagram shareable and in that sense I would say this is a a powerful pattern.

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I I, don't think many game developers or in general developers have have exploited because it's like a share button that uses nfts as the sort of like technical implementation behind it, and since it is very early, I think this can be a very interesting growth channel.

A

For uh for you, if you're working on a game um and essentially like, like you said it could be completing a level achievement, discover the secret item that was optional in the game like off the main path or it could be time played whatever you can come up with, uh where you sort of like uh which are like standard parts of the game of game design, um you can monetize them either one of two ways. One is that you could just have like sort of have the user minted.

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So they pay you for the privilege of getting the thing as an entity the achievement as an nft, um or you could monetize it by giving it to the user for free or for like marginal cost and then earning royalties off of that. So this is sort of like you.

A

You would probably want to make sure that there is a reason to for there to be a secondary, Market, otherwise you're actually not going to make money off of that, but that's also an option essentially and the the approach here is like quite similar to to before. Essentially, you need to give the user an nft um with a DF approach.

A

You can do it with energy part as well I'm not going to details but basically like if you whitelist user, in a in a contact, then that sort of acts as a selective filter for who can meet an achievement and the API approach is essentially the same as before the user. Either you take like off-chain payment or the user takes an action, it may be free and your application decides okay. Now it's it's a good time to Mint to that user. Make, a post, endpoint call!

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You can make a post call to the nft board API we call the minting, RPC and, and the nft is dropped to the user.

A

um So I said before and I know: I haven't really like delivered on the title uh really, which is you know, integrating this with unity. um Let me. Let me show you quickly the unit documentation that we have so um in the API logs. We have a unit section. You can do literally every part of it. uh Everything that I just showed you you can do in unit as well with Native function. Calls it's very easy to get started.

A

You can use Unity package matcher to uh to test it out, takes a few minutes and there's a feature list, so you can see like the feature parity on by Chain. So what is available on on in the SDK and what isn't? Let me show you a Showcase of the unity SDK. So uh let me connect my account.

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A

I think it's there's something else. I need to do which I forget, but we can look at maybe a better way to look at this take collection. So let me explore our collection and now using the nft board. Unity SDK we're actually loading all of the nfts within that collection and, as you can see, we're actually loading and rendering the 3D assets as well, because in many cases entities hold 3D assets.

A

So uh this was this is the sandbox assets contract and if you look around, there's, like you know, there's a bunch of stuff um by the way, I'm just warning you playing a playground is going to crash you in a moment because uh there's no memory management, but um it's just the limitation of the of the you know the the example not really the SDK So within Unity.

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You can very very easily uh fetch both image assets and the you know, sort of the the main prize, which is the the 3D assets as well, uh and they could do it. You saw the load time here.

A

um These assets may be relatively big, but, like you can do it um rightly with us, because we catch them in a centralized storage. uh You can also mint 10 of these from within the game and there's a demo of this uh I won't go through all that and you can. um You can go through the demo as well later, if you want on your own.

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A

To summarize my talk so try to make money as a form of validation, to do that either sell nfts that gate content or let users meet meaningful moments to them. uh The the things that I showed you you can find all that in docs. That entity protects with that. Can you can sign up uh for free?

A

You can mean 100 nfts, deploy five contracts, uh get a free, API key, get all that done within a few minutes to see whether that would actually work for you for your game, and if you want to check out the unit the SDK, then that's on our GitHub at nft Port nftportunity. But if you Google NFC opportunity SK, you will find that as well, and if you want to get in touch with me, then my my email is at private nftart.

A

I'm very happy to to talk to you, especially I, would love to hear from you if you're building, something where sort of you have like issues or paints around emitting entities or using nfts within your game, so try to hit me up after after a talk and that's it. Thank you very much.