This month sees two contests going for walks concurrently! One for hot air balloons, and another in partnership with big name atlas for growing voxelized versions of the factions in their sport. The prizes for the pinnacle 10 finishers are huge. I exceptionally advise that everybody who is into voxel modifying, digital artwork, or even building cool stuff in Minecraft must check those contests. The software and entry to the contests, is completely loose.

While The Sandbox may have lost some of its hype to other virtual world / metaverse projects, it’s still a major player in the space. And an important part of The Sandbox ecosystem is user created content. This includes not only the games and Sandbox experiences, but also a large portion of the NPCs, objects, and other entities that are seen in-game! These objects are created using a free, easy to learn software called VoxEdit.

VoxEdit holds regular creation competitions to promote their tool and encourage content creators. General rules for these contests include keeping the entries appropriate (ie, no racism, sexual content, etc), making quality entries, and no plagiarizing. You can read the full list of rules at the VoxEdit Contest Guidelines.

Details on each contest are below. Good luck!

Hot Air Balloon Contest

The primary contest is rather easy. Layout a warm air balloon. But since it’s the sort of fundamental idea, creativity will play an critical component on this contest. Entrants could be compelled to consider how they can make their balloon stand out in a crowd of balloons. There are masses of real-life examples for concept, but given that there aren’t any actual-existence constraints here, i would count on to peer quite a few very particular entries (anybody up for making a steampunk balloon?)!

Balloons should not be larger than 512 voxels tall (which is pretty damn big) and the entire entity should not use a box larger than 512 voxels on each side.

Prizes for this contest are as follows:

• 1st place – 6,000 SAND
• 2nd place – 3,500 SAND
• 3rd place – 2,000 SAND
• 4th to 10th place – 500 SAND each

You will need to create a gif of the animated asset (Gyazo is the suggested tool for this), tweet the gif out while mentioning @VoxEdit and @TheSandboxGame and using the hashtag #VoxEditWeekly . Finally, fill out the official submission form.

Submissions accepted from May 5th through May 12th, 11:59pm UTC. Reviews and voting run from the 13th through the 27th, with results announced on June 2nd.

Star Atlas Faction Contest

The second contest sees a partnership with every other play to earn title, big name atlas. Submissions are open from may 2d through might also fifteenth, eleven:59pm utc. Critiques and voting from may additionally 16th till june 5th, with consequences introduced on june eleventh.

For this contest, designers are tasked with developing an inhabitant from one of the 3 factions — the oni, the ustur, or the dust. The three factions are quite distinctive. And whilst you can simply create some thing based on the photo here, it’d likely be wise to additionally examine approximately the factions to get more info and ideas.

There is also a secondary contest related to Star Atlas. For this one, the goal is to create a headpiece inspired by BLOND:ISH, an artist who creates for both The Sandbox and Star Atlas. This headpiece should fit the standard avatar. Personally, when I hear headpiece and space-theme mentioned together, my first thoughts go to The Fifth Element! And while I’m not really sure what sort of inspiration folks will get from BLOND:ISH, I do look forward to seeing the final creations!

The prizes for this contest are very hefty. First prize alone is worth about $50k at current values! Prizes include SAND tokens and Star Atlas NFTs.

• 1st place – 20k SAND and an Opal Bitboat
• 2nd place – 15K SAND, 2 Calico ATS Enforcers and a Calico Medtech
• 3rd place – 8,000 SAND and an Ogrika Mik, a Busan Thrill of Life and a Calico Medtech
• 4th to 10th place – 1,000 SAND and a Busan Thrill of Life for each

In addition, whoever designs the best headpiece wins Ogrika Mik and Busan Thrill of Life NFTs.

As usual, create a gif of the animated asset, tweet it using the hashtags #VoxEditWeekly and #WeAreStarAtlas while mentioning @VoxEdit, @TheSandboxGame and @StarAtlas. Then fill out the submission form.

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Play. Create. Own. Govern. Earn. Welcome to the Metaverse Own a part of the Virtual World Metaverse. Build your own creative games on Virtual Land.

What is LAND in The Sandbox?
A LAND is a digital piece of real estate in The Sandbox metaverse that players can buy to build experiences on top of. Once you own a LAND, you will be able to populate it with Games and Assets. Each LAND is a unique non-fungible token lying on the public Ethereum blockchain.

SAND

SAND is the utility token used throughout The Sandbox ecosystem as the basis for transactions and interactions. It is an ERC-20 utility token built on the Ethereum blockchain. There is a finite supply of 3,000,000,000 SAND.

What is “The Sandbox” (SAND)

The Sandbox is a virtual metaverse where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain using the platform’s utility token SAND. Players can create digital assets in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), upload them to the marketplace, and integrate them into games with Game Maker.

A LAND is a digital piece of real estate in The Sandbox metaverse that players can buy to build experiences on. Once a player owns a piece of LAND, they will be able to populate it with games and ASSETS. Multiple LANDS can be combined to form an ESTATE.

A total of 166,464 LANDS will be available, contained in a map that will form The Sandbox metaverse.

GEMS and CATALYSTS define the tier, scarcity, and attributes of ASSETS. CATALYSTS add empty sockets to the NFTs that can be filled with GEMS. The higher the quality of the CATALYST, the more sockets your ASSET will have.

Users can monetize their time on the platform, by keeping 95% of the SAND revenue by:

The Sandbox team is building a unique virtual world where players can build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences using SAND, the main utility token of the platform.

SAND holders will be also able to participate in governance of the platform via a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), where they can exercise voting rights on key decisions of The Sandbox ecosystem. As a player, you can create digital assets (Non-Fungible Tokens, aka NFTs), upload them to the marketplace, and drag-and-drop them to create game experiences with The Sandbox Game Maker. The Sandbox has secured over 50 partnerships including Atari, Crypto Kitties, and Shaun the Sheep to build a fun, creative “play-to-earn” Gaming platform, owned and made by players. The Sandbox aims to bring blockchain into mainstream gaming, attracting both crypto and non-crypto game enthusiasts by offering the advantages of true-ownership, digital scarcity, monetization capabilities, and interoperability

Selling ASSETS

Users can create and sell ASSETS on the marketplace as NFTs.

Owning a LAND

Buying a LAND in one of the LAND sales. Players can then rent them or populate them with content to increase the LAND’s value.

Building Games on the Game Maker

Build and monetize games using the Game Maker on the LANDS that are owned by players.

Through the use of ERC-1776, The Sandbox allows platform users to initiate transactions on the Ethereum blockchain while transaction gas fees are paid by the platform, optimizing overall user experience.

50% of all SAND transactions collected from LAND sales, Premium NFT sales, transaction fees and subscription services goes to the Foundation

The Foundation supports the ecosystem of The Sandbox, contributing to the growth of awareness about NFTs, the Metaverse, and $SAND.

The Foundation is currently involved with

Managing the Game Makers Fund and Creators Fund, offering grants to incentivize high quality content and game production in The Sandbox.

Funding over 17 game projects, some of which have been unveiled to the public at https://www.sandbox.game/game/top

Distributing grants to 100 artists to produce NFTs, most of which can be seen at http://www.sandbox.game/shop

Supporting local community managers to grow awareness around the globe about The Sandbox, NFTs and blockchain gaming via our Community Rewards and Ambassadors program https://medium.com/sandbox-game/the-sandbox-ambassador-program-4f00bb5c9c24

Sponsoring prizes for the various contests organized by The Sandbox team (VoxEdit Contests and Game Jams) to stimulate the creativity of users around the world and get them to engage with the tools of our platform.

Supporting play-to-earn tournaments and cross-gaming with activities that encourage the broader adoption of SAND.

Platform

Gameplay Experience

The gaming experience on the new The Sandbox platform will be launched through several intermediary phases, with increasingly more complex features in each. When the alpha version is launched, players will be able to make transactions and store their digital voxel ASSETS while also playing and interacting with other voxel asset creators and players in different user generated worlds. The gaming experience will make The Sandbox a strong blockchain-based alternative to existing platforms such as Minecraft and Roblox.

Even for players who do not create discrete items to sell on the UGC store, the combination of creativity and security can pay off for players who create LANDS with compelling attractions. This is because a LAND might have different revenue streams implemented on it, like microtransactions. Additionally, players can play-to-earn by collecting rewards through gameplay.

We expect a wide variety of audiences to enjoy gaming experiences in The Sandbox marketplace. We have identified some of the types of games creators will be able to craft for them:

● Social Experiences: The ASSET marketplace will allow creators to fully decorate their spaces with beautiful sceneries and structures such as a fairy wonderland, a medieval town, or even a futuristic space station. These types of experiences can attract communities of in-game friends that hang out for activities that combine social and gameplay elements.
● Build & Craft: Our voxel map is ideal for creators to make Building & Crafting experiences. Creators will be able to facilitate players with interesting experiences like building
competitions, creating their own play spaces. All these tools and mechanics will be able to interact with the terrain to modify it, build over it or even completely destroy it.
● Exploration & Adventure: Solve the mystery of the cursed swamp, slay the mercenary king of the endless desert, help the rebellion of the exiled prince of the elder LANDS or even discover all the hidden secrets of the ancient temple! Creators will be able to bring narrative, exploration and adventure gameplay to their LAND. Each new LAND will be different, offering new potential to discover new LANDS, meet new people and discover never before seen secrets!

Map – LANDS

The persistent map determines a player’s specific LAND coordinate. In most blockchain games where player domains are sold like real estate, the specific location of a domain is of paramount importance as it will determine who and what you are next to. Similarly, in The Sandbox there is a finite amount of LANDS, and their location is determined initially in the map, and cannot be moved from one coordinate of the world map to the other.

There are several advantages to this structure:

● Players have the agency to combine LANDS to create a bigger gaming space with and near
their friends; and
● Friends can cooperate in the creation of these larger experiences by building experiences together within the combined LAND and thus sharing the rewards (whether financial or purely social or artistic).

There is also an economic incentive for players to work together via a combined LAND. For instance, if several players band together they can create a ‘theme park’ experience, with each member focusing on a key attraction, or members can focus on distinct neighborhoods that together create a ‘city’ experience. In each case, the team effort allows players to cooperatively create a stronger incentive for players to visit and enjoy their creations—and more visits results in more revenue to be shared.

It’s true that a single player with one LAND can keep all the revenue from that LAND, but a larger, more diverse collection of LANDS combined can boost financial rewards to be shared by charging, for example, for a SUPER PASS that allows a player to visit all the gaming experiences in a combined LAND, with the revenue from the SUPER PASS shared between all the owners of said LAND.

There will be limits on joining LANDS together to keep certain conglomerations from having too much control and power against solo players.

Recent information has been released on The Sandbox Transportation System.

ASSETS Marketplace

The marketplace will use smart contracts to control item auctions and transactions. This open marketplace for creators and developers will allow for the free trade of in-game assets between the platform users. Additional benefits of this marketplace are that economic principles of supply and demand become automatically integrated into the system, allowing the community to determine the fair price of usergenerated ASSETS. The true strength of this marketplace, however, is that creators of such ASSETS can finally generate true tangible real-world value from the voxel content they create.

The ASSET tokens in our marketplace will require several pieces of information in order to properly be displayed as a sellable good. These pieces of info are:

● Name & Genre: In order to better identify the ASSET being sold, and to help potential buyers in finding it in the marketplace, the ASSET will require a name and a genre;
● Description: The description will help creators add specifications like size, model, potential uses or even attach a short piece of fictional lore to the ASSET;
● Thumbnail: The marketplace will show what the ASSET itself looks like via several thumbnails of the ASSET. We will include a feature in our voxel editor that will automatically generate these thumbnails for the creators;
● Price: The creator will have total control over the price the ASSET will have on the marketplace. This price will be set in SAND.
● Value: Creators will define Rarity, Scarcity and Attributes thanks to the Gems & Catalytsts system.

Once all these requirements are met, the ASSET will be successfully displayed on the marketplace and be available for purchase.

VoxEdit

Under the philosophy of “CREATE, ANIMATE, PLAY” VoxEdit is the voxel modeling software that allows the artist to rig models and animate them using a user-friendly keyframe interpolation timeline.

● Modeling: Having other software that also lets you model your own voxel art – what makes the modeling in VoxEdit different is that it is aimed at artists. That commodity is
thanks to a user-friendly interface, powerful tools to let the artists model anything they want, but also stay connected with them all the time to hear their feedback, what would be nice to have, and especially what would make their life using VoxEdit much easier.

● Animation: Here is where VoxEdit stands out. VoxEdit uses a skeletal system with hierarchies, like the ones used in professional 3D software like Maya, 3D Max, Cinema 4D, etc, allowing the Artist to rig anything they want and be ready for animation. It is the only voxel modeling software that allows to model AND animate your ASSETS. Once the skeleton is made, the artist can create any type of animation moving the different parts of their model with an easy-to-use timeline. The timeline works like a video editing software timeline, using layers to represent what part of the model you are moving and creating key-frames to set the position, rotation and scale. The magic happens thanks to the interpolation of these key-frames that the timeline does in the background.

● Exporting:
VoxEdit allows the artist to export their creation in .VXM and .VXR, formats that our Marketplace and games use to create a super smooth communication between the three parts. Besides that, it also lets export in the standard formats such as .OBJ and also .DAE and .GLTF for the models with animations on it.

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