🎉 NPC Robot Release: Meet Dexter! 🤖

After you all voted for “Robot NPC” in our item idea vote, the team took on the challenge and turned it into pixel-perfect reality. Now, Dexter is all-systems-go and ready to join us on our Etherjump adventures!

Dexter is an NPC that will pop up with a dialogue box whenever a player gets near, allowing for builders to finally tell their own stories and have more control over the level experience. Being a robot, Dexter is mass-produced so feel free to add as many of him in the level as needed!

Thank you to all you Etherjumpers that submitted your ideas and voted. Your inventive ideas and energy are what make Etherjump a truly community-powered game.

💡 Robots 101: Your Crash Course to Building with Dexter 🛠️

So, you're ready to add Dexter to your levels and introduce players to our new robotic buddy.

1. Head over to the Level Builder at build.etherjump.game

2. Open one of your Plots, or hop into Freeplay.

3. Open the Item Catalog by clicking the + button in the left sidebar, or press E.

4. Navigate to the Miscellaneous tab, where you’ll find Dexter, the robot NPC.

5. Place Dexter anywhere you’d like in the canvas, and a text editor box should appear. Type in your desired message for Dexter to say. Click Confirm.

6. Press Play to preview your dialogue for Dexter in action! If you need to make any changes, click on the pencil icon above Dexter, and edit your message in the text editor.

We can't wait to see the new adventures you create with Dexter. Remember to share you levels in #share-your-plot!

Stuck? Need a bit of help? Shoot a message in #general. The Etherjump team and your fellow builders are always ready to lend a hand.

We have many plans for Dexter in the future, such as being able to respond to his dialogue and letting him set objectives throughout the level. For now, we hope that players and builders will enjoy this added layer of interactability!

Replays

We know that replays have been out of commission for a while, so we’re pleased to announce that they are finally back! The previous inaccuracies on replays have finally been fixed, so players can rest easy knowing that their best runs are preserved just as they were played.

No more running through walls, taking random damage, or inconsistent enemy behavior! The new replay format guarantees that runs will replay out just as they were originally.

Level Format Update

The way levels have been stored have been long overdue for an update. The original method of storing and loading levels caused the file sizes to be much larger than necessary, resulting in long loading times for both the builder and player.

With our new and improved format, large areas of scenes can be condensed in a fraction of the size. What this means essentially is that maps with large sections of repeated blocks such as grass tiles, spikes, and even air can be stored quickly and efficiently. 

In practice, large plots have seen the largest increase, with a completely empty large level being over 250,000 times smaller! On average, large levels can see up to an 80% reduction in size. In the case of medium and small plots, you can still expect to see a notable shrinkage of up to 50%. 

Overall, these changes create a noticeable improvement in real world loading and uploading times for both players and builders alike.

Bug Fixes

No update would be complete without squashing out those pesky bugs!

• Clouds no longer inconsistently disappear during lag

• Sand no longer shakes inconsistently during lag

• Removed a bug where wizards would sometimes get stuck in an animation loop without firing a projectile

• Removed a bug where players would sometimes randomly take suffocation damage while wall jumping

• Modified gameplay timer to more accurately reflect run time

What’s Next

We know many of you are eager to receive news on the future of the game, and rest assured we have many exciting updates coming soon!

Asset Refresh

As mentioned in our January 2022 update, we have been working hard with our artist to unify the Etherjump style and create a more cohesive artistic identity. Stay tuned for more previews as this overhaul project nears completion!

New Content

We have many plans in place to spice up the gameplay of Etherjump. The Unity engine update has allowed us to feasibly add more dynamic features to the game. Some features on our timeline are slopes, moving platforms, and advanced enemies with adaptive AI. 

Thank you everyone for your continued support. We have many things going on behind the scenes that we can’t wait to share with you!

The Etherjump Team

Thank You, Etherjump Playtesters

Before we get into the update, we would like to take a moment to express our gratitude to all the playtesters who have been instrumental in the development of the rewrite. Your valuable feedback, dedication, and passion for the game have greatly contributed to refining the gameplay experience and identifying areas for improvement.

As we continue to scale and expand Etherjump, we look forward to your continued support and collaboration in making the game even better for all players to enjoy. Once again, thank you for being a crucial part of Etherjump's journey and helping us bring this Unity-powered experience to life.

Why Unity?

Switching to the Unity engine has provided Etherjump with increased scalability, allowing the development team to expand upon the game's features, optimize performance, and ensure that Etherjump can continue to grow alongside its dedicated community. This transition has also opened doors for future updates and improvements, making Etherjump more adaptable than ever before.

We’ve reworked our internal architecture to be a lot more modular, which will make it much easier to add to and scale our catalog in the future:

• Gameplay is much more performant than before. Complex levels that were extremely laggy in the past, now run with ease, in the new engine. We architected the new codebase with maintainability and scalability in mind, ensuring that future updates remain performant and easy to implement.

  • All of the items from the old engine were also ported with multiplayer in mind, so that current game items will work mostly out of the box when we start to develop multiplayer, without significant redesign.

• Unity makes it very easy to build across several platforms, opening the door to console and mobile versions of Etherjump in the future

• With Unity, we can also make more effective hires through the rich pool of talent within the Unity community!

New Features

The Etherjump Unity rewrite has allowed the development team to introduce new features that weren’t possible in the previous engine, adding a new layer of level design for builders and gameplay for players.

Hello Full Screen

We've added full screen to the game, allowing you to dive headfirst into the action and enjoy every pixel of the world of Etherjump, edge-to-edge. Say goodbye to black bars, and hello to an all-new, immersive gaming experience.

Entity Interactions

Ever wanted to see a roadrunner bounce around a cage of jump pads? Well, now you can!

With the new engine, blocks like:

• Jump Pads,

• Clouds,

• Sand,

• Ice,

• and Mud

…now affect all entities (enemies, vehicles, projectiles)

With this rewrite, we’ve totally reimagined the game’s architecture in order to accommodate a more modular and cohesive game world. This change greatly expands the realm of possibilities for building, and allows for more complex building patterns to create even more unique experiences!

This is the first step towards creating a more immersive Etherjump experience, and In the future, we hope to take this even further with more complex entity interactions (eg. fireballs melting ice, etc.) to bring greater variability to gameplay and introduce new game mechanics.

New-and-Improved Snowman ⛄

The original snowman was a bit of a weak enemy, so we’ve given it a revisit!

The new snowman now has the following behavior:

• The snowman now throws directly out of its body, from the height that is closest to the player

• You can no longer dash through the snowman

• Thrown snowman nodes bounce and slide around terrain for an increased lifespan

These changes, in combination with the entity interactions described above, makes for some pretty cool possibilities!

Replays

The replay system is a big part of Etherjump and we wanted to take that into consideration when porting over to Unity.

We’ve preserved all of the leaderboard entries and replays from the original engine, and when you click on the time of an old replay, you will be redirected to the old replay viewer.

The new replay viewer comes with a few neat upgrades, such as the leaderboard entry name and a live timer in the corner!

Mobile Browser Support

Unfortunately, due to the nature of Unity WebGL builds, many mobile devices are unable to properly run Unity games in the browser, which means we could not offer proper support for mobile browsers to play Etherjump.

Luckily, due to Unity’s comprehensive cross-platform support, we will be able to offer a native mobile app experience for Etherjump with much less effort.

So although mobile support is paused, for now, stick around - the app will be way better!

Integration of Existing Elements

Rebuilding Etherjump in the Unity engine was a considerable undertaking. The team faced the challenge of seamlessly integrating existing game mechanics and the level design into the new platform. Through months of hard work and dedication, we’ve managed to achieve a perfect blend of old and new, ensuring that fans of the original game would feel right at home in the Etherjump Unity rewrite.

The new engine has also been fully integrated into the Level Builder, so that Builders can seamlessly test their creations in the new Unity game engine!

Stay Tuned

With the Unity rewrite, our goal was to transition to a new engine for enhanced scalability, while maintaining the game's core essence and charm. With its innovative new features, and the hard work put in by the development team, Etherjump is now better positioned for growth and expansion. The Unity engine lays the groundwork for exciting future features, including multiplayer capabilities, player progression systems, and an extensive catalog of new items for players to discover and utilize.

Thank you all for your continued support, and thank you to the bug testers for your valuable contributions along the way — see you all in the next update!

Devs have been hard at work, and we just wanted to give you all a quick update on community playtesting for our upcoming Unity build of Etherjump! The private round of playtesting has been incredibly helpful. Our playtesters have provided us with great feedback, and we were able to resolve over 40 action items in just 1 week thanks to their input.

With that, we're excited to announce that the next round of community playtesting has now begun!

We've handpicked a group of players to participate in this stage of playtesting, and they've all been given the super cool, ultra-exclusive, "Unity Playtester" role in the Discord server.

As a playtester, you will have access to a private channel where you can give us direct feedback on things like bugs, and the overall feel of the game!

We're excited to hear what they have to say and can't wait to use their input to make the game even better before release. We're super grateful to everyone who signed up to playtest. You're all seriously awesome and we thank you for being a part of this journey with us.

Art Updates

We're very excited to finally welcome MaxCreed to the Etherjump team as our first Pixel Artist!

We've enjoyed collaborating with Max ever since we met him for our Halloween event, for which he created the Pumpkin Runner enemies. Since then, he's produced several of our newest assets and has just knocked them out of the park every time. His amazing creations have helped push the artistic direction of Etherjump, and we're excited to push it further with his level of talent.

Max will continue to create visuals that bring Etherjump to life for both Builders and Jumpers.

With Max, we are currently revisiting the art style of Etherjump and producing mock-ups of all possible upgrades and refreshes. This is a significant endeavor that may change existing art, and all final decisions will be made toward greater quality and cohesion of game assets.

As the game expands in depth and breadth, we want to make sure that our art style can scale to our needs, while creating a charming gameplay experience that can be enjoyed by all ages.

Concept Art

As we continue to explore our art direction, we’re also expanding the world of Etherjump and its many lands and characters. As such, we’ve sought out talented illustrators to bring that world, and our imagination of it, to life. These illustrations will help us express the core components of Etherjump through a creative and story-driven lens.

Engineering Updates

This month we continued work on the long-awaited Unity update, with lots of progress made. Here is some of the progress:

• We reworked our internal architecture to be a lot more modular, which will make it a lot easier to add to and scale our catalog in the future

  • Gameplay is much more performant than before. Complex levels that were extremely laggy in the past, now run with ease in the new engine. We architected the new codebase with maintainability and scalability in mind, ensuring that future updates will remain performant, and easy to implement

    • All of the items from the old engine were also ported with multiplayer in mind, so that current game items will work mostly out of the box when we start to develop multiplayer, without significant redesign

  • We redesigned our enemy/item systems to take an entity-based approach, meaning that it will be a lot easier for things to interact with each other. Now, things like mud blocks, magma, and jump pads are able to affect enemies, and in the future, we hope to take this even further with more complex entity interactions (eg. fireballs melting ice, etc) to bring greater cohesion to the gameplay and introduce new game mechanics

    

• We have finished the brunt of the work in porting things from the old Javascript engine to this new Unity engine, which includes the enemies, items, special blocks, projectiles, and more. We are currently working on the final miscellaneous things, such as UIs, camera systems, and general bug fixes/final changes.

  

• We are also exploring refreshed music/sound effects to create a more pleasing auditory experience in Etherjump, but this may not be available on the initial release of the Unity update

Once the Unity port has reached minimum viability, we will begin private playtesting within the community, with select community members being chosen to access the new engine for feedback/bug reports before public release.

While we have not yet officially opened up for additional headcount, we’d love to hear from you if you are, or know any experienced Unity developers or illustrators/artists! Shoot us an email at team@etherjump.game

Thank you all for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing continued progress in our next monthly update!

We hope you’re having a great start to your year! It’s been an exciting start for us, so we just wanted to give you a short peek into some of the things we’ve been up to.

Migrating to Unity

We’ve kept this one under wraps for a while, but we’re finally able to reveal some information about it.

We will be porting Etherjump from the current JavaScript engine, to Unity!

Couple things to note:

• Movement mechanics and other advanced techniques (“superjump“, etc) will be preserved in this new engine

• Plot builds will be unaffected by this change

The move to Unity will come with a number of benefits for the Etherjump gameplay and ecosystem, including:

• Performance boost

• Greater portability across platforms

• Shorter development cycles

In addition, it will enable us to add many more dynamic elements to the game, in a shorter span of time. With Unity, we can ship the game across more platforms, and make more effective hires through the rich pool of talent within the Unity community.

More details to come.

Game Asset Refresh

Over time, as we’ve worked with various artists, there have come to be some inconsistencies in art style with some of the Etherjump game assets.

As such, we are remastering some of our older assets to be more aligned with the style of some of our newer assets.

Here are some previews (subject to change):

These samples are early previews, and are subject to change!

These are just two of the many things we are developing behind the scenes (many of which we can’t share just yet!)

Thank you again for your continued support,

The Etherjump Team

Claim your Winter Builder Pack (1 per wallet) at: winter.etherjump.game

Read on to learn more about all the exciting new items in our Winter Builder Pack for Etherjump.

Winter Claim Experience

Step into the shoes of Pyx, an aspiring young adventurer with a penchant for Building, on a fateful winter evening. A strange, bright crack appears in the sky… a rift in the universe?

Help a new friend who’s a long way from his home fix his only ride back home. Who knows, he may have a special gift for you as a token of his appreciation!

Play the experience at: winter.etherjump.game

Yeti

First up, we have the Yeti enemy that will give you a run for your $JUMP with their powerful attacks and formidable size. Be sure to watch out for the giant snowballs that they scoop from the ground and lob at you. These snowballs will roll right through you if you’re not careful. You'll need to be quick on your feet and jump over them to avoid getting hit. With quick reflexes and a bit of strategy, you'll be able to take them down and emerge victorious.

Evil Elves

Next, we have the Evil Elves enemy, which are sure to spread some holiday cheer – just in their own naughty way! Be on the lookout for this mischievous enemy as it tries to take you out with its arsenal of sweet and explosive treats. You’ll be surprised how well they aim. As you encounter Evil Elves, be prepared for a battle that requires quick reflexes. The candy canes can be difficult to dodge, while the bombs pack a powerful punch that will knock you back.

Snowman

But that's not all the new foes you’ll face. The odds stack higher against you with the new Snowman enemy. Builders can make these as tall as a giant, making it a tough obstacle in your path. Not only that, but the Snowman will throw snowballs at you. From itself… It throws pieces of its own self at you… Until it destroys itself… Be sure to bring your best moves to take it down - all of it!

Winter Wonderland Biome

In addition to these new enemies, we're also introducing a festive new biome featuring a cozy neighborhood on a starry, snowy night, resting after a festive day of holiday fun. The houses are adorned with lights and holiday decorations, and the streets are covered in a blanket of snow. Explore the beautiful mountains and hills as you make your way through this winter wonderland. The ambiance of this biome is sure to get you in the holiday spirit as you play and build.

Sled

And last but not least, we've added the Sled! As you hop on the sled, you'll feel the rush of speeding through the landscape, dodging obstacles and enemies as you go. Dash through the Etherjump snow in this exciting new vehicle item!

But beware – the sled gets faster and faster. This means you'll need to watch out for any obstacles in your path if you want to avoid breaking your ride. There’s no stopping until it breaks!

We hope that the sled will add a new element of challenge to how players reach the end, and that players will enjoy the thrill of the ride as they make their way through the festive neighborhood and other biomes in Etherjump.

That wraps up all the new gifts for our Builders!

And finally…

A letter to our Builders & Players

From the bottom of our hearts, thank you, our community, for your support for Etherjump over the past year. From sharing amazing levels of your own creation, to competing to best each other on the leaderboards, your passion has helped Etherjump grow and thrive, and we are truly grateful for each and every one of you.

We are so excited for what the next year holds. We have some amazing plans in the works and can't wait to share them with you. We hope that you will continue to be a part of our community and help us make the game even better.

Thank you again for your support. We couldn't have done it without you.

Love & warm wishes,
The Etherjump Team

Today, we’re proud to unveil the beta release of our all-new Etherjump Level Explorer!

Check it out at: play.etherjump.game

This platform makes it easy to navigate plots, browse through trending builds, and discover all the newest adventures as soon as they are built and uploaded!

Some features of the Level Explorer include:

• Search: Allows users to search for specific plots by plot ID

• Featured Plot: Highlights a weekly curated staff favorite!

• Recent Uploads: Feed of recently updated/uploaded plots

• Trending Plots: Tracks plots that are recently popular using analytics

• Most Popular: Tracks the most popular plots of all time using analytics

Etherjump should be simple and intuitive to play, even for those who are not familiar with blockchain technology. We’re committed to building for the mainstream discoverability of Etherjump and bringing new players to your plots. The Level Explorer is just one major step toward this goal, and we’ll continue to iterate on this platform based on your feedback.

We built this platform as a first-iteration MVP to bring cohesion and discoverability to the plots, so there are still many features to be added!

The next features you can expect for the Level Explorer are:

• Builder & Player Profiles

• My List (favorites)

• Plot metrics

  • Player Leaderboards

  • Likes, play count, average time, etc.

• ‘My Plots’ list

• Personalized plot information

  • Title

  • Description

  • Tags

Thank you to our community of Builders, for your hard work and creativity in building such a wide variety of levels for everyone to enjoy. We hope the Level Explorer will make it easier and more fun for you to discover and play all of the amazing and evolving levels of Etherjump.

Finally, we’re also excited to announce that our Winter event is right around the corner! We don't want to give too much away, but we can say that you'll want to keep an eye out for some frosty surprises and challenges! ❄☃

You made the tricks - now it’s time for your treats 🍬

It’s been a busy week and we’re proud to reveal our 2022 Halloween Builder Packs! 🪂

All active builders have been airdropped our FIRST-EVER builder pack - take a look at what’s included, and keep reading for a word on our upcoming Halloween Builder Competition! 👇

Pumpkin Runners

Born from the souls of lost road runners, these cursed spirits are just begging for a reason to get aggressive.

Watch out because once they spot you, they’ll be coming for you… really fast!

They pack a punch of 1/2 heart, and take two dashes to be dealt with. Beware of its variants: pumpkins engulfed in flames of green or purple! A rare sight, but don’t stare too long.

Candy

What’s Halloween without everyone’s favorite - CANDY!

Experience an invigorating sugar rush by consuming these sweet confectionaries.

The Candy will give you a temporary increase in speed to boost you through your next jumps! This decadent delight introduces some interesting new movement tech for Builders and speed-runners to experiment with.

Decorative Trees

Some have reported cries of terror coming from these trees in the dead of night. Others say they’re just normal trees.

Either way, they make for a great decoration that’s sure to give you a fright! Our very first background items, we can’t wait to see you get in the Halloween spirit and light up your Plots with these trees.

Campfire

Sometimes the journey can be long and challenging. Now there’s a cozy place to rest up and catch your breath.

Simply stand close to the campfire to heal up. Now you’re ready for the next adventure! We wanted to introduce a new mechanism that shakes up the current speed-run meta.

Builders can use campfires to provide a place to stop and breathe on a long adventure, or a quick pass-through before the next jump.

Distribution

These Builder Packs were airdropped to Builders who had built their plots before the snapshot on October 22 at EOD. We wanted to reward our passionate Builders with a free airdrop as a token (heh) of our appreciation.

From that snapshot of built Plots, we distributed the Halloween Builder Pack in 3 rarities: Rare, Epic, and Legendary.

In the spirit of Halloween, plots with better costumes (higher rarity skins) got the better packs!

In order of rarity, the packs include:

RARE:

• Graveyard Biome

• Pumpkin Runner

• Candy

EPIC:

• Graveyard Biome

• Pumpkin Runner (Green)

• Campfire (Green)

• Twisted Tree

• Candy

LEGENDARY:

• Graveyard Biome

• Pumpkin Runner (Purple)

• Campfire (Purple)

• Twisted Tree

• Gnarled Tree

• Crooked Tree

• Candy

  

For those of you that missed out, don't worry! The Halloween biome as well as normal (red) campfire will be available to everyone until Halloween is over.

Stay tuned for our upcoming Halloween Builder Competition this week, which will lead into our subsequent Halloween Play Competitions this weekend! Details coming very soon!

Happy building! 🔨

What could it be…?

Introducing… the Crazy Llama!

The Crazy Llama comes to us from the illustrious Llamaverse, in our very first interoperability integration!

The Crazy Llama can be found grazing the lands of Etherjump, but don’t get too close! There have been reports of them attacking Jumpers—even spitting on them! If you encounter one of them, one dash should take them out.

Llamaverse holders will be able to find the Crazy Llama enemy in the Level Builder catalog, in the NFT Items tab. The item is free to try in Freeplay.

Note: Llamaverse holders building in Freeplay will need to own an Etherjump Plot in order to save and share their creations.

In addition to the Crazy Llama enemy, Llamaverse holders will also unlock access to the Llamaverse checkpoint flag.

With this integration, we've only just begun to present our potential for delivering unique utility for our partners, and deeper gameplay possibilities for our Builders and Players.

We’re gonna need a bigger catalog

With this latest release, along with the upcoming [REDACTED], we’re going to need to keep the catalog organized as it expands.

Introducing: Tabs!

Whereas previously we had all of our items in one page, we’ve separated them into categorized tabs so you can easily find what you’re looking for! We’re always looking out for our Builders and designing the best user experience in our platform. As we grow the catalog, we’ll continue to improve our UX so that building stays fast and easy, so you can focus on building your most creative adventures.

Thank you

Thank you to our Builders for continuing to build Etherjump with us. It is your passion and creativity that truly make this game. And thank you to our friends at Llamaverse for joining our world, and having us in theirs. 🍻

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The Etherjump website is complete!

https://etherjump.game/

The goal of the website is to provide an informational landing page as we continue to grow the Etherjump brand and our business development efforts! We wanted to highlight the key reasons why we all love Etherjump — it’s incredibly fun to build and play. And most importantly — we’re building it alongside our community, whose ownership is powered by blockchain and soon, $JUMP.

With the website complete, the team will now be focused all day, everyday on Etherjump's key foundations: whitepaper, token design, business development, and product development.

In recent weeks, we’ve been having frequent working sessions with our Advisors focused on token design, so that we can launch a sustainable model that enriches our builders’ and players’ experience in the Etherjump ecosystem.

Along with this, we’ve had several brands, both industry-leading and emerging, that we’ve had conversations with on mutually high-value partnerships and integrations. We realize we’re no longer in the same NFT partnership/collab game we were in pre-mint. We see our potential for providing unique interoperability and pioneering the concept of the shared pixel platformer metaverse.

To reiterate to everyone, our amazing community — Etherjump is just getting started. We didn’t start with a copy-paste whitepaper, or VC funding with promises of what our game could be. We started with a fully-playable game, built from the ground up, before selling ANYTHING. We started as passionate gamers and builders with a core philosophy: blockchain will forever change gaming and empower players with true ownership.

Thank you for your patience. Stay tuned for more releases, updates, and surprises!

What exactly is the replay system?

It's, well, a replay system.

We’ve been extremely impressed with all of your gameplay, and it’s been amazing seeing it being posted on Twitter, Discord, and various other platforms!

However, not everyone has the capacity or capability to record their gaming session, and it’s also difficult to retroactively record a cool run.

The replay system is the answer to all of those problems!

From here on out, when you submit your time, the game will automatically generate a replay of your run, viewable for anyone to watch.

Each replay is tied to a unique URL (on replay.etherjump.game) so you are free to share the replay with others, as well as analyze other people’s runs for tips and tricks!

This will also make it easier to detect cheaters if the replay looks out of line with what is normally possible in-game. Competitive integrity is extremely important to us, so this will only be the first big step in building a comprehensive anti-cheat system.

Accessing Replays

To access the replay of a given leaderboard time, simply click on the time!

Leaderboard times that have an underline are viewable with the replay system — times without an underline were submitted before this feature was live, and are not viewable with the replay system.

How does it work?

From here on out, every time you submit a time to the leaderboard, we also store the movement data from that run, in our database. When it’s time to view that replay, our replay system replicates those movements with pixel-perfect accuracy, giving you a smooth and accurate viewing experience!

In other words, you can imagine it as a robot playing the game with exactly the same inputs as the original player 😉

Some notes:

• Runs from before the replay system was implemented will not have viewable replay data

• This is still a beta feature, so some bugs may occur. A weird replay bug does not guarantee that the player is cheating.

  • Quality-of-life improvements will be made in the future, to make replay viewing and sharing much easier!

• Please report any issues that arise! We hope this replay system stirs up the competition, as well as unveil some hidden techniques that the top players are using 😉

Thank you all for your continued support and we hope you will make good use of this new functionality! ❤️

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@landphil | YGG#1020 and @enjoi#7173 are both veterans of the Blockchain Gaming space and we're thrilled to have them both on-board. The Core Team has enjoyed collaborating with them informally on topics such as tokenomics and we’re excited to finally formalize their advisory positions in a continuing effort to maximize our success in launching the next major blockchain game.

@landphil | YGG#1020 has been heavily involved in the Blockchain Gaming space for the last 2 years. He has been working with Yield Guild Games as Growth Ops Lead for over a year. His primary role is around strategic development of systems, organizational scaling and team building, as well as focusing on the intersection of business operations. Prior to his work with YGG, @landphil | YGG#1020 was a passionate community builder, most notably cofounder of Crit Theory Gaming. Outside of web3, Landphil has a background in small business consulting, business operations management and professional poker

@enjoi#7173 is no stranger to the intricacies of blockchain technology, has been involved in cryptocurrencies since 2013, and in blockchain gaming since 2017! He has 10 years of experience in Enterprise Sales & Marketing, and 15 years experience building out various passion projects. He considers himself an activist investor -- when he sees projects with potential, he aims to fill the gaps the best that he can on his own. http://ejlevels.com is a good example. He is also the co-host of @axiechat, a weekly podcast centered around Axie Infinity which has been running for 2 years straight!

With their deep knowledge and expertise in the space, we move even more confidently forward on product development that focuses on a soundproof tokenomics model as well as continued growth of our ever-expanding community!

Cheers, and thank you to our wonderful community for your continued support!

GM everyone! We've been working on a lot behind the scenes, and just wanted to give you all some insight on what's currently in the works:

New User Path

One thing that we've noticed for many newcomers to the project, is a general lack of knowledge, and a poor knowledge base for new users to learn about the project.

What we're doing to solve these issues:

- We've gotten rid of the previous "empty plot" design for unbuilt plots, and swapped it for a more illustrative "Demo Level" design instead, hoping to achieve 2 goals:
- Introduce new players to the gameplay and controls
- Inform users in a more clear way, that the plot requires building

- We are building out a new main website, to feed new users information about the project in a way that's basic and digestible

- We are currently in the process of testing our analytics infrastructure, which will pave the way for our upcoming Etherjump level explorer

Roadmap/Litepaper

Another thing that we've noticed, is a general lack of understanding, and lack of clarity in our current roadmap and vision.

We have a very large vision for the future of Etherjump, and we want to make that vision abundantly clear to both our players and investors.

What we are doing to solve this issue:

- Over the past few weeks, we have been actively crafting our token model, and conducting extensive research to model our game economy

- These ideas will all be listed in an upcoming revised litepaper, where we will describe the future of Etherjump, and our vision for growth

Gameplay/Anticheat

With the rise of tournaments being hosted on everyone's plots, we have noticed a few reports of cheating, with a few repeat offenders.

What we are doing to solve this issue:

- We currently have an automatic replay system in development, which will allow anyone to view a replay of the top leaderboard times, to manually verify those users' runs

- In the future, we will be adding more server-side verifications to authenticate player movements, and further prevent cheating

Partners/Exclusive Items

As for exclusive items and new content, we have started to develop the in-game exclusives for some of our early partners, so stay tuned as we provide teasers in the coming days/weeks!

Lots going on behind the scenes, so thank you all for your endless support, and we look forward to rolling out these updates soon!

We’re here today to bring another round of updates for Etherjump. We really wanted to prioritize the little things in this update, that all add up together to make the entire Etherjump experience that much more enjoyable, including:

🖥️Game Engine Optimization

For the game engine, we optimized the engine so that not as many sprites and tiles need to be loaded in at once What this means for you is that the game will run faster, smoother, and more consistent!

🪟Chunking

A big area of optimizations came from the concept of “chunking”

Chunking works similarly to the way it’s implemented within the game itself. Instead of loading in the entire map at once, only a small portion near viewable areas of the map are rendered.

This will greatly increase the performance of larger plots, which creates a much smoother experience, as seen on the right.

🪟Memory Leak Fixes

There was a problem going around that caused the game to incorrectly save tiles in memory from previous game sessions, which would cause the game to lag more over time.

This has now been fixed, and the game can now run for much longer without experiencing a slowdown.

On the right is a visual indicator of a level that was running before optimizations and then afterward

We hope that this results in a smoother and more enjoyable experience, especially for those who like to speedrun, and for longer levels that might take a long time and many tries to complete!

Overall, with all of these changes, the game can see up to an 80% increase in performance as compared to pre-optimization, but that’s not the only area that we’ve improved.

🪟Plot Loading

For those of you with lots of plots, we’ve drastically decreased the time it takes for all of your plots to be loaded.

Not much else to say, but take a look!

In the future, we plan to further improve plot selection with more options such as filtering, sort by, and quick selection of your most commonly used plots!

🏗️ Level Builder Changes

Building large level is now much smoother and along with instant loading of your plots in your wallet, we have implemented a slew of quality of life changes such as hotkeys, and new brush sizes, to make the building experience a lot easier!

🏗️Brush Sizes

We’ve introduced brush sizes for the draw and erase modes, making it much easier to place and erase tiles en masse, allowing builders to create large levels with ease.

The brush sizes range from 1 to 5, and only apply to blocks that:

• Have a tile dimension of 1x1

• Are not an enemy or player

We hope that this will alleviate the pain of having to draw or erase large portions of a scene slowly.

🏗️ Hotkeys

We’d like to introduce the highly requested feature of hotkeys!

You can now build your level much faster by having your mouse always focused on drawing, since you can now quickly select any tool with just your keyboard!

To access hotkeys, simply press the corresponding key to the tool that’s needed:

In the future, we plan to introduce more flexibility for what these hotkeys can do!

More tools are coming in the future!

📝New Content

We didn’t want to release an update without adding new content for everyone to play with, so we’re introducing the double jump tile, health boost, and colored blocks. We have also added place-able heart drops, and a double Jump Gem...go see for yourself

📝Double Jump Gem

Introducing the Double Jump Gem! If you time it right, the double jump gem gives you a second jump while in the air! After being used, it has a short cooldown period before it can be used again. Think of it as a platform with no collision! We’re excited to see the creative ideas that stem from this gem!

📝Colored Blocks

This one is for all of you pixel artists out there! It turns out a lot of people like making art on their plots, so we figured that we would enable artists with the medium to build colorful designs! In terms of gameplay, these blocks are no different from normal tiles, but in terms of aesthetics, they allow for a whole new world of creation!

📝Health Boost

Enemies have been able to drop health boost for a while now, but it’s now been added as a dedicated item that can be placed down on a plot!

This will allow creators to have a more precise handle on the level of difficulty that their plot has.

⚖️ Balance Changes

Although we feel that the game is pretty balanced overall, the wizards have been a consistent source of frustration for players.

⚖️Wizard projectiles now despawn after a certain amount of time:

• Ice Wizard projectiles now despawn after 1.5 seconds

• Fire Wizard projectiles now despawn after 2 seconds

• In addition, Ice Wizard projectiles are now 20% slower. This will help players dodge consecutive projectiles while also retaining the strength of the ice projectile.

We kept the balance changes relatively light this time, but they will continue to be monitored to determine if more changes are needed.

Next Steps 👉

As we always say, Etherjump is not going anywhere! We’re here to build for the future, and we want to be as communicative as possible to everyone as to what our future plans are.

In addition to the features announced in our previous update post, we are now actively working on deeper integration with our partners! In the coming weeks, our partners and their holders will start to gain access to exclusive items that are available to use in the Level Builder. (Custom Enemies, Pets, etc.) We'll provide more information the closer we get to the release of this feature.

If you’re not a holder, don’t worry! We will continue to develop features for the base game as we have been.

In this update, we aimed to focus on quality of life improvements that overall increase the ability for players to enjoy the game. From here on out, expect more in-game content!

We've also packed a lot into this update, so check out all the new details in our latest patch notes: https://etherjump.notion.site/Etherjump-Patch-Notes-8-09-22-743c200c8ef146b896ae99d2a6e9fa23

Thank you everyone for your your patience and continued support - Etherjump would not be here today without each and every one of you!

The changes are now live on OpenSea, play.etherjump.game, and build.etherjump.game! Good luck and have fun! 🥳

What the heck are NFT Picture Frames?

Put simply, these picture frames are a new item you can now use to display NFTs that you own on your Etherjump Plot! You can choose from 3 different frame sizes, which provides flexibility with how pictures can be displayed. We hope everyone puts this feature to good use!

Picture Frames

Picture Frames are broken down into 3 different sizes: Square, Horizontal, and Vertical. We may expand the options in the future for more customizability.

NFT Manager

When a picture frame is placed down onto a plot, the NFT Manager pops up and allows you to choose from a list of all the NFTs that you own. You can search for specific ones by the collection's contract address!

Common Questions

A couple of questions were raised regarding this feature, so they are compiled here for your convenience:

What happens if I sell my plot when there are Picture Frames?

The system will automatically update plots periodically to check if they still own the NFTs that are displayed on the picture frame. Changes should reflect within a day.

What happens if I sell an NFT that is being displayed as a Picture Frame?

Similar to the previous question, the system will automatically update the plot within a day

What happens when the system detects that a Picture Frame is no longer displaying an NFT owned by the plot owner?

A question mark placeholder will be in place of the Picture Frame. You are free to replace it with another frame in the Level Builder

Bug Fixes

What is an update without some bug fixes? We have a slew of changes that will make your gaming experience much more enjoyable.

Win Portal Changes

This was accidentally not added to the last bug fix, so we're officially adding it here now! The timer for when a level is "complete" now ends when you first start the win animation rather than when it finishes. This keeps timing consistent when players have varying times for the win animation to complete.

Dash Visual Fixes

We found that some of the characters (namely the ultra rares) were incorrectly missing their dash visual effects. This has been fixed so that everyone can now enjoy the unique effects of the ultra rares!

Leaderboard Fixes

Fixed a bug where the leaderboard would sometimes display the wrong leaderboard for certain levels.

What's Next For Etherjump?

We like to take this time to thank everyone for your continued support. Etherjump would not be where it is right now with the continuous building done by the community.

It's only been 10 days since mint and everyone has already created some ridiculous levels! The same goes for us, we're not going anywhere, and it's full steam ahead development wise for us!

Here are some features that are currently being worked on, some are further along than others, and we will provide a timeline for these as they get closer to release.

- Controller Support
- Decoration (Background and Colored) Blocks
- Water Tiles, Coins
- Level Explorer
- Level Builder QOL (This includes more tools, hotkeys, etc.)

We're always looking to improve, and with this new update will inevitably come with some bugs, so please don't hesitate to report any problems ( 📢│game-feedback ) that arise so that we can continuously improve Etherjump.

Thanks once again everyone, happy building!