Devlog #54 —New Matchmaking, Builder Colours & UI

Welcome to another edition of the Realm Devlog!

This week we’ve got some excellent updates for you, and as usual you can catch the founders AMA here. Also check out the chat in the Telegram for some exciting discussions about staking mechanisms.

Without further ado, on to the updates!

New Matchmaking!

We know our loyal players have had some struggles with the existing Nakama matchmaking and this is the last thing we want to introduce friction to. With the increasing popularity of Don’t Fall and the imminent launch of HOVR and new car racing physics, now more than ever we need players to seamlessly enter a match with the people they are queuing with, and for this process to be smooth and swift. We therefore set about the challenging task of building our own from the ground up.

We now use a completely custom-made system allowing us exact control over matchmaking parameters and conditions, and a timer system much better suited to our in-game racing lobbies. A group of players gathering in a realm and queueing for a match will now see, in real-time, the players they are matched with, as well as an accurate representation of the server-side matchmaking timers. Our servers will still attempt to match the maximum amount of players allowed for a race, but handle smaller groups of players much more gracefully, adding an additional buffer each time a new player joins the matchmaking pool. This should ensure that smaller groups of players searching for a match can all be sure to join the same session.

Architecturally, the new matchmaking system allows us to define an arbitrary amount of game-modes, each with their own set of random realms a match will choose from, and each with a distinct set of matchmaking parameters such as min and max player counts. The minimum player count for a matchmaking pool is also no longer required to be 2, allowing us to assign singleplayer-matches server-side, instead of needing to rely on a client-side timer to initiate singleplayer matches for each user.

In the future, this system may allow us to introduce even more advanced matchmaking features, such as matched players voting for a preferred realm while queueing, or more complex friends/followers integration when users join a matchmaking pool.

We cant wait for you to be jumping into matches with ease — check it out in action below, and note the sweet profile images of those queuing with you!

Builder Colouring and UI

We are aware that the colours have been somewhat limited in the builder tool as to now, and have therefore implemented a new vertex colour system that allows you to customise the vertex colours of modules in the builder. You can now choose a palette for your realm and easily assign colours to items, groups or types.

This new color system has also been implemented in the procedural template generator as well. In this demo, you see how you can choose what color is assigned for each layer of the terrain, and how, when changing the palette’s colors, the colors of the terrain change as well. This eliminates the need to change the colors of the terrain manually. You can add remove and reorder layers. You can also have multiple layers of the same color if needed.

For anyone looking to buidl for free on Realm, you can download Realm Builder Tools here:

https://enter-realm.itch.io/realm-world-builder

Also, as a bonus here is a quick update on the status of the builder UI remake — I think you can agree its going to look way more professional as we exit alpha and enter beta.

About REALM

Leading NFT gaming Metaverse with a purpose. Empowering players, creators & brands to participate in generating the future of entertainment in a co-owned virtual universe.

REALM users are rewarded as they engage with the platform: 1/3 of the profits go to the token staking community. The native REALM builder tool allows anyone, with no coding experience, to build personalised microverses, tell their story, and trade NTFs on the REALM Marketplace. Creators and brands can bring to life unique music, art, games, and anything else they can imagine into their realms.