One of the most anticipated AAA Games that runs entirely on the Solana blockchain.
About
Star Atlas is a AAA game built using Unreal Engine and developed to work directly with the Solana Blockchain. Users are able to buy, sell, and trade various in-game assets as NFTs and explore the universe in search of new planets to mine for resources or challenges to face in the name of global conquest.
Project Objective
The main objective of the project is to revolutionise the gaming industry by adapting the power of the Solana blockchain to give users 100% ownership of the assets used in the games. Players can buy, sell, and trade ships, resources and structures as NFTs and use them in the game and one day move those assets into other games as more game companies embrace the use of the Solana blockchain. We successfully designed and developed the entire infrastructure used by the Star Atlas team to build, test, deploy, and manage all aspects of the products and services offered by Star Atlas.
Conceptualization
- Integrated Development Environment
- Issue Tracking and Workflow Management
- Source Control Management
- Code Quality Management
- Application Performance Management
- Continuous Integration
Technologies Used:
- Google Cloud Platform
- GitHub
- GitHub Actions
- ClickUp
- TeamCity
- New Relic
- MongoDB
- MySQL
- Postgres
- Firebase
- Terraform
- Various Solana RPC Providers
- NodeJS
- NextJS
- Bash/Shell scripts
- JavaScript/TypeScript
- Rust Language
- Various Web3 node modules
Features:
- Multi-regional Support
- Advanced Monitoring and Observability
- Web2/Web3 CI/CD Pipelines
- Unreal Engine Game Dev Pipeline
- Advanced infrastructure scaling (on-demand)
- Various advanced automation
Functions:
- Build, test, and deploy web3 applications
- Handle high volume of visitors/users of the services
- Build, and deploy the Unreal Engine game
- Control what regions can access our services
- Disaster recovery strategies
- Simple and robust containerization of individual services and microservices
Project Challenges:
- Working with and under budget for project success
- Learning and adapting new emerging technologies
- Building systems that have never been built before
- Little documentation of the required technologies and services
- Managing tools and services used by a large team (100+)
- Ensuring product and service security in an industry subject to many attackers
- Ensuring product and service stability while the company quickly grew in popularity across the world
Solutions we developed:
- We designed and implemented a robust CI/CD pipeline to build, test, and deploy the various web3 applications that the Star Altas team was developing
- We quickly adapted new technologies that were required to deliver a finished product
- Conducting research and development to quickly develop, test, and iterate over new design concepts that connected real-time actions in a video game to a robust globally shared ledger on the Solana blockchain
- As these new technologies were being developed, we put a lot of effort into research and development to ensure we were able to build the systems required to run the Star Atlas Game and its associated products and services.
- While the Star Atlas had an explosion in growth both in popularity and in the number of people brought onto the project, we were able to balance security and usability across all members of the team, both new and senior.
- We applied industry-standard best practices and implemented various tools to ensure our overall security including but not limited to website monitoring, observability, third-party auditing, penetration testing, load testing, fuzz testing, etc.
- We applied industry-standard best practices and advanced infrastructure techniques to ensure that the product and its associated website remained up and available at all times, even during times of high demand during large product releases, complex transitions, and the launch of a scavenger hunt that records each participants movement in the game to Solana blockchain in real-time.
