How to become a Monster in Tezos development?
By: Mikael Lazarev
Tags: Games, Development, Blockchain, Smart Contracts, Tezos

You could find a game on https://tezos-monsters.com, Github: https://github.com/MikaelLazarev/tezos-monsters-server

My personal inspiration

When I started to learn Tezos a few months ago, I was a little bit confused with many different options: you should choose between Michelson, 3 dialects of Ligo language and SmartPy. I’ve chosen Pascal Ligo and I really like its approach and concepts.

However, learning was not so simple, there is a lack of learning materials and stackoverflow exapmples (Tezos has their own stackoverflow). Before CoinList hackathon I’ve a question: what I should bring to community to make developer experience better?

The first screen

When I started learning Solidity, I’ve completed CryptoZombies and they helped me a lot to understand basics and have a good practise. Gamification really helps to learn with fun. And I decided to build a game with a sotry and some provocative content to make it more unique.

Part II. Monster factory task

As a hero you start from designing simple token smartcontract, and in the Part II you could learn more advanced technics by developing your personal Monster Amazon with blackjack…

Inside monster factory

For this hackahton I’ve developed full game engine from scratch. The project consist of 5 modules:

Tezos monster server — which provide game backend

Tezos monster client — game frontend

Tezos monster code checker — it checks gamer’s code and provide feedback. I’ve clonde Ligolang WebIDE and make some changes

Tezos monster story editor — a specal tool for creating story

Tezos monster factory — a microservice to render monster by their DNA

One of the most interesting part, which you could not see is a Story Editor:

For each page, you could edit story, set up answers or initial code and add test cases. Each time, when you submit a code, the server sends your code with provided tests to Code Checker, which computes them and compare with expected result:

Test Cases Editor

What’s next

I beleive that this game could help blockchain developers to learn Ligo language. I found some great advantages of using Ligo for smart contract:

Clear idea of data storage, it’s much better that in Solidity

Functional programming

Better contract design

A picture of game

As a co-founder of Saint-Petersburg Blockchain Developers association, I know many blockchain developers, and I sent 250+ messages with asking them to check the game, provide feedback and vote for the project (of course). I also posted game description in many groups in social networks & channels with blockchain topic.

I got a lot of positive feedback, some of community ideas was already implemented, some of them in backlog. For the moment of writing this article, a game has 80+ registrations and it’s growing day by day.

How you could help?

If you just started to learn Tezos, please play the game. I would really like to get a feedback from you and ideas how to improve learning experience. It’s really cool to make something that could help other people.

And please, share link to game or this article for your friends. With better community we could achieve more.

Game: https://tezos-monsters.com

Github: https://github.com/MikaelLazarev/tezos-monsters-server

Contact me via telegram: https://t.me/mikael_l