Unreal Engine on Cardano Community

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem.

Nurture a community of Unreal developers working on Cardano & toolmakers interested in reaching an audience.

[GENERAL] Summarize your relevant experience.

• 10 years Unreal Experience
• Created & Growing an active Developer Community on Discord
• Top Seller on Unreal Marketplace nearing 100,000 users, in-tune with Developer Community
• Spent nearly the past year looking for related tools. I've met many Cardano developers along the way.

[GENERAL] Requested funds in USD.

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

Overview

New developers are often overwhelmed by complex new subjects. This usually means they give up & lose interest or move on to another ecosystem.

Essentially, if you're new to a topic; communities can be an invaluable resource.

A dedicated Unreal & Cardano focused community can capture the attention of interested developers & set them on a pathway for success.

Goal

Give Unreal Engine developers a Community to:

• Engage in Q&A, reducing frustration in the learning process
• Find latest tools, information, related communities (like Catalyst)
• Stay up to date with latest news
• Discuss Cardano, their projects, & the latest news
• Provide Contributions to expand communal knowledge
• Overall, increase Unreal Engine adoption of Cardano

Onboarding

Without a community, the onboarding process requires a lot of self-motivation & ability to scour the internet for hours. Not only that, but you need to know the right terms to search. Often this just isn't realistic to ask of a newcomer.

By providing the components below, such as pre-compiled resource lists & community support, we lower the barrier of entry dramatically.

Ideally anyone with interest & desire, regardless of skill, can come to the community & learn all they need to know to get started.

News

Staying updated on the latest news is important in an evolving ecosystem like Cardano. New functionality, interesting stats, resources, tools, and more are being announced; but finding it can be difficult or time consuming.

Community will provide focused news channels which automatically stream from relevant sources. As time progresses, Cardano tool channels & other sources will be added. Users will be able to subscribe to news notifications via reaction role assignment.

News sources will be hosted on GitHub for community collaboration.

Discussion

Having a central location of discussion for developers interested in this topic is crucial. Developers can coordinate on projects, learn about new possibilities, share resources, and more.

In my experience, onboarding developers who are not easily convinced will often come looking for answers. With a knowledgeable and experienced community to answer their questions, it's much more likely they'll choose Cardano.

With Cardano toolmakers & Unreal developers sharing a community, there's a higher chance of innovation & coordination between the two, ultimately leading to higher quality resources & increased adoption.

Support

For some questions, a search engine isn't enough.

A community provides a way for developers to access the collective knowledge of many. Asking & answering questions is rarely avoidable in development, especially for newcomers.

Without a community, many simply give up or move on. A Community is desperately needed for adoption.

Resources

Community will maintain a list of resources for Unreal Developers working with Cardano, designed to save hours of research & searching online.

• Articles
• Tool Reference
• Documentation
• Resources like builtoncardano.com
• etc.

List will be hosted on GitHub for community contributions & mirrored to a Discord channel using a bot. More on that here.

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

The experience for Unreal Developers looking to integrate Cardano with their project is bleak. Information & tools are scattered or non-existent, finding others who know about Cardano is nearly impossible.

A community provides a place to ask questions & get answers, talk to others about your interests, share your project & get feedback, provide resources to others, & get inspired by what others are creating.

Essentially, a Community is a support system that many require. It eases the learning curve for interested developers who may give up or move on otherwise. 

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

I'll address each identified risk individually:

Risk # 1

Not attracting developers

Response # 1

Attracting developers will be an important focus. I have 2 things in mind in response.

• Coordinating with Toolmakers to co-promote communities
• Promoting resources on Unreal Forums, Reddit, Twitter, & GitHub.

It is partially an uphill battle due to another mentioned risk, existing bias. Many developers are still interested though, and the best way to reach them is through the methods above.

Risk # 2

Low Community Participation

Response # 2

Many of the individual components planned for the community help mitigate this risk.

• Consistent News
• Continuously Updated Resources
• Channels for discussion
• Place to find support

Risk #3

A lot of bias around blockchain technology exists within the game development world, and tech world in general. Many do not understand the benefits. This could lead to slow adoption.

Response #3

In one sense, it is not the focus to convince developers who have bias. The users who are interested will still come. It's beyond a single Community's scope.

However;

If a Community exists, those who have bias have a chance to visit & learn new things. In this sense, I believe that the Community itself is the solution to this risk.

Overall

I do not see any of these risks presenting much issue. In my eyes, adoption will only grow from here. It may be slow, but based on my experience it will grow with time. I am comfortable with growing a community and currently run an active 650+ member Discord.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Project Timeline

You can find a detailed breakdown here.

Check out the Community yourself!

Other Proposals

I am proposing 2 separate (3 total), limited scope projects with aligned interests: Onboarding Unreal Developers & Nurturing Interest in Cardano development.

• This Proposal
• Unreal Engine Integration - Engine Plugin using Blockfrost
• Discord Community Manager - Open source tool to empower Communities with functionality like wallet verification & reward users for other on-chain interactions.

As stated above, these are limited scope & can easily be done simultaneously. After completion they are designed for continuous improvement via community contributions.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

Full details can be found on this website 🙂

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Being a straightforward project, I'll be completing the project myself:

Notable Projects & Roles

• Unreal Marketplace
• VisAI - Community
• VisAI - Companion
• VisGM - Team Deathmatch
• VisGM - Deathmatch
• Open Source - Simple Blueprint Game Example for Unreal
• Open Source - Media Manager Social Media management tool.
• Previous Instructor Partner at Virtus Learning

Social

• LinkedIn
• Personal GitHub
• Business GitHub
• Discord Community
• Twitter
• More

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

If the Community flourishes as I hope it does, I will likely return in efforts to expand the Community staff & available resources.

I would also want it to be the last proposal I made for the UE Community specifically, so being self-sufficient would also be an important factor of any future proposal.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

I will use Favro's task management system alongside a synced GitHub project.

Users can easily keep up to date via the GitHub repository or the Favro board.

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Success for this project would mean new developers joining the space consistently. I will finalize the success factors in the board here.

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

Entirely new