The F-KIT: A Bridge to Web3 for Game Developers

“All you have to do is give them a vision and the tools. All the rest is secondary, for the bonfire inside a creator’s heart just needs a spark to set the universe ablaze.” - Unknown ONI author

“Channeling the spirit of Web3, the Star Atlas F-KIT paves the way for mass adoption of decentralized gaming. It instantly renders the open metaverse accessible to hundreds of millions of new entrants and enables anyone to build immersive experiences themselves, creating more opportunities through digital ownership and by giving game studios and publishers the ability to integrate the Solana blockchain into high-quality projects built on the Unreal Engine.” - Yat Siu, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Animoca Brands

It’s time we open the blockchain gates to the world, explorers!

ATMTA, Inc. (“ATMTA” for short), developer of Star Atlas, has created a new in-game bridge with an embedded wallet that connects gameplay transactions in Unreal Engine 5 with the Solana network. This means that Star Atlas players in the midst of future battles won’t have to fiddle with opening windows from third party apps or wallets, which adds up to a better user experience, improved performance and more fun.

And the good news doesn’t end there!

ATMTA is sharing this innovative work with Unreal Engine 5 and Solana developers across the galaxy via the open source Foundation Software Development Kit (“F-KIT”). The F-KIT provides developers with free, state-of-the-art technology that will make it easier and faster for them to bring their Unreal Engine 5 games, products, and tools to Solana - and, by extension, to the Star Atlas metaverse.

By releasing F-KIT open-source, ATMTA is demonstrating its commitment to advancing the web3 game developer community and building on the promise of an open and immersive metaverse.

The Barrier to developing Unreal Engine 5 games on Solana

Game development is a complex activity in any context. Even the simplest of games requires multiple production pipelines, and engine selection is one of the biggest decisions to be made as it impacts the game's most fundamental structures, like graphics, logic, and limits.

Unreal Engine 5 was a natural choice for Star Atlas. It’s the world's most advanced real-time 3D creation tool for photorealistic visuals and immersive experiences. It provides the framework that upholds the threshold of gameplay that ATMTA wants to offer Star Atlas players.

The challenge is that Unreal Engine 5 is not natively compatible with structures necessary to enable game integration with NFTs and the blockchain. ATMTA engineers needed to build web3 and Solana-based integration tools from the ground up.

Before today, every game studio building on Unreal Engine 5 that wanted them integrated with the Solana blockchain had three costly options:

• Hire or build a full-scale blockchain engineering team
• Bring in third-party contractors or consultants
• Seek an outside development firm

Not surprisingly, these are massive roadblocks that consume a development team’s valuable time and resources, especially because few developers will have this type of expertise.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there. Producers would also be faced with ongoing blockchain development costs, such as:

• The need to continually invest in upgrading infrastructure
• Delays of weeks or months when trying to launch a game
• Solutions that aren’t scalable, impacting game experience and increasing the risk of security threats
• Solutions that aren’t flexible enough to adapt to future games

But now these expensive constraints have been overcome thanks to the blockchain team at ATMTA. F-KIT offers an exquisite solution that allows developer teams to focus their resources on their true mission: developing fantastic games as well as other products and services on Solana.

Let’s see how this will impact gaming projects.

How the F-KIT helps developers and growth of the ecosystem

“Star Atlas is a pioneer that is bolstering the entire Solana ecosystem. With a major reduction in development time and cost compared to building the functionality from scratch, Star Atlas is supporting and expediting the development of high quality Solana games and lowering the barrier of entry for studios new to blockchain gaming and Solana.” - Johnny B. Lee, Head of Solana Gaming

We envision our F-KIT saving up to 80% of the development and time costs that a company would spend on creating the infrastructure for an Unreal Engine 5-Solana integration. The F-KIT offers the following:

• Allows the in-engine generation and import of Solana private keys and wallets.

• Permits Unreal Engine 5 to interact with on-chain data (reading on-chain data from the game and allowing the game interface to perform on-chain transactions: sNFTs, xNFTs, and tokens).

• Creates an Unreal Engine 5 wallet management feature that allows users to see and interact with all of their SPL tokens and NFTs.

• Embeds development support, including visual coding blueprints for user interfaces and user experience.

• Integrates with any Solana program.

These are just the initial steps of our journey into making blockchain technology accessible to all game designers and developers inside the Unreal Engine 5 and Solana ecosystems. As you can see in the roadmap below, we aim to reach many improvement milestones in the following years:

In addition to the direct benefits listed above, the F-KIT should also provide secondary effects. By facilitating the entrance of experienced developers into our network, more exciting features will be introduced on-chain, such as new high-quality games and apps from emerging industry partners. All of these will bring new users to the Solana blockchain community.

But it’s not only Solana developers who benefit from this. We anticipate an expansive future for the Star Atlas universe, and this tool is the first evolutionary step to immersive environmental integrations into this limitless world. At the same time, Unreal Engine 5 developers will be exposed and integrated with blockchain, allowing them, if they so wish, to access things like:

• Any Solana web3 app

• NFT marketplaces

• Decentralized Finance Protocols (Defi)

• Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs)

• Swaps and aggregators

• Other Solana-based games

Companies and projects that have already committed to using F-KIT are Major League Hacking (as part of their hackathon series) and Elyz.io, as well as many others.

Knowing all of this, we hope the invitation is clear: Join us in building on UE 5 within the Solana ecosystem. If you are prepared to make the leap toward web3 gaming, click on the link below and learn everything you need to know to get your hands on the F-KIT today!