Otherside

The Otherside Litepaper

Introduction

What is this litepaper?

This document is the litepaper for the world-building metaverse platform known as Otherside. It is designed to communicate and explain principles of the platform, capabilities of its developers, and possibilities for community co-creation.

Consider this litepaper a stepping stone. It will eventually be replaced by a Codex that will continually evolve with Voyager input to share the most up-to-date information, announcements, and decisions that shape Otherside.

It has already been immensely inspiring to receive your support thus far and we cannot wait to continue this journey as we discover novel ways to collaborate and forge our unique path.

What is Otherside?

Otherside is a world-building platform that provides an exciting environment to play, create, compete, connect, and explore together. Initially, users will experience Otherside through a narrative gameplay experience (aka The Voyager’s Journey) co-developed by Yuga Labs and Improbable and based on the technology from M². In the future, we look forward to seeing what new experiences and games our community can create to expand the possibilities of the metaverse. The tools and utility of Otherside will be continually and iteratively shaped by the participation and needs of our community. In Phase 1, only Otherdeed holders (aka Voyagers) and selected third-party developers will be able to participate and contribute to the first stages of the platform’s features and uses.

What is Phase 1?

Phase 1 marks the beginning of development for the Otherside platform. All Voyagers are invited to take part in Voyager’s Journey, an 11-part storyline surrounding a mysterious Obelisk that has appeared in the Otherside universe. Team up with other Voyagers, develop your own experiences on your slice of the Otherside, and discover and shape what can be harvested, crafted, traded, bought, and sold. Voyagers will play a large role in shaping the core capabilities of the platform through exclusive events, playtesting opportunities, and as co-developers of our Otherside Development Kits (ODKs).

Principles

1. Built for and by the community

We believe in the extraordinary power of community and have seen firsthand how it can be a significant force for good in this industry. We aim to incentivize, empower, and recognize the expression, creativity, and ingenuity of Otherside’s community of contributors. This deep connection to our most passionate supporters and creatives will be key to understanding what functionalities, moderation, tools, and support our community needs as we grow this bottom-up ecosystem together.

We are committed to an open and transparent approach where Voyagers can directly participate in important events that will shape the future of the platform. Large scale playtests will allow the community to try out new systems, content, and mechanics while pushing the limits of Otherside’s technology. Developers and Voyagers will be able to get their hands dirty by using and giving feedback on software development kits (SDKs), and more casual players will be able to use in-game building tools to their hearts’ delight. As the platform transitions into new phases of development, there will be increasing numbers of exciting ways for the community to have an impact on its future.

2. Genuine ownership and interoperability

An Otherdeed NFT represents more than a simple picture of land, it’s an access token to participate in playtesting and co-creation of Otherside. Additionally, each Otherdeed NFT depicts a plot of land that will be available in Otherside (aka a Plot), with a unique composition of natural elements, resources, elemental attributes, and more. As a Voyager, you will have genuine ownership and control over a Plot. What you do on the Plot is your choice (within community informed guidelines). Your actions have the potential to influence the inherent utility of its natural resources, any items you craft, and whatever sweet loot you might stumble across in your adventures.

Otherside will support interoperability in the future, giving Voyagers a chance to bring their own outside collections and NFTs to life within our metaverse. Voyagers will also be able to share experiences and creations between their lands through linking them. This is just the beginning - as this space grows, so will the number of other amazing projects that we want to recognize. Alongside Voyager feedback, we will be working to establish smart and safe industry standards to unite the web3 community.

3. Real incentives and support

We are focused on providing real incentives and structure through a collaborative ecosystem and network of contributors and by giving Voyagers and developers the opportunity to network with peers, industry professionals, designers, engineers, and any other piece of the puzzle that they might need to bring their visions to life.

Communities have made incredible contributions to the web2 and web3 space and it is our goal to empower them to build bigger and better than ever before. As a platform, Otherside will seek to connect in deep ways with its userbase and partner with established and respected entities in the industry to provide the education, experience, and leadership necessary to build the metaverse of tomorrow.

Voyagers + Developers

A community of Voyagers first

In order to plant the seeds for a successful community, we are starting development on Otherside with Voyagers, who are our first adopters and believers. They are a crucial part of Otherside’s history and are invited to join the Voyager’s Journey. This interactive experience will serve as an important first step to connecting with the Voyagers and understanding their group and individual needs as we work together to develop optimized avenues for maximum fun and entertainment. In Phase 1, only Voyagers and selected developers will have access to the platform and be given unique opportunities to network and collaborate with each other and industry professionals.

Open development

Unlike traditional development operating in secret, Yuga and Improbable take an open, transparent, and iterative approach to the development of Otherside that leads to results you can see faster. We will use your feedback to course correct, change directions as we discover things good and bad along the way. We’re developing Otherside out in the open with you; we’re inviting you to come with us on this journey. This requires trust, open communication and shared motive for success.

The sort of experiences we’re building have never been done before in the digital space. To ensure the best possible outcome, we will frequently playtest at huge scale with Voyagers, trying out new systems, content and mechanics, and pushing Otherside’s technology to its limits together.

Defined content moderation

With a large potential audience, it is essential to define the correct moderation rules to ensure the best experience for anyone who visits or partakes in Otherside. We are committed to creating governance systems that are built from the bottom-up and truly representative of the evolving community needs. We bring extensive experience to the table from the work we have accomplished with our other communities and look forward to working with you all to build the basis of what’s necessary for Otherside. You will hear more in the future about our plans for the community as we begin preparation for Otherside together.

The Voyager’s Journey

We are inviting Otherdeed NFT holders along to participate in the Voyager’s Journey, a narrative gameplay experience that will introduce and educate players on the fundamentals of how to participate in Otherside. Each major Stage of the Voyager’s Journey is marked on the Obelisk page and will be explained in more detail here.

All Voyagers that complete each Stage of this experience in accordance with the rules will be eligible to receive additional incentives related to Otherside in the future. The section below will be continually updated with the official rules and stipulations to qualify completion and will be announced prior to the beginning of each Stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

First Trip

The first stage of the Voyager’s Journey will be a series of tech demos, allowing Voyagers to journey into Otherside and participate in an evolving story. Voyagers will also get several chances with playtest sessions to help our developers push the limits of the platform technology.

“First Trip” is the first of several “Trips” that Voyager’s will be able to participate in. The inaugural First Trip was held on Saturday, July 16th, 2022 at 12ET. Each subsequent Trip will take place on a different date in order to accommodate as many Voyagers as possible. Specific details on date and time will always be announced on our official social media accounts.

In order for an Otherdeed owner to qualify as completing the First Trip stage, they just need to participate in any of the Trips or watch the Livestreams. More details will be provided on how to verify your participation soon.

The Codex

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

Koda Origins // The Decoupling

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Growth

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Agora

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Dream

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Choice

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Settling

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Toolkit

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Aeronauts

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The Rift

More information will be revealed as we get closer to this stage of the Voyager’s Journey.

The ODK

The Otherside Development Kit (ODK) refers to a suite of “Creation Tools” built with Improbable that will allow users to create interoperable content for Otherside that largely falls into three categories:

  • People - This is your account, your friends list, and your identity across Otherside.
  • Places - Worlds you can travel between with common game systems.
  • Things - Interoperable objects, avatars, wearables, items you can take between places - within the Otherside, and beyond.

Otherside is built by developers and Voyagers together, so to make sure everything works properly with each other there needs to be rules we can all follow - Open Object Standards.

Open Object Standards

We want things made with our Creation Tools to be interoperable - they can be used anywhere within Otherside - or any other metaverse that conforms to these standards. To achieve this we’re working with Improbable’s M² Network to create a set of Open Object Standards that describe what objects are, what they look like, and how they behave:

  • Metadata Ontology - We will allow objects to be tagged using descriptors from the Otherside Metadata Ontology, enabling common gameplay behavior.

    • Examples: tagging an object as a chair allows it to be sat on, tagging an object as a ball allows it to be picked up and thrown.
    • Metadata tags will follow the ERC-721 metadata JSON standard.

  • 2D Images - We support common image formats, starting with PNG, JPG - with more being added as Voyagers request them.

  • 3D Objects - We support 3D models through the popular glTF format (which includes meshes, materials, cameras, textures, animations, and everything you need to make a complete model). These objects can respond to in-engine lighting and physics.

  • Universal Scripting System - We will support scripts to be attached to objects and worlds to define and extend their behavior.

    • The current prototype uses JavaScript and is undergoing large-scale testing.

Objects built using this open standard will be fully supported within Otherside, any M² metaverse network project, and any outside project that adopts this standard.

In order to create objects within Otherside you need to do two things. First: Author or Obtain a Template of the object, and Second: Manufacture the object using Resources.

Authoring and manufacturing processes

There are two types of primary processes that form the basis of the ODK tools:

  • Authoring Tools - Easy-to-use, in-world tools that let you collaboratively bring assets together and compose them into templates for interoperable objects.

    • Templates can be shared, traded, or sold between Voyagers.
    • Creating a template doesn’t cost any Resources.
    • Here are some theoretical examples of templates:
      • A smart 3D object that makes noise when a player walks by
      • A tool to import images into stickers
      • Creating the architectural blueprints for your own personal room or structure
      • An object that follows people around looking for attention
    • We believe Voyagers will come up with a wide variety of useful and fun new Templates that other players will enjoy Manufacturing with.

  • Manufacturing Tools - For an object to become real and permanent within Otherside it has to be Manufactured. To do this a Voyager collects Resources from around Otherside and combines them with a Template to create as many of that type of object as they’d like - so long as they have enough Resources to do it. When an object has been Manufactured it will be able to be used and interacted with in game.

The Manufacturing process allows Voyagers to use Templates and create objects that work with Otherside’s interoperable standards, and with some performance optimizations automatically applied. Here are the current steps involved in Manufacturing:

  1. Optimization - Objects are passed through an automated optimization process that creates Levels of Detail (LODs), optimizes materials and shaders, and tests any script behaviors for performance issues.

  2. Moderation - Objects are passed through a moderation process using established guidelines.

    • Items must pass community and safety guidelines before moving on
    • Tags are applied to the content accordingly, e.g.: explicit, NSFW, etc.
    • Voyagers will be able to set rules for their worlds on what level of moderated content is allowed.

  3. Resourcing - All objects require Resources to be Manufactured; Resources can be found on Plots, traded for, or earned through play (more details to come). The bigger and more complex an object is, the more Resources needed to Manufacture it.

  4. Imbuing - Some types of objects may optionally be imbued with special properties by Imbuing Resources as part of the Manufacturing process. This gives a chance for each object to get a random special property as it is Manufactured. The better the Resources used for imbuing the better the potential special properties.

The Manufacturing Process is still very early in development and we expect many aspects of it will shift, change, and evolve as it gets used more and tested.

The engine

Otherside will utilize Improbable’s M² technology to allow thousands of Voyagers to gather in the same space at the same time. The goal is to let everyone be able to communicate and play together on any device. The metaverse doesn’t work without a crowd - we hope Otherside will be one of the best places around to build and join communities, learn from each other, and explore the metaverse together.

To do this Otherside aims to solve three major technical challenges:

  • Crowd Networking & Rendering - How to let thousands of people come together into a crowd.
  • Crowd & Spatial Audio - How to let thousands of people speak to each other in real time.
  • Access from Any Device - How to let anyone access the Otherside from their device.

Challenge: Crowd networking and rendering

For technical reasons, other current metaverses cap out at a maximum room size measured in the dozens instead of thousands. No virtual city, concert, or party can be truly epic with only a few dozen people attending. However, there’s an exponential increase to client and server requirements which currently aren’t achieved by existing game engine tech.

We want to be able to:

  • See everybody and interact with a dense crowd, and what they are doing in real time, all with a great frame rate
  • Be able to visualize each of their unique characters based upon NFT equipment and clothing, at a quality that makes everyone and everything look great
  • Hear everybody around you, cheers and roars just like you would in a festival or a concert, without making it hard to hear the important details

Solution: Morpheus

We’ve partnered with Improbable’s M² Platform which, since 2020, has publicly demonstrated their Morpheus technology enabling thousands of players to participate in events such as Scavengers ScavLab and the AleXa Concert. By cleverly optimizing network traffic and developing a new kind of rendering system, Morpheus has already blown away records for in-room concurrency while maintaining more than 30 frames per second and high-fidelity graphics.

Specifically, leveraging Morpheus offers…

  • A groundbreaking networking solution that allows for thousands of players in the same space to exchange networking information at the same bandwidth of a typical 100-player battle royale game
  • A custom character rendering engine that supports thousands of totally unique avatars being rendered at the same time with different animation states

Through the ODKs and content tools we will be able to provide these capabilities to the whole creator community.

Challenge: Crowd audio

It can be difficult to feel heard in the herd as an individual when there are dozens, or indeed thousands of participants all around you. This is even more of a technical challenge in virtual spaces, where text and audio mic chat can be very difficult to manage traffic for. Virtual chat and MMORPG experiences struggle with moderation, hot-mic audio, and other methods of natural communication.

Solution: Spatial audio

Built to handle thousands of input audio streams, and thousands of rendered spatial output streams. The spatialisation supports distance attenuation, air absorption, occlusion, voice projection, head muffling. Specifically:

  • A realistic crowd audio solution that can mix thousands of players of live audio into a spatialized mix along with accurate reverb and air absorption.

Challenge: Access from any device

There are a limited number of potential players that have high-performance gaming PCs. This is at odds with a philosophy that Otherside is for everyone and draws huge crowds of people of all kinds. Any requirement for rare and expensive equipment to access an experience dramatically reduces the playerbase. Furthermore, requiring the installation and configuration of multiple layers of software just to access a metaverse reduces numbers of people that participate even more.

Solution: Streaming technology for all platforms

The M² Platform includes a complete game video streaming service that gives players access to Otherside from a web browser (in supported regions), including on mobile devices, in seconds. This will enable virtually anyone to jump quickly into Otherside and become connected to the community.

The Agora

The Agora is Otherside’s planned marketplace for buying, sorting, finding, trading, and selling the huge variety of things that can be created, farmed, harvested, and more. We plan for the Agora to be the fastest, easiest, and most secure place to participate in and enjoy the benefits of Otherside’s economy.

As we continue to develop Otherside together, both in our marquee experiences and in the creations of our community of developers and players, there will be a growing and evolving supply and demand for the natural resources of Otherside based on the experiences that are created.

We expect users and developers to use these resources to craft all kinds of amazing creations in our world and their own. The possibilities are limited only by the creativity of everyone who builds in the Otherside. Your actions will shape the inherent utility of the resources you harvest, the items you craft using the ODK, and the loot that you find across the Otherside.

ApeCoin

The Otherside ecosystem uses ApeCoin, an ERC-20 governance and utility token controlled by and built on by the ApeCoin DAO community. ApeCoin DAO membership is open to all ApeCoin holders, and the token is available on major exchanges. You can learn more at apecoin.com.

Looking Forward

In the upcoming stages of The Voyager’s Journey, expect continual updates to this document as it evolves from a litepaper to the first version of the Codex. We will explore new ways that Voyagers can help shape the story of Otherside and invite them to take part in more special Trips and events.

We are just getting started with everything Otherside, and cannot wait to continue The Voyager’s Journey with you, our incredible community of Voyagers. Let’s keep playing together!

Appendix

Who is Yuga?

Yuga Labs is the web3 platform initially known for the creation of the Bored Ape Yacht Club in April 2021. Today, Yuga is at the helm of Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Bored Ape Kennel Club, CryptoPunks, and Meebits, shaping web3 through storytelling, experiences, and community. For more information, visit yuga.com or email [email protected].

Who is Improbable?

Improbable

Improbable is a British metaverse technology company, which helps brands bring to life rich virtual worlds of unprecedented scale and ambition. Since 2012, Improbable has solved multiplayer problems for the video game industry. It partners with 60 publishers globally, and works with dozens of AAA studios, including 2K, Activision Blizzard and EA. Improbable is now set to play a pivotal role in the next wave of Web3 businesses and massive live interactive events.

MSquared (M²)

To bring interconnected virtual worlds like Otherside to life, Improbable established M² (MSquared) and opened the M² Network to help companies create better Metaverse experiences. M² supports over 10,000 live participants with customisable avatars and advanced immersive audio, in real time, in the same space. Otherside will be one of the founding interoperable Metaverses on the M² Network.