Genesis city top-down map website and mapping script, 6-month renewal

by 0xb0145ae156d201d6e371d07265fe3c045071c967 (maraoz)

Should the following Tier 4: up to $60,000 USD, 6 months vesting (1 month cliff) grant in the Platform Contributor category be approved?

Abstract

Maintain, update and improve https://genesis.city/, a top-down view map of Decentraland’s world. This is an extension of the previous grant: https://governance.decentraland.org/proposal/?id=b8219300-900f-11ec-9794-c9ea21a9ed8f We’ll keep maintaining the website, running the mapping script weekly, and improving everything according to community feedback.

Grant size

36,300 USD

Beneficiary address

0x98093Be3c215659583fd72e24962D7E918A65622

Description

In february 2022, our community approved a Decentraland DAO grant that enabled us to create, update and make freely available to the community a top-down view map of genesis city. You can read the grant proposal here.

Back then, a prototype version existed, but the mapping script was buggy, the map hadn’t been updated in a while, and the site was very basic and not very performant. Since getting the first grant, we’ve updated the map monthly. We’ve also worked on improving the mapping script in order to reduce the human interventions needed to complete a full map and we’ve greatly reduced the time needed for the script to run. We’re now confident we can provide weekly (instead of monthly) updates. We’ve also added a “Jump in” button that allows the user to jump into the scene at the right-clicked coordinates.

We received a great deal of feedback and requests to develop new features. This grant will set up a budget, including salaries and expenses (web hosting, image storage, and domain name renewal, for now), to run this team for the next 6 months of developments and updates. Further grants will be requested by us in the future if the community continues to be happy with our work.

Specification

A working version can be found on https://genesis.city/

Site code: https://github.com/maraoz/genesis.city/

We’re using GitHub to host the images, and Netlify to handle deployments and building the website.

Personnel

• maraoz - original map prototype creator, will oversee that the project’s vision is aligned with the Decentraland community (Product Owner Role). Will also act as Project Manager until a replacement is found and hired. https://github.com/maraoz
• Rodrigo Heredia - Full Stack Unity3d + Web Developer https://github.com/rheredia-dev
• Project Manager: to be hired. Making interviews now with 3 candidates.

Budget: $6,050 USD per month, resulting in $36,300 USD grant total. This monthly budget includes:

• Team compensation : $6,024/month
• Operational expenses: $26/month

Roadmap and milestones

An updated version of the map will be live weekly. We'll also create an NFT on Rarible with the full map once per month. The map’s content will be updated via script every week for 6 months. Once that time has elapsed we will request another grant in order to provide further maintenance and updates. Other than that, these are the things we’ll be working on (we also want to be flexible to adopt future community feedback, so don’t take this as set in stone).

June 2022: Automate zoom layer creation and optimize mapping script. Start running the mapping script weekly.
July 2022: Resolve pending problematic tiles bugs and start work on new mapping script traversal algorithm (screenshot already loaded scenes before moving to next unexplored tile)
August 2022: Show visually when a tile changed recently. Finish new mapping script traversal algorithm.
September 2022: Add a first overlay layer to the map (options are: estate delimitations, go-to-marketplace for tiles on sale, show districts, points of interest, or colors by owners).
October 2022 and on: Add more overlay layer(s) based on previous list or community feedback, or additional community feedback implementations.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO