Dev Diaries: Volume 1

3 min readJan 7, 2022

Introducing the “Dev Diaries” series: where we break down what the team worked on for the past month, what our goals are for the upcoming month, and some insight into how we are doing as a company and game.

Game & Website Updates (Nov + Dec 2021)

December was a big crunch as we were kicking off new projects, battling important technical issues, and rapidly growing as a company. Here is what we were able to do to improve our user experience and product performance last month:

Flowerpatch/Nugbase

As we combatted various network and server provider issues throughout the month, we were able to strengthen our tech stack immensely and button up some exploits and botting opportunities.

> NEW TECH STACK

The Great Merge.
Upgraded entire tech stack for Nugbase and Flowerpatch Repos
Rewrote codebase
Upgraded webpack, react, babel

> Game Server

Fixed context/deadline issues that users were seeing
Fixed harvesting exploit that caused game server lag + seed inflation

> Dropper

Updated SEED drop system
Introduced “babysitter” code (manages transactions): Handles upgrading price if tx take too long / pending tx, handles almost every error a node can throw, 0% failure rate on sending SEED transactions now
Edited code to prevent overpaying on gas from our end

> Minter

Reworked minter to use new logsync library
Minter checkpoints now stored in database and easy to edit
Fixed GROW minter
Edited code to prevent overpaying on gas from our end
Introduced configs for managing flower markets— configurations/markets
Made it much simpler to add new FLOWER sets
Introduced set management features into configs/brands.json
Fixes to cards and markets to support new configurations
Updated Flowershell inventory repl, allowing admins to control inventories easily

> User Fixes

Anti-Botting: Implemented basic reCaptcha, patched major exploit where you could plant fully grown flowers via API, implemented Google AI to track botters
Fixed chainID bugs introduced by newer MetaMask (i.e. failing to detect which chain we are on)
Prevented FLOWER self breeding in the UI
Prevented breeding if not enough SEED (considering 1500 vs 2000 pricing)
Re-enabled ETH breeding
If localStorage runs out, game settings stop getting saved—implemented automatic cache dumping if localStorage is full
Fixed issue with gas limits being too low in some cases, which was causing users’ ETH breeds to fail
Fixed dead space at top of game UI that was unclickable
Advanced Login flow using redux and web3React
Fixed FLOWER rendering bugs

Dapper Dinos

Since we were contracted to develop products and tech for the Dapper Dinos NFT collection, we have already embarked on a variety of features within this project.

> Website

Designed and coded account page, login flow (wallet connect), about page
Designed landing page animations and assets
New User data API, which can store an arbitrary amount of tagged data
Responsive design update

> Product

DinoDB + deployment (indexes Dinos, account search basics)

Flowerpatch Statistical Insights (December 2021)

To give a brief overview of how our NFTs, SEED, and our products are performing, see below.

Website

Users: 16,498
Average Daily Users: 532
Total Sessions: 42,902
Average Daily Sessions: 1,383.9
Average Session Duration: 9:05
Total Time on Website: 108.25 days

Game

Total Breeds: 3,282 (530 Two Player Breeds/ 2,752 Self Breeds)
Total FLOWER Cards Minted (Via Breeding): 9,846
Total Flowerpatch SEED Market Purchases: 37

Opensea

Total FLOWER Sales: 4,645
Total ETH Volume Traded: 6.9972

This Month (January 2022)

We have so much in store for 2022 and intend to get off to a sprinting start in January — here is how we intend to improve the game and bring value to our users this month.

Game Updates

New and updated FLOWER filters
Multiple Worlds
Game and server optimizations

Website Updates

New login modal with added support of other wallets
Begin website facelift

Other

A DAO for Flowerpatch
Dapper Dinos Website improvements, breeding functionality, and game assets.