🎲 Earn BTC in online backgammon matches

GammonPros is an online platform for playing backgammon with the opportunity to win Bitcoins from other players, participate in tournaments with prize-winning places, follow and communicate with other players based on the principle of a thematic community or forum. Our team has developed not only the product interface but also the interface of the backgammon game itself with a 3D board, which is a kind of our manifesto in developing Gameplay UI.

The task for our team was the comprehensive development of the platform's design, namely analytics and competitor research, studying the peculiarities of the game, creating the information architecture of the project (IA), developing frameworks, and accordingly creating UI and design systems including the game itself. Our team spent a lot of time studying the capabilities of competitors and their architecture before creating the first frameworks. Separately, we paid attention to the development of the game, as using modern new tools, such as Spline for example, we created a 3D board for backgammon and all the necessary tools for it - pieces and dice. This was a new challenge for us which we believe we have successfully accomplished!

To create a competitive product, GammonPros must be memorable for users. Since this is a new product in the online backgammon market, we paid special attention to branding by creating a unique visual identity, developing a logo and color palette, and selecting font styles.

GammonPros is a multifunctional and complex project with a vast array of features and an extensive architecture. After researching competitors and developing the branding, we moved on to work on the information architecture and created a Flow Map. By thoroughly working through all hypotheses in the flowchart, it became clear how to develop the product structure in a way that is correct, convenient, and logical for users. Here's what we achieved!

Every time before developing a UI mockup, we conduct sketching and wireframing of the future interface. GammonPros was no exception! Our team worked through all the details of the future interface, except for the styles. This was purely work on the UX aspect of the project.

Just like for any major project, our team created a design system and style guide for GammonPros, including the development of the game interface. We devoted a lot of time and attention to the game interface, as it is the main part of the product. As we mentioned earlier, we decided to use the new powerful tool Spline for optimizing and speeding up the creation of the 3D layout of the board and the game as a whole. Developing the 3D part of the game in this tool allowed us to create immediately a functional code of the volumetric object for its use in a web environment.

The mechanics of GammonPros in finding an opponent and creating a game involve each player being able to create an announcement with game parameters: free game or with BTC stakes; price per move; match, or single game. Also, each user can join an already created game room by another player with pre-proposed game parameters. After creating the game room, the game announcement appears in the general list of game rooms, where the game parameters are displayed, and there is an opportunity for a third user to observe the game.

Backgammon, being a game with numerous interface states corresponding to the game rules and player actions, required us to work through each state of the game, effectively becoming professional backgammon players 😅. We anticipated all possible events in the online game, for example, a double dice roll, moving into the home board, bear off, and specific states like gammon and backgammon.

In this Figma preview, you can view all the main states of the game that we have developed in this project.

The 3D game board we created is a low-poly optimized object with simple textures, designed so that every user, regardless of the speed of their internet connection and the power of their device, can always enjoy the game.

The random generation of dice rolls in GammonPros is especially protected by cryptographic principles, eliminating the possibility of falsifying dice values. This is particularly important given that users play with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Each user, in real-time, can check the game's hash and will have access to the history of the completed game, where each move can be verified for authenticity. GammonPros was designed to be a completely transparent, secure, and fair game.

Another important aspect of GammonPros is its tournament feature. Every user of the platform can participate in a tournament after depositing the necessary amount of BTC for entry. The tournaments in GammonPros are structured so that each player, by winning in each successive round, can advance to the final and compete for the main prize. The tournaments are accessible to all users of the platform, allowing everyone to observe the progress of the games in the tournament and ensure their fairness.

GammonPros features a unique built-in Bitcoin wallet for each user, offering the capability of quick deposits and withdrawals from their gaming account. Users can replenish their account at any moment to play with other players using BTC. Similarly, funds can be easily withdrawn to their own BTC wallet from the platform.

Each player has their own profile on the GammonPros platform. Any user can follow another profile to keep track of other players, monitor the games played by that player, and see the gaming rating of the profile. Additionally, if a player has questions, they can ask them to other users in the convenient group chats of the GammonPros platform.