Cronos Play for Unreal Engine Plugin Is Now Available in the Unreal Engine Marketplace
Singapore, October 12, 2022 — Cronos Labs, the ecosystem development organization of the Cronos blockchain, is pleased to announce that…
Singapore, October 12, 2022 — Cronos Labs, the ecosystem development organization of the Cronos blockchain, is pleased to announce that the Cronos Play for Unreal Engine Plugin is now listed on the Unreal Engine Marketplace.
In April 2022, Cronos announced Cronos Play, a comprehensive modular suite of developer tools and integrations to streamline the creation of Web3 / blockchain gaming and GameFi applications on the Cronos blockchain.
Cronos Labs published two open-source projects as part of Cronos Play: Cronos Play for Unreal Engine (Plugin) and Cronos Play for C++ SDK (Software Development Kit). Both projects were developed in collaboration with Crypto.com, the world’s fastest-growing crypto exchange and a technical partner of Cronos chain.
The Cronos Play for Unreal Engine Plugin is now available for free on the Unreal Engine Marketplace. In less than a month since the listing went live, the Plugin has already been downloaded more than 15,000 times by game developers.
Cronos Play for Unreal Engine supports multiple platforms: Mac, Windows, Linux and Android. iOS support will be available soon.
“The Unreal Engine, developed by Epic Games, is a leading engine used by many of the world’s top games to deliver highly immersive user experiences,” said Ken Timsit, Managing Director of Cronos Labs. “The Cronos developer community saw the need for a Plugin to make it easy to add blockchain functionalities to the next generation of games and metaverse applications. Game developers downloaded the Plugin more than 15,000 times in three weeks, which validates the strong user demand for this project. I am looking forward to working on exciting collaborations between game studios, Cronos chain and Crypto.com product offerings such as Crypto.com Pay and the Crypto.com NFT platform.”
If you are a game developer, please read on for more information.
Installing and enabling the Plugin
As a game developer, you can install and enable the Cronos Play for Unreal Engine Plugin in just a few steps:
Visit the plugin page, sign in with your Epic game account and click the Free button to add the Plugin to the Epic Games Launcher.
In the Library Tab of Epic Games Launcher, click Install to Engine below Cronos Play for Unreal Engine inside VAULT section, select the Engine version then click Install.
Open Epic Games Launcher and select Create New Project.
Once Unreal Editor is opened, click Edit > Plugins, and search Cronos Play for Unreal Engine.
Check Enabled box and press Restart Now button to restart the project, so that the plugin changes can take effect.
When you are done, please check the developer documentation, and read on below for an overview.
Available Actor and Blueprint Classes
As a game developer, you can leverage two classes when using Cronos Play:
DefiWalletCoreActor is a C++ Class that has all the features for interacting with the Cronos blockchain and also the Crypto.org Chain. Artists, designers, and programmers can use the powerful Blueprint Visual Scripting system provided by Unreal Engine to create DApps/DGames easily.
PlayCppSdkActor is another C++ class that brings the WalletConnect capability into Unreal Engine. Developers can find it under Content Browser > Blueprint Class.
Interacting with the Cronos blockchain in a game
As a game developer, you can leverage the Cronos Play Plugin to interact with a ERC20 token smart contract on the Cronos chain.
After creating DefiWalletCoreActor you can rename the class. In this example, we rename the class as BP_DefiWalletCore. Then, you can select the Cronos network (Testnet or Mainnet) by specifying the JSON-RPC endpoint and chain ID under Network Configuration:
Double click BP_DefiWalletCore in Content Browser, and open the Blueprint Editor
In Cronos Play Unreal section of Details tab, input the JSON-RPC endpoint and Chain ID settings:
My Cronos Rpc:
[Testnet] https://evm-dev-t3.cronos.org; or
[Mainnet] https://evm-dev.cronos.org.
My Cronos Chain ID:
[Testnet] 338; or
[Mainnet] 25,
Please note that the rest of the instructions below are based on Testnet configuration.
To get started, navigate to the Map, select the drop down menu of Blueprints > Open Level Blueprint and launch the Level Blueprint Editor:
The screenshots below illustrate how you can Query the name of the ERC20 token smart contract and display it on the screen. In this example, we use a Function — Spawn Actor from Class to create an Actor instance from BP_DefiWalletCore Class. The Transformation defines the location, rotation, and scale that will be used by the new Actor.
A reference to the new instance is available in the Return Value which is fed as input Value of the Function Erc20Name. Erc20Name also has an input Contract Address, which you can set, for example, to 0xf0307093f23311FE6776a7742dB619EB3df62969 (on Testnet). Finally, you can print the token name to the screen with Function — Print String.
This will display the contract name “USDC” on the screen.
This illustration is just a basic example of a use case of the Plugin. The Plugin can be used to display ERC20 token balances, or transfer fungible or non-fungible tokens (NFT) to players. Click here to view all available functions in the developer documentation.
Demo Project
To further explore the Cronos Play for Unreal Engine Plugin, game developers can refer to a demo project available here on Github.
After you unzip the file, please click CronosPlayUnrealDemo.uproject and launch the demo project. Click Yes to load it anyway in unreal 4.27.
Right click Content > CronosPlayUnreal in Content Browser > Migrate.
Choose the Content folder of the project you are working on. CronosPlayUnreal assets will be migrated into the Content folder of the current project.
You can also migrate the demo maps into your project and reuse them:
Right click ThirdPersonCPP > Migrate within Content Browser.
Uncheck all assets except ThirdPersonCPP > OK.
Choose the Content folder of the project that you are working on. CronosPlayDemoMaps will be migrated into the Content folder of the current project.
For further information
Please click here to subscribe to the Cronos blockchain developer newsletter.
For community support, please join the Cronos Discord server. If you are a game studio and would like to discuss a strategic partnership with Cronos Play, please visit https://cronos.org/play and click on Contact Us.
About Cronos
Cronos (cronos.org) is the first EVM-compatible layer 1 blockchain network built on the Cosmos SDK, supported by Crypto.com, Crypto.org and more than 300 app developers and partners. Our mission is to make it easy and safe for the next billion crypto users to adopt Web3, with a focus on DeFi and Web3 gaming.
Cronos has already skyrocketed to top 10 position among all chains by total value locked (TVL) and is used by close to a million end-users, growing at 20% per month. Cronos is powered by the Cronos ($CRO) cryptocurrency, which supports an ecosystem of more than 50 million users worldwide.
When developers build on Cronos, they can leverage: all Ethereum developer tools (Solidity, Truffle, Hardhat, OpenZeppelin, Web3.js, ethers.js, ChainSafe Gaming SDK, etc.); several leading wallets (MetaMask, Crypto.com Defi Wallet, Trust Wallet); wrapped versions of the world’s top 50 cryptocurrencies; Cronos Play, a suite of developer tools for web, Unity, C++ and Unreal game developers; IBC cross-chain connectivity to Cosmos chains; and a rich ecosystem of composable DeFi and GameFi Dapps.
Cronos is supported by Cronos Labs, the ecosystem fund, web3 start-up accelerator, and incubator of Cronos chain.