Development in decentraland

Using the Decentraland SDK

This is a tutorial on how to install and use the Decentraland SDK to create immersive experiences and great user interactions for the good of the decentraland community. This article will only scratch the surface and only show the basics of the basics which is a great place to start from.

Dependencies

• NodeJS (LTS version)
• Visual Studio Code

Getting Started

Once all dependancies are downloaded go into the command prompt on windows by typing in “cmd” in the search bar next to the windows button. For Mac OS press spacebar and search for the terminal or use the rocket launcher to find the application.

Once in the terminal you should see the directory:

 C:\Users\USER_NAME

The USER_NAME stands for your user, for example my user is C:\Users\T3

This is what a terminal looks like and is mainly used for creating directories and downloading dependencies.

Installation

To install decentraland onto the system we need to install npm first which is the javascript library we will be using to lay the foundations for decentraland development. Use the command below to install the npm package globally, this means that it will be usable in every directory on your computer.

npm install -g

This should make your terminal look like something out of the matrix or Mr robot, you are now downloading your first package congrats.

Next you will need to make a folder using the mkdir (make directory) command. The word “plop” is just the name of the folder I am importing into and can literally be anything. Such as “Elephant Season”.

mkdir plop

Once created you will need to change the directory so you are within the folder and can import dependencies into you project.

cd plop

Next we need to install the decentraland dependencies into the project

npm install -g decentraland

Once this has finished you will need to initialize the project using the dcl init command

dcl init

This will set up dependencies for your project locally within the folder you have chosen. Allowing you to test locally and deploy on to land in decentraland.

Next use the following command to see your project rendered on the browsers local host. Once inputted the terminal should create a link to the local host you are serving to, however the browser tab will open automatically.

dcl start

dcl init command installing

dcl start command finished with local hosts.

To get access to the local host you will need to put in your meta mask password if you dont have meta mask install here . Warning without meta mask you can not connect to the blockchain decentraland uses.

Below is the local host starting up, don’t worry if it is taking a while as the speed and generation of the test world depends on the speed and graphical power of your computer as well as the connection to meta mask.

You should now see a rotating cube which on click makes a copy of itself.

The local development area for decentraland projects

This has been my tutorial on how to set up decentraland for further reading take a look at the decentraland docs as well as the npm documentation