I apologize if this has been covered but I couldn't find anything relevant by searching.

I'm trying to learn more about blockchain development & integration and would like to create an NFT-based game, but I'm not sure if Loopring would be appropriate for it.

What I want to do is create a lottery-type game and I know Loopring can be used to mint a bunch of NFTs at once, cheaply, which would be ideal for the tickets.

It seems like there are 2 ways to do it:

1. Mint the tickets as NFTs and create a smart contract to handle the logic of the game (identifying winners, payouts, etc.)
2. Mint the tickets as NFTs but handle the logic/gameplay with PHP, Python, etc. (as long as I can still trigger payouts on the blockchain)

Option #2 seems like the simpler of the two, since it doesn't require learning a new programming language.

So I guess my questions are:

1. If I *did *want to create an entire smart contract and use Loopring to mint the NFTs, what language should I use? Am I correct in thinking that it's basically an ETH smart contract, but with Loopring integrated in some way?
2. Is a marketplace a necessity? Opensea & the GameStop NFT marketplace make it easy to find & buy/sell NFTs, but I could also do that on my own, either via the smart contract or other blockchain integration, right? By the nature of NFTs I guess tickets from my game could always end up on other marketplaces, but I'm not sure GameStop would like me basically running a casino on their system
3. Does anyone know of any tutorials or resources about getting started with this kind of thing, that they can point me to?

I also have a few questions about architecture & implementation, but I'm not sure if this is the right place for them.

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can give!