Hello everyone! Welcome to the 136th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Lordrex and Idyllic have continued working on fighter features for the Capital Update, with Lordrex rigging the default fighters to support the last few features we want, while Idyllic added a camera feature that was incredibly vital to functional gameplay with more than one class of fighter. Skinny worked on an advertisement for planetary features, with the help of some community members, legomadamada had some interesting bugs to work out of the environmental generator, and Juszl got some work in on a new map. First things first - this week in our Discord Community, Skinny tasked the builders of RoVerse factions with designing and constructing their best skyscrapers, with the goal being their inclusion in the latest teaser for planetary gameplay. Featuring ships flying through the sky, a mountain, and a magnificent city on the horizon, the only thing it's missing is a line of tanks invading, crushing the calm grasses beneath their iron treads. Legomadamada has continued to work on the asteroid field generator, in an attempt to create a more varied and interesting arrangement of rocks of all sizes. This week, we have a picture of a not-quite-working version, where the density and size that is supposed to increase and decrease three times, is instead increasing, abruptly stopping, and starting over. Not quite where we want it just yet, but still making progress. Lordrex worked this week on ironing out a few bugs with last week's lighting upgrades, as well as a few modifications to the default fighters. When rigging these fighters to work with the fighter scripts, certain specifications needed to be met - a part named Core here, a part named Thrust there, so that the control scripts knew where to look for specific things. Engine effects for the Excalibur were contained within a single engine part, which easily allowed the system to turn the smoke and fire on and off - but that won't always be true for every ship. It isn't for the default fighters, and it won't be for any Faction fighters we might get, so adding flexibility was important. To that end, the code is now well on its way to supporting multi-part engine effects. The other feature we were looking to support that lordrex began work on this week was another highly-requested one from the dogfight alpha - fighter headlights. Capital ships have had them for a while, but now fighters will too. No more getting lost in a dark corner, bouncing off of walls and having a seizure. Due to the limitations of the voxel lighting system, updates may be a little slow to render, but we expect that to improve in the future. Idyllic was a bit busy this week, but managed to add the base code for a vital feature we hadn't even considered before. The Excalibur is a very small ship, measuring in at about 1x1x1 studs. The camera is hardcoded to follow this stud around in all the fancy maneuvers a daring pilot might take - but that offset doesn't work for all fighters nor all fighter classes. Here is a view from the pilot seat of a Cardinal Heavy Fighter. The Cardinal, being significantly larger than the Excalibur, fills your entire screen, clips through the camera with every maneuver, and it is impossible to aim your weapons at anything. So Idyllic dove into the camera code, laid the foundation of a system that will allow a custom offset per fighter, and got the camera to a much more reasonable and useful distance. Now you're ready to take on your enemies with the highest firepower money can buy! Juszl is in the early stages of our most dense map yet, full of nooks and crannies where ambush fighters will have the edge in combat. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Is ice just cold water? A1: Or is water warm ice? Q2: Will there be a way to make any resistance movement illegal? A2: That sounds more like an internal faction affair than something RoVerse would deal with. If you want to disallow people resisting orders, make it illegal and assign a punishment. If internal struggle is an integral part of your faction's culture, battle on. Q3: Will debris be locked in place, or will it drift? A3: There is a trade-off between quantity of debris and motion of debris. We might simulate motion at a distance with particle effects to keep things lively, but having asteroids actually move is beyond the constraints of the platform. Q4: How will freeroam work for factions? A4: Freeroam is the first stage of development where factions will begin to make their mark on the galaxy. Consider it a dry-run for the full game, where bugs are worked out, features are continually added, and everything is working towards the official release. While it is unlikely any work done in this stage will carry over to the final game, considerations may be made for factions that establish themselves in freeroam to bypass the initial stages in the full release. Q5: Will you be able to damage ally ships in combat? A5: This particular question has the opportunity for hot debate - on one hand friendly fire not doing damage is a nice feature to have, especially in a 3d combat environment, on the other being able to punish allied ships that break protocol or wrong you in some way would be useful. Simple enough on the coding end that we might as well make it an option toggle-able by faction leadership. Q6: For structural damage to ground structures, do you require materials? How about vehicles and ships? A6: Yes. Physical repair of a vehicle or structure will require some percentage of the materials used in its original construction. Even having your ship replaced by the insurance feature may require a few bits of steel to reconstitute it. Object permanence is one of the core tenets of the RoVerse universe, having things magically appear for free, or throwing money at a building ravaged by war, doesn't align with that goal. Q7: What would warrant staff intervention in-game? A7: We'd like to interfere as little as possible in the struggles over the galaxy, but that doesn't mean we won't step in when necessary. Things like exploits will be reversed as best as possible, but faction actions within the realm of the game will be unhindered. Don't look to the staff to respawn the XXXL you worked months on that the pilot crashed into a star. Actions have consequences. Q8: Will you be able to differentiate between fighter launch and landing points? A8: The system we are currently using involves the 'hangar doors' shown a while back, that fighters can fly up to to land - the form of this door is inconsequential, just the proximity of a fighter is all that is required. Spawning on a carrier will use set spawn points placed around the ship, as a random system might clip you inside and end in your destruction. If you want these points placed around 'launch tubes' then that can be done. Q9: Will RoVerse use the allies/enemies function of the website groups? A9: The stability of such a system is currently in question, as Roblox looks to overhaul the groups feature. What is most likely to happen, is factions will be tied to a group, but all faction relations will be handled in-game on our end, to ensure stability. Q10: Will there be flares? A10: A definite possibility for fighter consumables, used to ward off missile tracking. Q11: Will gear and ships get rarity classifications, like destiny? A11: Faction weapons are unlikely to receive such a classification, as there are no random drops and new designs are unlocked through research, but the mention of exotic-tier ships like the golden Excalibur caught my attention. Perhaps there could be a way to unlock slightly better ships through some in-game action, not just skins changing ship aesthetics. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the 135th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Lordrex has been modifying the lighting system, to locally load the lighting conditions for the individual player, while Idyllic has worked on the weapons code we showed off last week, and messed with the gimbal-turret aiming system. Skinny, meanwhile, is still hard at work on the MQF, a sorted list of every newsletter question asked and answered, not just the frequent ones. You may have noticed in a few of our menu screenshots that the hangar lighting sometimes looked a bit weird. One map in particular is lit bright green, which works fine in the darkness of space, but in the confines of the hangar it is particularly bright. This just wouldn't do. Luckily, you can make changes to lighting locally on the client, without affecting the lighting for everyone else. Much like the hangar loading in locally and being invisible to everyone else, when you're in the hangar you can have the default lighting scheme, while once you load into the map, the space lighting scheme. Idyllic has been working on the code that makes the fancy weapons debuted last week actually function. Last week was the fancy visuals that show when the shot is going, but that's only on the client - the real work goes on behind the scenes, where rays are cast, hits are detected, and damage is doled out. There were a few bumps along the way, with a labyrinthine trail of server events and client events and event listeners not doing what they were supposed to, but progress is being made. Every new twist and turn mapped out is one step closer to a functional system. A small function was overlooked in the update from one ship with a dedicated list of mounted weapons that were not modifiable, to the current system that is modifiable. But our main man Idyllic was able to fix that right up, once he managed to find the problem. There are a few more bugs to work out, but getting firing replication up and running again is on track. An update on what skinny has been up to - some of you have been around long enough to remember when the FAQ was short enough of a list to reference when you had a question. After 135 newsletters, though, you can imagine that list got quite long. To fix the usefulness of the FAQ page, we cut it down to the actual important questions that everyone asks us a few months ago. But we still wanted those answers to be available to those that were curious - skinny has taken on the task of assembling them all, editing them with the most up-to-date information, and sorting them into categories. You'll be able to search for specific terms, find questions about different categories from planetary combat to faction operations. This week, he is officially up to question 111, after losing a bit of progress to a file error. We'll keep you updated on his progress, and let you know when the MQF is available to the public. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will you be able to hack fleet messages in the chat system? A1: While an interesting mechanic, unfortunately it would have the side effect of driving players to other chat services, like discord, instead of using insecure and unreliable in-game chat systems. So that's going to be a no. Q2: Will there be in-game voice chat, audio commands? A2: In the unlikely event that roblox adds an in-game voice chat feature, you can use it. We will not be coding such a feature, as we'd likely get banned for it. Use discord or teamspeak. As for issuing prebuilt audible cues to the game, that is a feature we could look into. Now everyone in a system will be in voice chat, and having a way to caution wayward cargo vessels from getting any closer, or call on local support in defense, could be useful. Q3: Will there be a beep beep when you're locked on by a rocket? A3: Sounds useful for the homing missile variant, some sort of indicator, preferably both audio and visual elements warn of your impending doom. We learned our lesson about just audio indicators with the original hitmarker sounds. Q4: Will there be different types of shields or defense on ships? A4: Destiny has an unusual elemental shield system, where matching types do more damage, but I think that's a bit too complex for what we're doing here. Your defense is broken down into two categories - shields and hull. Shields recharge, hull requires physical repair, each having their own weapon-type advantages. Q5: Will fighters get beam turrets? A5: Yep! They're in the works, but work a bit differently than the projectile-based weapons, so more work has yet to be done. And we want the effects to be stunning too, as you glide across the surface of a capital ship leaving a burnt scar across its hull. Q6: Will there be a global map that lets you set routes to specific destinations? A6: Sounds like a useful feature. Travelling from system to system currently is a bit confusing, if you don't know which system name you're looking for, so a feature that adds a waypoint over the wormhole you should be taking would be handy. Luckily wormhole travel distance isn't considered, so we'd end up with a simple grid maze calculation, rather than the traveling salesman problem. Q7: Any chance you would release the fighter updates prior to adding capitals? A7: The way things are working out, we may be able to take the capital update in steps, starting with the fighter updates, then adding in specific capital game modes, and expanding from there. There are still some things that need completed before we release anything though, but fighter stuff is all at the top of our list right now. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the 134th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic has continued on his valiant effort to pull the Capital Update ever-closer to release by adding code to support the various weapon types. While we showed laser and plasma shots a few weeks back, that was primarily visual changes and figuring out the code layout. This week was the addition of railguns, autocannons, and torpedoes, including both firing stats like cooldown and rate of travel. First up are the railgun turrets. These gimballed weapons launch small metallic objects at high rates of speed using a magnetic propulsion system. While not as flashy as the laser bolts, they do leave a trail of ionized space-dust in their wake. Their physical bolts do require loading into the chamber, and the magnets need to recharge, so these do fire significantly slower than their energy-powered counterparts. Getting trails to work was a particularly interesting aspect of the railgun code, as the special way we load weapon shots caused trails to bug out. A quick-and-dirty solution was turning on trails only after they've been fired, and that problem was solved. Next up, the auto turrets. With a much higher rate of fire than any other weapon type available, the autocannon turret is the fast-shooting, low damage option for those who want to put a lot of lead in the air. There is something very satisfying about the sound of autocannons firing, a non-stop barrage of high-velocity rounds streaking towards an unsuspecting foe. Next up, missiles! Everybody loves missiles. They make up for their slow rate of travel and abysmal reload time by packing quite a punch when they do manage to hit something. This week we started off with a simple torpedo variant, which travels whichever way you're facing at the time, and accelerating until the end of time if you miss. Probably best against big, slow-moving or stationary targets... I wonder where you'll find one of them... We added a small detail to their firing, where they start off moving slowly, and have a constant acceleration applied to them over time - like real missiles in a zero-drag environment, they will keep getting faster and faster the longer they travel, so aim well. Future plans do involve homing and tracking variants, but they will take a bit more time. Also included this week was a small fix to the bank comma adding function we showed a week or two back. The string.gsub matching didn't work as well as we had hoped, so Idyllic developed his own code to sort it all out. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: How will getting into and out of ground vehicles work? A1: Currently the proof-of-concept uses the standard touch to enter seat system, but that isn't necessarily going to stay. A lot of games nowadays have a 'press e to enter vehicle' system that seems a bit more friendly, for when you're pinned down behind a vehicle and you want to use it as cover, rather than hop in and drive away. Expect something along those lines. Q2: Can both fighters and capitals use consumables? A2: Definitely. You won't be able to hold on to quite as many in a light fighter compared to a capital frigate, but they also don't take up as much room. If you were wondering what use fighters had for cargo space, this and exploration inventory storage are the biggest aspects. Q3: What is the smallest ship size that could contain a hangar? A3: Any of the Capital ships can have a hangar, even the smallest ones. Of course, hangar capacity is based on ship volume, so don't expect to have more than a few fighters stored up in the smallest of ships. Q4: How will ship repair work? A4: We've mentioned hull-repair consumables acting as health packs, and that you can get fully repaired in stations or outposts, and potentially minor repairs in carrier hangars. The key factor in this, though, is that over time hull damage will build up, and repair will have decreasing returns. Using a nanobot repair kit to patch a hole blown through your bow will only work so many times, and never repair it to full strength. Basically, battle-scarred ships will need to be removed from the front lines and repaired from time to time, not just accepting resupply cargo and dropping back into the action. Q5: Will the size of a ship affect its detection range on the radar? A5: Setting range on a per-class basis would be a fair way to determine radar return distance. We'll get right on that. Q6: Can we voice-act our custom species? A6: Sure. That'd be a cool little detail if you've already gone through the effort of designing custom characters. Q7: Will you be able to change the price you're selling goods for? A7: Players get the chance to sell their own resources at stations to other players at whatever price they choose. If you post a sale for a certain price, but later change your mind, you'll need to cancel the original and post a new one. Allowing players to edit price quickly would do more damage to our servers than it would add in convenience. Q8: Will players be able to manipulate the markets? A8: They are welcome to the challenge. We'll set things up with stability in mind, but if one faction wants to become an empire and control all of a single resource, we won't stop them. If said resource is necessary for other factions, though, they might have a fight on their hands. Sell things at high prices, withhold resources to make them artificially scarce, all on the table. Q9: What ships can go into a Capital hangar? A9: If it fits, it ships... Hangar space is calculated to a portion of your ships volume - if you have a really big capital, it could carry a few of the smaller capitals around in its hangars, which in turn could carry ships in their hangars... Currently the most nesting you could do is 4 levels, but that doesn't include carrier kit hangar increases. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the 133rd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic took a trip back in time to work on two of the most-requested features immediately following the launch of the dogfight alpha - boost charge and hit markers. Lordrex has been busy, adding an experience tracking and ranking system and patching some bugs. If you've spent any time at all playing around in the dogfight alpha, you know that the boost function is a very useful tool for blazing across the map to attack your enemies. But you quickly realize that it's easier to just hold down boost all the time, and nearly always have the advantage over newer players that don't know the controls yet. This wasn't always the plan. One of the features that got bumped to be added "after initial release," the addition of a boost charge meter was mostly forgotten, along with many of the planned additions, that were deemed too complicated to add to the original scripting. Now, after a code refactor and other various improvements, it was finally time to check that tickbox. Finally adding function to the second set of tickmarks on the ship ui, the boost charge meter does exactly what it sounds like it does - keeps track of how much boost energy you have left in the tank. When not boosting, this power recharges slowly over time. This also means that boost does, in fact, run out. No more boosting non-stop through battles. Sorry. This addition involved a few tweaks to the code, that all started with Idyllic patching the boost-throttle bug. In the dogfight, if you were to hit boost while also holding 'W' the throttle key would override the boost and you would remain at regular max speed. Letting go would also catapult you forward to max boost speed instantly, and was seriously problematic. Good news, though - this bug has been patched. Another feature that was highly-requested post-dogfight was a visual hit marker to go along with the auditory ones that play when you hit an enemy ship. The code has always been there to make the sounds work, so adding in a small bit of code that creates a hit marker on the player's cursor was trivial - it was the design that required some thought. There are lots of hit marker effects in sci fi games, from your standard cross or x, to fancier ones that have crazy effects. We wanted to stand out, but not be too excessive, so we went with a simple addition to the existing cursor you know and love. The key is to not go too big, or it becomes distracting, don't go too fancy or it'll be hard to read in combat, and with enough contrast that you can see it when deep in combat. Lordrex has been working on an experience and rank system to reward players for completing various activities, and to reward the most dedicated of players with a badge of honor showing their skills as a pilot. Now you'll get a handy popup notification when you are rewarded with credits or exp, or when you rank up. We're still working on what exactly the ranking system entails, but you might be able to achieve some fancy titles fitting for your position, or even unlock fancier skins. This feature should add a nice extra dimension of depth to the game, to keep players coming back for continued challenges and to unlock cooler things over time - all unlockable with igc, of course. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will the targeting hud from the dogfight alpha be available in the full release? A1: The existing targeting system will be used, though there will be restrictions to the range you can see enemy ships at, similar to the radar. We don't want to lose all the stealth aspects of the game, but we can't expect players to pick out two moving pixels kilometers away. Q2: Will there be a release of the RoVerse gun and vehicle scripts so that factions can add them to their bases? A2: That remains to be seen. On the one hand, security is important - on the other hand a game with as lofty goals as RoVerse is a prime target for exploits and placestealing, so it might be better to release anything ourselves. We'll see. Q3: Will ground combat become obsolete it the face of overwhelming aerial firepower? A3: We don't want it to. We'll be setting up ground combat to be equal parts air support, vehicles, and infantry. Expect obstacles for vehicles to run into, small shields to minimize airstrikes, and large distances requiring transport, each playing off of each other in a fun and rewarding combat system. Q4: What sort of content will come after the full release? A4: After release there should be a slew of new default ships added, as well as skins to go along with them. There's always room for new weapon types and expansions to keep combat interesting, and the list of features on Idyllic's wish list that would be cool to have, but aren't vital for release. Q5: Can we program station defenses with targeting priorities for their automated functions? A5: The full depth of automated station defenses are still being planned, but we would like some way to set priorities - why have the cannons trying to shoot small fighters when a capital is doing more damage. I'd put that on the 'eventually' list. Q6: Could a subfaction pilot undock a corp ship, fly to a neutral station, and dock it as their own there? A6: No - ships constructed by a corporation are inherently that corporation's property, a solo player on a thieving streak won't be able to make off with it. In this case, it would remain the corporation ship, just docked at a neutral station. Q7: Will there be infantry shields? A7: A handheld shield is a possibility. Depending on how flexible the ground combat system is, we plan on supporting a wide variety of weaponry and arms. Q8: How many horsepower does the excalibur have? A8: At least 7. Q9: Will you be able to stop midway while warping in the middle of space and mine asteroids or build a base? A9: Definitely. The warp system is just there to help speed along the process of travelling across the vast reaches of space, it's not locking gameplay into small spheres around landmarks. Asteroid belts will stretch all the way around stars, there will be endless risk and reward out in the void for the brave adventurer. And, if you wanted to, you could set up a station or outpost out there, which would then turn into a landmark you could warp to. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |