Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-ninth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. We have some exciting news to share with our community! It has come to our attention that the name we have been developing this project under for the past nearly two years has begun to show its age. One-word game titles are a thing of the past, and to stay relevant, we need to update our image. So with that in mind, we have brought together several members of our community to workshop a new name for the game that we will be using from here on out. We present to you... With inspiration drawn from the most popular sci fi titles of both video games as well as other media, The Great Expanse offers us a memorable, modern moniker while offering the uninformed reader a glimpse into what our game is about. Who needs a unique and original name for a game, if you can use bits and pieces of already well-known media properties? Drawing from the success of No Man's Sky, we will be changing our official font from the boring old one from the logo, to one based heavily on the successful title. Now, when people see our game, they will immediately think of No Man's Sky, and their success will be ours! Along with these changes to our name and theme, we're changing a few of our gameplay features, based on community demand, and how the developers wish to move the project forward while remaining unique and exciting. Two years ago, a realistic and fun space combat game on Roblox was only a dream, held by a few talented developers. Since the release of our groundbreaking Dogfight Alpha game, the number of direct copies, as well as knockoff versions has increased non-stop. Where we once were pushing the boundaries of the platform, it is now crowded with cheap imitations. With this in mind, we have decided to change the focus of the project from faction combat in space, using fighters and capitals, to one that focuses on exploration and cooperation between factions. We believe that for the Clans and Guilds Community to remain relevant, we need to work together, not constantly fight. With how much work IdyllicDestroyer has put into creating an amazing planet generation system, it would only make sense for us to truly take advantage of it. Unrestricted by combat objectives in the game, we will be able to drastically increase the number of planets for players to explore. We are considering the creation of at least 20,000 planets spread over at least 5,000 star systems, each able to be named by the players who discover them, and available for players to land on and search for fuel to power their ship as they look for the next one. With over 10 minerals to collect, these changes should result in hours of exciting gameplay for our players. Imagine, peering into the endless void of space with only the light of several thousand real stars the light your way as you fly across the galaxy in the hunt for new planets, new biomes, and new minerals to collect. 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 Valoria Supreme? A1: This question has been discussed in the community discord quite a bit in the past day, with many on both sides weighing in. The final result seems to be yes, valoria is the supreme faction at this point in time, but that doesn't mean other factions can't start challenging them for that title. How you can challenge them right now is up for debate, unless you get lucky with team sorting in the Dogfight Alpha. Q2: Will Idyllic ever stop talking in the third person in newsletters? A2: Unlikely. Since the precedent set by Vaktus who wrote the first newsletters used this format to talk about progress made by our developers, changing the style up for no good reason won't happen anytime soon. We have a good thing going, why change the formula if it works? Q3: Will RoVerse work for people with high-ping connections? A3: Our game will work for everyone who wants to play regardless of where they come from or group they are a part of. Unless you break our rules, you will not be locked out. Games that lock people out because they don't like who you are are some of the worst scourges to the platform. Happy April 1st everyone! 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 eighty-eighth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, lordrex has been designing the character creation data systems and menus that players will use when they first join the game, to create the personification of their RoVerse character, and Idyllic has continued work on Capital Ships, with some promising work on turret transit and aiming systems. Let's take a closer look! For RoVerse we wanted to blend the characters you use elsewhere on Roblox that are supported by a fairly limited set of options, with our own more expansive system that provides more options for customization - including the possibilities for custom meshes for different species both Dev created and faction created. To blend the two, we have been working on a system that will import pretty much the entirety of the Roblox Catalog into the game for use on your character. Assets sorted into categories you are familiar with, like hats, shirts, and pants, as well as some of our own design at some point in the future. Tacked onto this are more robust character options including the aforementioned custom meshes, as well as a wider variety of colors and adornments will be possible. The backend systems to support this aren't all that new - Catalog Heaven used catalog assets in-game particularly well, and the Roblox API's are readily available to grab asset ids - and the systems used to load these assets into the character creation screen aren't all that different from what you will encounter in-game when you visit shops at stations to further customize your character. It's important to look your best when terrorizing the starways. Idyllic recently picked up the task of working on Capital ship scripting for the upcoming Capital Update, and has been making steady progress for these past two weeks. Last week saw the ship movement systems, including strafing, pitching, yawing, and rolling on the global plane, this week he has continued work on these systems, including the addition of a vector lock toggle that maintains your current heading and speed, allowing you to move the camera about to aim your turrets. Contrary to the rudimentary system in the original Dogfight Alpha, this vector lock does not rotate your ship to upright, allowing it a more versatile use in combat. Upon testing it is clear that it is hard to tell when this function is enabled, so in the future we will be looking into visualizations to show the direction your ship is locked to, in addition to the HUD toggle readout. This feature added, he moved on to more important aspects of Capital control systems - turret transit. While the previous iterations of turrets worked as long as they were oriented upright, that didn't quite work for us in space, with its 3 dimensions. Using some advanced calculation methods helped along by inbuilt Roblox functions, Idyllic managed to get turrets to track the mouse position and turn to face it as closely as possible, with the turret at any orientation. This includes turrets mounted sideways like those on the front of the Avenger below, as well as those mounted to the bottom, or any angle in-between. Another aspect of importance is the modular aspect of the turrets - a hardpoint on the ship model, and a matching hardpoint on the turret model makes adding and interchanging turret models a breeze, as well as a standardized grouping format of the turret parts should allow us to easily change between any variation of the model imaginable, whether it's developer created or created by a faction. We'll be releasing the final details in a few weeks, so you can get your devs working on custom faction turret models! Here you see the turrets independently pointing at the cursor, as close as is possible on their axis. Also included in this code is the groundwork for weapon groups, so you can turn on and off sets of turrets for various situations - turning on left or right groups of turrets if you happen to get flanked, for example. Moving forward, Idyllic will be taking on the task of turret firing, of all the various projectiles we have prepared for every weapon type, as well as beginning to interchange some of the turret models and effects to test how well the system works. 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 fighter-ground vehicle hybrids be possible? A1: While a combination fighter-mech would be cool, I'm not certain how reasonable it would be to make nor use one. In the end, it'd have to be debuffed as both a fighter and a mech, making it worse at everything than two separate vehicles would be. If there is enough interest we could possibly add it in at a later point, but until then you would probably be best off with a fighter large enough to carry a dedicated mech you could jump into when you've landed on a planet. Q2: Will cities have to be filled with skyscrapers? Will dead cities leave ruins? Could I build a bunker in the ruins? A2: Actually, no. If your faction theme is better suited with low-rise structures or other shorter buildings, you can design them like that, it's up to you. Dead cities will leave ruins as a marker of the history of the place, to add exploration interest, allow factions to rebuild their cities, and to retain more history than anything in the clan world can currently. Imagine walking among the ruins of a capital of a faction that died out years ago. If you're looking to build a small structure in a city, a base is the way to go, rather than building an entire city. Q3: How will sieges on cities work? A3: City sieges will be live-fire against whoever is there to defend, with any reinforcements you bring along. Attacking a city will be straightforward, involving shooting everything, but will be tempered by a large health pool. Defenders should also be able to conduct repairs, so your invasion force should be sure to take out any incoming cargo ships bringing resources. Q4: Will ringed planets be textured planes, or will the rings be made of real junk? A4: Since one of our primary goals is avoiding the shortcomings of previous space games, it just wouldn't be right of us to take the easy way out for planetary rings. I would expect that at a long distance, the rings will appear as a textured plane or two, while up close there should be detritus to mine, or avoid crashing into on approach. 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 eighty-seventh issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we have an update on the status of the Capital Update, some more planet work from Idyllic, and some more backend development and documentation from lordrex. Idyllic wrapped up this week solving a few more planetary generation problems, with continued work on moisture distribution. While some generation systems just randomly place biomes wherever they want (looking at you, minecraft), we weren't happy with that process. Instead, we opted for a relatively simple process that generates moisture for every 'tile' on a planet based on whether its land or water, then in a few cycles, moves that moisture around. Using the wind vectors we set up, water moves over land, dropping out as it goes, with more dropping when obstacles like mountain ranges are encountered. This creates realistic rain-shadows behind mountains where deserts are more likely to form. Desert biomes will be dry because they don't have consistent access to water, not because a random point generator picked a spot. It also takes into consideration the heat factor we've generated - the poles will be cold and snow-covered with little precipitation, while mountain valleys with the right shape and direction will collect excess water, forming rainforest or swamp biomes. And with continued work, each of these biomes should end up with unique foliage forms suited to their stats, to better immerse the player in the planet surface gameplay. While some may say that working on such complex planets isn't worth the effort, we don't agree. The exciting gameplay experiences possible with planetary invasions, or exploration of the four corners of the galaxy, pushes this game beyond the arcade shooters that have come before. Lordrex has continued his work on backend systems as well as the design of the finer details of faction interaction. This week, we've ironed out the details of how a faction leader will go about running their faction, from how they use an expanded galaxy map, to what information will be available on that map, to how they can orchestrate raids and battles from a central command point with their HRs. Along with this came further discussion about how faction conflicts will be run, and we believe we've settled on a compromise solution that solves the problems we have identified with faction warfare, as well as allowing players to attack anytime, anywhere. In other words - no set battle times restricting participation. Further details will be released at a future time. Many of you may be wondering about the status of the Capital Update. We are working hard on catching up on the 3 months of work that we lost when craft left the team, but progress is slow because of the school year. Our dedicated team is doing the best they can, and we'll be continuing to provide updates as we go. Of note this week, Capital ship movement has been refined from NoCollider's Demo, with some added features like collision detection. Idyllic has also begun to help out with Capital Development, to speed up the process. We should be seeing promising results in no time. The two gifs here are comprised of a total of 1 day of work on the refurbished system - Capitals aren't all that complicated on their own, but the most challenging features are replication, and collision detection with minuscule fighters. Also of note is a simplification of the process of setting up Capital ships for easy implementation. As long as the model has a core part and a bounding box, it should be able to fly. Prior systems, including the original Dogfight Alpha were very poorly set up to accept different ship models and turret models, which we had to re-write for the Capital Update, which was well worth the time we put into refurbishing that part of the system. 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 borders work? A1: While we could implement a system that bars people from flying into your systems automatically, that really wouldn't be in the spirit of giving Factions a realistic playing field on which they can do as they please. If a faction want's to secure its borders, it'll have to hire security forces, or recruit members to patrol these territories, and should consider the extra area to cover before invading every system they can - if they can't defend their territory, they won't hold it for long. Q2: Will there be HIGHSEC or similar? A2: Continuing from the above question, the security of systems will be up to the owning factions. There won't be an automated law system anywhere, because factions can have their own set of rules, which they are free to enforce. While we will rank systems based on their hostility towards new players for initial spawning purposes, there will be no interference by us in how players act. Q3: Will we be able to keep systems independent from faction control? A3: With the newly decided details of Faction and Subfaction abilities, it is likely that this will be possible - if enough people residing in a system want to keep faction influences out, they should be able to attack any faction installations that try to be assembled, whether that means that individuals or organizations keep the entire system free, or just a planet surface, is entirely up to them. Drawing inspiration from the Browncoats of Firefly, or the Hutts of Star Wars, there is a wide range of possibilities for uncontrolled systems. Each planet acting entirely independent from one another, or whole systems run by a powerful mob boss, the possibilities are pretty cool to think about. 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 eighty-sixth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we have some outstanding progress on the planetary front, some more design work for economic systems, and a new planetary structure that will be vital to establishing colonies. Let's get started! Idyllic has been hard at work this week wrapping up the final updates to his old system of planetary generation, marking the end of the old and slow system, and the beginning of his explorations into new processes of making planets as varied and realistic as possible, both to keep them interesting, and to immerse players. This time last week, he had been solving continent growth and collisions, this week he has completed updates to that portion, as well as the wind generation, heat generation, and default moisture generation systems that will all go into generating realistic biome conditions on the final planets. In the process of debugging the collision code, Idyllic generated a few planets and was surprised with how cool they were, even without refining the different variables. Here we have a shallow continent meeting an ocean, which would form a beach, while in the background rises a high continent, meeting the ocean with steep cliffs. Also during his work, he accidentally generated a 5-step planet, which would have taken 3 hours to generate using the old system, but it managed it in about 15 minutes instead. It does have some unique formations, like land-locked plates surrounded by high mountains that will be toned down for the final system, as well as an exceptionally tall mountain visible at the south pole in the image above that could be cool, but isn't quite realistic. As with any new creation, sometimes you find cool things about it that you didn't plan for, and are neat in their existence. Like the insides of the planet, giving you an inverted view of the mountains and continents on the surface that you otherwise couldn't see. Look at the depth of that oceanic trench! And this neat mountain with a lake! Now that he is all caught up with the updates to the old system, and has cut generation time by 80%, Idyllic plans to move forward with planet biome generation, where heat boils ocean water, that is then carried by wind and deposited on land masses, resulting in various climate zones in various places around the planet. We can't wait to see what he comes up with. Idyllic, Skinny, and Lordrex have also spent some time this week developing exactly how contracts and purchasing of goods from other players will work. Every detail from the expiration of requests, how factions will make a profit off of transactions they host, to where transactions can be made, fulfilled, and who gets to know about them. Exciting stuff! This week, Brad has constructed a new planetary structure to assist in the transfer of planetary goods to the far-flung stations of any faction - the Capital Spaceport. Modular arms built like any structure and rising high into the sky will connect with telescoping gantries to any Capital ship small enough to enter orbit, allowing cargo to be loaded and unloaded, machinery and equipment, vehicles to be transported from their construction location to where they're needed, whether that be fighters for the front, or miners for the asteroid belts. Expensive to build, but worth the cost to offload cargo from planets on a large scale, or bring in materials for city building. 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 subfactions be able to sell 'salvage' or 'ugly' ships scrapped together from pieces of other ships? A1: If the Ravager appearance is the sort of style you or your band of mercs want to go for, you will definitely be able to submit ships that are unusual in style, you might even be able to get permission from another faction to use their ship parts, or create your own custom pieces. As for in-game mechanics allowing you to piece together broken ships, I wouldn't expect that anytime soon. Q2: Will we be able to move outposts from system to system every once in a while? A2: While we don't have any current plans for moving outposts around, the suggestion has come up quite a few times and would be worth considering. I can see the use in a pirate outpost moving around the asteroid belt to stay hidden, or an outpost for storing and shipping large volumes of cargo wanting to stay in the most efficient place. If outposts prove to be useless if locked in place, we'll look into a semi-movable sort of system after release. Q3: Will there be any sort of 'training mode' for factions to practice with their recruits? A3: While we would prefer you drop them in real combat, that wouldn't be the best process for every sort of training. We'll look into either providing a separate place for practice, or release some scripts for factions to use in their own training simulations, or perhaps we just have a toggle for a Mirror Dimension where nothing is permanent. Q4: Will you have to worry about maintaining orbit around planets like KSP? A4: Not really. While realistically simulating gravity is a cool stunt, I'd think by the time they've developed gargantuan capital ships, they'd at least have figured out a computer capable of keeping the ship hovering in place over a planet, rather than needing constant pilot input. 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 eighty-fifth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week has been another week full of progress on a wide variety of fronts, with continued work on backend server systems, more work from Idyllic on planet generation, and some other detail work from a few other devs. Let's get started! Lordrex has continued work on the backend systems that will run nearly the entire game, with more successful demos on loading and caching data, with a successful test of pulling data every 15 minutes from sheets to the VPS. Beyond that, he has worked organizing the discord and our storage directory, important work as more and more work gets done on various systems - we'll need to know where everything we've done has been saved. He has also tested the limits of in-game datastores, on both a single server and multiple server basis, during which he found that there is a 6 second cooldown when editing the same value in the datastore, but only when editing from the same server - important information to know when planning out storage and saving systems on a large and complex game. Unfortunately, work on VPS doesn't create many opportunities for pictures... So this is what we imagine he looks like. IdyllicDestroyer has spent the week focusing on planetary generation, with most of it used to hunt down a bug that wouldn't sort tables correctly. For each continent on a generating planet, it grows out to the next-closest points at the edges, so that continents grow to be continuous masses, rather than having to calculate floating groups individually at a later point. To get this list of ordered points, he was using the table.sort method on the list of all points. He was getting correct results in certain cases, so he knew that it was sorting correctly, but for some reason when storing this value for later, it was getting jumbled - it turns out that setting a variable's value to a table makes a reference, not a copy of the original table. So if you want to shuffle a table into different orders sequentially, remember to manually copy each value over into a new table, or you'll end up with a mysterious bug to hunt down, while Idyllic's ghost laughs at you. After solving such an elusive bug in his code, it was a quick jump to update the continent growing functions, plate drift and rotation, and edge collisions, with a substantial reduction in generation time when compared to his original system. Concentric continents, which could be an interesting and rare planet generation setting, but not ideal for all the planets we'll be generating. Grown Continents, in their proper shapes. Continued work includes finding plate edges, and each point's distance from the nearest edge, all used in collision and elevation generation. An important realization reached while updating his old code included the pressure and shear calculations between points on adjacent continents. The old method was less-than-optimal, so taking the proper time to figure out a legitimate calculation for pressure and sheer this time around was a great benefit to the eventual result's realism. Early results show a much better falloff from high-impact points at plate edges, which will form mountains, to more even level central areas. We look forward to his continued work on such an important system for our planned game. This past week, Vedrakkerous has stepped down from team co-director, with Skinny filling in his management functions. He will still hang around to work on those beautiful effects he does so well, but the stress and time commitment was getting excessive. Meanwhile, Skinny has moved south for his real-life occupation this week, meaning no progress on any ships, but he has done some great work managing the devs on the team, learning everyone's current tasks, and keeping them on track. Lorenzo has taken on the proof-of-concept for custom character meshes, we'll see what he can work out in regard to that feature that we'd really like to have. If we can map a custom mesh to use the existing Roblox clothing texture format that everyone is so familiar with, it would greatly help with the implementation of custom character meshes. 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: Can we add bayonets and flashlights and stuff to our guns, and have them work in RoVerse? A1: While flashlights have been planned to an included feature, for navigating those dark corridors and those dark and endless nights on planets, we'll have to look into implementing bayonets in combat. At this point I'll say no, but you can include them in models for looks, and maybe eventually as a feature. Q2: Will different races have different deathsounds? A2: While we might have a RoVerse-custom deathsound, I wouldn't expect a custom sound for each race anytime soon, though possibly in the future. Q3: Will factions/subfactions be able to manage some sort of editable rank system ingame? Either through typing the ranks out, or choosing a premade system? A3: Faction ranks will most likely be a sort of blend between an entirely custom system and the Roblox-provided one, with options to set two ranks equal to each other, or have different branches marked out, and with more permission options for RoVerse. Expect to have most of your ranks set in your group, with only a few more features on our end. 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 |