Hello everyone! Welcome to the 312th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week was all about the forces fighting over Hyperion Station, from the criminals breaking the law, to the security officers that enforce them. Our 3D artist Mori has been hard at work making the armor and tools of these two sides, Idyllic has been working on more crimes, Skinny has been building out a new Post and Freight area on Hyperion, and Idyllic, Skinny, and Fang have completed the first Hyperion Restaurant. Hyperion has received a new area, courtesy of Skinny. Nestled across from the Arcade where the storage areas used to be, the Post and Freight stall handles all of Hyperion's internal mail and package delivery. If you've got some cargo that wont fit in the vwoop tubes, they have the drones to deliver those crates anywhere on the Station. While we don't plan for any actual features to use this area, it is a nice bit of background scenery to liven up the place. And inside the storage area is one of our newest vehicles - built by Mori. It's a cargo-lifting drone/forklift. Equipped with a pair of gripping claws, the lift can grab crates by the side, or pick up a flat pallet to carry oddly-shaped cargo. Built on a similar platform to the Hoverquads, it hovers above the ground on it's own power. One of the benefits of ranking up in the security enforcement questline unlocks a security force uniform and body armor for players to equip to stand out in the crowd. This week, Mori put together the several variations of uniform we'll need. The Security Force uniform is equipped with medium armor, a full helmet with face protection, tactical pockets for any equipment they might need in the field, and backup ammunition for when they get locked into a gunfight with the Station's criminal element. They come with several versions, with or without full facemask and visor. And they are equipped with a sheriff-issued sidearm with two settings - stun, and lethal. If you're being chased and see the neon switch from green to red, best comply immediately. On the other hand, the criminal element of Hyperion Station is well-established. They have access to the same or better equipment than the security forces have access to. They too have medium armor, but in a more flexible cut for getting out of tight scrapes with the law. Pouches for law-breaking equipment, and tactical kneepads for hacking consoles in tight maintenance corridors. And unlike the security forces, the criminals have a bit of style. So which side will you be choosing? Skinny, Fang, and Idyllic have been collaborating on bringing a sushi-themed restaurant to Hyperion Station, serving a variety of Japanese-themed foods, from ramen to yakitori to sushi. The ground floor is a simple café with sushi-delivery trains, while the more exclusive upstairs area serves the full menu to its treasured guests. Introducing Daijobu Sushi: The latest crimes to get a final polish and modularization are the recon/surveillance crimes. Tasked with watching a location for anything interesting, the player just has to hang around the target and not be noticed. These crimes now have a proper highlight, instead of giant spheres, a detection meter if you stray too close for too long, and a colored highlight indicator for the different states - too close, too far, obscured by obstacles, and just right. You can now fail the surveillance task by getting too close to the target, and then the Korol gets disappointed with you and you feel bad. 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 you do pocket dimensions for the inside of your ships? A1: Since the inside of ships are entirely detached from the outside when flying around, there's nothing constraining the insides to be the correct size or shape. Obviously, we'd prefer they be pretty close so that players never notice anything unusual, but if your lore says your ships are bigger on the inside, you can build them that way. Just a reminder, building the insides aren't necessary, but just an additional customization feature if you want to participate. Q2: Will planets be collidable? A2: Ideally, yes. That makes it significantly easier to walk on the surface, and we've done so much work already making that possible. 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 311th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've been quite busy on a variety of development areas. Idyllic dove back into the code for the questing system, completing the module for graffiti quests, Skinny continued optimizing different areas of Hyperion. We also have a big announcement, so stay tuned to the end of the Newsletter. When we last left quests, we had completed the 'smash window' module, and made available quests show up on the criminal task board. Since then, we've been slowly expanding and optimizing this code, adding on extra final touches to make them as good as possible. Now, we've got the graffiti quests all up and running, giving you a target to use your art skills on. We also added the random-selection functions that pick a random untouched window or wall location as the target of your criminal endeavors. Coming soon, a fresh clean/repair quest will load at the neutral quest board asking kind citizens to clean up the damage the criminal scum have done. Unlike windows, which are easy enough to highlight the shape of so you know where to go to complete your quest, graffiti can be on any flat undecorated surface, and needed a special way to identify to the player. We tried out billboardguis with alwaysontop turned on, with a shaded version of the graffiti artwork, but that wasn't very identifiable at long distances. It could work if we created a second bright white version of the decal, but in the long run, we'd like to avoid that and keep it extremely easy to add more graffiti to our library, if Factions wish to contribute. In the end, we used the Curve Cutter Plugin to draw a rough outline of a basic graffiti shape, which disappears as you work your magic. Instead of a huge cube highlight, the target identifier is now a graffiti-shaped space. Skinny has continued improving the lighting and optimizing builds, and there are certainly a lot of areas due for improvement. Below is an example of the poor optimization decisions someone in the deep past made, that we need to fix, so that players have the best in-game experience possible. Alright, it's time for the big announcement: For those of you who have followed this project for the past 5 years, you know of our struggles retaining developers working on the project, when their skills are much more lucrative elsewhere on the platform. We had a strong showing initially, with a big commitment from members of the Clan community, but that didn't carry this project through long enough to see it completed. We don't fault those prior devs for moving on to bigger and better things, in fact we are inspired by them. This platform provides an unmatched opportunity for those with bold ideas and dedication to chase their dreams, and achieve the unimaginable. But this project must evolve with the times - a cool idea isn't enough to keep developers engaged anymore. With DevEx, working on Roblox isn't just entertainment or a hobby, but an actual potential occupation. With that in mind, and with the return of Banman455 to the development team, we have made the decision to begin directly funding this game, and using those funds to hire on new developers who can help us achieve its potential. In the past two weeks, we've hired on two VFX/Animation artists who are putting together a trailer for the game, we are in the process of hiring two coders to take on various aspects of the game, and a 3D artist specializing in meshing and texturing, and we're going to use their talents to get this game to Freeroam Stage 1. Having a sponsor or two has definitely opened doors that were unavailable just a month ago, and this week the entire team has been more active than ever getting things moving, assigning tasks to new developers, and making sure everyone has what they need to get to work on the very achievable task of Freeroam Stage 1. To the community - Thank you for your support over the past few years. I hope you'll stick around with us just a little longer, while we make the preeminent sci-fi space exploration and combat game on the platform. And if you or anyone you know would like to help out, drop one of the Directors a Direct Message, and show us what you can do, and we'll see if there's room on the team for your skills. Enjoy this free sneak-peek of the new RoVerse Trailer Set - See if you can figure out where this picture was taken. 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 No questions this week - hit us up in #dev_questions if there's anything you'd like to know. 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 310th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Skinny has continued updating the visuals at Hyperion, moving on from the Pilot's Sector, to the Docking Arm Hub. The Sheriff's office has acquired quite an improvement to its lighting setup, now properly lit for the tough job of keeping the Station secure. ...and the Security Checkpoint as well: From there, he headed into the core, to try and make the constrained power of a miniature sun glow like you'd expect it to. Idyllic spent this week pushing ahead with the wave-simulating deforming mesh concept - last week we ran into the resolution limits that meshing an entire sphere at once would cause, and thanks to some input from the community, we think we've found a good solution. Surprisingly, it's not technically chunk loading. Instead, a single hexagonal chunk of water follows you around, moving as you do, and expanding out to the horizon. Waves can be a lot higher resolution than the full planet offered, but it does involve a lot more complicated math. Out first iteration involved moving the hex chunk around so you were always directly in the center of the loaded water area, however, that makes the waves jostle about as the bones move up and down the noise field as you move, which doesn't look very good. We moved to visualizing things with a simulated contour map, to make things easier to see: In this video, wave movement over time has been turned off, to test whether high points stay in the same place. Unfortunately, as you can see, the high points did not stay in place. The second iteration instead moves the water chunk in discrete steps, so that any bone that moves is always in the exact same spot as the bone it replaces. Highlighted below are the various bone locations, with the center point highlighted white. There remain a few edge cases we're looking at diagnosing, but this system should work out splendidly. And if it doesn't work like we need it to, we can always quickly rig up a chunk loading system until it does. 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 No questions this week - hit us up in #dev_questions if there's anything you'd like to know. 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 309th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've got a new proof of concept for planets, updates to Hyperion's aesthetics, and a sneak peek at the criminal hideout at the Station. Using the new deformable mesh feature, Skinny and Idyllic collaborated to create a proof-of-concept for planetary water. We showed off generated wave systems using a deforming mesh in a map intended to be added to the dogfight, however, that only worked on a flat plane, and was rather repetitive. For planets, we need water to be much more randomized, but still look believable as a wave system - though we do have a bit of wiggle room in the sci fi genre and alien worlds. With that in mind, we put together a small-scale, low-res demo. Using a python script to generate bones, automatic weights to assign the vertices of an icosphere to a bone, and the custom rig importer, we imported a mesh 'sea level'. With a bit of looping and math.noise, which happens to be 3D Perlin noise, we generated a gentle tidal system for a demo planet. Coincidentally, this might be the one instance where having planets be spheres actually made things easier for us than if it was a large flat plane. At this scale, the waves appear to be tidal in nature, but we're optimistic about increasing the resolution of the sphere to achieve better wave-shapes when seen up close, like you will when you're a character standing on the shore of an alien beach. Also of interest, the number of bones is less than the number of vertices on the sphere, by one level of subdivision, and the wave forms come naturally from the automatic weight of the bone applied to the mesh. Skinny has taken to 'fixing' up Hyperion Station, which is a monumental task. He has been removing duplicate parts, fixing z-fighting, and fixing up the small details that somehow got overlooked the first time they got built. Making billboards brighter and more readable... ...Fixing particles that clipped through the edges of models when they weren't supposed to... ...Unaligned unions that moved out of place without permission... ...and small building errors no one would ever notice. And to wrap it all up, he set Hyperion up for Future lighting, to make the most of some of the coolest aesthetic features we have access to. The rest of the team collaborated this week on the Criminal Hideout, where the kingpin of Hyperion Station holds his court. This dark and dingy bar is an ominous place that those who are good and law-abiding should hope to never see. Kitted out with a bar of its own, holopool table, armory, kingpin's office, and audience room, this hideout has everything the Hyperion Sect needs to wrest control over the Station. And for the best part, the holopool table is fully functional. You just have to make up your own set of rules for it. We hope all the Americans in our community had a pleasant holiday, and Canadians too. And hopefully you still have all of your fingers. 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 No questions this week - hit us up in #dev_questions if there's anything you'd like to know. 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 |