Hello everyone! Welcome to the 123rd 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 a number of features added to the Capital Update code by Idyllic, including an addition to the explosion system, the base code for inter- and intra-system warp of ships, a proximity alert and bank UI addition, work on some weapons and weapon effects from Skinny, as well as an update on where lordrex is. Other than that, the holiday week was pretty quiet. To get us started this week was a suggestion that came from the community as feedback on a feature we demoed a few newsletters ago - ship explosions. Our original version was sure to make a large and visually strong impact when something as expensive as a Capital ship was destroyed in combat, but it could be improved. Provided with a concept video from another space game, Idyllic set about adding in more, smaller-scale explosions along the hull of the ship before the full reactor-breach explosion that leaves a pile of rubble in the skies. Since the ship is already provided with a hitbox, and the math for collisions and bouncing was already done, adding in smaller explosions was only a matter of a few lines of code slipped in before the big bang. There will be further refinement to keep the explosions closer to the ship, as you can see in the gif was a problem, and there may be some edge cases that ships aren't convex that may need a bit more work, but we can chalk it up as a new feature. Also included in the suggestion was the loss of helm control once your ship is down but not exploded, which coincidentally was already included as a feature. On the UI front, recent additions to the Capital Update required new UI elements, like a bank to display how many credits a player has accrued, and other useful HUD info like a proximity alert function that players may find extraordinarily useful as they explore the dark and dangerous regions of space that fill the galaxy. Now you'll be warned in time to take action when you stumble into range of a hostile station or pirate outpost, strange nebula, or even when the daring adventurer gets too close to a star. Idyllic also dove back into Capital ship functionality, adding in the basic functions that will govern warping from point to point within a star system, but will also be useful for the future implementation of jump gates and wormholes, which should receive their initial testing in the Capital Update. Below we have a demo of camera FOV scaling and ship speed being pushed to the max, though destination calculation and selection, along with the other visual effects will come at a later time. No more will you have to plod your way through the barren voids between asteroid fields, stations, and jump gates - warp systems shorten that time significantly, though as you can see it will not be instantaneous. Lordrex has wrapped work on the station replication system, and has joined Idyllic in working on the Capital Update, already implementing a data saving system to record your stats across sessions, which will be an important expansion on what was available in the Dogfight Alpha. His help on this portion of the project should speed things along. Skinny took it upon himself to create a new, higher-resolution plasma turret of the default variety, which then led to him working on particle flare effects. 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 have weaponless fighters to use as scouts? A1: Sure - just because a light fighter can have 2 mounts, doesn't mean you have to have a turret mounted there. Weaponless ships could find a variety of uses, from quick and uncatchable scout craft to diplomatic missions between factions. Q2: Will there be secrets in the galaxy? Idyllic statues? A2: Yes. You'll just have to explore and find out. Q3: Is Scarblade a good name for the infantry or to edgy? A3: If it fits the theme your faction is going for, I say go for it. People call everything 'edgy' nowadays, doesn't mean you should change anything to try and avoid that. Q4: How many ships does a faction need to build? A4: Technically, you could get by with a single capital, a single fighter, and a mining ship at minimum, if you aren't using default ship models that the devs have built, but unless it fits some sort of faction lore that you don't have any ships I wouldn't recommend applying without a few of each. Q5: Will you be able to build on moons or asteroids? A5: Moons, most likely. Asteroids, fairly unlikely. Moons can be included in the larger-scaled planet servers, for some awesome planet-satellite action, while asteroids are out in system server at a smaller scale, and will only be accessible by using a ship to navigate around them. 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 122nd 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 a few feature updates for Capital ships from Idyllic, involving fighter skins and HUD effects, a fighter and a fighter skin from Juszl, a status update on station replication, and an inquiry for faction leaders. This week, Juszl has been a bit busy, but he found the time to collaborate with Idyllic on an expansion of the ship skin functions we've so far only demoed with Capital ships. He took his classic Ninazu ship, the Dervish, and gave it an Urban Camo paint job - which Idyllic then rigged up with attachment points and engine effects, and imported into the Capital Update fighter hangar. This particular ship skin uses a different process than the one we used to texture the Avenger. Where the Avenger used a UV unwrapped mesh and a baked texture, this option uses decals applied to every side of a meshpart, which obviously requires that the model is properly segmented. Moving forward, the team is willing to support both types of texturing in the codebase, since one is a cheaper and easier alternative to texture painting, and will require minimal additions to the code. Along with expanding textures into the fighter category, Idyllic also added code to support ships segmented into more than one meshpart. The Avenger was efficient enough to only require one mesh import, so it's entire frame only required updating one textureID - other ships, like the ones shown last week by Skinny, aren't that lucky. Also included in the decal application system is the ability to change part colors - if the model is properly set up, with each part being named, and those names are encoded in the texture system, their new color will be applied. This portion of the project was the most involved, requiring brickcolor be recorded on a per-part basis into the texture table, along with any bricks that had textures applied, which meant a whole new table format to set up. Luckily the Dervish is only 8 parts. This opens up a whole range of opportunities for fighter skins that are either simple recolors, or simple decal applications to different meshparts. If you have any recommendations for skins, let Idyllic know in the community Discord server. A feature Idyllic was working on implementing last week that wasn't quite completed in time for the newsletter, is the implementation of the beautiful speedometer gauge in the ship HUD, coded by Boysun and TheFurryFish. It was pure chance that Idyllic stumbled upon this code edit while delving into the updated dogfight alpha code, as the duo hadn't mentioned they had coded this feature exactly as requested when they were first hired on - an excellent bit of work that functions much better than anticipated, is much more fluid, and sure is a lot easier on the eyes than looking at a number readout that says '35'. A further update on the station replication system from lordrex states that stations, when killed, both explode and are deleted from the server and database, which was still an in-progress feature the last time we showed a demo. With that feature implemented, and a bit more cleanup work to do, lordrex is preparing to move on to projects more directly related to the Capital Update, to speed along its release. We have an important inquiry we'd like to bring to the discussion table this week, and any feedback from faction members or leaders and those interested will be greatly appreciated. For a while now, we've been discussing an extension of the roblox group ranking system that would allow for much more flexible organizational structures. Currently, Roblox locks groups into a linear hierarchy, ranked from 0 to 255 - we think we can improve on that and create much more interesting group structures in RoVerse. To that end, we are interested in whatever group structures you guys can come up with, from the traditional monarchy to an anarchosyndicalist commune, with an executive officer of the week, to a council of elders in charge of everything, to a democracy. If you want to do separate branches for your military and civilian corps, list out the different ranks in each, and their prestige level compared to each other. Branch separation would mean that a combat sergeant that outranks a miner pilot, but belongs to a different branch wouldn't be able to boss them around, that sort of thing. Be creative, think outside the box, and show us what you've got. Below we have a few examples, from the one Idyllic put together, to a few submitted by community factions earlier today. (draw.io is a useful web app for making flowcharts.) 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 different asteroid field types spawn different ores? A1: Certainly. Field types aren't just an aesthetic choice, they will also have different varieties or concentrations of various minerals found within them - learning which type of field spawns the most of the ores you're currently looking for will be an important job for miners and miner management. Q2: Will there be asteroids that might damage the ship? A2: If we were doing a fully-simulated asteroid field, we'd have fast-moving bits of rock do damage as they bounced off your ship, but as it stands asteroids are quite large compared to the player's ship, and don't move. As for asteroids emitting damaging radiation and the like, there is a distinct possibility. We'd also recommend you don't crash into any type of asteroid head-first, as that will hurt regardless, even if you do bounce a little. Q3: Will shield regeneration make ships kitted solely with armor useless? A3: Definitely not. There are several factions planning to go the hard-target route, armoring up their ships to sustain a lot of damage during battle. If you play your cards right, an armored ship should be able to take more hits than a shielded ship under constant fire, as shield cycling is interrupted by consecutive hits. Both health types will have available options for quick-repair, like worker bots or shield capacitors - and both options should be viable in gameplay. Q4: Can you change the ship classifications to an arbitrary naming scheme? A4: Unlikely. Grouping by ship size is much more intuitive and self-consistent than any other scheme that has been suggested. Q5: Will the biggest ships be entirely immune to smaller ship fire after a certain point? A5: No, health is scaled by size, rather than a set percentage - the smallest fighter will do only minimal amounts of damage to the largest capital, but it will still be counted. Regeneration systems are interrupted while in combat, so your damage won't be erased unless you are. Q6: Will planets use terrain water? A6: This was originally ruled out due to a stepping effect that appeared when doing spheres of water, but since then it has come to light that different methods produce different results - fillblock creates steps at 45° angles, while writevoxels can be made smooth, at the cost of render speed. 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 121st 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 progress on the menu systems from Idyllic, news on the ship meshing project from Skinny, some pretty atmospheric shots from Ved, an update on the NPC system from Stratiz, and some general status updates from others. Let's get started! This week Idyllic has continued his work on the ship loadout system, combining features developed in the last few weeks into a functioning system. Now, each turret mount location has a class value for light, medium, and heavy turrets, determining which size turret can be mounted to that location. This is most apparent when you're using the Bolitho, as seen below. The Bolitho has 3 mounts intended for medium conventional turrets, with the rest being light flak, like the one visible on the forward side of the ship. Previously, all turrets were pulled from the same folder, regardless of turret location, and it led to some unusual looking turret mounts - for example, this Medium conventional turret mounted precariously on the side of the hull. Along with this addition of classes, came the need for the player's options list to update with each turret selected. We had two options - graying out unavailable options, or trimming the list to just the available turrets, which was the option we went with in the end. There is also a handy little indicator screen center to tell you which class of turrets you're currently selecting from. On the technical side of things, the list of turret options is created at the beginning, listing every option, that is then trimmed down to available options, and the menu is set up using a UIListConstraint set to horizontal. When an option is not to be listed, its visibility is turned off, and the constraint automatically restructures the list towards the center, not leaving any gaps, which Idyllic found to be an amazingly well thought out and executed feature. Also in the Capital ships department, Skinny has completed the meshing of a few more Capitals, including the Bolitho, the Dauntless, and Ironclad, reducing their part counts from 146 to 10, 117 to 5, and 525 to 3, respectively. Quite the significant reduction, that should make piloting these ships in combat a much more lag-free experience. This also means that these ships are now available to be retextured with skins, though a bit of code will be needed for multi-part models, since the Avenger was only a single mesh. With the new triangle limits, we were able to import them as fewer parts than we could just a few weeks ago, so that's quite the improvement. Ved has continued with atmospheric effects, including lighting and particle-based gas clouds, as well as experiments with textured-mesh nebulas. We'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Lego has continued work on his asteroid field generator, which produced this lovely asteroid ring during his testing. On the Station NPC front, we'd like to cover the progress Stratiz made over the past few months. We last left them off with a collision problem, where they'd run into each other and push each other around, which is a dangerous thing to do in a station full of outcasts and criminals, that has since been at least partially resolved. They are now capable of long-distance travel, rather than being localized to one room on the station. Stratiz has gotten really busy in the last few months, with school and developing his own game taking up most of his time, so this project is on hold for the time being. Good news though, we started early on a feature that won't debut until Freeroam at the earliest, so there is plenty of time to get it working. Last week we demoed station health replication across the server boundary with a gif showing the station exploding about 8 seconds after it had been triggered in its home system. This week, after a bit of code optimization and elbow grease, lordrex has managed to cut that time down to 2 seconds, in a best-case scenario. This of course requires more frequent HTTP requests to be sent, which may impact our limits in the long run, so will have to be turned down again, barring Roblox increasing the request limit. 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 there be incendiary weaponry? Napalm? A1: This is a definite possibility - from hand-held flamethrowers to vehicle-mounted turrets with explosive or flammable ammunition, ground combat could get quite hot. Testing will be necessary to determine if the effects are purely splash-based to players, or if we could get fires burning through alien forests without impacting performance significantly. Q2: Will building a ship with different ores give it different armor stats? A2: The construction of a ship will have the same requirements every time and wherever you build it, but there will be options for bolt-on modules that increase a ships armor stats, that could have varying ore requirements. Save up some rare titanium for armor plating to make your cargo ships easier to defend, or a strike-craft that can survive planetary defenses to drop a bomb on a base of operations. Q3: How will control work on the surface? A3: In a very similar fashion to how it works in star systems. Factions are given an influence measure based on the amount of infrastructure and their activity in a system. Factions that build stations and outposts in space, and bases and colony cities on planets, will receive a significant bonus if they keep that infrastructure up. With planets, though, territory will be divided into a grid of hexagons, as we demoed in a newsletter a while back, allowing borders and fronts on the surface. Basically all you need to begin capturing territory is to build a transmitter tower in whatever zone you wish to claim. Unclaimed territory will be the 'wilds' where anything could happen. Q4: Will players have an in-game profile that others can view? A4: This is a planned feature. It will show your Faction, rank, and some other information about you. Possibly to include any dishonorable discharges, available funding, KDR, or player titles. We want to provide security forces with the information they need to catch smugglers and spies, faction recruiters with information they need to see before recruiting them into their faction, and what any other interested parties need. Q5: Will ship explosions be bigger if you're carrying explosive cargo? A5: While that would be a cool feature and all, I think you'll be a little busy exploding to notice any difference. Either way, a ships drive systems exploding would probably be more violent than any cargo you'd be carrying. Q6: Can players be members of a corporation while being members of a Faction? A6: Corporations are a tier below full factions, belonging in the organizations/subfactions category. This means that you can be a member of both at the same time - if your faction allows that, of course. We don't want to limit factions that are fine with their members joining a bunch of organizations, and factions that want to be exclusive can mandate and enforce that on their own. Q7: What happens to players whose ships die in battle? A7: If they're a faction member with piloting permissions, they can take a ship spawn out of a nearby carrier ship, if it has any left, or if they eject they could be picked up by friendlies and taken back to another capital ship, or worse case scenario, they are spawned at the nearest friendly or neutral station. Q8: Will planets have moons? Will they be habitable? A8: Definitely. I think we can make the gravitational system robust enough to support multiple celestial bodies, and there should be a wide variety of biomes, from habitable moons to barren chunks of rock. Q9: How will air support effect ground combat? A9: Fighters will be able to enter atmosphere and fly around, both for exploration and to support ground troops in combat, but we don't intend for them to become the absolute best method of conquest. To that end they will have a few debuffs, notably poor accuracy when firing weapons. Ground forces can also install anti-air defensive systems, to attack airborne ships, or scramble their own fighters for some intense dogfighting in the skies. 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 120th 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 a new page on the website, covering a bunch of new information for those building Faction Fighters and Capitals, another update from lordrex on data replication across server boundaries, some new and improved engine effect from Vedrakkerous, who has rejoined the team, a progress update from Juszl and his station work, and a section covering some recent Roblox updates we'd like to address. After a few months hiatus from the Development team, Vedrakkerous has returned to work on particles, effects, and maybe a bit of scripting here and there. Taking the lessons he learned over his time away, he's set about improving some of the particle effects left over from before. Here we have brand new engine flares, that are a significant improvement over the 'triangle inside a circle' particles we had before. These flares are fully color-customizable, letting the developers or Factions pick a color for their engine effects with ease. In a continuation of the segment we've been talking about for the past two months or so, Lordrex has been working on station data replication from server to parallel server. This week, we have outstanding news regarding the testing of that system, as well as two lovely gifs to demonstrate the feature we've been promising every week. Here we have lordrex damaging an outpost module by 500 hitpoints, which is then sent off to the backend server to make sure everything is kosher... ... and a few seconds later the module explodes in a blaze of glory! Here, in a parallel server, we see the effects of another module exploding. The cursor moves at the mark when damage was done on the foreign server, and about 7 seconds later that information replicates to this server, where Idyllic watches in horror as his beautiful outpost module is obliterated in a nuclear fireball. We'll be working on reducing that replication time over the next few weeks, to get it as short as possible while still verifying the report's accuracy before destroying your hard work. Juszl has continued work on his default station, this week adding in a few details to the exterior. And to quote him directly, "This is only most of the front half." We can't wait to see the rest of the station! Idyllic has made a few touchups to the Capital systems, patching a significant bug that didn't reset the list of turrets when you selected a ship with fewer mounts, leading to floating blank mounts surrounding your ship. He also took some time to actually test the Ninazu beam turrets in firing mode, which he hadn't done yet. This demo was recorded in a live server, where turret firing is still a bit buggy and not replicated, but as a proof-of-concept for faction turrets and loadouts, it works. Idyllic's other project this week was the creation of the Shipbuilders Guide, a sort of guideline set for Faction builders who want to start building fleets of ships. On this page you can find the most up-to-date information on the Fighter and Capital classes, their divisions, and just how many turret mounts you can put on things, along with a selection of accurately-scaled ships of each class to compare your builds to. In the past few weeks we've had two awesome feature updates from Roblox that we'd like to address firsthand - these two features will play a substantial role in both how RoVerse looks. First off it the implementation of FiB. The Future is Bright feature is a landmark feature that, once enabled on the client, will change everything. For quite some time now, in our polished progress pictures we've been using the demo versions to create murky and mysterious space environments, as well as planet atmospheres, and we had always hoped that this feature would release in time for RoVerse's release, so we could make not only the most ambitious space game in Roblox history, but the prettiest looking one too. With Ved on the team, and his excellent work with the lighting systems, RoVerse moving forward should be a sight to behold. The second feature we'd like to mention is the bump of CSG and mesh import triangle limits. While it won't be as drastic a change as FiB provides, this will allow us to halve the number of parts required when meshing and importing faction ships, especially the ones that go way over the triangle limit of a single piece. The new limits, 5k and 10k, respectively, should give faction shipbuilders a bit more room to work with when designing and building, and our devs that have to mesh and upload everything a bit of breathing room. 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 faction stations be able to allow people to use their services for shipbuilding and such for a price? A1: While neutral stations will offer all the services a solo player could need, they may find themselves in a far-off system or in need of more specialized services. In this case, it is possible for them to approach a Faction station and hash out a deal allowing them to use that faction's station as a staging ground for shipbuilding, cargo storage, or any other activity. Q2: Will players get credit for coming up with cool tech ideas that then get added to the game as research? A2: Definitely. This is a community project, and we're trying to include as many community influences as we can, from faction ships to faction cities, and giving people their due credit along the way. If you have a cool idea, that wasn't already on our list or suggested by someone else, we'll definitely make sure you're mentioned as the 'pioneering researcher' on the project. Q3: You've answered the question about Faction-locked ships in the Capital Update, how about the opposite? A3: Sure, we'll support publicly accessible ship unlocks for private companies, if you want to spread the word about your ships as an early form of advertisement. Shouldn't be hard at all. Q4: Can I make my faction species poisonous as a form of revenge against those who wish to consume us? A4: That's an oddly specific request, that I'm not sure we're quite to the stage of being able to address. I don't think players will drop flesh when you kill them, so in-game at least that's a no. On the other hand, if you want to add that to your lore, you can. Q5: Will players start with free money? Could they make alts and gift it to their main? A5: Players will get their first funds during the tutorial, where they borrow a mining ship from the stationmaster to gather ore and purchase their first ship. You aren't given any money directly, meaning players would still have to go through the effort of completing the tutorial mining mission, which they could do much easier with their own mining ship on their main account. Q6: Do factions have to build a version of each station type? A6: It's highly recommended you build as many custom assets as possible, which will help with application, and make your faction look cooler. The only situation where using default station models would be an option, is if your faction lore leans towards that being a reasonable choice. Q7: Will the designers of ships get a free copy of the ship blueprint? How many uses will they get? A7: Since building a ship form a blueprint still requires resources, giving someone a blueprint isn't an advantage, per se, so they will have unlimited uses for the original shipbuilder or faction. Duplicate copies of that blueprint will either be limited to one use or several uses, as desired when sold. Q8: How will players research black holes without falling in? A8: Faction research stations and outpost research modules will be the infrastructure used to study nearby strange and unique phenomena, and can be built anywhere in a system. Finding the perfect spot will be a fun adventure for those enterprising nerds to figure out. 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 |