NEWS
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Hello everyone! Welcome to the 145th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week Idyllic only had a little time to do some work, so he continued working on the fighter weapon systems. Last week was the special case for beam turrets with their custom effects - this week, it was the missile turret's turn. We've shown their launch function before, but they didn't yet have any collision detection or explosions. Unfortunately, a bug has appeared where cancollide false objects are acting as if they were solid when a touchinterest is involved, so the results look pretty but are ineffective in battle.  Note that in prior gifs, the torpedoes continued as fired unimpeded by the player's own ship, but as soon as a touchinterest was added, collisions happen regardless. This means that missiles, too, will require a raycasted method, that keeps up with their exponential speed increase.
Here's a list of all the available eggs at the time of this newsletter. A few more are stuck with pending funds and will be available as soon as possible. See if you can guess where these eggs can be found based on their design.  Some eggs will be quite challenging to find, others... Keep in mind, this is our first time, so there may be bugs. Send any reports Idyllic, Maniku, or Tzleo's way and we'll get them fixed as quick as possible. 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 did Idyllic get involved with the RoVerse project? A1: It started long ago, in a remote desert village on the fringes of the galaxy. That leads us up to 2016, where Idyllic saw a really cool flight script demo, and offered to contribute a galaxy-generator script he had laying around. This contribution was mistaken for an application, which was denied. Then, out of spite, Idyllic applied as a builder, building ships and outposts and station interiors, which he continues to do to this day. Q2: Lore descriptions on vehicles/ships? A2: You'll get a 300 character description for store pages and inventory menus, anything longer than that would probably be better suited for the wiki, where die-hard fans can go looking for more info. Q3: Can you research captured vehicles? A3: Research isn't entirely pinned down just yet, but that would be an interesting activity to engage in. We'll keep it in mind. Q4: Will we be able to terraform planets? A4: Not easily. Q5: Will there be any ground-modification system or terrain editing? A5: Probably not. We allow that, people start digging tunnels through planets. Something to look into down the road. Q6: Could a faction base themselves on a single planet? A6: Definitely. Factions will have one Capital planet that is their base of operations, and any colonies they build up from there. If they decide to remain where they are, or don't have the military might to expand, we might see quite a few single-planet factions. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you're taking full advantage of the planet's resources. 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 144th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week Idyllic was back on weapon types, adding functionality for fighter beam turrets. We also have an event announcement, so don't miss it. Beyond that, it was a busy week for our developers with the holiday, so only a short newsletter this week, and part of the problem is Idyllic is out of town and on the edge of internet access, making uploads tedious and gameplay impossible. Just know we tried our best. In his continued work on all the fighter weapon types, Idyllic has moved on to the Fighter Beam Turrets. Functionally, they're rather similar to the other available weapon types, differing only in visual display of the firing mechanic, but they work a little bit differently than their Capital-sized counterparts. Rather than a barrage of bolts fired in the direction of the cursor, instead it is just the raycast repeating and one beam effect being updated to the nearest intersection.  Though there was some initial worry about how the effect would be turned on and off, which was a problem with the Capital beam turrets, the fighter beams are highly responsive and ready for action in one step.  I bet the sound they make will be like UUUuueueuuuUUUUAauusueeuuuuuuZzueuejauuyyy A few more tweaks to fighter weapons and they will all be ready to go. The Capital Update Phase 1 is getting close now! Coming up later this week is RoVerse's first Egg Hunt, featuring eggs designed by the community, factions, and devs and with a thrilling in-game reward for those daring enough to collect them all.  It will feature a custom-built lobby and 25 diverse eggs to collect, taking the player across several faction bases and other locations, complete exciting adventures and follow dangerous trails to obtain them all. Stay tuned in the Discord community for the Grand Opening announcement, which unfortunately got delayed by pending Robux to pay for badges, which apparently still cost money. Built by Calexian Industries, the grand prize is an event-exclusive fighter available in the Capital Update and full release - Sails of Joy. This event is brought to you through the efforts of ManikuCalex, Tzleo, and Engerishe in collaboration with the RoVerse Development team, Vaktus, and the amazing community. The idea is that if Roblox wants to forget the past few years of success and send the annual egg hunt to the grave, it is up to us, the members of the community, to carry on its memory. And what better place to do that than in the many worlds of clans? A chance to visit all these wonderful clan bases people have built over the years, not for conflict, but for adventure. Fight over a pile of eggs, not a terminal. Visit forgotten laboratories that have only existed in faction lore but are finally given the opportunity to come to life. Explore the universe we are all working on expanding together. 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 mercenaries work in-game? A1: The goal is for the system to be as autonomous as possible, we provide a method for making connections through advertisements and job boards at stations, but leave whatever activities you require up to you. Say you need someone to perform a specific task, destroy a specific outpost or ship. Rather than coding the system to let players specify the details, it is up to you to verify the action was completed and send payment accordingly. The players are going to come up with some very creative activities for the unscrupulous players, and we don't want to limit that. You might get scammed, but good news, post a job to destroy the scamming pirate and take your sweet, sweet revenge. Q2: How will mercenaries be paid? A2: However you wish - do you have wealth stored in a surplus of gold ore reserves? Perhaps you can pay a cargo hauler corp to ship it for a cut. Do you prefer good old-fashioned Robux for jobs? Negotiate that with your potential employees. Q3: How will snipers work on planets? Any sort of trick or skill mechanic? A3: Potentially. Ground weapons are still a ways off from being scripted, but they could potentially have some sort of mechanic to make their use as tricky as they are useful. The suggestions of sway and breathing and wind could be considered, particularly on snipers. Snipers will also have to contend with planet curvature limiting their effective range, something not possible on flat maps. Q4: What is the Annum celebration? A4: Looks like a two-week long celebration in midsummer. https://roverse.fandom.com/wiki/Events Q5: Will there be any sort of delay when coming out of warp? A5: Potentially. Right now the thinking is just a slight weapons-disabled delay of a few seconds, a sort of cycling between the high energy use of warping and going right into combat. It will probably also halt shield recharge, to minimize the viability of flight maneuvers. Q6: What sort of stealth will be available? A6: There are currently no plans for complete invisibility, with plans for early stealth technology being radar-only. But that doesn't mean that in-game research couldn't lead to something like near-invisibility somewhere down the line. Q7: Will Idyllic ever put me into the newsletters? A7: Trust me, doing so would be a fate worse than death. Trapped forever in the time between weeks, never moving forward and always a moment in the past. Q8: What happens to a factions' IP - ships and stations and uniforms - if they shut down? A8: In-game, their ships will no longer be able to be produced, as only that faction has access to unlimited blueprints. For those who already own that faction's ship, they will keep it, and it may become a collector's item. A relic of a lost civilization. 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 143rd 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 been hard at work on several features, completing the coding for several important ones this week. First up is the re-enabling of a feature coded a long time ago - weapon toggles using the number row keys. Demoed in a newsletter a long, long time ago, this feature allows the player to turn on and off specific turrets by hitting the corresponding number key. While only marginally useful now, it forms the foundation for the eventual weapon-group toggles we hope to expand this feature to cover. The code is there for turning weapons on and off by key, it should be straightforward to expand that to turn groups on and off.  The next feature on the list was the binding of Missile firing to the 'F' key. While eventually we will allow full customization of keys to our players, for now the default is F. Instead of trying to fire the Missiles every 10 seconds with the left mouse button, which interfered with firing the faster weapon types, Missiles have been modified to use their own bit of firing code and be tied to a keybind.  This missile version being a torpedo, unsteered mono-directional explosive. In a slight bug fix, Idyllic corrected some scaling issues with the turret stat gui, that caused it to move off-center with different screen sizes. Another small change was some code that allows teams in gamemodes to tie, rather than just picking whoever had the highest score first. Should prevent some anger down the line when Team Alpha always wins the tie. The last feature directly involves faction ships. Prior to this point, all ships available were added to the sort and purchasable, if you had the money. Now, those ships belonging to specific factions and restricted to faction members only, are now grayed out and unpurchaseable, unless you join their group.    Both their stats are not displayed and the ship is made transparent, to keep faction ships a little secret. We might also hide the description, if that is something faction leaders would prefer - vote in the community discord for your preference. 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: Do factions need to be militaristic, or is there room for other kinds? A1: While nothing is forcing factions to be strictly military-based, defending and claiming territory without a strong presence in the game will be quite difficult. If it's a corporation you're looking to start, a subfaction might be more your speed - it doesn't hold any territory, but it can work with a faction host or on its own doing business around the galaxy. Q2: Could you unlock faction secrets through exploration? A2: While we don't have any plans for a system like this at the moment, there's nothing stopping us from considering it somewhere down the road as a way to discover faction lore even if you're an unaffiliated player or a member of another faction. 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 142nd 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 worked on the turret types code, making modifications to the original hitscan system, Juszl has begun work on another map, and Lordrex has undertaken a map-loading quality-of-life feature. First up, Juszls new map:  It seems to appear to be based around either a fractured small moon, or a large asteroid mining quadrant. Either way, lots of little things to get in the way, and avenues for capitals to take. Should be fun for small ships in large groups to dip in and out of cover to evade capitals, while giving capitals the necessary firing lanes to properly engage others. - Juszl  If anyone has any recommendations or ideas for maps, let us know. The next item on Idyllic's list-of-things-to-complete-before-release was weapon variant coding. It was a simple enough task to modify the code to support multiple weapon types on the visual end, but this week was spent upgrading and expanding the features of the raycasts that go on behind the scenes. The original dogfight alpha uses a hitscan raycast, where it's fired instantly at whatever the turret is facing, which created some unusual situations where it appeared the bolts were hitting a ship but not registering, or hitting them when the shot was nowhere close. To fix this, Idyllic has implemented a progressive raycast function, where several raycasts are done over the lifetime of the projectile, for better resolution when detecting the hits of moving projectiles. Ships that move into the path of the projectile after the shot is fired can now be hit, making lead-time a critical factor to consider. This gif from the archive shows it best:  Matching up the projectile speed to the visual speed has been an interesting task, to say the least, but the good news is that the procedural system was very modular, and transferred from the Capital turret code to the fighter code extremely easily. In the process of testing the Capital Update, the devs noticed a significant lag spike whenever a round started. This spike interrupted menu controls for ship modifications, even the music playing in the background stuttered. The cause - the map loading in. Lots of rocks don't take well to being called into existence at the exact same time, causing that frame to grow significantly, as the engine calculated visible geometry and physics for everything. But there is no cause for alarm, as the solution to this problem has been implemented across many a Roblox game - incremental map loading. In exchange for a slightly longer intermission period, the map loads chunk by chunk instead of all at once, reducing one huge lag spike in numerous barely-noticeable ones. Lordrex has taken on the task of implementing such a fix, and has begun laying the groundwork for the system this week. Roblox has released its 2019 roadmap, and we thought we'd take a minute to review some of the features we're most excited about and what they could mean for RoVerse in the future.  Up first, the features that are nearly here.
 Later this year.
 Features big enough and far off enough that they probably won't happen this year,
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 big is the galaxy in miles or kilometers? A1: That is a question for the most intelligent scientists factions can provide. Only individual systems are accessible, and the jumpgate system bypasses significant portions of space, so there's no guarantee the galaxy map is to scale or complete. Q2: Will there be a system of punishment for glitch abuse? A2: There will be a reward for reporting glitches you find, as they will be inevitable in a game of this scale. Punishments for abuse will vary case by case based on severity of abuse. If you're destroying whole enemy fleets, or building fleets of your own, don't expect to be allowed to play anymore. Minor glitches that don't do much will either be reversed or just patched. Q3: Can factions create skins and give them out for free? Division skins for ships and weapons? A3: That sounds entirely reasonable, sure. For faction-related ships and equipment that you built yourself, it would only be reasonable to allow you to sell or gift to whomever you see fit. There may have to be some sort of review or limit to ensure that factions don't just go making a duplicate of RoVerse skins or random stuff like that, but it should be simple enough. Q4: Will you be using 100 player servers in RoVerse? A4: We'll certainly try, though stability is more of a concern than having that many players in one server. Until such gameplay is stable, don't expect wide adoption. Q5: Could you make fake or decoy Capitals? Shield ships? A5: In theory, you could. But in practice it might not work too well. Any construction of a ship is going to have a base cost, you can only strip it down so far. We recommend visual deception, either by having big ships be scaled versions of smaller ships so they're hard to identify at a distance, or unusual shapes or skins. Shield ships are more viable, armor and shield stats can be maxed over firepower, allowing them to absorb damage meant for other ships in the fleet. Q6: Will I kill Idyllic one day? A6: Every man is on the way to his last sunrise, but Idyllic's last is in another place and time. 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 |
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