NEWS
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Hello everyone! Welcome to the 154th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week we had another round of intense testing and bug fixing and feature adding, with the addition of interaction sounds to the ship modification menu, the addition of round victory rewards, and general bug patching. A suggestion from the community recommended that we add a few sounds to the menu system for better immersion. To that end, we added a satisfying clicking noise when switching between ship selections, a wonderful ding when making a purchase, and a disappointed dong when you try to purchase something you can't. The mute button has now seen full integration with the menu bar, with a delightful toggle icon that pops in and out when toggled. This feature now also carries over into matches, which was a slight bug in the last version.  The first menu button to actually do something! The problem with the deploy button not updating its text when you joined while a match was in progress has been patched. It was tied to update when a value changed, but the part that was to initially load the value when you joined wasn't set up correctly. This has been remedied and should be good to go. One feature added this week was a rather important one - when a round ends and your team wins, you get a reward. Sounds simple in concept, but in application was a bit tricky both on the design side and the coding side. We want to reward players both for their participation and winning, but we don't want it set up so you can sit in a game all alone and win the prize over and over. So, the reward scales both by number of players on the winning team, and how close they got to that round's goal - whether that be holding the hill for 100 seconds or killing the enemy team 25 times.  There is yet one flaw in the system that is being tracked down as we speak, in that it calculates your reward to be infinite money, which simply won't do. Idyllic spent several hours intensely staring at a single 10-line function that is supposed to control how far turrets can aim in any direction, which was brought up in testing as a bug. Vector math takes a very special mind to figure out, and trying to figure out what magic some other coder did to make a function work is not a pleasant task. If you don't know what you're doing, you either end up with nothing happening, or something incredibly bizarre happening, like so...  At least for now, though, you're going to have to live with the incredible freedom unrestrained gimbals give you. The original solution, designed for vector3 values, doesn't cooperate with the welds cframe requirements, and simple conversions didn't work. We'll keep working on it, but in the meantime there are more important features to be working on. Visually, the hangar was much too bright during intermission causing it to be impossible to see your ship. This has been remedied by removing the excessive color correction filter that just generally made everything burn your eyes. Our legal team is still opposed to this for some reason. In the ship selection menu, you can now freely rotate your camera around the ship you're looking to purchase. This was originally locked in place as an aesthetic choice and to allow the scroll wheel to cycle selections, but we can now lock the min and max zoom distance to prevent the camera zooming in and out while you make your selection.  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: Could we give ships a respawn timer instead of having to rebuild? A1: Unfortunately that would lead to one inevitable problem - an ever-increasing number of ships as factions build as many as they can all the time, and the ones that get destroyed returning without effort. No, destroying ships needs to have some sort of permanence for the stability of both the galactic economy, and our datastores. Q2: What are the benefits to establishing mining bases? A2: Well, bases are handy to have around to support your ships out in the field - no one wants to fly halfway across the galaxy to offload their cargo. Build a base in the middle of your mining fields for all the nearby miners to stop off at and restock, maybe invest in building a base where other people are mining to get first crack at any rare ores they find. Q3: Will murphy's law apply in game? A3: The old adage - what can go wrong, will go wrong - is not something developers usually have to code into a game, but it very much will apply. You need a fleet to defend control over a system? They'll get waylaid on the way and dispersed. You find a rare ore? Pirates. Q4: Will RoVerse be console compatible? A4: Not until Roblox adds groups to console. Q5: Will capitals be plane-locked with only smaller ships flying over and below? A5: Nope! We've given you the full range of 3 dimensions in which to maneuver your ships. Surprise attack from above? Go right ahead! We expect most conflict to happen around a single plane because that is the shape of the systems, but that doesn't mean you're locked into that plane during battle. 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 153rd issue of the RoVerse Development newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Another round of testing on the books, with several new bugs identified and patched out, like illegal purchases, some additional rewards, and some changes to different stats based on performance.  Lighting has been adjusted on the maps slightly, since they were designed for FiB/Legacy lighting, which has been officially removed. This is an ongoing activity, as they aren't quite perfect just yet, but they're getting closer. Sun ray intensity has been reduced, to reduce the number of permanent blinding cases our legal team has to take on.  If you stare into the sun, be prepared to be blinded... The ability to toggle the round music has been added, though it isn't quite perfected yet and defaults to off for some reason - consider it a feature-in-progress. But it is functional at least, so you can turn off the intense battle music and only hear enemy ships attacking. The performance of ships across the board in these rounds of testing has been identified as being much too slow for the size of the maps we have created. Since the maps are only a portion of the size actual systems will be, simply scaling the map down isn't viable long-term, so ships have been sped up to compensate. The standard baseline of the excalibur - known for its 25 speed and 35 boost - has been increased by 10, since everyone held boost all the time in the original dogfight anyway. We'll monitor how it continues to perform. In that same vein, combat has devolved into floating in place and turreting enemy ships. To combat this, weapons have been buffed and should do a lot more damage to ships. Instead of ships being stalwart hunks of steel, they should now feel appropriately fragile compared to the nature of the weapons hurled at them. Engagements should be met head-on, with only a few loops, and the heavier ships shouldn't be untouchable. We did a little math and weren't happy with the results - an excalibur, with 10k shield and 10k hull, with 1000 dps weapons shooting at it, would, in theory, take 20 seconds to kill with perfect aim and no shield regeneration. This was excessive for one of the lightest fighters out there, so the change was made. Rewarding the winning team and players when a round ends was an important feature that got overlooked, but has now been added. Not only do you earn credits for kills, now the winning team or top players earn a bonus for winning the round, to encourage a bit of competition. There was a slight bug where you could purchase ships without the credits to do so, which has been remedied. The culprit was a system looking for existing turret data for the selected ship returning true whether the ship was purchasable or not. This was initially reported as spam clicking the button allowing you to purchase the ship, but was just clicking the button twice. 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: If I start a shipbuilding corporation, what percentage of the profits do I get to keep? A1: Whatever you decide to sell your ships for, that is how much money you get, minus whatever regional taxes are at play. We aren't going to arbitrarily going to take a cut of your money as a dev team. You might plan to sell the physical ship, which would cost you some resources but would be right there for the customer to fly off with, or you might sell single-use blueprints and let them build your design themselves, as a cheaper option. Q2: Will we be able to control the automatic expansion of colony cities to preserve areas around them? A2: Great suggestion. We'll be sure to add a way to halt or set limits on the growth of cities outward. Perhaps we will support a wider variety of ways to expand cities upward, you choosing to halt expansion doesn't hurt your faction too much. Q3: What happens if you run out of money and don't have access to any fighters? A3: You'll find yourself on a station with a stationmaster willing to lend you his default mining ship, for a cut of the ore you collect. From there you can go out, mine ore, sell it to the station, and earn enough to get your wings back. Hopefully you'll learn your lesson about saving for a rainy day. Q4: Why isn't RoVerse ship physics based on realistic gravity and momentum? A4: We've seen games go for that hyper-realistic movement, and it has its place, I guess, but it isn't always fun or cool. We much prefer a distinct and active movement system, only partially because our devs took the time to develop the system we have a long time ago. If you need some sort of answer about why ships move the way they do, look no further than the RoVerse-trademarked gravimetric disturbance amplifier engines, that accelerate ships based on an invisible, asymmetrical, all-permeating field of gravity waves. Science fiction. Q5: Will factions have taxes? A5: We've talked about this a few times, and the simple answer is yes. Factions can tax transactions within their own territory to fund their war efforts, so they don't have to rely on requesting "donations" from members constantly. The trick will be finding the right balance between funds incoming, and funds remaining with your faction members. Q6: Will ships be permanently destroyed? A6: It is unlikely that the smaller ships - fighters, miners, etc - that the individual player has access to will ever be permanently destroyed, but they won't be free to replace if something does happen to them. Faction ships, on the other hand, are intended to be a measure of that faction's military and industrial might, so are more likely to fall into the 'can be destroyed' category, particularly capitals. While you can always salvage the wrecks, factions must be careful with what they use their hard-earned battlecraft for, and that their pilots are the best trained. 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 152nd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week saw another round of testing Phase 1 with several significant bugs getting fixed, including the targeting bug between rounds, a few loadout errors, and some high-fire-rate turret lag mitigation. Testing is going well, and release gets closer with every round - time to get excited!  There was a slight problem with our spreadsheet formulas that caused a ship's max boost speed to be pulled from the row above, which probably would never have been noticed except that the Danube, with a base speed of 15, received a boost speed of 55, which was particularly excessive. This formula error has been remedied. The largest bug fixed this week was a problem with targeting. After a round, the targets would remain visible through the hangar, and the next round you would be unable to target-select anyone. This problem perplexed Idyllic, but was eventually traced back to a problem with clearing ships after a round ends. In the event that you killed someone in a round, their ship would not get cleared at the end of the round, causing the problem; if the next map was the same, you could actually fly up to the ship corpse in the next round. In the rare case of solving 4 reported bugs with a single fix, Idyllic patched the round clear issue and all the problems have disappeared. A certain faction ship with no weapon mounts brought up another problem - when the player attempted to edit its loadout it would break slightly, but that was resolved. The easy route would have been to disable editing the loadout for that ship, but that would have also locked out any skin modifications as well, and that just wouldn't do. So we dug deep, added a case for turret-less ships, and worked the bug out. The chat tag given to players assisting with testing - [Alpha] - turned out to be confusing since there is also a team named alpha, has been changed. The temporary tag is now α for clarity. Loading out an entire kit full of beams or autoturrets to a ship with 5 or more mounts was causing excessive lag with their high rate of fire and number of turrets firing concurrently. A remedy has been put in place for autoturrets that balances responsiveness with number of projectiles fired. We'll see how well it works and go from there. Missiles were set to fire once every second to test whether someone could hit anything with them or not, and ensure they did the appropriate damage. Since these issues have been confirmed operational, their fire-rate has been reduced to their intended value, but not before some testers had a bit of fun with absurd loadouts.  pew! Lordrex has added the ability to mute the in-game combat music, so you don't have to mute the game audio and lose the feedback of someone shooting at you. While we respect your decision to not have a constant dun dun dun dunnn dunn dunn going in your ears, we invite you to reconsider at any time. He also turned down the extreme lighting effects that have run rampant since the lighting system was automatically switched from legacy to fib. There should be minimal blinding effects moving forward. And for the last time, I swear, commas in the banking system have been fixed. Turns out the problem all along was that it was appending the currency symbol before adding commas, so it considered the symbol part of the number. Now it works perfectly. On the topic of Faction ships, Idyllic has received such a flood of submissions that he has decided that setting up a plugin to do the mundane parts is a necessity, both to simplify the process and to prevent mistakes from being made. So this week, on top of patching bugs, he has also been working on creating a shipyard studio widget to help out.  It's still in its infancy, but should have all the features we need in no time. It's remarkable how easy building widgets is, it's just like coding a gui. 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 multiboxing be a problem in RoVerse? A1: There isn't exactly much we can do to stop them, but certain features are set up to make it more trouble than it's worth. With weapons having travel time and not just automatically shooting at selected targets, and weapons stopping firing when you leave the screen, combat is pretty much out of the question. If you want to fly two ships around systems with twice the danger and half the attention, then they can surely try. But beware. Q2: What is the max crew on a Capital? A2: While the confirmation for multi-crews is still up in the air, in the event that it does there should theoretically be no maximum to the number of passengers or crew manning turrets, just the server limit. You could theoretically all board a single capital, fly to a system, then all deploy in fighters and strikecraft from there. Q3: Can we have radar that scans entire systems at once, or a module to do so? A3: Unfortunately, no. We want systems to feel big, and retain some measure of mystery - there would be no point to busing secret stations or having pirate outposts if you could immediately see where everyone is. We will offer modules of some sort to boost range, but it won't be the entire system. Q4: How will factions store resources? Will HRs have a bank to give loans from? A4: Basically, yes. Resources will remain as physical as possible, remaining persistent throughout the game so you actually have to ship the metals to build stations across the galaxy to use them. They can be stored in outpost modules or on stations, but always risk destruction. Credits, on the other hand, are less physical and can be doled out as factions wish. Q5: How much emphasis will there be on exploration? A5: We are looking to create a good amount of exploration opportunity for both solo players and factions, from unique and interesting system configurations, to teams looking for the rarest of resources available in asteroid fields. When planets are added, there will be a lot of exploration possible, 835 planets is a lot of territory to cover. 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 151st issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week was another round of testing and bug fixes, with the team hard at work ironing out the last few problems forestalling release. Bugs fixed this week include a bank display error, a logic problem for ship purchasing, and a missing spawn point.  The bank error was rather simple - the bit of code found on the internet had the bad habit of adding trailing commas onto the end of the number (,5,000,000) or putting 4 characters between them (,5000,0000) neither of which look very good. So back to working through the logic of a 10-line function to find that string.len was supposed to have a -1 on it. Good news, the appropriate number of commas are now added to your balance for easy reference. A logic problem in the ship purchasing system allowed players to spam click the button to purchase ships they either didn't have the funds for, or were faction locked. This obviously wouldn't do, so was modified to operate correctly.  The beam fighter turrets have been modified from their original form, which moved a target around following the last raycast hit, to purely move the beam's attachment forward from the turret the distance of the last hit, so their effects should be more consistent, even with high-latency connections. A missing spawn point in one of the maps caused problems during a specific game type, but has been remedied. Theoretically, this means no more lockouts when trying to spawn in free-for-all matches. A problem with faction ship stats was causing problems when these ships were used, including being locked in place, not being able to roll or turn, and overall not working. Turns out that no stats had been set for faction ships in the data files, so quite a few defaulted to 0. Some fighters then did division with those stats, causing a divided-by-zero error, which worked about as well as you'd expect. This has been remedied by issuing placeholder values for all faction ships. Camera locations on some of the larger fighters weren't in the best of places, so those have been moved. The Blue Komodo, the Centuri, and the Iridium have been relocated to more agreeable locations. Let Idyllic know if any other ships are in unusable places. Faction fighters also attempted to load faction turrets from the file system, but not many factions have provided these turrets so the system didn't know what to do in this case. Adding a check to make sure this search doesn't error should be simple, but unfortunately there is no way to verify a path using FindFirstChild without nesting checks ad nauseam, so a function was created to verify any given path using a loop, which isn't as straightforward as it sounds. Regardless, faction ships now either grab their faction turrets, or default back to dev-created turrets if none are found. If you are participating in the bug testing and find a bug, be sure to send or tag Idyllic with a picture or gif of what's happening, as well as opening the F9 output window and finding anything highlighted red. 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 capital ship turrets be targetable and able to be disabled by shooting at them? A1: While a cool concept that was bounced around a bit early on, the engineering to do so isn't on our side. With fighters and capitals all moving at the same time, and guns blazing away every which way, it just isn't technically feasible to target individual turrets. On the largest classes of capitals, it could be possible, but the smallest capitals aren't much bigger than fighters and would be hard to hit at all, let alone specific locations. That leads to a difference in gameplay between different capitals without a good alternative. If capital gameplay is stale in the end, we'll consider this as an option to spice things up, but it is not a priority. Q2: Is there an order for the faction ships getting added to the Capital Update? A2: Not particularly, Idyllic has them all in a single rigging file, ready to be worked on, he just has to find the time to do so. The ones that have already been delivered should be rigged and ready by release, but might not be entirely meshed by then, as that is the most time-consuming part of the process. Q3: How many ships are planned for the Capital Update? A3: At least 7. There are quite a few default fighters, if you care to look back and count them, plus an unknown quantity of faction fighters and capitals. Q4: What is life? A4: That's a very good question. We should build a computer able to calculate the answer. Q5: Can we add custom skyboxes to our systems? A5: Well, making sweeping changes to the aesthetics of a system you don't technically permanently own isn't really something we'd support, but come to us with an idea for a system before release and we might make it a special location. Q6: Will you sell shield texture and engine trail effects as customizations? A6: An interesting proposal - while faction ship submissions would be allowed to submit their custom effects to match their theme, the option for selling different effects for default ships to solo players is a definite possibility. Q7: When will the Capital Update be available for public testing or open? A7: There are a few bugs left to correct before we can open the Capital Update Phase 1 up to the general public, so when those get knocked out the game will be opened up - first to the community, then the world. 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 150th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week was a momentous occasion, with Phase 1 of the Capital Update being released to a limited selection of the RoVerse Community for its final rounds of testing. Members of the community, from the most active to the most renowned assisted Idyllic in hunting down those last few bugs that will need to be fixed before the game is ready for its grand opening in the next few weeks. Needless to say, the more... creative members of the community managed to break it in ways the coders had never foreseen, so the game isn't quite ready for a full release immediately, but we now have a list of things that must be fixed before the wider public gets a chance to play. The first apparent "bug" was that everyone that joined didn't mount any turrets on their ships, so their first round was full of flying, but very little shooting, and a lot of getting shot at.  Remember people, make sure you have turrets equipped before diving into battle, no matter how tempting that deploy button is. To solve this, we will be developing a tutorial system for new players, to guide them through the laborious process of selecting a ship, adding a turret to each turret mount, clicking confirm to lock that selection in, then hitting deploy. Beyond the technical bugs that arose, some feedback on gameplay was submitted - beams accidentally had a very high damage value so they were significantly overpowered, and their range and accuracy being perfect made them nigh-unbeatable.  It was fantastic seeing players try every combination of weapon and ship, creating some unusual combinations that are entirely strategically viable - like a heavy fighter with 5 torpedo turrets that spray missiles across the stars, or a nimble hummingbird chasing down everyone at the highest speed possible, but then exploding into dust. On top of this limited release, Idyllic added several new faction fighters to the Update, further refining the process involved in taking the beautiful public designs and fixing them up to work with our beautiful code. Command bar scripts were developed to weld and unanchor ship models, setting up engines for particle effects, and generally making Idyllic's life easier. The ships that were meshed a few weeks ago by Skinny for all the default fighters have also been imported and welded, replacing their other part-intensive versions. In the testing, there was nigh a complaint about the meshes that we are loading, so so far the process has been a success in making the game run smoother.  We will be extending the testing to more members of the community in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. 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 ship boarding? A1: We considered this initially as an interesting combat mechanic, but unfortunately it would significantly cut into actual ship gameplay - nobody wants to stop mid-battle to teleport to a different server and start shooting at each other, only to be flanked by a warship. While an interesting concept, there is no way to fit it into our gameplay. Ship interiors are also a significant strain on factions to require them to be built, and if an important boarding mechanic was included, an interior would need to be built for every ship. We have kept the option open for ship interiors as a voluntary thing, where players can drop anchor somewhere and explore the inside of their ship, roleplay, etc. Q2: Anti-shield mines? A2: It's on our list. Q3: What will it be like walking through a city? Big blocks and lack of life with a few hubs? A3: Roughly. The feature isn't entirely fleshed out just yet, but there is no way we can do both an entire planet and a fully detailed city in one server. Picture lots of medium detail skyscrapers, roads crisscrossing between them, and a few landmark points to defend - city hall, an armory, or industrial district. Q4: Can we slingshot asteroids at enemy capitals? A4: No. Just no. Q5: Will there be a way to warn players that an area is restricted access and to not go there? A5: We might add a way to drop warning beacons or something, but leaving lots of ship corpses might be a good indicator that there are enemies nearby. Q6: How much detail can I write into my faction lore about the home system? A6: If your 'home system' isn't a physical place in RoVerse, you have a little bit more freedom with the details. Add planets, have weird phenomena, do whatever makes it interesting. If your home system is actually in-game, though, the max number of planets is 5, and systems are pre-generated so you'll need to find a home system that fits your liking. 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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