Hello everyone! Welcome to the 206th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic ticked off several new gamemodes that have been on our feature list for quite a while, developing important mechanics that will impact the fighter mechanics when we pivot to freeroam. First up, the Outpost Strike gamemode has been merged into the Dogfight Alpha, along with quite a few of the smaller features demoed in the test version, notable weapon reload bars on the HUD, better turret movement, and keybinding support. With the further gamemode research Idyllic has been up to, he has now completed the score system for the gamemode, allowing its implementation to proceed. Unlike other gamemodes, you earn points for killing non-player objects, which posed a difficulty when it came to editing the rewards system, but now it is finally possible. The elimination gamemode we showed off last week has seen some improvements, with a new camera system bolted on that lets you fly around while attached to the fighter that killed you while you are eliminated. Instead of freezing in place, you can now coast through the stars as a phantom. While it is a bit jumpy in the gif, actual gameplay is as smooth as if you were flying the fighter yourself. Also good news, the gamemode can't be cheese by not deploying from the hangar! We planned on having to add some code to prevent that, but it naturally occurred and was unnecessary. Now on to the new gamemodes created this week: Killerball is a gamemode where players respawn if the player that killed them is killed, and was an easy addition that required only adding 6 lines of code to the Elimination gamemode. Victory is achieved by eventually eliminating all opponents, as players respawn unless you've killed them, which should be a fairly exciting gamemode to try out. Teamtag is a gamemode where you are switched to the other team when you get killed, is a relatively simple mode that was important to testing the ability to freely switch the teams of players during a game. The winning team, which is actually everyone, wins the pot when all other players are eliminated and converted. With the gamemode code solidly understood by the coders, we can move forward with other changes and improvements and features that we will be adding to the Dogfight as we inch closer and closer to the Capital Update. It was a quiet week in the dogfight, there were 34 kills, 19 with beam, 13 with auto, 2 with laser, 0 with railgun, 0 with plasma, and 0 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Excalibur, with 19 kills, followed by the Hayabusa III with 15. The most dangerous map was Citadel with 13 deaths, followed by Blue Spaceway with 11. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FutureScience, with 16 kills and 1 deaths and a 16 KDR; FangABXY with 15 kills, 0 deaths and a NAN KDR; and SkyleeLuna with 1 kill, 3 deaths, and a 0.33 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Stratus Sprite in the Alpha Dogfight. Nice work pilots! If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 50) 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 There were no new questions in the community discord this week, but if you have any we'll be happy to answer 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 205th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic put together two solid early versions of two new gamemodes, getting to the testing phase with a select few members of the community, and a new faction ship has been rigged and is ready to fly. The two new gamemodes this week were voted on by the community a long time ago - Elimination and Gatecrash. Elimination is your standard last-man-standing wins, where survival is all that matters. As opposed to the Free-for-all gamemode where getting the most kills matters, that is not so in Elimination. Be the last ship alive and you take the pot. And if two of the last three eliminate each other, the third person wins, as seen in this screenshot from testing. There are a few things left to polish off before the gamemode sees full rotation, such as a few targeting bugs for dead players, and dead players end up in a sort of 'paused' state where no other ships move, which doesn't look pretty. We'll tweak that a bit to keep showing the other players fighting it out if you are one of those unfortunate enough to have died. The other gamemode, Gatecrash, involves flying ships through the opposing team's jumpgate, while also defending your own gate from your opponents. Points are scored by flying your ship through, and bigger ship classes are worth more points. This gamemode is a bit better off, with the major effects and coding nearly complete. We're looking at small changes, like coloring or adding waypoints to the jumpgate you're supposed to be flying into, in case you get turned around. We'd also like to make a special map just for this gamemode that is a little smaller and more chaotic, perhaps with 3 teams. Some bugs were also fixed this week, particularly the King-of-the-hill Hill mesh interfering with weapon raycasts. You can now shoot freely from within the Hill zone, as well as shoot inward from outside the Hill. The House of Akatana has a brand new ship on the line, the Hayabusa III. It is quite agile and fast, and a formidable foe in battle. It was rigged prior to the Community Dogfight, so we got to see first-hand how deadly it could be. The Community Dogfight continued again this week, with members of the community coming together to blast each other out of the sky. Here are a selection of screenshots from the event - send in your own if you have them. Join us next week at 8pm EST and earn double credits for the duration. This week, there were 141 kills, 90 with beam, 30 with laser, 9 with auto, 7 with railgun, 5 with plasma, and 0 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Hayabusa III, with 53 kills, followed by the Excalibur with 41. The most dangerous map was Classic with 60 deaths, followed by Pillarum with 41. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 53 kills and 14 deaths and a 3.78 KDR; devOmegax with 16 kills, 25 deaths and a .64 KDR; and Phaytox with 12 kills, 6 deaths, and a 2 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Stratus Sprite in the Alpha Dogfight. Nice work pilots! 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 There were no new questions in the community discord this week, but if you have any we'll be happy to answer 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 204th 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 continued working on conventional and flak turrets, with a few weird issues cropping up and throwing a wrench into the works. This week also concludes the 7th cycle, so we have a brand new ship for the cycle 8 leaderboard-topping players coming next week. Deep into the code for making projectiles bounce off of surfaces, Idyllic ran into a problem. A trick to debugging complex code that is giving you trouble is to just start explaining it, usually to a rubber duck, and you'll likely find where the problem lies. This particular problem involves the projectiles after they bounce off of a surface. Instead of travelling in straight lines, they curve as if affected by gravity. However, they do not all curve in the same direction, and gravity is turned off in the dogfight. Projectiles being effected by gravity curve because there are two forces acting on them, one in the direction of their flight, and one going down... perhaps the problem is that the projectiles remember the direction they were originally going, and keep trying to go that direction. Turns out explaining the bug is actually pretty helpful. We'll keep you posted. In other changes, the bank display has been moved to the location that used to be occupied by the username in the menu bar, several bugs have been fixed in the dogfight regarding incorrectly-named Hills, and a missing spawn has been resolved. This coming week begins the 8th cycle of the dogfight, the 7-week units of time where we crown a dogfight champion, and weekly leaderboard-topping players earn an exclusive ship. Next cycle, players will be able to earn the Stratus Sprite, the next ship in the Stratus line, which is more of a specific-role fighter compared to the flexible platform of the Squall. The community dogfight continued again this week, with members of the community coming together to blast each other out of the sky. Here are a selection of screenshots from the event - send in your own if you have them. Join us next week at 8pm EST and earn double credits for the duration. This week, there were 210 kills, 68 with plasma, 62 with beam, 59 with laser, 10 with auto, 6 with railgun, and 5 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Excalibur, with 44 kills, followed by the Silencer with 40. The most dangerous map was Classic with 125 deaths, followed by Citadel with 39. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were CptJaller, with 49 kills and 35 deaths and a 1.4 KDR; Phaytox with 40 kills, 13 deaths and a 3.07 KDR; and IdyllicDestroyer with 27 kills, 36 deaths, and a 0.75 KDR. Nice work pilots! This wraps up the 7th cycle, and was the last opportunity to unlock the Stratus Squall, but we'll have a brand new ship for players to earn in the coming cycle. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 48) Now, for the overall cycle stats! Classic was the most dangerous map, with 375 kills, followed by Citadel with 308, and Frostland with 214. The top ship was the Excalibur, with 602 kills, followed by the Washi-0 1 with 269, the Hex with 150, and the Gladiator with 111. The top weapon was the Laser, with 568 kills, followed by Beam with 516, and Plasma with 250. Auto marked up to 188, Railgun with 68, and Torpedo with 18. An outstanding 80 pilots participated this cycle and earned at least one kill, while again 100 players died at least once. The lowest KDR belongs to BAXTHEGUY with a .04 KDR. The dogfight has seen 5,572 visits, with an 83% approval rating (26-25) and 287 favorites. This cycle there were 1,608 kills total. Topping off this cycle's leaderboard was FangABXY, with 290 kills, 183 deaths, and a 1.58 KDR. He was followed closely by JakorKilludge with 140 kills, 60 deaths, and a 2.33 KDR, and Phaytox with 134 kills, 148 Deaths, and .9 KDR. These three pilots have unlocked the exclusive Golden Squall Skin, coming soon to a dogfight near you. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Championship Series 7) 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: Why would I ever want to fly a medium fighter over a V-Heavy fighter? A1: While the heavy armament of a very heavy fighter is certainly quite attractive, the agility of lighter fighters can prove to be an advantage. In dogfight combat where you're flying directly at each other it may be better to have more guns, but in the future, evasion may be a more productive tactic. And don't put too little emphasis on agility, looping around slow-moving fighters can do wonders for your survival. Q2: Y'all remember when armament had no meaning? A2: Of course! Such wonderful times when we were ruled by the iron fist of the Sentinel, crushed under it's heel. 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 203rd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic hopped back on Capital weaponry, continuing the task of converting the demoed versions of Conventional and Flak turrets and ensure that they operate correctly with the fighter weapons code. We announced last week that the Bolitho has been rigged - this week it is ready for action with its standard complement of weapons - three Conventional turrets and a collection of flak turrets. But a major step to making this happen was the coding of these two turret types. With most of the turret types, code could be repurposed from the fighter turrets to just use a different turret model and effects, however, there are no fighter conventional nor fighter flak turrets to build off of. This required some new code to deal with the special properties these two weapons have. Conventional rounds ricochet off of solid object when fired at a shallow enough angle, and flak rounds burst after a short duration or distance. Making the turrets shoot was easy enough, modifications to the fighter code allows multi-barreled turrets to alternate shots, and adding in the special ricochet effect followed shortly after. We have set up the system to allow shots that bounce to do partial damage to the thing they're bouncing off of, since we can't penalize players too much for indirect fire in a combat scenario. Consider it as bonus damage for any direct-fire shots that hit their mark head-on. There remains a bit of timing and projectile velocity to work out, as you can see by the projectile outpacing the white raycast visualization line. The above gif also demonstrates our new silky-smooth zoom transition we mentioned last week - the power of zoom and enhance is now in your hands, ready to help you pick off targets at extreme distances. Next week, we plan on having all the Capital weapon types ready to go, with their special mechanics and particle effects as we march closer to the update. Check back next week for more progress! We also have a special gif from Skinny's environment work, that he released to the community last week. The community dogfight continued again this week, with members of the community coming together to blast each other out of the sky. Here are a selection of screenshots from the event - send in your own if you have them. Join us next week at 8pm EST and earn double credits for the duration. On to the dogfight - this week, there were 220 kills, 123 with laser, 52 with plasma, 36 with beam, 7 with railgun, 2 with auto, and 0 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Sentinel, with 66 kills, followed by the Gladiator with 54. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 83 deaths, followed by Classic with 48. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were Imaboss2122, with 69 kills and 28 deaths and a 2.46 KDR; devOmegax with 54 kills, 27 deaths, and a 2 KDR; and FangABXY with 29 kills, 63 deaths, and a .46 KDR. Nice work pilots, you've earned the cycle-exclusive ship Stratus Squall! If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 47) 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 detailed will the ricochet system be? Can I design my ship hulls to maximize deflections? A1: Ship hitboxes are actually a simplified mesh approximating the shape of the ship, rather than every single fine detail on their surface, so you won't be able to design any tricky shapes. You can certainly design your ships to take into consideration direct fire, or which direction attackers are most likely to attack from in the design process, but keep in mind conventional turrets are only one of many different weapon types. Q2: How will a Capital ship counter fighters? A2: The most powerful weapon in the Capital's armory is the flak turret - an explosive shell that sprays debris over an area and dealing high damage to any small ships unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. Beyond that, Capital ships have significantly more health than a fighter, and should be able to withstand a decent number of hits before being destroyed. The Capital gamemodes in the dogfight alpha will help us balance these stats to make sure ship operate as we intend them to. 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 |