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RoVerse Development Newsletter #106

7/28/2018

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 106th 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 returned from his road trip and dove right back into Capital Update coding, with a neat diagram of how it all fits together, and the pieces yet to be added. The Flak turret that was in-progress last week has also been completed, rounding out the last weapon class the be added before the update.

Up first we have the long-anticipated flak turrets. Launching an unguided shell that explodes after a preset duration or distance, the shell violently launches shrapnel in all directions from its point of explosion. This shrapnel tears through any ship unlucky enough to be nearby.

Shown here used to create a 'smokescreen' protecting ships behind it from missile attacks, this Avenger has been outfitted with a full complement of flak cannons - an unusual arrangement to be sure, but a possible one. The red spheres shown are not the final particle effects, but rather the markers indicating areas that have just been exploded. Any missiles passing through this area will have a chance of being destroyed in-flight, saving the ship it was targeting.

Stat values, like transit speed and fire rate will be tweaked to ensure fair effectiveness of this defensive weapon. Also, keep in mind it won't stop a laser or conventional shell, so a flak ship should have an escort fleet.

We will also allow you to vary the time/distance to detonation, to protect the ship up close, to providing cover at an extended distance, probably bound either to the scroll wheel, or incrementally triggered by two keys, depending on our final keybinding scheme. Fighters will also have to watch out for these weapons - a well-placed flak explosion could knock you out of the sky.

With Flak turrets seen here, it is important to consider ship shape when designing ships for different purposes. Turrets on the far sides of ships that cannot aim at a target do not fire - if you're angled improperly, you may not be as effective as you need to be to win the day.

Now that we have all the weapon types available, it's time to return to our roots, and kit out the Bolitho with it's designed kits: three conventional turrets, and 4 flak.

Impressive,

and with a shake of the hand, explosion effects!

Is idyllic unstoppable?

And while we're mixing together weapon types, why not randomize it completely to see what sort of beast we can make?

Also on Idyllics plate this week was mapping out how exactly the updates to the fighters and gamemodes have been structured. With the departure of thefurryfish and smellypencil, it's now time to figure out how the pieces lay, and how we're going to fit these awesome Capital features Idyllic has been working on together.

After the chaos that was the initial Dogfight Alpha release code, we knew it was absolutely imperative that we simplify and modulate the code it ran on, to be able to add new features, edit values, and ensure the best performance of the game. A while back we talked about just how bad the coding on the original dogfight was, so we won't go over it all again, but know that it has been fixed.

The new format for code is modular and easy to read and add to, and it should be a cinch to add Idyllic's Capital modules to it with limited problems.

In diagram form, the organization of the code is made simple, rather than slogging through thousands of lines of code for what you're looking for. The addition of Capital mechanics will tie right into the ship spawning code, health and damage will be straightforward, and adding gamemodes to include capitals will be a breeze.

All with the very important aspect of being Filtering-Enabled. We've had a few people in the community ask us about this the past week due to Roblox's policy changes, but we're here to reaffirm that yes, RoVerse will use all the best security features available, including being Filtering Enabled.

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 planet-surface based area denial weapons that require special equipment to pass through?

A1: There should be plenty of defensive measures to protect your ground bases and cities from attack, though the best defense will always be players there to guard and defend. Use of terrain and obstacles to deny vehicle access will be possible, as should explosives.

Q2: How will spaceports work?

A2: We've already covered how stations and outposts will take in ships, and a few newsletters back we debuted a structure for connecting parked capital ships to the surface, but we didn't cover all that much of the mechanics of it, as well as how smaller craft will land. You can try using landing gear on rough terrain, or build a helipad, moving up from there, there should be larger sized pads, up to the capital docks. Storage of ships would involve hangar buildings, but none big enough for capital ships. Other than that, you're free to travel to and from planets, just watch out for people shooting at you, or the impounder comes to lock your ship down.

Q3: How will ground-combat medical items work?

A3: There should be plenty of medical items for use by infantry in planetary invasions. While we don't have the specifics yet, medpacks are fairly standard, but could take different forms based on faction lore. A healing syringe for one, a bandage pack for another, a wrench for a third.

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!

RoVerse Development Newsletter #105

7/21/2018

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 105th 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 two new ships from Sae'Tzar, as well as an updated model of the Garfish to follow the no-CSGv1-partial-coloring rule we introduced last week; we have an update on the continued work on station NPC's by Stratiz; further development of the asset-loading back-end systems from lordrex, and a quite substantial website overhaul from Idyllic. Lets get started!

Over the past several weeks, Sae'Tzar has been working on additions to his fleet of ships to be added to the game. He had one of these ships completed last week, but we decided to hold off on showing it until the full fleet could be assembled.

The largest Capital in his fleet is now the Conqueror. Seen here adjacent to several Guardians and Bolithos, as well as the Titan.

Truly a massive ship - with an armament of about 18 medium mounts, a sprinkling of light mounts for defensive weaponry, and equipped with enough missiles to blow out the sky, this ship is a force to be reckoned with on its own, let alone as part of an invading fleet.

Adjacent to the Small Capital Guardian, which is about 50 studs long at 2% scale, with the 125 stud Conqueror.

When building your ships, it is important to know where to use high detail, and where it is unnecessary - details like fixed broadside guns that will be a focal point can have a bit extra, while the majority of the hull is smooth and low-detailed.

This doesn't always work, especially with rounded hull shapes, but where possible, reduction of excess polygons is encouraged.

The second ship Sae'Tzar completed this week is the Iphigenia, here being rigged up for addition to the Capital Update.

Stratiz attended RDC this week, so his development time was limited, but he has started the process of teaching NPC's to search for available seats around them in the station. This behavior will later be expanded to include a variety of activities and interactions with objects scattered throughout the station, and emphasize what technology is available for interaction to the player.

With all those showcases available to explore, with all sorts of fancy holographic displays and door access panels, it's hard to tell what is available for the player to interact with. The use of NPC's will be both for aesthetic reasons, as discussed before, but also to show just how detailed our stations are. From walking through doorways into darkened corners, to browsing the local weapon dealer's selections, stations should be full of interesting and engaging activity.

On the back-end side of things, lordrex has gotten the initial demonstration model of asset loading working, as seen last week with the image of the world tree; this week, he has pushed forward with designing and beginning to code the entire asset loading system. From faction stations to nebulae in the void, all sorts of stellar details will need to be loaded in when the server starts up, and specific details will have to be replicated between running one and might disappear. We can't wait to see what he comes up with.

Last week we debuted the RoVerse Development Roadmap, showing where we've been, and where we're headed. To be honest, it wasn't very pretty, and was fairly hard to read. So Idyllic took some time on his roadtrip to spruce it up, as well as some of the other pages on the RoVerse Website.

Now it includes a legend, so you can tell what the different shades mean, selected images showing the work already completed in each phase of the project, from the ALPHA and BETA stages, to beyond Primary Release, as well as some descriptive paragraphs about those phases. Take a chance and check it out.

We've also significantly changed the FAQ page. Previously, it was a list of every question ever asked in a newsletter, and it wasn't very helpful for those looking for introductory details. So we thinned it down to our top 10 most frequently asked and important questions.

If you're looking for every answer ever given, to every question ever asked, reading all 104 newsletters is probably the better way to go, to get a better idea of the project as a whole, not just the questions people ask us.

Much more approachable, if you ask me.

Beyond that, we've made a few aesthetic updates to the home pages, edited a few descriptions, updated old photos; the Photo Archive has been updated to include the last few newsletters, and an update to our contact page.

Another new page this week is the Introductory Videos page, linking you to all our development diary video updates, rather than sending you searching for Vaktus' youtube page.

The most useful for seasoned community members will be the new Starmap page, where you can view a high-resolution image of the galaxy without any nebulae obscuring systems or routes. Released to the community earlier this week with a zoomable map, this page now includes information on the 7 sectors of the galaxy, and will be updated with more information over time, like basic resource information or who controls the sector.

In the future we'll be creating a shipbuilder's guide with all the information you'll need to build faction and subfaction fighters and capitals, but that'll have to wait until next week.

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 an arcade version of the game where ship destruction doesn't matter, and you can try out all the ships?

A1: Beyond the Capital Update's various ships and unlocks, we do have some plans for a practice field for factions to use to train new pilots without risking their valuable ships and resources, so something along the lines of an arcade version will probably come around eventually.

Q2: Will there be communications jamming?

A2: An interesting concept. Though it may find it's uses in real-world combat, I'm not sure there would be an effective way to use it RoVerse. If we add a jamming function, factions would jump to discord chat or voice chat, over using an inconsistent in-game chat system.

Q3: Space Torpedos?

A3: Sure!

Q4: Will there be any medical equipment for healing during combat?

A4: For ships there should be a few different options, like deploying nanobots to repair hull damage, or energy boosters for shields. Creating or purchasing these repair items should be fairly expensive and have a built-in delay, so ships don't just spam them.

RoVerse Development Newsletter #104

7/14/2018

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 104th 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 continued work on system travel and object loading systems, to bring the skies to life; we have work on the last weapon variant for the initial Capital Update - flak; and we have begun the process of meshing a variety of Capital ships in preparation for their addition to the Capital Update. Let's get started.

Last week we showed you the first steps in the player persistence system, with a player's last system saved and loaded when they rejoin. As part of that test, Idyllic and Lordrex met up in a single star system by following wormholes towards each other. This week, Idyllic struck out on his own with the goal of being the first to visit every star system on the map. 220 distant and unique systems, all connected by interstellar pathways, and some code. After about 2 hours and 22 systems visited, he had to put his adventure on hold, for it was much longer than he had anticipated. Below you can trace the path of his journey.

Though he only managed to visit 1% of the galaxy, he did get to experience some interesting sights, including the skybox variations that come with visiting systems in the different sectors of the galaxy. The ominous red haze of the Great Hollow, to the vortexes of the Abyss, to the clear skies of the Core Systems. Travel between systems was easy, it was the walking to the next jumpgate within the systems that took the most time. And he only got lost once!

On the coding end of things, Lordrex spent this week designing and laying out his future plans for object loading and replication between servers. We'd like to clarify a design point on the number of active servers and players per server - out goal is to be able to support up to 100 players engaging in faction v faction battles within the same server, and if this is possible we might restrict the number of active servers per system, to simplify defense of faction stations, and prevent serverhopping. If it is not possible, and systems can only hold 30 or so players at a time, parallel server count wouldn't be limited. In both instances, it would be important to sync the data between parallel servers as time goes on - a faction builds a new station, an attack destroys an outpost module, a system changes ownership. The system behind this must be robust enough to keep track of numerous servers all updating values, detect malfeasance, and reply to all active servers with the current status of stations, outposts, planets, wrecks, and any other persistent objects we'd like to maintain in a star system.

To demonstrate the loading system, we loaded a tree.

There is a reason behind the choice of a tree - we're also saving orientation as well as location, so we needed an object with a top, and directional sides to easily determine it was loading in the proper direction. Science.

The last weapon variant to be coded before the Capital Update releases is the flak turret. A variant on a missile class, at least in the code, the flak turret launches a projectile with a fuse for detonation, rather than a proximity trigger. After a short distance, the projectile explodes violently, damaging anything within range of the explosion significantly, and shredding anything beyond with shrapnel. Used as anti-aircraft in WWII, flak has a long history in taking out small attack craft, so defending your planetary bases, to keeping fighters off your capital ship's flanks will be a breeze.

They also function as a useful anti-missile screening system, when deployed correctly. Their explosion leaves an invisible sphere of debris, that destroys any missiles that come into contact with it. With this extra functionality we hit a few roadblocks, but nothing that can't be overcome, and we hope to see a fully functional demo next week.

Also this week, Skinny has taken on the task of meshing the 15 or so Capital ships we plan on including in the Capital Update. Ships of all sizes, from the small and fast Bolitho, to the giant Protector, all cut down from hundreds of moving parts, to under 10. While this will require extra care managing loading times, the performance increases from 10 parts moving over a hundred is substantial, and well worth the effort.

In the process of meshing developer-created ships, Skinny did run into a problem - object format exports of CSG v1, where negation was used to change the color of some faces of a union, do not work, requiring that these faces be manually selected and recolored. This greatly increases the workload and the time spent on meshing models, so for faction-submitted models this will not be allowed. We recommend you turn on the 'Use Part Color' value, and add separate parts to color different areas.

We also have another important update to inform you about this week - our first public roadmap.

Available here, we have laid out all the progress we have made, and the future steps we will be taking as we move past the Capital Update and on to the full release.

We will be updating this map as we complete features and release updates, so check back there if you ever lose track of our progress.

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 weren't any pressing question from the community this week, if you have any of your own, post them in the #dev_questions channel in the community Discord.

RoVerse Development Newsletter #103

7/7/2018

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 103rd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week saw some great achievements on the star system transportation system, a new weapon type for Capital ships being added to the mix, and extensive work on updating and unifying the UI between Fighters and Capitals.

Up first is the new weapon type - the second-to-last weapon type for Capital turrets is the plasma cannon. Launching a superheated and compressed pocket of ionized gas using magnetism and lots of electricity, this weapon type is one of the most devastating weapons at taking out opponent ships shields. Though the projectiles have a lower velocity than other weapons available, they make up for it with an expanded area of effect for hitting targets. If your gunner can properly lead an opponent ship, you'll have them destroyed in no time.

Plasma turrets also feature a charge-up effect like beam turrets for the larger versions of this weapon - fighter plasma launchers have a much lower charge-time.

On the back-end side of weapon additions, plasma weapons act as a combination of conventional turrets and beam turrets, with a few stat changes, the target name, and two lines of code, these new weapons were added to the game. This ease of addition is important if we want to be successful in adding a wider variety of weapon types, as well as a variety of turret models and shapes, to match faction ships. A success is a great sign.

Lordrex has continued refining the system travel code that we've been talking about the last few weeks - the first successful test of multiple players travelling between and towards the same system at the same time has been completed. One of the most interesting and challenging aspects of our plan to use a single star system place, and dynamically load in the proper maps has been sorting players into the proper server. An easy shortcut would be to create a separate server for everyone, but then the galaxy would be empty. No, we have to register each server with an ID, save that ID elsewhere, and if someone attempts to join a star system that already exists, send them there instead of making a copy.

The first live test hit a small bug, but in under 10 minutes we were back for test #2, which led to lordrex and Idyllic flying around the same star system server, together.

There was something incredible about being able to, for the first time, exist in this galaxy in a set location - Idyllic spawned in the Cassiopeiae system, while lordrex was in Alpha Prime. Taking a trip through Arcturus, to meet in Babylonia, and travel on together to Alexandria was an experience unmatched in my development career - basically like taking the first steps on the moon.

We can't wait to see the galaxy take shape, with asset loading and an improved map added in, as well as seeing players explore and take their first steps as well.

Last up this week is work on the Capital Update UI. Idyllic spent some time while on a road trip designing an updated and uniform UI layout that covers everything from the loading screen to fighter turret management. Some of the storyboard frames are posted below.

Much more sleek and polished, especially when all the interfaces match up.

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 damage-over-time weapons?

A1: While we don't have any plans for those at the moment, our system is flexible enough that we could add new weapon types fairly easily. If you have a specific weapon type in mind, type out a description and put it in the #suggestions channel.

Q2: Will ships be able to intercept ships while jumping or using FTL?

A2: This question came up quite some time ago, and the answer was no - for system-to-system travel. Because jumpgates send you between servers, there's no way to drop someone out midway, nor any use to do so. But with some recent changes in gameplay we've developed, there could be weapons used to interrupt the jumps between points of interest in a system. It could be an interesting concept to look into.

Q3: Can we have ground combat on ship exteriors?

A3: Unlikely, ships are much too small to have any sort of exterior gravity-generating presence, and if you had artificial gravity on the outside of the ship, you'd end up covered in debris. Stick to shooting ships with turrets, rather than handguns.

Q4: Do faction-designed jumpgates have to be ring-shaped?

A4: I suppose not. Within reason, you could build a bit of structure behind the portal on the far side from the system's star for an unusual-shaped jumpgate, as long as it's not excessively detailed or large.

Q5: Will weight factor into ship stats? Can we have more details about stats?

A5: Weight won't be a direct factor affecting ship stats, though it could be considered a combination of other stats directly set - more armor will be heavier, and will affect acceleration and turning radius. We'll have more stat details in the future, we're still nailing down the initial stats, which will then be tested in the Capital Update.

Q6: Will faction leaders be able to assign lower ranks the ability to pick outpost modules to build to expand stations?

A6: We plan on having an extensive rank system chock full of permissions for a wide variety of tasks, including assigning someone as a stationmaster, allowing them to run the station as they see fit, freeing faction leaders from micromanagement to look at the bigger picture.

NEWS

RoVerse Development Newsletter #106

RoVerse Development Newsletter #105

RoVerse Development Newsletter #104

RoVerse Development Newsletter #103

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