NEWS
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Hello everyone. Welcome to the 158th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week we pushed a new round of patches for a few smaller bugs that slipped through the cracks, fixed a few bugs relating to features released last week, and began work on our next projects.  Here we have a sneak-preview of the next project Idyllic and Lordrex are working on for the Dogfight Update. It has something to do with giving players something to do when alone in a server. Idyllic has made some upgrades to the Outpost generator script, now taking into account module hitboxes to prevent overlap. Onto the bugs - there was a small problem where you could purchase ships that were faction-locked by spazzing out the menu system. We have modified the system to do two separate checks of whether you have permission to purchase a given ship - one when displaying them, so faction ships remain ghosted, and the other when you actually attempt to purchase that ship from the server. Glancing over the code we thought the server verified the purchase, but it turns out it just checked your bank balance and whether you already owned that ship. Should be all fixed now. Now that we have datastore data to review, but that we can't outright delete whenever something weird happens, we have found the need to be able to read and write to the datastore asynchronously - when the servers aren't running or players aren't in-game, to verify that things are working correctly. Lordrex has written a command-line script that outputs the datastore for a given key as a stop-gap measure, but we intend to pursue a more robust system in the future. Last week we rigged and added the f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ second wave of faction-submitted ships, which introduced a few bugs that were quickly remedied with only minimal incident. Some old code would go down the list of ships and automatically register them all as owned if their cost was 0. This was useful originally, but its oversight when adding data for new faction ships led to everyone that joined being given ships they weren't supposed to. The menu system still functioned to stop you from selecting those ships you obtained illegally, so it wasn't a major problem, but this has been remedied. We won't be adding any new faction ships before their stats and price are determined, to prevent free ships being thrown to the wind. We also added a feature to remove any ships you obtained that you shouldn't have, to prevent problems down the line. I hope you enjoyed your fun. On the topic of Faction Ship submissions, early this week we opened a form up for the official submission of Dogfight ships, to collect all the necessary data and files into one place, rather than 100 DMs in discord with only partially complete data or outdated files. This link will remain private to Faction Leaders in the discord, but we want to describe the process to any potential shipbuilders. The most important question - Is the ship going to be changed in the near future? If we are going to go through the effort of rigging and meshing your ship, we don't want to have to do it over when you want to change how a ship looks. Finish building, then submit - don't rush things. Ship Name - A ship needs a name. There are lots of names out there - ask people and they'll usually help you come up with some if you get stuck. Faction Name - Who do we list as the faction that built a ship. Group ID - If the ship is faction-exclusive, which Roblox group should it be restricted to? Manufacturing Company - Does your faction contract with a corporation to build their ships, maybe the name of a shipyards where the ships are built? Description - In as close to 300 characters as possible, describe your ship. Its armament, its speed, its agility, its armor, in general terms. 300 characters is all that fit in the box, so make them count. Class - Is it a Light, built for speed over power, or is it a Heavy, with lots of firepower but sluggish? Preferred Stats - In the 5 stat categories, on a scale of 1 to 10, what are the desired stats of your ship - Speed, Shield, Armor, Agility, Armament. You get 20 points to spend, so use them well. Spend them all in Speed, and you won't have many left for agility or weapons, balance them across the categories, and you might end up with a ship that excels at nothing. There is no direct correlation between how many points you spend and the final stats, since they all vary by ship class - spending 10 points in Speed won't make a VHeavy fighter zip by at the fastest speed possible, so just spend them in relation to the other stats.  And now the moment you've all been waiting for - who topped the leaderboard this week and earned a place among the RoVerse greats? ...and who didn't? Topping the leaderboard again this week is Imaboss2122, with an outstanding 196 kills to 29 deaths - that's a 6.75 KDR. This week, the most-used weapon took a sharp turn, from the Auto turret last week to a close race between the Laser and Railgun turrets this week. Nearly 70% of kills were from these two types of weapons. Oddly enough, the railgun turret was debuffed last week, yet it still performed well. This implies skill over balancing is to blame. The most-used ship for kills this week was the Sentinel, because of one particular player putting up a high number of kills, followed at a distance by the Excalibur and the Sails of Joy - 166, 73, and 69, respectively. The lowest KDR this week is JangofettAlex, with 2 kills and 29 deaths putting him at a solid .06 KDR. A new record! If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 2)  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: What determines a fighter's shield regeneration rate? A1: Right now, it's a flat value across all ships. In the future there is potential for it to get involved and change based on the ship, potentially as an aspect of attachable ship modules, but we'll see. Q2: Will planet gravity affect ship performance? A2: We have plans for atmospheres interfering with flight controls to level the playing field for ground-based units on a planet's surface, but gravity itself should have minimal impact on a fighter. We want there to be a noticeable difference between space and planetary combat, but not excessively complex. Q3: If you get close to a faction's homeworld, will they have defenses that KOS? A3: We're evaluating the effectiveness of automated defensive turrets, but you'll always want a real person there to ensure security. If they're within striking range of your Capital, it's time to rally your fleets to come to its defense. Q4: Where is earth? A4: Ah earth, the cause of much trouble in every universe. Suffice it to say that there will be no accessible earth planet in RoVerse. It could still be out there in the galaxy somewhere, since our 220 star systems are only those connected by wormholes, not every system in a tiny galaxy. The lore is up to factions - it could be lost, out of contact, destroyed, or disguised, but no confirmed answers to the mystery. Q5: Anti-planet weapon? A5: No. Idyllic will never allow you to harm his beautiful planets.
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 157th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week was full of bug-fixing and looking towards the future, with the significant bugs from the release of Phase 1 being patched, and planning for what our next steps will be.  The first and most important bug to patch was the slingshotting camera bug, that happened every time a new ship spawned. The cause was quickly identified and a fix was in the works the very next day. It turns out that whenever a new ship would spawn, there were two functions requesting that new ship's data from the server, which yielded the operation script of every client. This was updated with a spawn function, a very useful tool that is highly recommended. This patch did unfortunately introduce a race condition that caused limited problems for about 10 minutes, but that was also rectified. How well the system worked with 50 players, excluding the slingshotting, was a good indication of how robust our system is and looks good for future combat between a large number of ships. A small bug that popped up was boost only recharging while holding throttle, which was quickly remedied by a simple logic update. It hadn't appeared earlier because we only recently disabled deceleration while not holding throttle. This should all be taken care of now. Be sure to conserve that boost for when you need to make a quick escape. Radar range was debuffed a bit, since it really didn't help to be able to see people 2000 studs away if you couldn't even tell when someone was right next to you, and you can see people at a distance with the targeting selector. Now it should be much easier to tell where people are up close, and be able to turn in that direction to hunt them down. Beam turrets do a lot of damage very quickly and in quick succession, which led to an excessive number of hitmarkers appearing on your cursor and slowing down your UI significantly. This has now been capped to a reasonable number, preventing interface lag and letting you fire to your hearts content. A number of nil pointer errors have been pcalled, to prevent the server and client locking up when someone leaves at the wrong time or something unusual happens. This week, a few of the backlogged faction ship submissions have been rigged and imported, and will become available soon. First off, the much-anticipated Barrel - the pinnacle of Distrionian shipworks, the barrel is literally a barrel with wings. Good luck.  A ship only a mother could love. Next up is the Luparan Goshawk, the pride of the Luparan space forces.  The third and final ship added this week is the much-anticipated prize from the RoVerse Community Egg Hunt - Sails of Joy.  And now the moment you've all been waiting for - who topped the leaderboard this week and earned a place among the RoVerse greats? ...and who didn't? Topping the list this week is Imaboss2122, better known as CZESŁAW GRZYBOWSKI in the discord community. In a stellar performance, achieving 242 individual kills, entirely with the Sentinel, while putting up a respectable 4.7 KDR. That's some quality piloting. The most used weapon this week was the auto turret, followed by railgun and laser, with a record 3 torpedo kills. The most-used ship for these 1273 total kills was again the Excalibur, with the Iridium and Sentinel following close behind, and the Dervish and Gladius putting in respectable numbers. The lowest KDR this week is Zer0xxs, with 2 kills and 26 deaths putting him at a solid .07 KDR. Keep trying, you'll get the hang of it eventually! If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data Now that our initial testing is concluded, the ships have been raised to their official price and the grand opening sale has ended.  Looking to the future, the next step is Phase 2 - the long-awaited Capital Update. Capital mechanics are well underway, and it is just a matter of combining them with this dogfight that remains. After that has been completed, we will be turning our attention to the next significant project - Freeroam. Freeroam drops players in the middle of the actual galaxy, where they can fly, mine, battle and explore to their hearts content as we continually add features to the game, from stations to factions. A big chunk of this work has already been completed, so we're optimistic about the schedule as we move forward. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Can we attack opposing colony cities to disrupt enemy operations there? A1: Definitely. We don't want cities to be static, untouchable scenery, but living breathing, changing environments where everything you do matters. Build a viaduct and have better transportation, destroy an office building or two to clear a path into the heart of the city. Q2: Can a Capital ship crash into buildings? A2: Probably, but I wouldn't recommend it. They probably will do more damage to you than you to it. Q3: If a Capital ship is killed, will it fall to the ground? A3: Definitely. It's not like they'd just float in the sky and do nothing. Prepare for debris raining from the sky! But don't expect it to kill everything instantly. Energy shields could be a possible counter. Q4: What is the optimal cooking temperature and time for a 12 oz serving of linguine? A4: At least 7 temperature units and at least 7 time units. Q5: Do you have a list of planetary features you're planning on adding? A5: Oh yes. Lots of fun stuff. We've talked about most of it in newsletters, but there are a few ideas we have that we're keeping close to our chests. Q6: Crew skills? A6: A very complex system for crew skills is being developed, where members of the crew practice over time and become naturally better at their jobs... Player practice. Any skills you bring to the table will make your performance in a ship better, not some arbitrary crew skill number saying you're that much better -you are the one that practices and gains skills naturally. Q7: Why did you scale down ships to a tiny scale? A7: Originally we had two specific reasons for the scale - lag reasons, that still exist, and render distance reasons, which have been nullified since roblox extended render range to 100k studs. Originally the render distance was 10k studs in any direction, which means things just vanished beyond that point, limiting the size of systems significantly. We even started working on a system to turn far-away objects into billboardguis right at that limit so you could see beyond it in a limited way. Lag is still a very good reason, as smaller objects are less intense on everyone, and much better when moving. Plus, we don't have to worry about characters floating around just being a mess in general. 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 156th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week marks the three-year anniversary of these newsletters - 52 weeks/year - so it was the perfect occasion for some momentous occasion. That occasion, as most of you know, was the release of the Dogfight Update Phase 1, that added a slew of new fighters, weapons, maps, and gamemodes to the original Dogfight Alpha on our way to Capital combat.  Unlike the last Dogfight Launch, this update opened right on time without any fatal errors. Christmas Eve 2016, we launched with untested changes to turrets that broke the game immediately, and had to hurry up and fix them for all the waiting players. This time around we knew better, and had extensively tested everything in the months and weeks leading up to launch - as well as not setting an arbitrary release date before we knew we could hit it. That's not to say that having the 3-year newsletter release date as a target didn't help focus our efforts, but not releasing that to the public too soon saved us a lot of stress if things didn't line up. We had an excellent turnout for the opening, with an initial server count of 50 players in one server to test the upper limits of the server. It handled it relatively well, with the only major problem being a bit of slingshotting whenever someone new spawned a ship or someone died. This is likely caused by something yielding when a ship is spawned, and we're digging into the problem as we speak - it should be fixed in the next version. A few bugs cropped up when people left at inopportune moments, leaving values as nil and breaking the gamemode system, but nothing we haven't handled before. A majority of the suggestions that rolled in were very helpful and will be considered as we make tweaks and changes moving forward - some of them are listed here:
 If you're like me at all, you love a good spreadsheet full of good data. If you aren't like me, you can still appreciate it when it comes. We have compiled a bunch of statistics that we collected throughout the release, and have provided it here for your entertainment.
With all these stats being tracked, by far the most important is the leaderboard, right? Who came out of it with the most kills? Who is the supreme dogfight champion three years running? That's right, CptJaller stuns the crowd with an amazing 108 kills. With a KDR of 1.75, the Captain has certainly proved once again why he's the best in the game.
If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data There's a lot to be said for the stability of the game in these early testing phases, but even with the lag spike problem, our dedicated players stuck it out and made the best of it. There were no bugs that would've been picked up with 3 or 4 players bug testing, only ones that came from high playercounts and large battles. So we'll get to bug fixing, factions get to building their custom ships, and we'll meet back here next week. A copy of the livestream is available here: RoVerse Phase 1 Release Stream Some glamour shots from the opening:  That's a lot of people...  Everyone scatter!  Great Pilots dont use target lock. 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: What's next for RoVerse? A1: There is quite a lot coming down the line for the Dev team and the Community. We've got a list of bugs to patch, factions have ships to build and maneuvers to practice, and there's an upcoming community event. Long-term, Capital ship mechanics are coming, and Freeroam full of exploration and collecting not long after that. Q2: How far has planet generation progressed? A2: Spheres generate, continents form and collide, water pools, and wind blows. Gravity works on objects like crates and vehicles, we're waiting for EgoMoose to release an open-source player gravity script, since he's really good at that sort of thing. Q3: Will we be able to fly from one system to another within a year? A3: I talked with lordrex, and he's optimistic that we can have that functionality done within the summer. The teleportation part is completely functional, we just need the flight scripts from the dogfight to be able to "fly" through systems. Q4: Can we submit faction fighters to the Phase 1 Update? A4: Sure, send a message Idyllics way if you have some ships in mind, he'll help out. Q5: Can cats talk? A5: Oddly enough, adult cats only meow at humans, not each other. The usual meowing is between kittens and their mother, so read into that what you will. 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! Coming up this Saturday is the official public release for Phase 1 of the Dogfight Update, full of exciting new content like 20 new fighters to earn of all shapes and sizes, weapon loadout switching with 5 weapon types from missiles to beams, new gamemodes like King of the Hill and Free for All, several new maps, and persistent data to save all that hard work you do. We will be hosting a livestream to kickoff the event over on our twitch channel, so be sure to check that out here.    And this is not the end of the content. We will continue to add content to the game over the coming months, from even more gamemodes involving mechanics vital to the full game, new maps to keep things interesting, more and more faction ships as they are submitted and rigged, and most importantly, Capital ships. We had to put them on hold a bit to get the fighter portion of the update ready to go (Phase 1 - Fighters and Phase 2-Capitals) but they are still under development. Our roadmap has recently been updated, if you're new and don't know what all is planned or in development.  There are a lot of features, big and small, crammed into this update. We haven't just been sitting back doing nothing since the Dogfight Alpha, lots of work has been going on behind the scenes. One of the biggest and most time consuming parts of this process was the fighter refactor. The dogfight alpha was rushed out to test the waters for a clan-based space fighting and exploration game. As such, it wasn't coded the best and with future features in mind. Team colors were hardcoded, the ships were hardcoded, the whole thing was obfuscated by a dev who left - it was in a sorry state. SmellyPencil and theFurryFish took on the monumental task of extracting the functionality we wanted from the Dogfight, and modifying it to work the way it should have been designed. After a year of this process, and a good chunk of it complete, it was handed between a few devs who tried to add Capital functionality, but each failed in turn. From there, it came to Lordrex and IdyllicDestroyer, two long-time developers on the team who had the dedication to finish out all the little stuff that had been overlooked and push it to completion. And here it is. After an intense month and a half of ironing out the last fatal bugs, it is finally ready for public deployment. It is still a development version, so don't expect it to bug free the first time around - the Dogfight Alpha certainly wasn't - and things will definitely change over time as we balance weapons and ship stats to what we want them to be for the full game. Now enough chatting, back to more pictures of everything we've done these past few years.   
 And that's just the pictures of features directly related to the upcoming release - to see everything we've been working on, from planet gen to asteroid generation to capital mechanics, check out our newsletters. One last thing. We'd like to thank all the members of the community that assisted us in bug testing these last few weeks. They'll get their own little reward for their efforts in making this game a success. We'd also like to extend our thanks for the continued support of our community. We're here working week after week to deliver the game both you and we want to see for the clan world and the Roblox community in general. -The RoVerse Development Team Hello everyone! Welcome to the 155th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week was an auspicious occasion for a good chunk of our community, so we celebrated as any true patriot would - by blowing stuff up. In our case it was festive flak shells. After the celebrations died down, our development team tackled the last few problems in the way of our second public release.  'merica Patch notes for this week include the removal of infinite money as a round reward. Our economics professors ended up looking wistfully at the horizon when we asked them how it would work. Sorry guys, it just wouldn't work out in the long run. You now need at least two players to get any bonuses for winning KOTH. No more sitting on the hill and winning the full prize all by yourself. We're working on a PvE gamemode you can play solo, but you won't be getting free money. There was one pretty significant bug that appeared in the first rounds of testing that was problematic to say the least - every once in a while the killfeed would report that you've killed yourself. At a loss for how this could happen, lordrex dove into solo testing to test the specific circumstances surrounding this edge case, and this testing, combined with an output logging webhook, managed to fill in many of the blanks left from our closed beta testing reports. He and Idyllic managed to track down the culprit - an orphaned bit of code that should have been disabled - and put the bug to rest. The problem was that the client-side code that created the effects of other ships shooting at you, was also actually shooting at you. So in the very rare (not actually) circumstances that an enemy was shooting just a little off target, but on your screen they were still aimed at you, your client ended up shooting your own ship with someone else's turrets. But this has all been taken care of as of 7-4, and we'll keep monitoring just in case it isn't. Beyond the debugging, Idyllic put a little time into generating ellipses that could potentially be used in system gen or motion. Polar coordinates and sin waves are fun to mess around with. Whatever it is, we'll find something cool to use it for.  There was a question about the accuracy of hitboxes for the various ships, and due to a prior misunderstanding they were thought to be 1x1x1 cubes, but this is not the case. The weapons do appropriately detect the ship's generated hitbox when calculating hits, though in the future we plan to refine their accuracy to better fit the shape of the various ships rather than a strict box.  Fantastic news! Next week we will be opening Phase 1 up to the public for their enjoyment, and we will continue to add features as we work our way up to Capital combat, faction ships, and the many gamemodes we'd like to see in the Dogfight Alpha: Capital Update. Stay tuned in the community discord for any livestream announcements, links to the open game, and any other news that may come out this 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: How in-depth are planetary surfaces going to be in terms of features. I struggle to comprehend how our cities will come along on elevated terrain and whatnot, how resources will be harvested, how products will be made from said resources? It just seems like an overwhelmingly huge task. Will all forms of transport be available from trains and trucking, to freight ships, and aerial cargo? Would factions need to provide their own designs for such vehicles or would generic faction-less models be provided as apart of the main game? A1: Well, you have these lovely pre-genned planets with continents, oceans, magma fields, salt flats, mountains, etc. Colony cities will be placed somewhere on the surface, preferably with a lot of fairly flat area to expand into. The system we demoed already considers slope and avoids it. Resource gen will be pretty similar to asteroid fields, and it looks like only surface mining will be possible. Materials, like in space, will be taken back to a base for refining, probably by trucks or the same cargo ships from space. High speed trains for fast travel are only a maybe. Factions will be able to submit their own designs like with fighters and capitals, but we will have defaults that we use for development. Q2: Would it be possible to have backward facing missile pods which can lock on to fighters chasing you? A2: Sure, you can specify a rear-facing turret and make it a fixed variant. Q3: be honest, how much do you actually sit on a bench thou? A3: Not all that much, actually. Usually just when waiting for the bus. Q4: How hot is space? A4: Temperature is a measure of average vibration speed, which is pretty low when you don't have that many things to vibrate, like in space. That being said, space is a great insulator because of this fact - an object hit by light from a star has nowhere to release that heat, so it continually heats up, but the space itself lacks heat of its own. Q5: What is your grand vision? Your end goal? A5: I personally want to see the coolest planets Roblox has ever seen, full of living cities, majestic landscapes, fast vehicles, and hidden wonders, creating a fun and cool environment for players to be a part of. Planets are the farthest-reaching aspect of the game, so right now they're my end goal, but that doesn't mean when we get there there won't be something even cooler down the road. 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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