NEWS
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Hello everyone! Welcome to the 262nd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic refined the round end screen a bit more, making it fit on-screen between the existing hangar UI instead of overlapping. We also have a new faction ship, and the release of the cycle reward ship. First up, the Tenebruzian Monarchy's Diptera:  Last week we showed off our completed round report screen, and no one noticed the really cool feature of it that we didn't mention directly, making Idyllic sad. So I guess we'll just point it out here as we look at the round screen again - the background of the hangar has been gaussian blurred. Thanks to a fancy module by Fractality, and a bit of tweaking, those with high graphics settings can see their menus with better clarity. We'll try not to abuse this power by applying it to every menu in the game, but it's going to be hard to resist.  And lastly, the new cycle reward ship, the Cosmos Asimov:  This week in the dogfight there were 861 kills, 18 with auto, 27 with beam, 43 with laser, 135 with plasma, 44 with railgun, and 594 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 528 kills, followed by the Koguun with 157. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 413 deaths, followed by The_Great_Hollow with 259. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 486 kills and 3 deaths and a 162 KDR; CptJaller with 158 kills, 7 deaths and a 22.57 KDR; and tygrys202 with 117 kills, 4 deaths, and a 29.25 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Asimov 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 106)  Calexian Community Challenge The challenges are: 6000 Outpost Turrets, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills.  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 buildings have detail on them that does damage to players? A1: While allowing details like barbed wire to actually do damage to players trying to climb over walls would certainly be immersive, it would also lead to an arms race of factions designing their buildings to subtly trap and kill enemy players with any sort of mechanic like that. Unfortunately, for the sake of balance, we're going to have to say no. Q2: Will credit balances transfer from dogfight to freeroam? A2: Unlikely. While the difficulty of obtaining credits in the dogfight is appropriately difficult, having players start Freeroam with a million or ten would throw any balancing aspects we have planned right out the window. With freeroam, we want to balance the core gameplay loop first, then expand to the rest of the mechanics, and we can't do that if everyone just bypasses their first ship and mining experience. We'll make unlocked ship blueprints transfer to make it worth the effort to unlock them, but not straight credit transfers. Q3: What happens if a faction loses their major stations? A3: While losing your last station isn't entirely fatal to the faction that built it, it certainly isn't good. A station is a huge investment of time and resources, let alone an important identifiable structure showing off a faction's power - losing one will certainly impact morale, reduce a faction's ability to complete tasks like research, shipbuilding, and refining, as well as losing a significant contributor to influence on claiming a system as their own. Losing a station won't immediately make that faction lose a system, but it will make it much easier for an opponent to sneak in and claim it. 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 261st issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic coded up the round-end screen we debuted a few weeks back as a concept, with full gamemode integration and fancy animations. Let's check it out. After locating where we saved the concept menu, Idyllic set about making it a reality. This turned out to be a rather complex endeavor, involving UI, animation, and saving data from a variety of places to display on the client after a round has ended. Here we have the old concept, with three activity groups, an experience bar based on the cycle challenges display, and an awards area.  For each player, the game has to track a wide variety of stats, and calculate a bunch of other stuff - kills, deaths, streak, round rewards, kill rewards are all tracked, while KDR, and percentages of round totals are calculated dynamically. At long last, Experience finally has a striking visual display to let you track your progress as you advance level to level. Previously, all that would happen is a small popup at the bottom-center of your screen during a match, which wasn't very striking. Now, both your experience and rank are tracked. Awards are special achievements given to players that accomplish certain tasks, like completing a round without dying, going on a long killstreak, or scoring the most points. Without further ado, the animated Round Report Screen:  Some fun math went into making the rings display the proper percentages, as well as ticking up the numbers for kills and the credits earned stats. The experience bar is animated, showing you just how far you've come this round, and how far you have yet to go. And the awards are all awarded one at a time, even going offscreen if you happen to be an overachiever. Using fake data was one thing, getting it to work in the Beta was another. But we did. Here we have Idyllic doing a test-run against a tiny Outpost, killing 5 turrets to earn 1,250 credits, winning the round to earn 800, and not dying, while earning 75 xp towards level 1. Awards were not quite implemented correctly, but that has since been fixed.  While it may require a few dimensional changes, nothing is too cramped on-screen to make that a problem. We hadn't initially planned on the round report appearing in the hangar, instead we wanted it to hang around in space after a round ended, but the way the game is cleared between rounds made that impossible. This week in the dogfight there were 1503 kills, 310 with auto, 5 with beam, 201 with laser, 45 with plasma, 47 with railgun, and 895 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Niu with 573 kills, followed by the VSa1-1_Kazan with 264. The most dangerous map was Blue_Spaceway with 663 deaths, followed by Pillarum with 472. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were Edgar_TM, with 1005 kills and 9 deaths and a 111.66 KDR; FangABXY with 299 kills, 20 deaths and a 14.95 KDR; and CptJaller with 167 kills, 16 deaths, and a 10.43 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Novikov 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 105)  Calexian Community Challenge With the end of the 15th Cycle, we have a few changes to make to the Community Challenges - rather than failing to hit the goal in a specific timeframe and having all your hard work erased, challenges will now continue until the goal is reached. Once both challenges are completed, the next set of challenges will be unlocked, with two more ships. This way, we don't have to recycle failed challenges back through again somewhere in the future, and your work will always count towards the goals. The challenges are: 6000 Outpost Turrets, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills.  Now, for the overall cycle stats! Blue Spaceway was the most dangerous map, with 1040 kills, followed by Pillarum and The_Great_Hollow with 999 and 586 each. The top ship was the Niu, with 573 kills, followed by the Kazan with 564, and the Spirit Kazan with 261. The top weapon was the Torpedo, with 1462 kills, followed by Laser with 424, and Auto with 419. Plasma marked up to 172, Railgun with 72, and Beam with 63. Overall, 19 pilots participated this cycle and earned at least one kill, while 34 players died at least once. The lowest KDR belongs to The Outpost with a .03 KDR. The dogfight has seen 8,071 visits, with an 83% approval rating (149-30) and 377 favorites. This cycle there were 2,612 kills total. Topping off this cycle's leaderboard was Edgar_TM, with 1009 kills, 9 deaths, and a 112.11 KDR. He was followed by FangABXY with 873 kills, 49 deaths, and a 17.81 KDR, and pigyyyyy345 with 239 kills, 4 Deaths, and 59.75 KDR. These three pilots have unlocked the exclusive Golden Novikov 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 15)    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 you vandalize other people's planets with decorative structures? A1: While you could theoretically sneak in and plant a bunch of pyramids all over someone's planet, they could just turn around and remove them, so you basically just gave them resources. It could be worth the laugh, I guess. We won't stop you. Q2: Will you be able to form squadrons/fleets that sync movement? A2: Unfortunately, forming squads and fleets in RoVerse will only come with enhanced communication and server preferences, not fly your ships automatically. You might want your factions to practice keeping in formation, and the payoff will certainly be worth it. 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 260th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic patched some bugs, , and we've reached the moment of truth on the live challenge stats feature - we get to see if it kept track correctly or not. Unfortunately, Idyllic's dedicated coding time was rudely interrupted by a storm this week, and the resulting cleanup meant that they didn't quite have enough time to complete a 'pretty picture' feature for this weeks newsletter. However, a contribution from Fang of a custom faction hangar, will serve as substitute.  In the dogfight, we've patched several bugs related to the custom faction hangars, including one that let you drop your ship into another faction's hangar quite easily. While this didn't have any impact on any gameplay, and was quite entertaining in some cases, all bugs must be quashed eventually, as this one has. Semi-related, whenever you'd load back into the game with a faction ship selected, it wouldn't update the hangar to the special one. Now, the hangar is loaded properly when joining, as well as when you exit ship selection. Last week we got live stats working, but as with all new code, you must test them to make sure they work as expected. With the datastore saving turret kills in-game, and showing them on the fancy new menu, there was always the potential for the numbers to get out of sync and not match up with the official stats Idyllic keeps updated in the spreadsheets. The moment of truth is at hand - will the automatic system match the numbers from the old system?
We were incredibly close. By the official reckoning, we should be at 1,037 outpost kills, and 553 non-missile kills. Being off by exactly 1 on both numbers is suspicious to say the least, and we suspect that it is due to a testing kill we made when testing the system out, so we'll keep an eye on it. And if in the next two weeks we somehow pull off the challenge by a single point, we'll give the community the benefit of the doubt. This week in the dogfight there were 142 kills, 4 with auto, 4 with beam, 0 with laser, 43 with plasma, 0 with railgun, and 91 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 134 kills, followed by the Outpost with 4. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 138 deaths, followed by Frostland with 4. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 95 kills and 1 deaths and a 95 KDR; IdyllicDestroyer with 43 kills, 2 deaths and a 21.5 KDR; and n_nqy with 3 kills, 1 deaths, and a 3 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Novikov 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 104)  Calexian Community Challenge Before the end of Cycle 15, the community must strive to complete the following two challenges to unlock a Calexian ship for all to use. The challenges are: 6000 Outpost Turrets, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills.  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: In the recent newsletter, it said “Faction leaders in their command mode will be able to look at any given planet, select cells to view information about it, and direct troop movements from afar.” Is this ‘command mode’ something that only Faction Leaders would be able to utilize? Or could this be a power delegated to say, everyone in a group rank 250+, for example. Also, assuming ‘troop movements’ refers to actual players as troops, do you mean for this command mode to be more of a tactical oversight or having a method of issuing instructions and orders through it to all soldiers in a cell ? A1: Yep, real people have to do your conquering. Like a RTS where the units can decide not to do what you say. 'Faction Leaders' was meant to refer to anyone that is a high rank as well. On the last question, its a bit of both - you get info and make decisions, and send messages through it to nearby squads as needed. You can see a bit more info from afar, but its less accurate due to access/update rate limits. Also important, you can mark cells as targets, or locations to build stuff. For example - “Build a city here” “Attack enemy here” “Build defenses here.” Q2: Remind me how we take over colony cities? Same take over as many structures as possible? Or do we have to take over a center or importance? It seems to me that if it’s the former, a low density city will be harder to take over since more structures will need to be seized. A2: Taking over colonies will not involve going building to building and capturing the structure - most buildings in a colony will be a solid shell, rather than an accessible place with rooms, but they will be destructible. The final process for capturing a colony has not been determined, most will just get blown up and replaced. Theoretically, there will be a central point where the city was first created, which could be a building or a landing pad or a resource dropoff point, that could be open to capture. Q3: What happens if an enemy faction makes all their players fill a server, so the opposing faction members can't defend? Like for a period of 3 days? A3: Besides being impressed at their dedication, we've been working on a system that reserves a set number of spaces for each team with territory in a system, as well as for those unaffiliated. Approximately 30% will be open to any passing traveler or invading army, while the remaining 70% of max capacity will be reserved by percentage for factions with territory - the more your faction holds influence, the more spaces you get. Q4: What would be the fastest way to travel across a planet? Can we build teleporters? I know that an invasion will have to use trucks and stuff, but what about well established factions? A4: I'm not sold on teleporters, because of the problems that arise when you establish that technology in-universe. Also, you'll miss out on all the scenic vistas we're making. The fastest will likely vary a bit, but between transport ships or fighters on planets with really rough terrain, potentially having rail systems on smoother ones, light jeeps or hoverbikes, and watercraft eventually. The goal is for the trip to be interesting, not just a bloop. Q5: Do we get to determine what cell we land in when we de-orbit our ship? If so, can we just fly up and then enter atmosphere at our destination's square? A good maglev is epic but they're known to fall behind high speed air travel. A5: You wont necessarily pick the square specifically, but we will do angle math to where you approached the planet. Using this to travel around a planet would work, but would also involve hopping servers twice with a significant load time, I'd expect. Flying a fighter around like in Daedalus would likely be much more efficient, provided there's a place to land. Shorter distances might benefit rail or vehicles more than extreme distances. 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 259th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week we wrapped up the live challenge stats menu code, which you can try out today in the Alpha Dogfight, and amidst out work on secret but important stuff, we worked on a small side project involving simple planets, that could very well make its way into Freeroam. Let's get started. Last week we had the first half of the Live Challenge Board done, with the menu layout and the updating system in place, but we were stuck on the datastore portion of the system. Our original Datastore module is great at storing player data, caching info to be accessed quickly and updated easily. Unfortunately, this system was only good at saving player data. Everything was tied to a player id, in multiple places, making edits to it a lot of work. So Idyllic was faced with a decision - spend a long time editing this system to accept global data, hack a fake player to store this info, or make a lightweight normal datastore system to run in parallel. We chose the third.  The menu is accessible via the Info button in the top left menu bar - the 'i' icon in a circle. It is accessible both in the hangar and in flight, and should update live as you get kills. Data streaming in from other servers updates a bit slower, but won't overwrite anything.  It has been a long time since we've talked about planets in the newsletter, hasn't it. Well Idyllic took a much-needed break to work on an idea that has been bounding around for quite some time and get it "on paper" so to speak. It involves the hexagonal grid that will cover planet surfaces, dividing them into individual cells for factions to vie over in their quest for territory. This project pushed that further than the neon glowing outlines we've had in the past, updating inefficient code and using new coded unioning features to make the hexagons individual units that can be selected, as well as a few lines of code to do the selecting. Here's where we're at: A placeholder planet, with 4000 or so hexagonal cells covering the surface...  And a selection system that follows the mouse. Faction leaders in their command mode will be able to look at any given planet, select cells to view information about it, and direct troop movements from afar.  We also ended up with a few cool pictures from the cell generation process.
For those of you in America, it is a very special weekend. We wish you all a happy 4th, and remind you to only blow off however many fingers you can spare. After the past year, it is definitely time to celebrate a little. This week in the dogfight there were 149 kills, 7 with auto, 0 with beam, 4 with laser, 83 with plasma, 5 with railgun, and 50 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 124 kills, followed by the Excalibur with 11. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 91 deaths, followed by Blue_Spaceway with 52. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were IdyllicDestroyer, with 79 kills and 12 deaths and a 6.58 KDR; FangABXY with 53 kills, 2 deaths and a 26.5 KDR; and Screech9791 with 16 kills, 5 deaths, and a 3.2 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Novikov 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 103)  Calexian Community Challenge Before the end of Cycle 15, the community must strive to complete the following two challenges to unlock a Calexian ship for all to use. The challenges are: 6000 Outpost Turrets, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills. 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 many different types of ores will there be? A1: A good number, I'd expect. Not so many that you cant keep track of what does what, but not like 3 either. We'll be workshopping this idea all the way through launch, most likely, as we work out what resources are needed to construct various ships and structures. Q2: What determines the amount of ore or material needed to build a given ship? A2: A similar system to the one that determines cost in the dogfight, with volume included in those calculations, most likely. Q3: Can we have different weapon colors on the same weapon type? A3: We might consider allowing you to customize the colors of your weapons somewhere down the road, but that won't necessarily be a priority. Factions will be able to do custom effects, but that would be on a per-weapon basis. Q4: Could we make a ships shield flash a different color? A4: Ship shield meshes are made on a per-ship basis and included in the ship model. If it's that important to you that your ships flash a different color, that could be arranged. 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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