NEWS
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Hello everyone! Welcome to the 314th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've been developing a new and important aspect of Hyperion Station - respawn mechanics. RoVerse is intended to have a fairly complex respawning system, and the work we've done over the past few weeks has set the stage for what we intend to expand as the game does. It all starts with a few key ideas - players should maintain their last location whenever possible; when players die, they should be able to return to their last location, or a safe location they've recently visited; players that have been away for some time, should return to a location that makes sense to the in-game story. With these three factors in mind, we've developed the following system.  Players that leave the game have their last location saved to a datastore. If they merely lost connection, are server-hopping, or are just leaving for a short time, they can rejoin the game and pick up right where they left off - their location is unchanged. If they return much later, several hours or the next day, the in-game story pretends that they went on their way - they returned their mining ship to the cargo hangar, or they returned to their room at the hotel, or they visited the civilian areas in the upper disk. In these cases, they spawn at select spawn locations based roughly on what they were up to when they last left. These mechanics were simple to develop - the final category was much more complicated, but also much more interesting. When players die at Hyperion, whether because they got into a gunfight with criminals or police, tripped and fell into an ore grinder, or were nearly incinerated in the core, they are now saved by a helpful medical AI with access to a short-range transporter device and teleported straight to the Station's Medical Facility. There, the best automated doctors patch you up and get you right back into the action - however, you can use the short-range transporter to return to one of the last few locations you've visited, to get right back into the action.  To make this work, on the backend there was a lot of work to track the last locations your player has visited. We found an extremely useful module that lets you divide the world up into zones based on groups of bricks, that can also track when a player enters and leaves a zone. We then chopped the Station up into the 46 pre-planned areas, from sushi shop to Faction Hall, as well as dividing them up by the different Sectors each smaller area exists in.  The Module wasn't quite designed for what we needed, but we worked out a way to allow a hierarchical structure of zones - when you're in the middle of the Entertainment District, for example, it registers you as in that sector, but not in any of the sub-rooms like the Café or Arcade. We're still working on the visual effects, like the transportation and respawning animations, but on a technical side the mechanics are functional and successful. Much like any modern game where your character dies, you can now respawn in the last safe area you've been and get right back to the action without having to wander all the way from some centralized respawn location, or get randomly spread across a rather huge Station.  This feature will be mechanically useful for respawning, but also gameplay-useful for players trying to describe where they're at if they want to meet up with another player. It will also come into play when reporting crimes, letting the police know where the action is so they can get to arresting ne'er-do-wells. 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: For ground combat, what kind of time to kill will weapons have? A1: On planets, there will be quite a large variety of weapons to choose from, and as such we can't really give you a straightforward answer. We'll want handheld weapons to have the right punch against other infantry, ground vehicles matched against other vehicles, and spacecraft matched up with spacecraft, but each category will have something designed to 'punch up' to the tier above them in the right scenarios - a handheld grenade launcher for taking out vehicles, or anti-air turrets for taking out aircraft. We'll probably have extensive testing to make sure that everything hits just right for our combat designs - too strong and you spend most of your time respawning. Too weak, and it feels like you're not doing anything at all. A fine balance to strike. 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 313th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. These past two weeks, most of the team has been on family vacations and out of contact, but we do have some updates and things to talk about. We've got another criminal recon quest in several parts, this time involving tracking a specific NPC, a completed hover-vehicle for delivering cargo, and a call for submissions of Faction food items for the Café that is soon to be added to Hyperion. First up, we have out new vehicle. As a warning to all aspiring criminals, hijacking a post-office vehicle is a federal offense punishable by death. Also, they are extremely slow, so they make terrible escape vehicles.  Mori's hovering cargo delivery drone is fully rigged up and ready for action as a slow, but entertaining, mode of transport. Last we left you, we'd finished up the Recon: Location Quest code. Now, we've added on three variations of that particular quest. First up, the Korol will have you watching an NPC that hangs out in one specific location. While quite similar to the location variation, the highlight lights up a person instead. Simple code, simple variation.   The next variation involved upgrading our Station NPC system to spawn a specific NPC whenever the quest starts, that follows a preset path in a loop around the station. Find them, catch up, and watch what they're up to, for criminal reasons. Get too close, and they get suspicious. Stray too far, and you'll miss what they're doing.    The NPC system has been upgraded to spawn an NPC whenever requested, with a special action assigned - in this case, follow a randomly selected path, pathfinding around obstacles. This NPC won't be stopping to dance or taking up all the bench space - he's on a mission. Currently the NPC's avatar is randomly selected from the big list of everyone who's played RoVerse, but eventually it will spawn, for example, a security guard on patrol, or a smuggler with a briefcase. The final variation of the quest is worth a bit more reputation - instead of walking in a loop, the NPC will walk along a path with a beginning and an end, and you'll have limited time to find them, see what they're up to, and complete your mission before they go somewhere you aren't allowed. Failing means facing the Korol, so do be careful.  The explorations into the NPC system originally built by Stratiz will be a major aspect of Hyperion, where the NPCs aren't just random characters wandering around (and sometimes dancing), but simulated people that get up in the morning, head down to Hyperion's Ring, and go about doing their business, whether that is enjoying the Entertainment Sector, boarding a ship for a distant station, or carrying around cargo. And the NPC system sure is flexible enough, these additions show that we can approach the idea, if we want to. Last up, we've been hard at work working on the central restaurant in Hyperion's Entertainment District, but we have a specific need that we'd like the community to help out with. If you have a Faction, or if you are particularly creative, we'd like you to build some food items from your lore, that we can add to the menu at the Donald Café. Bonus points if they're unique and memorable, like the selections from the Onyx Hold and Akatana below.  We have a selection of Faction Food items from the Faction Food Newsletter we did a while back, so if you'd like to join them in providing food items, get in contact with Idyllic. 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 will ship interiors work? Will you see them only when docked to a station? A1: The current plan is to provide a 'drop anchor' button that despawns your ship from the system you're currently flying in, and teleports you to a special server that is just the inside of your ship, at full scale. This is only for ships that have built interiors, which isn't mandatory. Inside, the plan is to allow you to customize things similarly to the Station Hotel - color scheme, furniture, little bobbleheads on the dashboard. Functional things like changing weapon loadouts or looking at system information should be available, and in the case your ship doesn't have a built interior, will be accessible by gui, just without the walking, so nobody will miss out. Q2: What's Idyllic's Favorite Food? A2: Spicy Noodles are high on my list right now, but burgers are great too, when they're cooked right. 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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