NEWS
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Hello everyone! Welcome to the seventeenth 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 focusing on the scripting side of the project in our efforts to get the Dogfight Alpha ready for official public release as soon as possible. A lot of features have been added to our flight system since the pre-Alpha, the latest of which being smooth realistic strafing and bullet convergence based on the objects the cursor is over. Before the Alpha is ready to be released publically we want to ensure it's stable and polished so you can most accurately see how RoVerse will not only play but also look visually, this includes engine trails, projectile particles, shield impact effects, animated gun turrets and of course, satisfying ship explosions! In the Dogfight Alpha you'll be playing rounds of team deathmatch between red and blue teams, however soon after the public alpha release we'll be adding more modes such as FFA, CTF and last man standing. Further in the future, there'll even be a juggernaut mode where one player spawns as a capital ship and everyone's objective is to defeat them, there may also be a team version of this mode where each side has one capital ship player with the objective of destroying the enemy capital while protecting their own. On the building side of development, we've got another new ship finished, belonging to the super high tech ship line which make extensive use of hover technology resulting in extreme agility but very thin hull.
 The military outpost (which doesn't have thin hull!) has also seen expanded development, this progress being the factory module:  We've also got a sneak peak for you of the unique pirate outpost which is built into the rock of the environment it is constructed within to camouflage the base from lawful patrols:  With the majority of the outpost types constructed, we'll be just about ready to upload a brand new Guide to RoVerse developer diary video about player-built stations/outposts over on our YouTube channel. So expect to see that in the coming days! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall, so be sure to join if there's something you'd like to ask about RoVerse: https://www.roblox.com/Groups/Group.aspx?gid=2948290 Q1: Will we be able to live modestly or expensively normally in our own houses under the rule of an empire if we want to? A1: In the initial release of RoVerse your lifestyle will be shown through the value of the clothing you wear, the ships you fly and if you're the ambitious type - the stations/outposts you own. In future expansions we absolutely plan to add living quarters on all public stations that the owners can choose to rent out to players for weekly payments, these will come in three grades - Standard Accommodation, Economy Residence and (for the high-rollers) Penthouse Suite. Q2: Say a RoVerse gang/pirate group gets big enough to turn into an actual faction with a star system - will it be allowed to be implemented into RoVerse straight-up if it is active and original enough? Like, the people working under that gang/faction have never known or seen anything outside of RoVerse and formed everything within it - could they prosper like that? A2: Most certainly! If a sub-faction becomes so influential, organised and well equipped that they can maintain a powerful grip on the star system they reside in, they'll then be allowed to create their own group on the ROBLOX site and be registered as an official faction of RoVerse with that star system as their home territory on the galactic map. Q3: Can factions hold players prisoner (and that player can possibly escape)? A3: Funny you should mention that, as it's precisely what we have in mind as one of the expansions! Once ship interiors and multi-crew have been added to the game, we'll be implementing the feature of brigs on ships and prison stations. These will be used primarily by law enforcement for criminal punishment and by bounty hunters for contracts that are to be brought back alive. Players that have been locked in these holding cells will have rare opportunities to escape, however it will take both skill and a bit of luck without a friend to break them out! Q4: Will some planets have rings made out of ores you can mine? A4: Indeed they will, all asteroid fields will contain ore though the fields with the valuable minerals will be rarer. Q5: Will all players have a skill system similar to GTA 5's levelling system of certain traits? eg. flying, shooting, etc. A5: We don't want to make RoVerse too much like MMOs where the winner in a fight is determined by who has grinded for the most points or researched the most qualifications. One of the things that has made ROBLOX special is how the combat relies on a player's own skill and knowledge of tactics to gain the advantage rather than their character having a number that restricts them to a certain level of ability. We want to continue that tradition by allowing players who have invested more time into RoVerse to gain access to cooler ships and more expensive equipment but not in a way that leaves newer players at their mercy. A new player would have as fair a chance as anyone else to be victorious, they just need to understand the ship they fly and how use it correctly. Q6: Will there be a tech tree or some sort of research that players can undergo with a minimum time limit depending on how many stations and outpost are assigned to the project (ex. 1 week for developing a new scope or gun or a year to design a brand new destroyer or whatever.) A6: Yes, clan factions will use their stations and resources to research new levels of technology to make available for sale at their station equipment outfitters. The speed of this technology research will depend greatly on the players in that faction keeping their economy strong, which also gains profit for the traders and miners who do so. This makes civilian jobs almost, if not more important than military jobs, as a faction's navy can only be as strong as the economy that funds it. The technologies that research unlocks will benefit the players of that faction greatly, however they will be specifically designed so they make the player's experience more enjoyable and comfortable with a fair trade off rather than only positives giving that faction an unfair advantage over other less-developed ones (for example, researchable technologies might be: more effective mining drills but they use more fuel, larger cargo hold upgrades but they lower engine performance, or higher damaging guns but they fire slower). The Dogfight Alpha is right around the corner and this week we've spent a lot of extra time on scripting it, so keep your eyes peeled for any future word on a definite release date!
See you out in the black, pilots! Hello everyone! Welcome to the sixteenth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! We've been gearing up for the first public release of the Dogfight Alpha test of RoVerse, which we're aiming to have ready by the very start of November! Planck has been using every chance he gets away from his studies to work work on the flight scripts to have them ready as soon as possible, this week he's worked on the shield effects, turret functionallity and further flight controls. A new heavy fighter has been added to the civilian ship line, produced by Nyte Manufacturing and you may be able to tell from the thick armour and many weapons - this ship is meant for hunting big fish and is a sight to fear for anyone not on their guard.
 It's ships like these that make the galaxy a very dangerous place indeed. When danger comes to your neighbourhood you need to be prepared and one sure fire way to do that is with a military outpost, armed to the teeth and solid as a titanium bunker:   Those are front and back shots of the operations section of the military outpost, this is the first section of any outpost you construct.   Two sections of arm connections, these aren't usually quite so large but we're dealing with heavy duty fortifications here!  The shipyard section of the military outpost - extra large dry dock for the behemoth warships that'd be built here. When the Dogfight Alpha is first released it will be played on one map, however as expand the content we'll also be adding new diverse maps to further immerse yourselves into the world of RoVerse. The initial release map will take place within the remains of an great ancient battleground, filled with many great wrecks of massive warships whose origins have long been lost to history. 
The map is a graveyard of giants, and so we've taken many inspirations not only from many sci-fi games but also from nature - imagery such as animal skeletons, carcasses, fossils. This battlefield will be the first taste players get of living in the world of RoVerse, so we want to ensure this map encapsulates the essence of the clan world's rich history.
 We've made some great headway on these during the week but we'd like to offer you guys a chance to pitch in to speed up the release of the Dogfight Alpha. Rather than being a developer of RoVerse and having long-term obligations, you can freely build some ship wrecks matching the following criteria and if your work meets the requirements we'll put it in the alpha: [Send your submissions to: [email protected]] REQUIREMENTS: -Mostly dirt brown in colour. -Almost made of primitive bricks without unions. -(Unions can only be used for shapes that would be too complex for normal bricks. If a union is used, it needs to be made non-collide and then invisible bricks need to be placed inside it to act as the hitbox.) -Need to be hollow with lots of spots to fly in and around. -We're going for a style that matches House of the Dying Sun or Planetary Annihilation. Nothing needs to be over detailed. -More examples of RoVerse building style: http://imgur.com/a/iJUWN Our hope is to get the Dogfight Alpha online by the beginning of November, however school/college/university/jobs make this difficult so all contributions to the project will be greatly appreciated! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall, so be sure to join if there's something you'd like to ask about RoVerse: https://www.roblox.com/Groups/Group.aspx?gid=2948290 Q1: Will there be escape pods on "Larger" cruisers, as shown in the trailer? A1: As the game expands after release and ships are given interiors there will indeed be escape pods on larger ships, there will be reductions on the insurance replacement fee of your ship if you do make it to your escape pod in time and use it to return to safety. Q2: Just wondering, where and how will we be able to submit or clan's armada of ships, we have a few designs ready but do we wait for the release in order that our faction is the only one using our ship designs or give it to a developer before release? A2: As we near the official release of RoVerse we will post information on how clans can submit their application for joining along with their designs. This will almost definitely be via email and require a specific template layout to be used to show that your clan is organised enough to handle the formalities. Q3: I have a question: Are clans going to be able to make super powerful weapons? (like the death star, except less overpowered) A3: After a few expansions after release, yes, but it's a secret. Q4: This game is going to be real big and looks like it will be very detailed. not everyone's pc can handle this will there be something to prevent lag? A4: Actually, we've been building the game from the ground up with low-end systems in mind and have been constantly testing our updates with slow PCs purposely to ensure high performance. We want everyone to be able to enjoy RoVerse and not have it restricted to only people who can afford super computers. That's all for this week's newsletter, we hope you'll continue to join us for our upcoming newsletters as we approach the Dogfight Alpha's release. Happy hunting, pilots!
Hello everyone! Welcome to the fifteenth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! This week is a very special one indeed with the opening of our own web page (kudos to LordRex for setting it up!) where all of our future newsletters will be posted from now on. This site should be very helpful to anyone looking to learn more about RoVerse and get more in touch with our development progress. Now let's get to showing you our progress over the past week - we've got quite unique ship for you today, probably one of the most unique designs out of all the civilian ship lines and certainly the most technological: 
Plenty of work being done on not only space-based weapons of mass destruction but the ground FPS portion of RoVerse too:  And what are all these powerful weapons worth without stuff to blow up with them? Fear not, for we have many environments planned for the galaxy of RoVerse:  But when you're looking for a more long-term goal instead, there's a vastness of opportunities waiting for you when you can build your own refinery and start a mining corporation! For that you'll be needing a hydroponics section in your station complex for a renewable source of oxygen and food:
The connection arms you'll use to bridge the sections of your station together have been refurbuished and expanded as well:  We've mentioned before how the scripting side of RoVerse is by far the most important and challenging part, yet the milestones we reach in our coding can't truly be depicted properly in these newsletters like the building work can. PlanckTheConstant has been a huge part of this scripting work and thanks to him we hope to have the Dogfight Alpha out at the end of the month if all goes according to plan. There's a lot of maths required for the features we're implementing and though we can't share all of the coding with you, we can however give you this insight into the sort of equations Planck has been coming up with:  Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall, so be sure to join if there's something you'd like to ask about RoVerse: https://www.roblox.com/Groups/Group.aspx?gid=2948290 Q1: Will there be new star systems coming out through time expanding the RoVerse universe? A1: For most of the time after RoVerse first comes out the current galaxy map will be more than enough however we fully intend on expanding the game with new star systems as the playerbase grows and the factions gain more territory. Q2: What's the estimated date that RoVerse is expected to open? A2: It's difficult to say at this time, we were hoping to have most of the game finished by Christmas however due to school/college/university/jobs most of our developers have had to cut down their activity times dramatically. We're optimistic about our rate of progress increasing as the school year goes on and things settle down in real life but for now we can only make a very vague estimate of sometime during the Summer, Spring at the earliest. Q3: The max player limit per server that ROBLOX can have is 100, since each team could only get 50 people each that means that only a fraction of the group could participate. How do you plan on allowing all group members to participate in these events? Also, could you explain how the star system campaigns will be structured? A3: When it comes to the official battles that count towards whether an invasion succeeds or not, there will be many chances for different members to take part due to multiple of these battle occurring at many different times of day throughout the week, the wins of both sides are then tallied up at the end of that week and the side with the most wins gains control of that star system. Another reason why all members of a group get to take part is because players will need to travel to the system where the battle is taking place each time they respawn at one of their stations. This means players queued to join a full server will get a chance to enter as members of their group get destroyed. Q4: What will be the access for Pre-Alpha? Free for everyone? Group only? Certain people? Paid? A4: Everyone will be able to play the Dogfight Alpha for free, however players will be able to earn points for kills and wins, these are used to purchase new ships and weapons. This will mean that only the dedicated and experienced players get to try out more of the game's content and these players will be more likely to inform us about problems they notice compared to people just trying it out. That just about wraps up this week's newsletter, we hope you enjoy our new setup for these weekly newsletters and feel free to subscribe to get an email notification whenever a new post is uploaded!  Hello everyone! Welcome to the fourteenth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! Every passing day we're returning back to our full level of activity and this week has been a very especially noteworthy with many of our developers returning to nearly full activity. This includes our ship scripter which means the Dogfight Alpha will be nearing public release within the next couple of weeks! HeroMaster has completed yet another ship to add to the lineup for the upcoming Dogfight Alpha. This one is a light fighter but one of the most heavily armoured and packs a big punch for its class, however due to the added mass of its thick hull, it suffers from slow agility. This makes it a poor turn fighter but very deadly in a joust where it can bring all of its forward-firing guns to bear.
 Some of you may have caught our build stream yesterday, where Galbotrix was working on one of our latest guns for the neutral civilian armaments. We were the top ROBLOX stream for the duration of the broadcast with viewer count peaking at 30+, but if you happened to miss it you can check out the recorded video at https://www.twitch.tv/roverse_official or take a look at the end result here:  Lots of tweaking finalization to the Industrial and Corporate outpost aesthetics, here's a shot of one of the sections ArcticCitadel made:  We're continuing to constantly add to our pool of environment assets as well as drawing up images to represent each when they are in the distant horizon, so the physical models don't have to be loaded until they're close enough.  Each week we'll be compiling a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall, so be sure to join if there's something you'd like to ask about RoVerse: https://www.roblox.com/Groups/Group.aspx?gid=2948290 Q1: What are the dynamics of combat in space? Will there be different types of damage and defenses to counter each one? (Ex. plasma, laser, kinetic, etc.) A1: Absolutely, there will be many different forms of weaponry such as missiles, torpedoes, seeker mines and kinetic ballistic guns which does most damage against hull. Then there's pulse cannons, laser blasters and beam railguns which do most damage against shields. There are different types of shielding which better reflect damage from certain types of weaponry so versatility and a mix of damage types are important when outfitting your ship. There's also the importance of ensuring your ship has a good countermeasure dropper for deploying flares to stop any missiles from getting a solid lock on you. Q2: Will we be able to chose our planet? In the way of where it is, or what scenery/nature it has? A2: When it comes to a clan's starting homeworld system, it will always be random however the credits the clan earns from the homeworld system will be the same amount for all new clans in order to have a fair start. Q3: Will clans be able to submit their own ships and such for their armada? A3: Of course! When clans first apply to join RoVerse as an official faction they will need to supply designs for their starting ships, stations and equipment in order to remain culturally identifiable and feel like they accurately represented for their roleplay. Q4: How will alliances work? A4: Clan leaders will control their clan through the Commander mode of the galactic map, we talked a bit about this in last week's newsletter if you haven't hard of it before. In this mode, the clan's Commanders will be able to access expansion of their territories, construction of structures, research of technology and diplomacy with neighbouring clans. The diplomacy options will allow Commanders to declare war, request peace, or offer alliances to any clan with territory that neighbours their own. When clans are in an alliance they are able to help each other in war engagements, they also sell goods at lower prices to players in the allied clans, meaning their economies also grow together. These reasons are why alliances in RoVerse are very important and can be very beneficial but also harmful to a clan if they become reliant on an alliance and then lose it, or ally a clan that could be a burden. Q5: If let's say my faction joins the RoVerse game and we have a name for our homeworld would you be able to change the system's name to fit our lore? I really want my war clan to be a part of RoVerse. A5: Definitely, in fact *all* locations of RoVerse will be nameable and these names will be seen on the system and galactic maps for all players. When RoVerse first begins, the players who first discover locations will be able to name them like real life explorers who discover new lands. However once a faction owns that territory, they will be able to rename the locations to what they desire for a very small fee. All names will go through a scripted in-game system where a team of moderators will approve or deny names before they are automatically assigned to become the new names of those locations. Q6: First of all I see that your wanting to make foot combat, does this mean that you will also have ground vehicles? Or that clans would be able to have pilots in the air protecting their troops on the ground? I'm also wondering if you've ever considered having ocean planets/worlds. A6: Yes indeed, there will be ground vehicles of numerous types - jeeps, APCs, tanks etc. Air support for troops on the ground will be very important however anti-air defences will be a key aspect of planetary invasions which only ground forces can take out. Q7: What would happen if, through genius coordination and blitzkrieg, a faction somehow managed to take over most of RoVerse's star systems (most of the map)? Would the admins override it? Would they be allowed to do that in the first place? A7: It would take a *very* long time and an extremely large pool of active and skilled players with expensive warships to gain control of even half the RoVerse galaxy. Though it is unlikely, it is still very much possible for one single powerful empire to take over the entire galaxy and 'win' the game if total conquest was the goal of that clan. However whenever a clan loses all of its star systems, it undergoes a dead/defeated period of roughly a month (subject to change) where all of its members are stranded on the last planet the lost with no ships, forced to live as a primitive people until the dead period is over. At that point their Commanders will get the option to 'resurface' as a space-faring civilization again and be given a random planet to become their new homeworld system just like a newly joined clan (this star system will be randomly selected and will be a currently unoccupied one if any are available). Now, when a single empire controls all of the star systems in the galaxy at the same time, a total conquest victory time period will begin that will last at least 2 months (subject to change) where no clans will be able to resurface. Once this time period has concluded, *every* dead faction in the galaxy will be simultaneously given the option to resurface and a galaxy-wide uprising will commence to overthrow the rule of the dominant empire. It is this civil war that will decide whether or not the conquering empire gets to continue their reign of tyranny over galaxy or if the civilizations of species across the galaxy will gain their independence and freedom from the empire's rule. This concludes this week's newsletter, we look forward to bringing you more news of our progress next week, see you out in the black!
Hello everyone! Welcome to the thirteenth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! It's been a pretty tough week between real life obstacles and errors with Studio. Throughout the week team create has been crashing within a few minutes of building, changes to group construction places not saving and unions seem to have stopped working and become invisible. These problems have apparently been due to recent ROBLOX updates and affects almost everyone so all we can do is wait for ROBLOX to sort it out before we can get back to our usual rate of progress. Nonetheless, we've spent our time working on whatever areas are currently functional in Studio. The most stable being scripting which we've made progress in lobby functionality which handles players entering the games within the universe and physical travel between different star systems (which are each individual games) through jumpgates/jumpholes. Even with Studio being unwieldy, HeroMaster has already completed a light fighter belonging to the ship manufacturer invented by the winner of our recent competition:  And not only that, he also finished the majority of medium fighter from one of our other ship lines:
 Hero's not the only one who's managed to make great progress through all the troubles during the week - ArcticCitadel completed three whole industrial player outpost sections just this week:
 Last week we started up a community group for fans of RoVerse (which you can join here: https://www.roblox.com/Groups/Group.aspx?gid=2948290 ), in this group we said anyone could post their questions and we'd compile them into an Q&A in the following week's newsletter. Here are the questions you asked about RoVerse: Q1: How will the building situation be? Will only the owner of a faction be able to edit the territory? A1: Clans will need to expand into different star systems in order to be able to place structures in those territories for construction, such as space stations or defence platforms. When clans join RoVerse, they get to select up to 5 leaders to be appointed their clan's 'Commanders'. These players will be able to enter a command mode which allows them to administer and govern their clan's operations. Q2: How will the movement of off duty clanners be affected by the territory owned by other clans. A2: That will depend on if the two clans are currently at war with each other. When your clan is at war with another clan, you will no longer be able to enter that clan's star systems *apart* from systems which border ones that belong to your clan. This restriction is in place in order to stop fleets of ships from just flying straight to an enemy's capital deep in their territory and camping their homeworld, when realistically a fleet of enemy ships would never be able to get into the core territories without it being a part of the frontline advance. The only reason players would be able to do this is simply down to activity times, there can't always be border patrols blocking every entrance to the clan's territories. We've planned RoVerse out very carefully and this is why steps must be taken to ensure griefers can't ruin the game or break the immersion. Q3: How big will the Ground be? Like will there just be a Facility? Or multiple locations? A3: We cannot yet confirm it at this point as we've been focusing on space development, but we believe we will be able to make planetary gameplay actually exist as full spherical planets with gravity and camera scripts that make it feel flat just like in real life. Again, we cannot be sure yet that this will be possible or feasible with the gameplay we have planned, but this is what our "best case scenario" hope for RoVerse ground gameplay is. Q4: Will Ro-Verse include any type of lore regarding different locations and whatnot? If so, how lore-based would the whole project be when completed? A4: Our intention for the physical world of RoVerse is to build it as a fresh, clean slate that the clans in it will slowly develop over time. We want it to be a blank canvas that clans have total freedom to build into the world they're wanting to live in. Just like with our current clan world, we have such great historic tales of past ro-wars, massive alliances/coalitions, legendary crusades, devastating battles... all of this being *real* events that actually happened, not just an idea for a cool story that someone had. It's that sort of real living world that we hope RoVerse can become, so our community can actually have a real literal clan world to call home, if we so wish. Q5: Will there be weapon manufactures? A5: Yes, there will be both fictional civilian manufacturers to start off so everyone has a selection of weapons to purcahse rather than just clan-specific weaponry. Later on we will then be adding the ability for players to start their own businesses and submit weapons/ship designs for approval and then to sell to other players at their personally-owned space stations/outposts. Q6: Can factions/clans make up lore about their own planet? How does a clan enter RoVerse? A6: Absolutely, we want RoVerse to be the perfect place for clans to enrich their clan with culture and personality! When RoVerse is near completion, we will be posting a thread on C&G with an application template for groups to apply with to become an official faction in RoVerse. Q7: Will super clans be allowed to join or is it more like "Power Clans" because I want my group to participate full time in the RoVerse. A7: All forms of clans are welcome to apply to join RoVerse! The requirements are still to be decided on but they will focus on originality and activity, rather than popularity and size. Q8: What are the 3 ship classes? A8: There are many ship classes in RoVerse, they are based off of size/power to simplify classifications and avoid confusion (e.g Battleship? Battlecruiser? Heavy Cruiser? Dreadnought?). These classes are split into twp categories, capitals and sub-capitals. Sub-capitals are starfighters, usually flown by one pilot, these exist in the following classes: Light Fighter (LF), Medium Fighter (MF), Heavy Fighter (HF), Very Heavy Fighter (VHF). Capitals are anything above sub-capital classes, usually the sort of vessels most sci-fi games don't let you fly, these exist in the following classes: Small (S), Medium (M), Large (L), Extra Large (XL). Q9: At the start of RoVerse, clans will have to meet some expectations & there won't be a lot compared to the future. But say after about a year or two in development, will it be easier to get in? Also, for late-late clans to get in with all of the star systems taken up by everyone, what sort of territory will they start out with? A9: As time goes on, it will likely become harder rather than easier to get into RoVerse, this is because a major part of getting your group into RoVerse relies on originality and a cultural style that can stand out from the others. The more clans in RoVerse the less original styles there will be, however we will still be as fair as possible in the approval of clans once we can see that the members are passionate and dedicated. When a clan joins RoVerse, the game will randomly give it one star system which would be designated their 'homeworld system', for a certain period of time the clan will have boosted resources and immunity from invasion in their homeworld system to ensure they get a good chance for success against unfriendly neighbours. We'd like to thank everyone for understanding how life can be hectic during these times of the year and not losing faith that progress will pick up again shortly!  |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |
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