Hello everyone! Welcome to the 171st issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week we have another round of faction ships, a brand new map has finally made its way into the dogfight, and the latest news about the special community Halloween event. As always, the new ships come first: Adrestia Mk2 Hermes 1 Aegis Mk1 Aether Mk1 Coming this week is the community event you've all been waiting for, RoVerse Hallows Eve! The event has three parts - a brand new Dogfight Map called Core of Nothing... ...a special version of the Lights End Raid... ...and an event exclusive quest, called "It Sang Back". The Lights End Raid has a reward ship, Diminishing Star ...while the quest offers two. When the event goes live, you will be able to access it from the event lobby, available here: Hallows Eve 2019 The map that has been through extensive testing over the past month or so is finally ready for release. Ecumenopolis, built by a community member, hearkens back to the unending skylines of many sci-fi cities like Coruscant or Mega City One. Do battle above a bustling metropolis full of buildings, landmarks, and transportation corridors as you vie for supremacy over the skies as well as the stars. This week's leaderboard was topped by ManikuCalex, with 145 kills and 44 deaths, leaving him with a 3.29 KDR. Imaboss2122 was just a hair's breadth away from the top spot, with 143 kills, while only having 33 deaths and a 4.33 KDR. You'll get him next time! There were a total of 522 kills, 266 from Laser turrets, while only 121 from Plasma, 84 from Railgun, 44 Auto, and 7 Beam. The top ship was the Sentinel, with 103 kills, followed by 99 by the Retaliator and 68 by Esther. Series 3 is now underway, top the leaderboard over 7 weeks and win a special prize. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 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 members of the community make maps for the dogfight? A1: Sure! We'd love for the community to contribute things to the dogfight, stuff like themed maps based around their factions. If they have the time and interest to create cool things, we'll do our best to add them to the game. Q2: Can factions design ships without shields? A2: Certainly. When you submit your ship and pick out the stats, you can spend zero points on shields and use those points elsewhere if you so desire. There are already factions that have a theme that promotes armored ships over energy shields, so you won't be alone if you try it out. Q3: Will there be battles at warp speed? A3: Unlikely, but not impossible in theory. You may be able to chase after a ship that tries to warp away from a conflict, but firing weapons while warping won't be possible so you'll have to be ready at the other end of the jump to do battle yet again. We will consider special weapons that you can fire while warping, but we make no promises that they would fit into combat fairly. The last thing we want is one weapon style and tactic dominating combat. Q4: Armor piercing or shield piercing weapons? A4: While the current code for the dogfight treats shields as an extension of hull with the side bonus of regeneration, our long-term plans for damage include weapon types that act differently when they hit a ship - for instance energy weapons like plasma doing some shield damage and some armor damage, while physical projectiles have the potential to ricochet and do damage elsewhere. 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 170th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic managed to quell the ship mechanics labor union strike so we have a new round of faction fighters, and we have progress on a few upcoming features for the dogfight. It's also the end of Series 2, with another Grand Champion being crowned, so stick around. First up, the new ships: Akatana Washi N Calexian Industries Astris Calexian Industries Esther Noxheim Uerion's Fate And thanks to the resolution of the strike, Idyllic was able to force the slav... workers to rig up double the number of ships this week to make up for last week. Akatana Washi-0 1 Soleran Gladiator Hades Syndicate Hex And the last ship rigged is the exclusive reward for the Halloween Event, Diminishing Star Also completed this week was a merger between code written before Idyllic's trip that runs skins and weapon tiers, with code written since the trip that patched some significant bugs. The two versions unfortunately got out of sync, but thanks to some handy difference checking tools and a bit of work, we got everything straightened out and functional again, without having to start from scratch. A few more touches, and these two features will be coming to the dogfight - stay tuned! This week marks the 14th week since the opening of the dogfight in Phase 1, and the crown this week was taken by Imaboss2122, with 43 kills and 13 deaths earning a 3.3 KDR. There were a total of 131 kills this week, relatively quiet for the dogfight, 88 of which were from laser turrets. Plasma was next closest, with 31. The top ship was the Excalibur, with 36 kills, followed by the Sentinel with 20 and the Sentinel Mk.II at 19. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 14) This week also marks the end of the second Dogfight Series Championship, lets take a look at the numbers. Overall, there were 287 players who played the dogfight, contributing to a total of 1,060 visits. The approval rating has increased to 78% positive. There have been 82 likes, and still only 22 dislikes, and 158 favorites. Of the 287 players, 74 managed to snag a kill against another player, 103 died at least once, and there were a total of 2,522 kills. There were approximately 1000 farming kills that have been removed from the total. Out of 2,522 kills, the Excalibur and the Estival took the lion's share, with 572 and 477 kills, respectively. The Laser turret was the favorite, racking up 1,682 kills - that's 66% of all kills. Plasma had a decent showing, with 574 kills, and Auto turrets also put up some numbers, achieving 132 kills. 29 ships were used to get a kill, up from 24 last series. That brings us to that time of the evening, where we crown the next Grand Champion of the Dogfight. This series, deposing Imaboss by 383 kills, is ManikuCalex! With 840 kills and 348 deaths, he had a KDR of 2.41. Congratulations on the win, and enjoy the grand prize for Series 2! Second place goes to Imaboss2122, with 457 kills, 101 deaths, and a 4.52 KDR. The highest KDR goes to xMrSwigglesx, at 9 with 9 kills and 1 death. The highest KDR that killed more than 15 people is Imaboss. The lowest KDR is held by codyspace31, at .06. He had 3 kills and 48 deaths. Juszl again led the devs, with 45 kills, 15 deaths, and a nice round KDR of 3. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Championship Series 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: Why weren't there any faction ships released last week? A1: If you missed the news, the ships mechanics union went on strike for better wages and less dismemberment. This strike was quickly quelled by replacing the mechanics with robots, who worked diligently for about 15 minutes, when a roomba was allegedly "run over" and caused yet another strike. Q2: How's gravity? A2: Fairly constant, hardly any fluctuations since the accident. Q3: How far from implementation are medium and heavy turrets? A3: Really close, they're entirely functional through the mounting process and menus, attach correctly to your ship and everything. The last bit is making their shots replicate for everyone else, which should be pretty simple. We'll also really want to test them ahead of release to make sure nothing gets corrupted. Q4: Could someone theoretically wreck enough ships around a station to protect it from attacks? A4: In theory, you could wreck quite a few ships, but stations are really large and covering them entirely would be infeasible and expensive. Wrecks are intended to make the battlefield more interesting than a complete void, so expect people to use them to their advantage. 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 169th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we had some important bugs to fix, a nifty little feature demo that's coming soon to the dogfight, and the newest report on who topped the leaderboard this week. A few weeks ago, a few vulnerabilities in the code in the dogfight was brought to the attention of the dev team. An individual had managed to manipulate our systems into giving his ship god powers. Fortunately, this individual decided to report these vulnerabilities to our team, and we immediately worked on a solution. From halfway around the world, Idyllic attempted to apply some hotfixes to the game so we would at least know when these exploits were being used and could take action. Then, once he had returned home, actual patches for most of these actions were implemented. They included a way to edit the values of turrets mounted to your ship, which was unfortunately drawing its values from the client, and a way to spawn multiple ships at once, which came down to a bit of code being disabled relating to checking whether you were trying to deploy while in a hangar or not. We would like to thank that individual for their input on the topic, and we would like to extend an apology to anyone who was in-game when they happened to be testing these exploits - in the end it makes the game a better place. Idyllic had a little free time this week after making those patches, and someone in the community reminded him of a graphics detail we've always wanted to include but just never got around to implementing - that detail being ship trails. The trails feature has been out for ages now, and from the beginning the potential was obvious for its use in any space games on the platform. Particle emitters were one thing, leaving a trail of clouds in your wake, but were always limited by emission rates - too high and you kill performance, too low and you just see dots. Trails, on the other hand, are perfectly suited for leaving a... trail... behind your ship. Being able to attach trails to just an offset attachment point, rather than having to add small bricks to every point you want to leave a trail is vital to this feature being included - two simple steps creating fantastic results. We would like to make one important caveat - these trails will remain as simple as possible, a few vapor trails caused by your ship hitting space gasses and nebula components, not smiley-faces or waving flag emoji like a game set to monetize would try to do. Adding these attachment points and trails to the over 50 ships we have in our catalog will take some time, and we'll be rolling it out over the coming weeks. If faction developers have anything special they want done, or wish to highlight where they want vapor trails to come from, inform Idyllic via the usual channels. We'd like to officially announce the October 2019 community event, with a message from the creator: Hallows Eve - RoVerse October 2019 Community Event. Hello again! I'm proud to officially announce the brand new community event that's approaching on October 28th. This community event will last for 2 weeks, and players will have mainly three new activities to participate in the darkest and most feared place of RoVerse, the Void. This community will be mainly built by myself assisted by IdyllicDestroyer who will assist me with scripting needs and update the Alpha Dogfight, EmperorDyrith who will work and write up the main lore concerning the event, and Vaktus will help with funding the event. Starfighter Combat - We all love flying our ships in the Dogfight Alpha, we all challenge each other in many ways and with many ships. I am very happy to announce that a new map named Core of Nothing. This map will take space in an unknown Void Rift and will be used for FFA and TDM game modes. Ground Combat - There will be two events that will lead to players earning rewards that can be used in the Alpha Dogfight. Special Hallows Eve Quest - Quests are missions in which players can complete at any time in order to obtain a special reward, explore the world of RoVerse and understand better its deep lore. The quest will be set in the depths of the Void, a new unknown threat lurks in the shadows of the Void which must be dealt with by players who can team up into max teams of three. Completion of this quest will reward a special ship. Hard Mode Hallows Eve Quest - Players must dive solo in this new Quest, dying will cost them their life and there will be no checkpoints in the mission. Completing this hard task will award you with another unique ship. Lights End Rework - Lights End is back! Lights End is a six player activity that was released last year in 2018. It requires players to descend deep within the Void to fight the threat first hand. Players can form up teams to either descend with Maniku Calex, Leader of the Calexian Imperium or with a new host, the Distrionian Emperor himself, Emperor Dyrith. Updates to Lights End are as follows. Completing Lights End will still award you with the rewards from its launch, however completing Lights End in the Hallows Eve Community event awards players with the Diminishing Star fighter. This is a general rundown of the event and how it will be set, things may be subject to change but this the vision in which the community event will be set. Expect updates and more teasers soon as well with an official announcement date. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in #faction_chat or DM them to me personally. - Maniku Calex, Leader of the Calexian Imperium. The event will officially kick off October 28th, we can't wait to see you there! The person at the top of the leaderboard this week is... ManikuCalex with 280 kills, 102 deaths, and a 2.74 KDR. The fact that nearly 10 of his submitted ships were added and he had to grind for credits may explain his damage output this week, but it still counts! There were 495 kills this week, 444 of them from a laser turret, with meager showings by Auto turrets, Plasma, and Railguns. The top ship this week was the Omarus, with 80 kills, followed by the Sentinel with 79, and the Atticus with 74. Next week is the last of the second series, now is your chance to top the leaderboard and win both bragging rights and a special prize! If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 13) 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 size classes work for ground vehicles? A1: Similarly to fighters, ground vehicles will come in light, medium, heavy variants that have different purposes and abilities. You might have a light recon vehicle, or a heavy tank. The specifics of how the different classes are delineated are not yet finalized, and if factions have any input on that topic we're open to suggestions. Q2: Why can't L+ Capitals land on planets? A2: There are three primary concerns involved with large ships entering our planet atmospheres. The first is that they are really big, and the atmospheres aren't, so too big of a ship and you'd scrape the ground every time you turned. The second is that part dimensions are limited to 2048 - a properly scaled ship at planet scale could easily pass this limit causing problems with the model and collisions. The third is performance concerns with large, moving masses in game not performing well. Larger Capitals should have enough concerns at the galactic scale, before worrying about ground invasion scale problems. Q3: Will there be in-game entertainment, like racing? A3: While we haven't anything of that scale planned at the moment, we will do our best to support any ad hoc entertainment factions want to make happen, whether that means creating a special map or zone, or just supporting the various prizes given out. Q4: Can you retrieve Dirth from the shadow realm? A4: It took strapping a bunch of fighters together, and a few people saying "it just might work," but we managed to extract Dirth from a mysterious place where there were no ships but only giant characters in a successful operation. Take it as a warning against piloting ships without any turrets mounted... 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 168th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic has made his triumphant return, and wasted no time getting back to work on the Dogfight, Daft-Cube has continued working on backend systems related to the economy, and Skinny has deployed and should have a bit more free time in the near future. First up is Idyllic, who has gotten right to work uploading all the faction fighters we've posted about over the past few weeks that have unfortunately not been able to be added to the game. Due to unexpected internet connection problems, he wasn't able to upload the ships the week they were announced, but now that he's back at home all should be working now. We thank those of you who have been waiting for your announced faction ships to be added for your patience, sometimes life gets in the way. A few problems with these added ships have also been patched, including scale problems, invisible parts showing through the glass models, and improper access. With the addition of these new ships, RoVerse has officially surpassed the 50 fighters count, landing at a solid 54 ships. We can't wait to see what other awesome content our community comes up with in the future - keep building! Daft-Cube has continued to work on economy systems, and has an open invitation in the community discord for any ideas - its better to take suggestions early in the process rather than later. Currently he is focusing on an API key system to secure our server, and we are proud to announce that RoVerse has officially implemented cloud technology. Not just Veds' computer-melting atmospheric clouds, but real, honest clouds of data all shoved into someone else's computer. I think that's how it works anyway. This week, ManikuCalex tops the leaderboard, with 86 kills to 47 deaths, with a 1.82 KDR. Nice work! His favorite ship was the Estival Excursion and his top weapon was a Laser. Overall, there were 359 kills, a majority of which were from laser turrets - 270. The favorite overall ship was the Excalibur, with 88 kills, followed by the Estival with 56, and the Dervish with 51. The past few weeks have seen a wider variety of ships used, with only Week 9 and it's 18 different ships beating out this week's 13. It's great to see a bit of diversity on the leaderboard, as people are earning enough credits to purchase their recently-added ships. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 11) Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will you be able to zoom in with Capitals and have free camera movement? A1: That's currently the plan. For fighters, a follow camera made a lot of sense for putting you right in the action, while for Capitals you're commanding from a bit further away, where you can get a better view of the battlefield. So Capitals will be able to freely rotate their camera as they see fit. As for zooming, certain weapons like the railgun may be equipped with a zoom function to make aiming the precision turrets a bit easier, but this may be possible for any ship, with less effect. Q2: Will you be able to chain warp to several systems away with one action? A2: Definitely not. A key point of the game is that you can set up defenses and claim territory within systems - there wouldn't be much point to all that if someone could just bypass it all with the click of a button. The galaxy will have real size to consider - if you're planning an offensive strike you better know the territory between you and your target, lest your fleet be broken upon the rocks. Q3: Will there be specific goals or flags to capture in combat, or a more informal process of attack and defense? A3: The goals of battles are entirely up to you - if you wish to attack and destroy an enemy manufacturing station, that can be your goal. If you just want to take over an empty stretch of barren rock, you can do that too. There will be no terminals to capture or flags to take down, just fleets to destroy and structures to explode. Q4: How do the faction fighter points to stat bars work? Is 5 points 50%? A4: No. Faction ship points increase or decrease stats in a calculated manner, but their display on the ship selection menu does not reflect the points exactly. The percentage bar in the ship menu reflects that ships stats relative to all ships, so logically light fighters have very few bars lit up, and very heavy fighters have most of the bars lit up for health stats, and the opposite for speed, etc. 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 |