NEWS
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Hello everyone! Welcome to the 280th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. The time of the turkey is upon us once again. A dark time to hold your loved ones close as terrors creep around just outside your vision. The time of the Space Turkeys. If you have survived another year without being eviscerated and eaten, we have a newsletter for you. This week, before the holidays set in, Idyllic worked on refining the dodge mechanics we revealed last week, and we've made a few changes to how they work. Now that we've had a chance to test the dodge with a wider variety of ships, a few changes were clearly necessary.  For larger ships, the agile and quick sideways dodge just wasn't the right fit, as was immediately demonstrated by Fang and his Kazan. Big ships with slow speeds just look ridiculous twirling around in space all graceful like, and that won't do, no matter how hilarious it is to see. Now, the ship's agility stat is used to determine the roll speed, preventing such wild flailing around, while keeping light fighters quick and nimble.  You may also notice that it only completes one revolution. Under a certain threshold, double-roll dodges would take upwards of 15 seconds to complete, which didn't seem in the spirit of things. So they keep their slow roll, but only roll over once, and don't go nearly as far laterally, to make up for their low agility. We also made a few changes to controls. We're going to be testing out moving the dodge keys to Q and E and see how that performs in combat, since the roll keys are prone to be tapped more often. Also, the loop-the-loop dodge has been replaced by a 180, and moved to the X key, so double-tap that to turn around. This week in the dogfight there were 94 kills, 13 with auto, 16 with beam, 0 with laser, 6 with plasma, 7 with railgun, and 52 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 49 kills, followed by the Iridium with 16. The most dangerous map was Blue_Spaceway with 57 deaths, followed by Classic with 22. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 68 kills and 16 deaths and a 4.25 KDR; IdyllicDestroyer with 22 kills, 19 deaths and a 1.15 KDR; and tygrys202 with 2 kills, 1 deaths, and a 2 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Stormfront Armaments Hercules 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 122)  Calexian Community Challenge The challenges are: 10,000,000 Kill Distance, and 100 Outpost Victories  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: On mining ships, can we just put all the mining laser turrets on the front in a clump to make mining easier? A1: While this is currently feasible with fighter weaponry, since the craft are so small, we're not certain that allowing this on larger ships would lead to much innovation. At the moment, we're considering a proximity limit forcing designers to spread their mount locations out a bit, instead of layering them all on top of each other. Nothing that would be hard-line enforced, if you have a cool design idea, but just as a design principle, don't put your turret mounts all on top of each other. Something something heat dissipation problems... 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 279th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic continued on their experimentation kick, ticking off another long-time feature request. Available now for testing in the dogfight are new dodge mechanics. Double-tapping left or right will make your ship dodge left or right, and double-tapping s will make you do a loop. Try these new evasive maneuvers in combat and see how they change your fighting style.  The first iteration just applied an aggressive roll to your ship, spinning you and your camera around violently. This would've made everyone quite nauseous, so we attempted to counter that roll with an opposite and equal camera roll - making sure it was equal was the difficult part, as seen above.  And below... But once we got the balance down, things were smooth sailing. Dodging also uses up a small amount of boost energy, so that you can't just spam dodges nonstop while boosting away from someone, so use your extra maneuverability thrust wisely.  Be sure to let us know how it works, and if you'd like any changes. We can adjust the trigger time, if you normally double-tap A and D in other scenarios where you don't want to dodge. And we're not sold on the double roll vs a single roll, so let us know if you think it's too long of an animation. And while we were at it, messing around with ship movement code, we also took a stab at a long-term feature we've promised - Engine Kill:  There remains a problem with the location the camera locks in on when triggered that we'll be fixing, but the mechanics are there. The ship maintains its current vector and speed, can't accelerate or boost but can slow down and strafe. You'll be able to cruise past someone, turn and fire your weapons without losing your present direction in style. This should revolutionize the Gatecrash gamemode, since you'll be able to fight back against someone on your tail. We look forward to seeing it in use. With the end of our Hallows Eve Event, the time has come for us to announce the winners of the two categories, and several honorable mentions.  The winner overall in both the full-completion category and the speedrunning category, is tygrys. Using a few secret shortcuts that no one else could find, he managed to whittle both down to nearly the fastest they possibly could be completed. He found a way to jump onto the balcony of the house, a way to climb over a maze wall, a technique for climbing out of the crypt, and the right place to reset to speed up his long walks. Incredible work. He has unlocked an exclusive flaming skin for a ship of his choice. Everyone who participated in the speedrunning category will receive a flaming Excalibur skin. And on to the less-glamorous leaderboards - The player with the fastest first completion goes to Codyspace31, with a time of 14:07. Nice work. The player with the slowest first completion was FangABXY, with a time of 1:46:28. Very dedicated. The player with the most full completions was tygrys, with 11, which makes sense with how much practice his records took. The player with the most improvement between first time and final time, is FangABXY, with a difference of 1:34:39. Wowza. The player with the most attempts was a close race, with tygrys pulling ahead at 65, followed by DevKomodo with 59 and Fang at 44. And last but not least, most failures goes to Screech, with 6. Better luck next year. Everyone mentioned here will get a Silver Excalibur skin, when the Capital Update comes out. And for future reference, some stats! 17 people completed a full run, there were , and 6 people solved the secret puzzle. The game received 267 visits, 6 favorites, and 8 likes. Thanks again everyone for participating! Those that unlocked the secret puzzle will receive a special skin that randomizes the part colors of every ship, in the theme of paintball.    This week in the dogfight there were 877 kills, 0 with auto, 123 with beam, 1 with laser, 0 with plasma, 7 with railgun, and 746 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 439 kills, followed by the Silencer with 234. The most dangerous map was Blue_Spaceway with 319 deaths, followed by The_Great_Hollow with 284. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 439 kills and 0 deaths and a N/A KDR; tygrys202 with 258 kills, 4 deaths and a 64.5 KDR; and Screech9791 with 179 kills, 21 deaths, and a 8.52 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Stormfront Armaments Hercules 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 121)  Calexian Community Challenge The challenges are: 1,000,000 Kill Distance, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills In a shocking turn of events, both the 1,000,000 kill distance and the 3000 kills have been completed this week, unlocking both the Aelia and the Estival Excursion.  That is 7 Calexian ships unlocked, with 4 remaining. The new challenges will be: Claim Victory over the Outpost 100 times and Get kills from over 1̶,̶0̶0̶0̶,̶0̶0̶0̶ 10,000,000 studs away  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 we be able to salvage disabled ships and use them again, if they haven't undergone significant damage? A1: As things currently stand, shooting a ship to death currently causes it to explode. Salvage from that wreck would at best be cargo, and normally just raw materials in a ruined state. There is certainly an opportunity for certain turret types to potentially kill ships without destruction as a rare chance, allowing you to steal a mostly-usable carcass to take back to a station. 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 278th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. After the successful inclusion of 28 ship shields, Idyllic doubled down and set a task of creating shields for every last ship included in the dogfight. While blender may have complained about it, and there may have been some long not responding delays, 101 more ships were meshed, nearly entirely at the same time.  Find your favorite one! After many crashes and a lot of RAM issues, the whole fleet has been successfully meshed. Bulk imports respecting UV maps was fixed, and a custom solution to modifying specialmesh offsets was developed. A terribly glitchy fork of SBS was made, that instead of moving parts, moves the offset value of the mesh. It's also so broken that it doesn't work when reopening a place, and has to be re-exported as a local plugin. We made a few touchups to missile raycasting, so that their explosions occur closer to where the rockets appear to be. This will change the feel of torpedoes a bit, but those are mostly only useful on Outpost Turrets, and the community has just proven how deadly non-missile weaponry can be.  Previously, the rocket visuals would trail the raycast by an entire step, and due to its acceleration over time, the lengthening raycast made the rocket fall further and further behind. Now, it should stay relatively close to the front of the raycast, and keeping the rocket closer to the explosion site. However, this may lead to situations where the rocket passes through something that hasn't been hit by the raycast, but that is just a sacrifice we'll have to make. A dark shadow has fallen across the galaxy. Whispers of an ancient evil rising once more. The Contagion Guillotine has been added to the Dogfight.  With the conclusion of another Cycle, a new Cycle Reward ship has appeared. Top the leaderboard any week in the Cycle, and you'll unlock the Stormfront Armaments Hercules as an exclusive reward.  This week in the dogfight there were 479 kills, 70 with auto, 209 with beam, 27 with laser, 8 with plasma, 16 with railgun, and 149 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 148 kills, followed by the Silencer with 88. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 208 deaths, followed by The_Great_Hollow with 156. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 187 kills and 11 deaths and a 17 KDR; FoxMcClou with 160 kills, 49 deaths and a 3.26 KDR; and tygrys202 with 106 kills, 0 deaths, and a N/A KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Stormfront Armaments Hercules 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 120)  Calexian Community Challenge The challenges are: 1,000,000 Kill Distance, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills The 3000 Outpost Turret Kills Challenge has been completed. The reward ship will be made available next week, and the next challenge announced.  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 fighters have their own warp drives, or will they have to dock in a bigger ship? A1: All ships will have their own warp drive for travel locally around star systems. Certain Capitals that can't fit through jumpgates may have their own special drives for warping between systems. Q2: Will fighters be able to repair themselves in flight, or will they have to dock for repairs? A2: If you've brought along some consumable repair nanites, you will be able to repair your hull most of the way. Over time, "wear and tear" will build up, making in-flight repair less effective. Returning to a hangar at a station will remove this debuff. 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 277th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, with Roblox back in working order, we can now return to your regularly scheduled programming. While the servers were down, Idyllic took the opportunity to dive into making ship shields. Since that all takes place in blender, and we had luckily pre-exported a selection of ship models, we had everything we needed on-hand. Our prior proof-of-concept method for making ship shields involved painstakingly tracing out a low-res outline of each ship, which with an ever-increasing number of submissions and additions, was infeasible. So with the encouragement of the community, Idyllic explored alternative options for automating the process, as well as re-exploring some ideas that didn't work when we initially prototyped the system, but that miraculously work now.  Our original prototype shield simply scaled up the Excalibur mesh and replaced the texture, but unfortunately not every ship is nearly as convex. Ships that have protrusions or bends will not scale correctly, as a proper shield is offset from each surface's normal, not scaled from model center. So this required revisiting the drawing board.  For the Avenger, recreating the shield was a simple enough task - just match the angles and go around some weird corners, and it works passably well. But this would not be nearly as easy when asymmetry became involved, or very complex shapes. The first one to really give us trouble was the Blue Komodo, a particularly round ship that was going to be a right pain to mesh. So we re-explored Blender Modifiers. The first time around, Solidify-Remesh-Decimate produced quite terrible results. They were often collapsed in the wrong place, or triangulated on angled surfaces, and were going to be just as much work as doing them all by hand. However, since our original experiments, Blender 2.9 has been released, and it has added a new setting to the Remesh Modifier - Voxel. This setting, combined with an extremely aggressive Decimate modifier to cut the number of faces down from the millions, provide a nearly-perfect shell of just about any ship.  And so, Idyllic set to work refining the process. Prebuilding the Modifier settings, figuring out the best order to apply modifiers in, and figuring out how to fix any irregularities without killing Blender. With the process complete, it was time to make the shields of the somewhat random selection of ships available.  28 ship shields so far, have been imported and attached to their host.  There are, however, a few remaining problems. Bulk-importing the meshes from a single .obj file breaks the UV maps of each ship, making it so that the shield doesn't do the shield effect, which is the entire point, so each ship has to be exported individually. But this does give us the opportunity to name the mesh correctly, so it can easily be associated with the right ship. We can still bulk import the meshes, but by selecting multiple files. But the results speak for themselves - we can't wait to see all the ships in-game with such fancy shield-damage effects. Be sure to complete the Hallows Eve Quest before Wednesday, when the mission dissolves into the ether like the Roblox Servers. Also, get your final speedrun times in, to be in the running for a second special skin. This week in the dogfight there were 368 kills, 7 with auto, 0 with beam, 53 with laser, 7 with plasma, 1 with railgun, and 300 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 253 kills, followed by the Aether_Mk1 with 49. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 244 deaths, followed by The_Great_Hollow with 73. And now, the moment you've been waiting for... The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 253 kills and 2 deaths and a 126.5 KDR; Screech9791 with 49 kills, 7 deaths and a 7 KDR; and IdyllicDestroyer with 47 kills, 3 deaths, and a 15.66 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Vostok 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 119)  Now, for the overall cycle stats! Pillarum was the most dangerous map, with 837 kills, followed by The Great Hollow with 544. The top ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan, with 735 kills, followed by the Silencer with 281, and the Aether Mk1 with 231. The top weapon was the Torpedo, with 1230 kills, followed by Laser with 191, and Plasma with 182. Beam marked up to 118, Auto with 65, and Railgun with 47. Overall, 21 pilots participated this cycle and earned at least one kill, while 17 players died at least once. The lowest KDR belongs to The Outpost with a .05 KDR. The dogfight has seen 8,377 visits, with an 83% approval rating (152-30) and 382 favorites. This cycle there were 1,833 kills total. Topping off this cycle's leaderboard was FangABXY, with 847 kills, 37 deaths, and a 22.89 KDR. He was followed by Tygrys202 with 297 kills, 5 deaths, and a 59.4 KDR, and Screech9791 with 260 kills, 44 deaths, and 5.9 KDR. These three pilots have unlocked the exclusive Golden Vostok 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 17)    Calexian Community Challenge With the completion of one of the Community Challenges, it is time to announce the prize, and the next challenge. The reward for 6,000 Outpost Turret Kills, is the Calexian Industries Astris:  Collect it today in the Dogfight Alpha. The next challenge is to get kills from a collective 1,000,000 studs away. Any kills in the dogfight will record their distance to target, and the further away the better. Let's practice that long-game. 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 There were no questions in dev_questions this week, check back next week! 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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