Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-second issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, most of our devs were occupied by finals as the school year is wrapping up, so this week we'll be doing something a bit different. We've gone back through the community discord channel as far as we dared to gather some of the most impressive and inspiring works by members of the community with the intent to join RoVerse as a Faction or subfaction. Important to the development process is the use of concept art. In the discord we have seen hundreds of images of sci fi ships and mechs and tanks, all really cool designs that we hope someone attempts to make their own. Google image search is a surprisingly good resource when it comes to finding cool things to build. While we don't recommend directly copying the images from concept art, using pieces, or combining different parts, with your own flair, ends up with the best results. Ships of all sizes and detail levels are right at your fingertips, and with unions and mesh imports, adding those trickier details is easier now than ever. Recently, one of the most pervasive users of the #faction_fanart channel has been Juszl, Vis of the Ninazu. He's been working on an entire fleet, weapons, structures for his faction for quite some time, with excellent results. Some of his posts can be seen below. But he doesn't just build a ship in one go - an important and interesting part of his posts is how he shows his process. From creating an outline of a ship based on some concept art, to filling it in using some pretty great plugins, to the final result. We've certainly enjoyed watching his development, and with his results, we'd recommend those just starting, take a lesson from his playbook. Another thing he does quite well is keeping a consistent theme between ships - they are all built by the same faction after all, so they should have some consistent elements. As seen in the fleet pictures, bold stripes can sharp edges are carried through his many ships, even if their shapes are wildly different. Another detail he has used is slight variation as seen below. Two ships of similar size but different purpose are the same ship chassis with a different format, which is an entirely reasonable thing for a faction to do. Drawing inspiration from things is great - there is so much content out there that no one has seen everything, and everyone's experiences are different. Find a style that fits you, and we'll work it into the game. We've also seen some other great stuff here and there that we'd like to spotlight here too. Be sure to post cool stuff you're making in the faction channel, to get some feedback from the community and devs, and to inspire others to make cool stuff themselves. RoVerse is more than just another spaceship flying game, it's a game for everybody in the faction community. Build your own ships, conquer the galaxy, show the world that you're more than an old base-raiding warclan. And most importantly, have fun doing it. Catch up with us next week for more progress on the Capital Update, as well as cool new builds and features for the full game! 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 eighty-third issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week has seen some great progress on our scripted systems, including a remastered chat system from davness, and some continued work from lordrex on the VPS backend data retrieval system. We also have some unfortunate news about the status of the Capital update as well, which we'll cover at the end. A few months ago, Idyllic roughly mocked up an edited chat system that modified the Roblox-provided scripts to try and customize the format and the look of the guis to better fit our theme, in a very short time frame. The system worked passably well, as long as you didn't look too closely at the edges. Since then, we've spent quite a bit of time building our own system from the ground up, with the features and design that we've always wanted. Developer Davness has been creating this system, and the progress he's made has been exceptional. Creating a custom chat system is more complicated than it may seem - there are lots of little features included to make sure that use of the system is as smooth as possible for all users, features like multiline chat messages and supporting usernames of any length up to 20 characters that are easy to ignore in a good system, but make use horrible if they are overlooked. He's also set up the system to easily scale with screen size, so that all users get the best experience possible. He has also set up an early demo of a shout system, so that RoVerse Admins can shout important updates, faction leaders can relay messages to their fleets, all with an easy-to-use system. Lordrex has successfully gotten our private server to read data from Google sheets, marking an important step in the development of our backend systems. Reading from saved data, making decisions about where to place people and fleets based on recorded information, sending star system data from the database we showed a few weeks back. A critical feature, and one that must be done right. Idyllic has continued remastering planet generation, this week taking a stab at table sorting as a way to easily grow continent shapes by having a handy list of all the closest points. While not completely solved yet, it does have some pretty results. We can't wait to see what else he comes up with. So many of you have been asking about the status of the Capital Alpha over the past three months since the originally planned release date passed. Since December, 90% of the update has been completed, including fighter models and rigging, gamemodes, all new custom maps, everything that would improve on the original system ten-fold... except for the mechanics of the capital ships. Since we couldn't release a Capital Update without Capital ships, we had to push that release back. To complete a rework of the system that NoCollider made nearly a year ago, we hired on craftsmashbuild, who had demoed several versions of his own ship flight scripts for his own project, that showed great promise for a robust and fun capital ship system fitting for a project as ambitious as RoVerse. Since then, craft has run it many, many personal problems, and has been unable to handle the stress of working on a professional development team with expectations and deadlines. Because of this pressure, he has chosen to leave the team permanently, and shows no sign of allowing us to use any of the progress he's made over the past 3 months, if any exists at all. While he had asked us to remain civil in the explanation of his departure, he proceeded to post several entirely incorrect tweets since then, and blocked all the RoVerse Devs, so civility is not something I can provide him. When we hired him in December we were clear with our expectations - while we understood he couldn't have made the original Christmas deadline, which we proceeded to push back, it was made clear that the Capital ships would be an important feature of this project, and if he didn't think he could manage such work in the required time, we would hand that portion of the project over to SmellyPencil and TheFurryFish, two talented devs who have done an exceptional job on the rest of the Capital Update. He insisted that the assignment was well within his grasp, so we hired him on to let the others do the final polishing of the other systems. After pushing back a planned release to the end of January, and now to the end of February, with no visible progress since the demo we showed of a capital ship doing donuts, the managers of this project, namely Vedrakkerous and IdyllicDestroyer, obviously had questions and concerns about the status of the project, that were always met with 'can't talk right now' or 'Ill have something to show by the newsletter' without any progress. Since it didn't seem like the completion of his project would occur within a reasonable amount of time, we initiated our backup 'plan B' - having the Update Dev team complete a rudimentary Capital system effective enough to release as the Capital Update in a limited capacity, to give craft enough time to complete the official and robust Capital system. It was at this point that craft decided he didn't want to work on this project anymore, due to the pressure of developing in such a public position. So don't worry, craft's sudden departure doesn't mean the Capital Update won't be coming out, but it does mean that it will take a bit more time than previously expected. In the future, we will be making sure that the devs we hire for such an ambitious game understand the expectations prior to assigning them any significant portion of our project. And to craft - if you had properly communicated to us at any point in the past 3 months that you didn't think you could complete the portion of the project we had expected of you, we could have provided support, or reassigned the parts that were out of your grasp, rather than having wasted our time for three months before deciding you wanted to work on your own space game more than you wanted to work on ours. Also, we are not the type of people to become vindictive to those who have legitimate reasons for leaving the team, as several members have come and gone over the development of this project without incident. But you spreading falsehoods in an attempt to slander us for who knows what reason is not something we take lightly, and as such I have written out the proper sequence of events for the public record. Had you be clear with us, or communicated when we asked, and even remained civil as you asked of us, this could all have been avoided. Let the facts stand as they are, and if they 'destroy your development career' as you claim we said, it is naught but your own fault. And on that note a quick recap - chat systems are progressing nicely, with lots of neat little features tucked inside. Backend development is progressing slowly but surely, with an important step towards our end goals being made over the past few weeks. And Idyllic has been playing around with planets, as he has always been. 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 there be indicators of ground combat from space, like explosions and stuff? A1: That's a great idea! We'll have our scripters look into how expensive it would be to send a notification to star system servers when and where ground combat is breaking out, but having little explosions appear on planets would be a cool little feature to notify people of things going on down below. And as always, ships 'in orbit' in the planet server will be able to see combat directly. Another light week on questions from the community. If you want to know more, feel free to ask in our community Discord. 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 eightieth 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 some more exciting work from Idyllic on gravity systems, this time upgraded to vehicles, as well as some more icon work from Mikey. The shipbuilders took a well-deserved week off after their work last week, in the hopes of keeping up with their real-life engagements. Since last weeks explorations into planetary gravity, Idyllic has upped his game to work on the constraint vehicle demo from a few weeks back. Vehicles and other debris can be dropped just like they can be on a flat surface, and bounce around just the same with as much work on the physics end done by Roblox, rather than our coders trying to CFrame every little object. With that comes official support, so as Roblox improves these features, we'll automatically reap the benefits. Early work, shows how vehicles effectively cling to the 'sides' of planets as you drive around, and most importantly, the forces don't pull the vehicle to the centers of triangular faces, which in a triangulated sphere are the closest point to the center. Even with standard Physical Properties, the forces were easily balanced to provide nearly perfect simulation. Driving straight results in a higher speed, turning sharply results in slight drift, all without the need to 'redesign the wheel' and code it from scratch. The biggest challenge of the week was improving traction on slopes. While relatively flat surfaces, and even up to 30° slopes, performed up to expectations, anything steeper than 45° would result in significant sliding backward down the hill. While that might be realistic for your standard car, an APC with 6-wheel drive would be expected to fare a little better. Attempts were made to increase the coefficient of friction between the two surfaces, increase tire surface area, and even add 'spikes' to the tire to simulate treads, but to no avail. The physical form of the wheel and terrain, a cylinder and a flat plane, did not provide the necessary grip to stop the vehicle from sliding, even with maxed out friction settings. So Idyllic had to get creative. With a bit of testing, a few hacked together ideas, and a roll of duct tape, he managed to find a suitable solution - whenever sliding is detected, by a high rate of rotation in the wheels without matching forward velocity, the vehicle shifts into 'low gear' getting an extra boost from a bodythrust, to make it up steep hills. The force is just enough to make it up the slopes it should, without making the vehicle climb vertical walls or sail away into the clouds. Overall, it was a fun and informative experience that provides an optimistic outlook on our plans for the future of ground combat. Going from a vehicle sim that worked well in the normal Roblox world, to our ambitious spherical world was no easy task, but our developers are up to it. And, in the end, having a cool car to drive around a planet and off ramps, was a great reward for a week of hard work. To go along with this work on ground vehicles, Mikey has been working on the set of radar icons to go along with them, including several classes of tanks, mechs, and various other vehicles that will be seen driving around planet surfaces. The radar system to go along with these icons will be a significant challenge, with a ground plane to match the player's angle relative to the center of the planet, but that too should be an exciting obstacle to overcome. 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 mining operations be able to take control of a whole planet? A1: We're focusing on a highly player-driven resource gathering plan, at least for the first iteration of RoVerse. An entire planet could be designated by a faction as open for resource gathering, with obvious resulting damage to the environment. Burn the forests, cut down the mountains, make as much money as possible, then move on - will be a valid method of operation. We may consider some automated methods at a later time if gameplay requires it. Q2: Will mining for resources come out in the first patch of RoVerse? A2: Resources are planned to be included in the first version of RoVerse, as they play a very important role in gameplay, from providing an occupation for the numerous members of factions, to being the backbone of fleet construction, to providing a source of income to fund those war efforts. Q3: Will independent planets be able to survive? A3: While unclaimed planets won't be able to resist faction expansion for very long, we may implement a few neutral locations where people can do as they please. And as always, with 220 star systems and 539 planets, there should be plenty of claimed territory that is too far from a faction's gaze to be well-policed, so I'm sure people who wish to remain alone, will be able to find a quiet place. Q4: How will Roblox group-game forts be integrated? Q4: We're planning on implementing a teleport system for the more notable group forts, where if you go to the right location, you can hitch a ride to the corresponding group fort. But it won't have any real impact on the RoVerse game. Q5: Is Idyllic a god? A5: He sure likes to think so, so you should keep stroking his ego. 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 sixty-ninth 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 hard at work on a variety of fronts, from planet generation to inventory management to planetary atmospheres, on top of our usual progress on ship building. Skinny has been taking a stab at designing some plant life to populate the numerous planets that litter the galaxy. We've been looking at two different approaches to the foliage that we'll be generating for planets. One option is self-contained meshes, like the ones below. The other option is modular pieces that we can procedurally generate into larger growths. These fairly low-res plant meshes can then be distributed over the surface of a planet, with changes in biome reflected in slight changes in color. One downside to this method is the fact that you have to create every different plant type by hand, which could be worth it. Current plans are to implement a bit of both, with single-mesh small plants and underbrush, with larger procedural plants as 'trees.' Here we have a lovely desert scene, and if all goes as planned, we might even be able to get the plant meshes to deform and sway in the wind, on high detail levels. Vedrakkerous has been hard at work developing a new line of ships which have been affectionately named the 'ticks' in the community channel. With a weird, alien shape fit for a ferocious race of conquerors, this line of ships should hold their own in any fight. He's also been working on another ship, of type unknown, as well as working with environments outside of the shadowmap demo, with equally impressive results. While they don't quite have the shadow quality that the demo allows, they do have quite a nice look to them. In other news, Idyllic is still working hard on planets, with another demo completed - unfortunately, Roblox doesn't like uploading large terrain files to their servers, instead preferring to crash. But he did manage to get a few good pictures in beforehand, and I think the results were quite promising. Here we have a low-res planet exploded out to full size, and converted from parts into terrain. Idyllic tried to convert the top half entirely to terrain, but that put the file size over the limit for uploading. But, it wasn't a total waste, as the process was a great proof-of-concept to help generate planets moving forward, as well as a good reminder to Idyllic to keep those file sizes low. Lordrex has had a pretty busy week, but he's been working when he can on NPC management systems, and we can't wait to see what quality work he comes up with, to make those space stations feel like the real thing. Mikey has developed a few more graphical assets for us to use, this week he's made some minor interaction icons and two new default corporation icons, for corporations to be determined. If you haven't already signed up for the Dogfight Tournament, now's your chance to do so. You can find the form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17KKApFQwTK-EW0uWbNQlWvq0i7OXem1Hf4YVh4SVOn4/viewform?edit_requested=true And to give you a little extra incentive, the players on the winning teams will get access to an exclusive Excalibur Skin to add to their own ships when we finally release. Winning teams will get to cruise the skies in their very own solid-gold Fighter, certified 14 karat gold. 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 there be a fuel system implemented on ships? A1: Early on in the project we talked about implementing a fuel system in ships that would require them to refuel between engagements. At this point in the project, we're not too sure about a 'fuel source' specifically, but a more general need to return to a base to repair extensive damage and stock up on supplies of fighters or ammo. Ships will be limited by a power system to prevent constant use of things like boosters or other consumables, though. Q2: Will minerals be restricted to a certain 'skill level' to be able to mine them? A2: I think we can all agree that being locked out of mining certain minerals would really cut out of the realism, and any game that tried to do that would next serve you with a popup for a gamepass unlocking that ability. But we're not about that. While mining more valuable ores might take longer, or we might implement a purity modifier, you should be able to hit anything that exists out there with your pickaxe or multitool. Q3: Will there be hidden, powerful weapons scattered throughout RoVerse, like infinity stones? A3: I wouldn't want to spoil the fun of you travelling across the vast reaches of space looking for rare weapons or special items, so I'll just say that the idea has been passed around a few times, and I personally think it'd be a nice touch, as long as they weren't quite infinity-stone levels of power. 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! Any fans of the science fiction genre on Roblox can join the Science Fiction Genre Discord and find other fans and developers like you. 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 sixty-seventh issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on all the progress we've made over the past week. This week we've been keeping on strong with the exceptional boost of productivity from the last few weeks, and have quite a lot to show you. We've got some nice new visuals from Ved showing capital ships in space; We've got some news on a ship skinning demo, a new capital ship from Skinny, a new scripter has joined the team to work on miniature characters, and some word from Animula, who we haven't talked about in a while. And off we go! Vedrakkerous has been spending quite a bit of time working on everything to do with spaceships, from their particle engine effects, to sun flares to finishing out the HUD players will use to fly them. When you are trying to make as awesome a game as we are, it doesn't help to cut corners. We want every aspect of the game to push the envelope for what a game can be on Roblox, which means catering to not just those of us with high end computers, but to everyone in between. While some of these in-game photos may look too good to be true, they were all taken in-engine, with a little help from 'the Future is Bright' Demo, and show the best the game can look. But I must restate, we will have detail level settings so nearly everyone will be able to participate. Here we have some lovely sun flares that Ved and Skinny worked on, combining the removal of the sun texture, the use of sunrays, and a scripted sun flare screengui with custom sun flare texture. Quite fancy indeed. We should have some more cool pictures in the coming weeks, as he further develops the aesthetics of RoVerse; we can't wait to see what he comes up with! Demo of these effects in-engine. On the shipbuilding front, Skinny has been working on a Capital ship design for this style of ships, and he has been working in a completely different style to what Ved does, that we talked about a while back. For Skinny, he starts in blender with a sphere or a cube, and starts moving vertices to where he wants them. From there, he separates out colors and imports them into studio. In studio is where he puts all the finer details in, like lighting neon, superstructures, and weapons systems, to finish out the design. And there you have it. While Skinny is still working on his design, the process is quite interesting, and could help out those of you who've wanted to start building your own capitals in anticipation of RoVerse. We'd like to welcome Sutic to the team on the scripting front. He's elected to take on the enormous task of developing our custom character systems, that will drive everything from the spherical gravity to handheld weapons, all at 15% scale. We wish him the best of luck in his endeavors, and can't wait to see what cool stuff he comes up with! IdyllicDestroyer had a bit of free time between lighting planets on fire and developing other core scripts, to test out a ship skinning process. He exported the Avenger, loaded it into blender, unwrapped all the faces, and baked some textures. The end result was a rough but workable first version of a ship skinned with custom decals. While the process was fairly straightforward on the blender side, importing the textures proved to be a little bit more rough around the edges, so to speak. The high res texture got scaled down automatically by Roblox, causing some of the edges to bleed over, creating these weird lines around the outside edges of faces. While not a huge problem, there should be ways to work around this in future tests. The important things we learned by this demo was that the texturing process was harder than first expected, text doesn't show up very well on the sides of ships, turning ships from bricks to meshes is a little harder than it should be, and blender stencils are the bomb. We look forward to the awesome skins we'll be able to create for all the ships in RoVerse, so you can make your ships your very own, flying across the sky in style. You may have been wondering where Animula has been hiding out all this time, but don't you worry, we've finally tracked him down. He's been working hard making more and more theme music tracks for RoVerse, and we can't wait for you all to hear what he's been making. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait just a bit longer to hear the 20 or so tracks he's created. They should bring just the right ambiance to RoVerse. ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: How will planetary garrisons work? A1: A military force would be instructed by their faction commander to guard a given planet's surface or star system, and it would be up to them to protect that area. They could construct fortifications to help defend a location, or just protect it by their presence. If you don't have the members to protect something important 24/7, consider hiring a mercenary group to take over while you're away! Q2: Will there be electronic warfare ships, to slow down or disable ship systems? A2: We've considered this a few times, and we'd really like to include it in the game, though it will need extensive testing to make sure it's not overpowered. While there wouldn't be a ship specifically designed to be an 'electronic warfare' ship, it would probably come as a ship kit that you could add on to a specific sized ship. Q3: Will starfighters have repulsor lifts to move vertically? A3: This great suggestion came from our Community channel this week. And I'll admit I hadn't thought of how ships would fly off of planets. Being able to hover vertically would be an important feature for any fighters that land on the surface, and it could be a useful tool in evasive maneuvers in space combat, along with the strafing we've already added. We'll definitely be adding a vertical movement aspect. 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 sixty-fourth 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 got some more work to show on the lobby menus, with Mikey creating a nice mockup of the character select screen. We've also got some good news from Idyllic on the planet generating front, and the completion of a feature we showed off last week. Here we have a mockup of what we intend the character select screen to look like, where you can see what your character looks like, its faction alignment, its credit balance, and its location in the galaxy. The images above are placeholders for the characters, which we intend to replace with the actual character models, so you can rotate your character in 3D. We'll be working on the implementation of lobby menus over the next few weeks, stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes info. Idyllic has been hard at work generating high-resolution planets. This week, he's got an update on the 9-step generation that he has been running for a month and a half now. With over 2,600,000 vertices, that level of detail will put us very close to the final detail level of planet surfaces. With that many triangles, each triangle will be about 12 studs long on each edge. From there, we can either subdivide one or two more times, with an excessive growth in file size and generation time, or we can generate most of the details at that resolution, and fill in the gaps live during chunk loading. We'll just have to see how long the rest of the 9-step generation takes, before moving forward. Something we don't have to wait to move forward on, though, is the importing of the previously generated planets. Idyllic spent all week working on the code that imports the data, which is in the form of 3 tables - the points, their locations, and their nearest neighbors. From these three tables, it should have been a breeze to reconstruct a planet. But it wasn't. Curiously enough, the second table was short 8 values, causing weird things to generate during reconstruction. A chaotic web of lines and points, that form a not-quite-random pattern, but no pattern that we can understand... But a cool enough structure to run into in outer space, so of course we sent an expendable dev on a mission to try and fly through the mysterious structure. Miraculously, the heroic pilot survived the trip! After a bit more furious typing, Idyllic managed to find the error that led to the problem, and managed to successfully import the first planet into the game. Drawn from only a text file, this planet is the first of its kind, and looks to be the beginning of a really cool experiment made real. In the coming weeks, we should be able to load in the higher-detail planets, and have the import system ready by the time the 9-step generation completes! Lordrex has completed implementation of the Trello updates feature we showed off last week into the Lobby. Details about the system can be found in last weeks newsletter, if you're interested. He also spent some time increasing the security of back-end systems so that user data is less corruptible, which will be a very important feature for the game we're making. 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 factions be able to create drone fighters for capital ships to deploy? A1: This question came up in the community, and stirred up quite the conversation. Sure, it would be cool to be able to launch ships to do the fighting for you, but in the long run, automating ships in any way really draws attention away from player participation. If you want to fly into a battle zone with a carrier, you should definitely take a squadron of fighter pilots along with you. Q2: Will you use the new pathfinding system in-game? A2: The new pathfinding system looks incredibly cool and very useful, and there are quite a few applications we can see applying it to in RoVerse, but before we make any promises about using it, we will have to put it through rigorous testing, and wait for the first few bug patches that usually come with any new feature. But, it should make our stations much livelier, if it does work out. Q3: Will ships have jump ranges? A3: Ships jumping from system to system will either have to use the jump gates they've constructed, the open wormholes where they should be constructing a jump gate, or by attaching a warp core to a capital ship. Each of these methods will produce the same results, jumping one system over. There won't be any bypassing systems by pointing your ship into the abyss. Q4: Will factions be able to create science vessels? A4: We have considered the inclusion of ships designed purely for scientific porpoises, but in the larger game plan, they really served no unique purpose. Any traveling could be accomplished with other craft, and it would require the development of many new unique systems to make them worthwhile and fun. They may be possible in an expansion at some point, or we may decide to include them closer to release!
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 forty-seventh issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! This week, the development team has really shifted into overdrive, with lots of developers getting a chance to update us on what they've been working hard on, some new members who got some cool things done this week, and some updates for where we're heading into the future! One of our new devs, NoCollider, has signed on to get to work on star system generation - things like asteroid belts, planets, stars, even moons! In no time flat, he had a working system that looks great, and we can't wait to see what more comes of it. Developer IdyllicDestroyer has continued work on his minerals and resources flowchart, with some mockups of ore generation - below are conceptions of what Lithium Ore and Copper Ore deposits could look like on asteroids. Petalite Ore, above. Azurite Ore, below. He also tested how planets would show in the star system servers, with options to appear as a low-poly mesh, rather than smooth terrain. If it can be made into a mesh, it would open up a whole bunch more options for planets, like moving in their orbits, while reducing client resource usage. Foil Planets end up quite reflective. You may have caught one of our development streams this past week, with developers RexPatriot and Vedrakkerous taking some time to show off their work process. RexPatriot is in the process of building the ruins you might run into on a planet's surface, particularly the desert biomes, with things like pyramids and obelisks rising from the sands. Vedrakkerous has been hard at work with particles, working on atmospherics like snow and rain, trying to keep the particle count low, while also making different biomes feel real. Another new member joining us this week, VitreusAeulous, has been working on handheld weapons and helmets, with some stunning work in the past few days. I know I wouldn't want to see those eyes glowing in the dark coming after me. We have several new coders joining the team this week, NoCollider, who you saw above, as well as eLunate, who will be taking on the task of creating the base engine that RoVerse will run everything off of, making sure it is efficient, effective, and secure. In regards to our previous coders, Jamber has reported the completion of a faction transaction system that can apply a set tax, for goods traded on a specific planet or system. ThePlanckConstant will be returning to work on the Flight scripts, now that he's finished another year of school - we can't wait to see more progress on that front! Also joining the team is Animula, who has been extremely motivated to create the background and ambient music for the game. Drawing inspiration from the TV show 'The Expanse,' you can look forward to some previews of the music in the coming weeks. Its been an exciting week, with lots of new hires and fresh faces livening up the dev team. It is great to see that, nearly a year into this project, members of the community are still as interested as we are. We hope to keep on working as hard as we can, to create an awesome game that everyone can enjoy. 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 clans be able to design their own weapon types that RoVerse will try to script accordingly? A1: This question actually came up on the dev team this week as well, and there was a lively discussion on the topic. The result of said conversation was that weapon models will be able to be submitted, with a set ammunition type/weapon class, but from there, there will be a limited upgrade system similar to ships, where you can spend points to improve features, at the cost of other features, or an increased cost to replace the weapon. Q2: Will we need certain gear to be able to survive on a hazardous planet (gas mask, thermal suit, etc.)? A2: The majority of the galaxy should be hospitable to most life, but there may be the occasional rocky moon with no atmosphere, or a lava planet with pure sulfur air that you might need special equipment to access. Q3: Will spaceships need certain repairs after time? E.t.c after so and so miles/light years flown you must repair a certain part or more will break/you will lose out on something? A3: Besides fuel costs for flight time, it hasn't quite been nailed down what sort of costs operating ships will include. Damaging parts would be cool, but it would be quite high detail to remember what parts what ships have, and it would get very confusing very quickly for younger players. I would look forward to directly apparent costs, like repairing damage from battle or collisions, and refilling with fuel after a long journey. Q4: Can clans have multiple types of architecture. For instance a type of architecture for their military, or for their homeworld/coreworlds, etc. A4: We look to support as many clan assets as possible, to keep clans as diverse and unique as they are currently - if you build it, we'll find a way to fit it into the game, even if we have to send Idyllic out for the hydraulic press and some butter. 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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the forty-sixth 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 seen an astonishing amount of visual work from Vedrakkerous and Idyllic has been working behind the scenes on the resource system for RoVerse, and has a very convoluted and terrifying spreadsheet detailing the first progression concept from basic minerals to full spacecraft and structures! This spreadsheet has been an absolute nightmare of organization and research to ensure that almost all ores and materials progress in a way that is somewhat accurate. As seen above, Idyllic is still quite far from completion, but has already managed to create the most convoluted chart ever seen, and we are excited to see what new organizational nightmare he comes up with later on. Vedrakkerous, on the other hand, has been hard at work creating, refining and optimizing particles for just about everything from space dust to entire stars! Take a look at some of these beautiful visuals that will enhance the game just that bit more: The image below is the shield effects, which flare up when your shields take damage and pulse outward around your ship based on the type of shield you use! Once a shield has been completely dissipated, it will create a form of vortex around the ship to indicate it is recharging, and once charged you will be once again safe from damage! Vedrakkerous even got the inspiration from Stellaris to make a few stars, namely some of the most common stars; The Class M Red Dwarf star: The Class G Orange star: The Class A White Dwarf star: While the stars are beautiful, and look absolutely stunning in dogfight mode, Vedrakkerous decided he wasn't done yet and decided to go out of his way to prepare warp effects for larger ships which look absolutely stunning as is to be expected at this point! And finally, he prepared a gif showing off the set status effects each ship has when under damage to provide just that little bit of additional detail to ships to show off current damage or destroyed modules on larger ships. At the time of my writing of this, Vedrakkerous is still hard at work updating and creating new effects for use, and if I were to update each time he made a change, I would be here all night! 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 there be clan specific / lore-based minerals? A1: While supporting clan lore specific minerals would be cool, in the end, it'd just be unfair - either only certain clans would get their own special mineral, or everyone would have to get their own, and can you imagine how much more convoluted that flowchart would get with a bunch more minerals to start from? Q2: About how much would the largest, most fully 'decked-out' capital ship cost? Millions? Billions? Trillions? A2: This is hard to say at this point - we want it to be possible for clans to build capitals, but not so easy that there are hundreds floating around. In the end, the price should be balanced to keep them expensive, but entirely possible with the right teamwork. Q3: Will there be AI planet populations? A3: I'd say an AI population in the most basic sense - there won't be characters wandering the streets, but there may be some generalized AI, sort of like a city simulation game would have. Q4: Will there be unrest for planetary populations? A4: In continuation of the previous question, a generalized city AI would allow us to have events occur in cities, like an outbreak of plague or other positive things, like a city-wide celebration boosting profits. So unrest would definitely be a possibility to explore. 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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Author's Note: Hey guys, I will be going through and organizing every newsletter published from #37 and prior to support a new category system you may have noticed on the right side which you can use to sort for specific topics you are interested in! We will try to tag every newsletter appropriately, and this will, hopefully, be the first of many overhauls to make the site more user-friendly than it already is. I've also removed the author tags on the bottom in order to have a permanent tag for all three authors (Vaktus, Idyllic and myself) on the right side under the categories. Thanks for reading this week's newsletter, and I hope you guys enjoyed all the amazing work put in by our development team! ~ Aleuvian Hello everyone! Welcome to the forty-second issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! This week we finally have some long overdue images of the chat system, news from Sae'Tzar and an update on the command center's progress! Let's start with most requested of these; the chat system! Lordrex has been busy at work improving, tweaking and gradually making the chat system much more efficient and aesthetically pleasing, and has managed to come out with a very nice design that we hope you all enjoy as much as we do! The coding behind the GUIs are still a work in progress, of course, but the chat system is very aesthetically pleasing, fits with other UI elements and is as unobtrusive as possible to give players plenty of screen-space to blast their enemies! RexPatriot has begun full work on the planetary command center this week, and has taken a modular approach to the development, and plans to complete a segment each week so he can show off the progression of the structure from week to week! As a reminder, the commander center is the central military stronghold of an outpost, and will be perhaps the most important military structure in an outpost. This week, he has begun the outer wall designs and the first entrance hall, as seen below: Sae'Tzar is working diligently to get more ships out when he is able to salvage his laptop's hard drive for use in a new computer. We look forward to his impending return to active development, and we especially look forward to his beautiful ship designs! 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 Planet Terrain be destructible by explosions, will it be editable by hand? A1: We want planets to be as immersive as possible - if a capital ship is bombarding the surface, but there is no left over crater, it would ruin the immersion. The plan right now, is for things to be locally destructible to a point, with bombs leaving craters that are only persistent to your server. Digging trenches and caves will take a bit more work, but we'l see if we can pull it off. Q2: Seeing the realistic planet generation system, will there be any alien-like planets with stuff like floating islands? A2: The realistic planet generator is only the first step of many in creating a unique and interesting galaxy to explore. Things like floating islands and xeno biomes are on the list of features for sure. If you have any concept art you really like, feel free to post it in the suggestions channel on the discord. Q3: Is RoVerse still looking for developers? A3: Yes! We are always looking for talented members of the community that want to help out in the creation of this expansive game. A wide variety of talents will be accepted, from builders to advanced scripters. Send an application over to RoVerse_Official on Roblox, and we'll get in contact. Q4: What sort of land vehicles should we look forward to? A4: I think we may have covered this a bit before, but you can look forward to quite a variety of vehicles - from offensive vehicles, like tanks and mobile artillery, to defensive mobile missile platforms and troop carriers, to civilian craft. 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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! ~Written by Aleuvian ~Edited by IdyllicDestroyer Hello everyone! Welcome to the fortieth 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 seen an absolutely astonishing amount of prop work put in by Rex, ranging from a meager backpack all the way to a fully equipped fort with mortars and anti-air emplacements! Rex is also very pleased to announce that he is beginning official work on the main command center, which will be a massive, self-sufficient building capable of withstanding a siege and operating even if the rest of a city falls! The building will be a massive multi-building compound designed for defense, and we can look forward to seeing massive fights over the control of these structures, as they will undoubtedly serve as the final stand for any defense force. Galbotrix has also been continuing his streams this week and has continued his work on the Industrial Space Station's interior layout, particularly the docking area. The layout, as it stands is almost complete, and he has been experimenting with some interesting holographic designs as well. Galbotrix streams regularly on our official Twitch channel, and you can tune in any time he is broadcasting here! 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 it be possible to destroy planets? A1: Yes and no, we don't want to spoil too much about this, but let's just say destroying a planet would be an extremely powerful ability, one that only a civilization with the resources and knowledge of an entire galaxy could ever hope to possess. Q2: Will ecological disasters and climate change be possible on planets? A2: We're hoping to implement systems that simulate pollution based on how many industrial facilities are constructed on a planet without building environment-friendly structures. We also hope to have disasters that break out on planets which would take the form of PvE style events, such as an outbreak of rebellious robots or a giant Godzilla-like creature attacking one of your cities. Q3: Are there any plans for terraforming to be implemented? A3: To some extent, yes, but we can't confirm how much we'll be able to do with this until we know more about the final state of planetary generation and how modifiable it will be whilst remaining stable. Q4: Will we be able to build massive artificial ring worlds, planets or dyson spheres? A4: There's definitely a possibility for superstructures such as these to be added as late-game goals for highly developed civilizations. However we still have a long way to go and we need to focus on the most vital parts of the game for release, so these features should be expected as long-term goals rather than release build content. Q5: Will we be able to capture enemy ships? A5: Absolutely! Once ship interiors are implemented (probably after release though) you will be able to board vessels and battle with its crew to either sabotage their systems or commandeer their ship. If you successfully capture a ship, you'll be able to take it back to port and store it as one of your own. *However* since you don't technically own it, you won't have access to ship replacement services in the event of its destruction, so be sure to use the opportunity wisely! 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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |