Hello everyone! Welcome to the 136th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Lordrex and Idyllic have continued working on fighter features for the Capital Update, with Lordrex rigging the default fighters to support the last few features we want, while Idyllic added a camera feature that was incredibly vital to functional gameplay with more than one class of fighter. Skinny worked on an advertisement for planetary features, with the help of some community members, legomadamada had some interesting bugs to work out of the environmental generator, and Juszl got some work in on a new map. First things first - this week in our Discord Community, Skinny tasked the builders of RoVerse factions with designing and constructing their best skyscrapers, with the goal being their inclusion in the latest teaser for planetary gameplay. Featuring ships flying through the sky, a mountain, and a magnificent city on the horizon, the only thing it's missing is a line of tanks invading, crushing the calm grasses beneath their iron treads. Legomadamada has continued to work on the asteroid field generator, in an attempt to create a more varied and interesting arrangement of rocks of all sizes. This week, we have a picture of a not-quite-working version, where the density and size that is supposed to increase and decrease three times, is instead increasing, abruptly stopping, and starting over. Not quite where we want it just yet, but still making progress. Lordrex worked this week on ironing out a few bugs with last week's lighting upgrades, as well as a few modifications to the default fighters. When rigging these fighters to work with the fighter scripts, certain specifications needed to be met - a part named Core here, a part named Thrust there, so that the control scripts knew where to look for specific things. Engine effects for the Excalibur were contained within a single engine part, which easily allowed the system to turn the smoke and fire on and off - but that won't always be true for every ship. It isn't for the default fighters, and it won't be for any Faction fighters we might get, so adding flexibility was important. To that end, the code is now well on its way to supporting multi-part engine effects. The other feature we were looking to support that lordrex began work on this week was another highly-requested one from the dogfight alpha - fighter headlights. Capital ships have had them for a while, but now fighters will too. No more getting lost in a dark corner, bouncing off of walls and having a seizure. Due to the limitations of the voxel lighting system, updates may be a little slow to render, but we expect that to improve in the future. Idyllic was a bit busy this week, but managed to add the base code for a vital feature we hadn't even considered before. The Excalibur is a very small ship, measuring in at about 1x1x1 studs. The camera is hardcoded to follow this stud around in all the fancy maneuvers a daring pilot might take - but that offset doesn't work for all fighters nor all fighter classes. Here is a view from the pilot seat of a Cardinal Heavy Fighter. The Cardinal, being significantly larger than the Excalibur, fills your entire screen, clips through the camera with every maneuver, and it is impossible to aim your weapons at anything. So Idyllic dove into the camera code, laid the foundation of a system that will allow a custom offset per fighter, and got the camera to a much more reasonable and useful distance. Now you're ready to take on your enemies with the highest firepower money can buy! Juszl is in the early stages of our most dense map yet, full of nooks and crannies where ambush fighters will have the edge in combat. 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: Is ice just cold water? A1: Or is water warm ice? Q2: Will there be a way to make any resistance movement illegal? A2: That sounds more like an internal faction affair than something RoVerse would deal with. If you want to disallow people resisting orders, make it illegal and assign a punishment. If internal struggle is an integral part of your faction's culture, battle on. Q3: Will debris be locked in place, or will it drift? A3: There is a trade-off between quantity of debris and motion of debris. We might simulate motion at a distance with particle effects to keep things lively, but having asteroids actually move is beyond the constraints of the platform. Q4: How will freeroam work for factions? A4: Freeroam is the first stage of development where factions will begin to make their mark on the galaxy. Consider it a dry-run for the full game, where bugs are worked out, features are continually added, and everything is working towards the official release. While it is unlikely any work done in this stage will carry over to the final game, considerations may be made for factions that establish themselves in freeroam to bypass the initial stages in the full release. Q5: Will you be able to damage ally ships in combat? A5: This particular question has the opportunity for hot debate - on one hand friendly fire not doing damage is a nice feature to have, especially in a 3d combat environment, on the other being able to punish allied ships that break protocol or wrong you in some way would be useful. Simple enough on the coding end that we might as well make it an option toggle-able by faction leadership. Q6: For structural damage to ground structures, do you require materials? How about vehicles and ships? A6: Yes. Physical repair of a vehicle or structure will require some percentage of the materials used in its original construction. Even having your ship replaced by the insurance feature may require a few bits of steel to reconstitute it. Object permanence is one of the core tenets of the RoVerse universe, having things magically appear for free, or throwing money at a building ravaged by war, doesn't align with that goal. Q7: What would warrant staff intervention in-game? A7: We'd like to interfere as little as possible in the struggles over the galaxy, but that doesn't mean we won't step in when necessary. Things like exploits will be reversed as best as possible, but faction actions within the realm of the game will be unhindered. Don't look to the staff to respawn the XXXL you worked months on that the pilot crashed into a star. Actions have consequences. Q8: Will you be able to differentiate between fighter launch and landing points? A8: The system we are currently using involves the 'hangar doors' shown a while back, that fighters can fly up to to land - the form of this door is inconsequential, just the proximity of a fighter is all that is required. Spawning on a carrier will use set spawn points placed around the ship, as a random system might clip you inside and end in your destruction. If you want these points placed around 'launch tubes' then that can be done. Q9: Will RoVerse use the allies/enemies function of the website groups? A9: The stability of such a system is currently in question, as Roblox looks to overhaul the groups feature. What is most likely to happen, is factions will be tied to a group, but all faction relations will be handled in-game on our end, to ensure stability. Q10: Will there be flares? A10: A definite possibility for fighter consumables, used to ward off missile tracking. Q11: Will gear and ships get rarity classifications, like destiny? A11: Faction weapons are unlikely to receive such a classification, as there are no random drops and new designs are unlocked through research, but the mention of exotic-tier ships like the golden Excalibur caught my attention. Perhaps there could be a way to unlock slightly better ships through some in-game action, not just skins changing ship aesthetics. 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 132nd 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 continued work on intra-system warp and a tweak to the credit system, while lordrex has made some changes to solar flare code. In an update to work we hinted at last week, we now have some official photos of the radar system update. Here you see all the points of interest in your local system arrayed out around the edge of your radar map. We might have to bump up the size of those icons yet, but the code behind it is complete and fully-functional. With that work out of the way, it was time to dive back into the warp systems, which involved creating a toggle-able HUD to display available warp targets very much like the radar system, allow the user to select and target that location, similarly to the way fighters target enemy fighters, and then tie that into the warp system, allowing you to vroom across the stars at high speed to your next destination. With lots of technical checks to make - like making sure you're on-target, out of the warp zone you were previously in, and not in a warp cooldown - a few tweaks needed to be made to the existing code, but nothing too substantial. The most complicated part was the custom intersection check, basically a raycast to make sure your ship is lined up with a valid warp sphere. While a regular old raycast would work in most situations, planets are larger than any sphere part can go, so there's nothing to intersect with. Sure, closestpoint would work, but with a max range of 1000 studs, a custom solution seemed like the better option. Target selection is rather straightforward - you toggle on the HUD that highlights your options, from planets to stations to jumpgates to wormholes. A simple right-click and it's highlighted - then all you have to do is align your ship with your destination. For that, we plan on two systems - manual, where you turn your ship until it intersects the valid sphere, and automatic, where your ship auto-turns towards the center of your target. Manual, of course, offers the greater flexibility when it comes to picking where exactly your ship will land, while automatic leaves the pilot free to fight off any pursuers chasing after them. Each should have their useful scenarios. The system is nearing completion, with successful jumps being made from spawn to planet, planet to planet, and planet to wormhole already. There are a few rough edges to clean up yet, but capital ships should be cruising the skies in no time. Another bit of code Idyllic worked in this week, was the thousands-separator for the credit bank. Nobody likes reading a bunch of zeroes trying to figure out just how much money they have, now you can tell in a single glance. For some reason roblox doesn't support adding commas in their string.format function. A shame, really. Lordrex made some changes to his flare code, this time adding a smooth transition from on-screen to off-screen. 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: What will happen to the RoVerse Alpha Dogfight after the Capital Update Releases? A1: We plan on uploading the Capital Update as a separate place, keeping the dogfight around as a classic game that you can play whenever you'd like. It has that fun arcade-y feel that I'd hate to lose. Q2: Can we design different turret models for civilian and military craft to fit their themes better? A2: Sure, we'll set it up so civilian craft pull from a different folder, if you want their equipment to look less militaristic and more industrial. Q3: Will you be able to equip engines to unused turret slots? A3: Uhh, no? Q4: Will there be alternative modes of transportation between planets, like space guns? A4: No. Your options for planet-to-planet travel are limited to flying your own ship, hopping in with a friend, or hopping on a transport ship. I recommend hitchhiking, its a great way to see the wonders of the galaxy on a budget. Q5: Will the minimap use the new viewportframe system? A5: Our radar is powered entirely by math, so there's no need to use viewportframes there. Planets might be a different story, but we'll keep a lookout for good uses of the technology moving forward. 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 129th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic and Juszl collaborated on some big details for the new map, Idyllic continued coding the fighter spawning functions, aiming to fix the fighter spawning system so we can spawn whichever ship wherever we want to. We also have some clarifications regarding attribute points for ships. Juszl has continued to work on his map for the Capital Update, this week completing the iconic central station that is the landmark for the map, where most battles will take place around and through. While not a station of any specific type, it certainly is full of cool details. Idyllic helped out, using blender to texture an energy beam mesh to spin around the top of the station, with beams used to create the pulsating effect. Pilots are warned against getting too close to this high-energy phenomena, as it may lead to malfunctions, ship destruction, and death. We're still solving the problems created when a developer left the team after obfuscating the code - we appreciate the work he did, but the state he left the code in leaves a lot to be desired, and that's why it's taken Idyllic two weeks to finally accomplish the surprisingly daunting task of modifying the system to spawn any of the new fighters on command. But good news! He has accomplished his task! In the end, it took choosing the nuclear option to disable chunks of code that ran the old hangar system, delete a folder of facade ships that the old system was based off of, and hunting down all the errors from there to find where to hook up the deploy button for the new and entirely rational format of the new hangar system. While this may seem like a minor and unimportant bit of progress, it is actually quite important to the completion of the game. As with any project picked up by a different coder down the line, things aren't exactly where they should be, and features have been added that weren't originally planned, but you still have to keep moving forward, hunt down what you need, and remove the excess, which we will keep doing. This week in the discord, a conversation brought up some questions about how 'attribute points' will work, which led to a discussion among a couple devs about their place in our plans. The problems involved dynamic attribute points making a tech tree redundant, or vice versa. Our decision on the matter proceeds thus: attribute points will be used exclusively by faction ship developers submitting ships, allowing them to tweak the stats of their ship from a baseline for the class, depending on their intended future use in their fleets. These points will be spent once and are not changeable by the end user. Further modification of ship stats, however, will still be possible through the purchase and installation of modules, unlocked by research that is available to both faction members and the solo player through station interfaces. Kitting is also a method available to modify stats - constructing a ship with a carrier kit selected will increase stats like hangar and cargo space, while decreasing armor and engine power - either as a selection during the building process, or as a rekit at a shipyard for added expense. Further details on these systems will be released in the future, but for now this is a rough guide on the current plans. 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: What incentives are there for exploration? A1: We'd like to think that a sense of adventure would be all the incentive you'd need to explore the far corners of the galaxy we're carefully putting together for you to explore, but if that isn't enough then there might be other rewards, as well as the tactical bonus you get for extensive knowledge of various systems. And who knows, maybe you'll find a mysterious artifact somewhere out in space. Q2: How dark will space be? A2: At least 7 dark. Really, though, space has it's extremes - fly too close to the sun and prepare to be blinded, explore the furthest reaches or in the shadow of a planet, and it will be dark as night, or more. Q3: Will there be a coded limit on how many large ships a faction can have? A3: Nope, the limits are all down to how much money a faction can rake in, how many resources they can collect, and how many pilots they can find to pilot capital ships. There may be a limit to how many XXXL capitals can be in a system at once, since they are exceptionally huge, but not to how many you can build at once. Q4: Can we scuttle our ships? A4: I wouldn't recommend it. Using your ships to combat enemies is still the most effective use of them, otherwise don't even bring them out to battle. Q5: How does warp work? A5: Idyllic is still in the process of coding the various portions of intra-system warp, but we can go into a bit of an explanation here. Warp isn't an instantaneous jump system, instead your ship moves at high speed from one location to another, requiring line of sight and minimal obstructions. Triggering the sequence, you select a destination that is provided on your HUD calculated as the shortest distance between two points of interest. You can always fly there the old fashioned way, and see what gets missed by those just rushing about, find asteroid fields plentiful in ores and establish a station as a new jump location, even. The image below shows a variety of flight paths through a hypothetical system, with dashes showing intrasystem warp engaged. Q6: Will there be warp bubbles or interdictors? A6: There won't be anything like that, no. Bring enough firepower, and you'll take down any target that gets in your way before they have a chance to flee, or be tactically-aware enough to know when to retreat without having to worry about the enemy having a magic bubble stopping you. Q7: Is there a cap on the number of factions allowed? A7: We originally planned on having a set number, but as we've been developing that has evolved - if you can carve out a niche in a far-flung corner of the galaxy, and stop any other factions from destroying your stuff, you deserve full faction status just as much as anyone else. Factions may rise and fall, there may be periods with lots of small factions, there may be times with only a few gigantic factions, fully dynamic.
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 127th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Lordrex has made excellent progress on the Capital Update, implementing the leaderboard gui we talked about last week, as well as varieties for a bunch of different gamemodes. Idyllic began implementation of his Capital functionality and main menu revisions, as well as created the most recent system mockup. We also discuss the implications of the new Roblox feature - automatic LOD. Last week we showed you the original graphics mockup for the game-end leaderboard. This week, Lordrex has spent a good chunk of time turning it into a functional board - better layout for coding, columns for stats we want to track, list layouts for the actual lists of players, and hooking all that up to the gamemode system so it actually shows valid data at the end of a match. With that out of the way, he jumped over to the in-game displays for important gamemode information - for instance in the KOTH gamemode, you'll be able to see the current top players, compared to team gamemodes that show the two team's stats that you are familiar with from the dogfight. Speaking of the dogfight - there is a relative simplicity and ease-of-use that came from the way information was displayed on-screen. The two teams are clearly defined, and the information is well-labeled, though the team identifier needs some work. But just plain numbers simply don't cut it for every situation - it's hard to tell how far you've come if you're heading for a goal as in koth, or fighting off destruction as in tdm. To that end we've been working on adding in a system of percentage bars, that you're all well-acquainted with from all over Roblox, most prominently in ammo displays. So far lordrex has the coding done, but the presentation is being worked on. We'll be sticking to the center display for this information moving forward, rather than sliding it off to the side of the screen where you have to actively go looking for it, which pulls you out of battle and could lead to disaster. Idyllic spent time this week working directly on the Capital Update code, removing the intro animation for the fighter hangar that had become severely broken over time, instead laying the groundwork for combining the work he has completed over the past few months with the dogfight alpha file. This meant trading the full-scale hangar for the space-scale fighter hangar that supports showing the player their ship options at native scale, rather than requiring a set of scaled-up ships rigged with a special format, among other code changes to better support the new menu systems. He also got a chance to work on the system mockup - a few weeks ago we determined our boundaries were going to be right around +- 50,000 studs from the origin, before floating point rounding errors caused significant warble among ship parts when moving. Since this limit was recently expanded to this size, and it doesn't look like there are any plans to move that any further in the near future, we're intent on developing an at-scale mockup of the layout of a typical system, from planets to asteroid fields to jumpgates to stars. Speaking of stars, this new limit will require us to reduce the actual size of stars in systems, but not their visual size. There are plenty of tricks up our sleeves when it comes to creating mirages, from billboard guis to fancy coding, that will let stars feel enormous, without taking up a significant portion of the system they reside in - made possible by the fact that of the objects in systems, the stars are pretty much the only things you won't be able to interact with up close (well, you can try, but I wouldn't recommend it). Roblox recently released a feature that we've been testing for its viability in making RoVerse Systems even better - Dynamic CSG LOD, or Level Of Detail. This feature takes parts that have been made using CSG, and at a distance greater than 500 studs, generates a lower-resolution model so save on rendering power. This is of particular interest to us in an application to the asteroid fields that will fill the 220 star systems available in the galaxy. While it doesn't function quite as intended, since RoVerse is scaled down significantly, it may work best for our needs in combination with a chunk system - rather than outright remove asteroids at significant distance from the player, we could thin them out, with a few low-res versions taking the place of an entire field of full-res asteroids. It is important to note that as of this newsletter, this feature only applies to CSG and there is no word on any future support for meshes, so its applications so far are rather limited, but luckily our csg asteroids built with such care by Heromaster and Domeboybeene should work for any immediate testing. It's actually hard to tell if it's working or not, so that either means it's doing a really good job, or it doesn't work at all. We'll keep testing and let you know. It's the holiday season again, and on behalf of the entire RoVerse Development team I'd like to wish you all a Merry Christmas. We'd like to thank you all for sticking with us through thick and thin these past two years, and hope you'll stick around a bit longer as we keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible on Roblox, all to support a fantastic clan community that keeps us excited and optimistic about the future we're all building together. --Idyllic Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will land vehicles have limited fuel? A1: Fuel is a feature we're still on the fence about throughout the game, but I will say this - if capital ships have fuel, expect ground vehicles to have fuel of some kind. Q2: Will you be able to build extremely large ships that can carry other ships inside them? A2: Definitely. If your ship has the hangar capacity, you can stuff it full of whatever ships you want - fighters, civilian craft, mining teams, even small capitals. Q3: In the capital alpha will there be a first-person view? A3: No. The views you've seen in the dogfight alpha and the newsletter previews are what you'll get. Care was taken in the design and coding of the camera and its relationship to the ship you're piloting, throwing in a cockpit surface view would only be disorienting. We found that a third person camera view was the best balance of visibility and control for piloting both fighters and capitals. Q4: Will RoVerse use FiB? A4: Of course! We waited a whole year in anticipation for it to be released and make our games look as epic as veds pictures made them look, it'd have to be extremely broken for us not to. 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 126th 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 continued work on Capital features from Idyllic, coding work from lordrex on gamemode and menu systems, Juszl has begun work on a new map for the Update, and skinny has progress work on a medium Capital turret. First up is the weapons work Skinny has been up to. We have here a double-barreled Plasma turret fitting into the medium turret category, comprised of 2 (two) single plasma turret barrels welded together, showing the adept engineering talents of the designers over at the Celestia Vega Defense Incorporated. Early progress this week involved defining the form of the turret, then going in and adding detail as needed. With results looking excellent. Earlier versions had neon loops at the ends, but they kicked the triangle count through the roof, so neon spikes have been substituted. Juszl has been hard at work on his studies, but also a new map for the Update. Featuring mysterious and alien rock formations, and a sinister environment, intrepid explorers and seasoned fleet commanders alike are cautioned against entering this field of battle, for within it lie the wrecks of countless precursors who have fallen before. Building a map for the Update isn't as straightforward as setting up a randomized asteroid generator, adding a few spawn points and calling it a day - real planning has to be involved to create an interesting map with variety and opportunity for unique engagements. Picture your favorite FPS map - there should be different paths to take, different heights to be at with opportunities for advantages and disadvantages based on your team tactics. In space we have a lot more degrees of freedom for players in combat, so to keep the map interesting special care needs to be taken. A feature that sets us apart from other games in the genre is the variety of scale in our ships - from the minuscule Excalibur to the behemoth Capulus, but that also leads to a problem - designing maps to work at different scales. A Capital ship may want a clear area with lots of large rocks and debris to maneuver around, but to a fighter a large empty space means being stranded if they get caught. This doesn't mean there won't be gulfs of space, just that we have to be careful with their placement. Lordrex has taken on the task up updating the dogfight alpha's ui elements that tie into the gamemodes we plan on adding, making UI mockups like the image below into functioning team lists and leaderboards. This is no easy task, though - these menus were designed by a visual artist, not a ui designer, and as such aren't properly set up to code right out of the box. But they are pretty sweet. Idyllic's work this week focused primarily on the systems that have been in development for the past few weeks, like shields and nameplates, and a few older features like lights and engine effects - rigging and adding them to the rest of the roster of ships we have awaiting the Capital Update. This is no small task, however, so he's been working on processes and automation to make the whole thing easier. Part of this task was rigging up a high-quality mesh created by skinny to test the triangle limits of the system, as a sort of impromptu-capital ship. This 400k tri, 56 meshpart ship functioned perfectly under normal conditions, casting a positive light on future ships having a quite substantial triangle count. The gif above shows the hitmarker system developed this week as an addition to the shields demoed last week, in it's most basic form. The effects will eventually be scaled to fit the size of the ship they're hitting, as well as consider the size of the projectile hitting them - a pea shooter wouldn't leave a mark on a battle tank. The images below are a selection of the ships that have been fully rigged and are ready for combat. 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 managing stations work? A1: The idea is that a Faction leader assigns someone the role of stationmaster, who has access to all the controls involved in managing and operating a station - for an industrial station this would include setting prices to purchase ore from independent contractors, for a military station it would be managing fleet storage and access. These players would have access to the menu systems that allow all sorts of controls. Q2: Can faction devs have input on their ship stat style? A2: Faction-submitted ships will be able to be customized to faction specifications within reason - if your faction prefers meters of armor over advanced shield systems, we will buff your ship armor stats and debuff shield power. A faction has already requested such variations, talk to Idyllic if you have something else in mind. Q3: How does the inter-system drive that ships that can't fit in jump gates work. Is it like cynosural fields where there has to be a ship on the other side making a beacon? A3: Our current plans are nowhere near that complex - a large Capital would trigger the wormhole device, and it would connect with the nearest system in that direction. Vectors will be calculated to determine the exit point of these temporary rifts. Q4: Can you upgrade your FTL drive for more speed? A4: We don't plan on allowing this at the moment, as ftl is planned to be a really fast speed close to the max the server can handle us slinging players around at. I'd look for more useful modules to add first, like shield enhancers or repair bots. Q5: Can you upgrade turrets to be more powerful than usual? A5: This isn't currently planned. There are the different turret classes and mounts, and the variations between fixed, gimbal, and turret types, as well as faction asset custom stats, but other than that it will be a fair playing field. Q6: What would happen if an XXXL rammed an outpost? A6: Someone would get fired. Imagine going through the months to years of effort to construct the largest most devastating weapon in the galaxy, then destroying it by crashing it into a solid object. I highly recommend using the actual weapons we so helpfully provided on ships to attack things, not destroying yourself by running into an immovable object. Q7: Can Capitals dock with other Capitals? A7: No. Find a station or use a shuttlecraft to transfer personnel between ships. Q8: Can ships honk? A8: I just might put our best audio engineers to work on making that happen... Q9: How long does it take to get a ship rigged and ready? A9: Now that Idyllic has had plenty of practice, rigging a capital for flight is a matter of minutes, when the ships are set up nicely to let him work. Grouping attachment points for weapons together, engine particle emitters, and nameplate surfaces makes his job easier, as well as placing a center core for the ship and anchoring all the parts before submitting it. Q10: Will lunar mining be a thing? A10: There will be all sorts of mining possible, from using a mining ship in space armed with lasers that eat through rock, to landing on planetary bodies with a hand tool or heavy equipment to scour the surface for minerals - moons being no exception. 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 123rd 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 a number of features added to the Capital Update code by Idyllic, including an addition to the explosion system, the base code for inter- and intra-system warp of ships, a proximity alert and bank UI addition, work on some weapons and weapon effects from Skinny, as well as an update on where lordrex is. Other than that, the holiday week was pretty quiet. To get us started this week was a suggestion that came from the community as feedback on a feature we demoed a few newsletters ago - ship explosions. Our original version was sure to make a large and visually strong impact when something as expensive as a Capital ship was destroyed in combat, but it could be improved. Provided with a concept video from another space game, Idyllic set about adding in more, smaller-scale explosions along the hull of the ship before the full reactor-breach explosion that leaves a pile of rubble in the skies. Since the ship is already provided with a hitbox, and the math for collisions and bouncing was already done, adding in smaller explosions was only a matter of a few lines of code slipped in before the big bang. There will be further refinement to keep the explosions closer to the ship, as you can see in the gif was a problem, and there may be some edge cases that ships aren't convex that may need a bit more work, but we can chalk it up as a new feature. Also included in the suggestion was the loss of helm control once your ship is down but not exploded, which coincidentally was already included as a feature. On the UI front, recent additions to the Capital Update required new UI elements, like a bank to display how many credits a player has accrued, and other useful HUD info like a proximity alert function that players may find extraordinarily useful as they explore the dark and dangerous regions of space that fill the galaxy. Now you'll be warned in time to take action when you stumble into range of a hostile station or pirate outpost, strange nebula, or even when the daring adventurer gets too close to a star. Idyllic also dove back into Capital ship functionality, adding in the basic functions that will govern warping from point to point within a star system, but will also be useful for the future implementation of jump gates and wormholes, which should receive their initial testing in the Capital Update. Below we have a demo of camera FOV scaling and ship speed being pushed to the max, though destination calculation and selection, along with the other visual effects will come at a later time. No more will you have to plod your way through the barren voids between asteroid fields, stations, and jump gates - warp systems shorten that time significantly, though as you can see it will not be instantaneous. Lordrex has wrapped work on the station replication system, and has joined Idyllic in working on the Capital Update, already implementing a data saving system to record your stats across sessions, which will be an important expansion on what was available in the Dogfight Alpha. His help on this portion of the project should speed things along. Skinny took it upon himself to create a new, higher-resolution plasma turret of the default variety, which then led to him working on particle flare effects. 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 we have weaponless fighters to use as scouts? A1: Sure - just because a light fighter can have 2 mounts, doesn't mean you have to have a turret mounted there. Weaponless ships could find a variety of uses, from quick and uncatchable scout craft to diplomatic missions between factions. Q2: Will there be secrets in the galaxy? Idyllic statues? A2: Yes. You'll just have to explore and find out. Q3: Is Scarblade a good name for the infantry or to edgy? A3: If it fits the theme your faction is going for, I say go for it. People call everything 'edgy' nowadays, doesn't mean you should change anything to try and avoid that. Q4: How many ships does a faction need to build? A4: Technically, you could get by with a single capital, a single fighter, and a mining ship at minimum, if you aren't using default ship models that the devs have built, but unless it fits some sort of faction lore that you don't have any ships I wouldn't recommend applying without a few of each. Q5: Will you be able to build on moons or asteroids? A5: Moons, most likely. Asteroids, fairly unlikely. Moons can be included in the larger-scaled planet servers, for some awesome planet-satellite action, while asteroids are out in system server at a smaller scale, and will only be accessible by using a ship to navigate around them. 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 112th 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 work from Idyllic on various Capital systems, including newly updated effects and work on Capital-Fighter interactions. Legomadamada has continued work on asteroid field generation, with progress in differing biomes. Also, coding work from Idyllic on a feature that has been on hold for quite some time, and news about lordrex's mighty battle. In preparation for upcoming work involving the mixing of the two groups of ships into the chaos of combat, Idyllic began adding a few new features to capital ship builds. Namely, holographic displays highlighting hangar bay doors on Capital ships, for when fighters need to land and restock, or when the battle is won and it's time to return to base. Because of the modular nature of ship classing, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to marking out hangar doors on ships themselves, but by using a common display system that lights up when a fighter gets close to a friendly ship, new pilots will find it much easier to land on a carrier vessel. While working with graphics, Idyllic decided it was about time to update the default engine effects used on the Avenger. Since forever ago, they've been composed of two different particle emitters, and one was a weird triangle and circle decal that looked really weird. So that had to go. Now it's a much more refined and pleasing particle effect that most players will have to look at 90% of the time while cruising the stars and dodging asteroids. Speaking of asteroids, Legomadamada has continued with system asset generation, bringing in a variety of asteroid biome assets that were created by Danthein and Heromaster such a long time ago. Smaller tweaks include more ellipsoid than square now, and have a lovely clustering tendency to keep things interesting while you're out mining the starways. No more will asteroid fields be evenly distributed rocks that turn mining into a boring and tedious exercise - it's up to you to choose whether to clear the fringes completely, or dive into the center where maneuvering gets tough and you might not make it out alive. From dusty fragments of worlds to molten chunks of irradiated mass, these different types of asteroids will keep miners busy. Spawning all over the galaxy, and with exclusive minerals contained within, the perfect place to start a mining corporation. He also did some tests with spawning debris fields using the same code, but it'll need further tweaking to make it look right, right now it's spawning way too many aerial dishes to look realistic... But it should be a nice addition to main hull wrecks we'll be spawning in space. For quite a while now, there has been code in the Capital flight system that deals exclusively with collisions. With Capital ships the system needed to be a bit more complex - one stud fighters should bounce off of pretty much everything without leaving a mark, but when it comes to sometimes tremendous Capital ships, a bit more math was required, as usual. Things bigger than your ship have the traditional boing response to your collision, while objects like rocks and debris smaller than you don't. If possible we'd love to move the smaller things out of the way, but if that's reasonable remains to be seen. We know you've waited in anticipation all week, and we have good news about lordrex and that mighty bug he was facing down last week. Effecting the replication system, it was an important bug to both diagnose and fix, and he managed to quash it with great skill. With that challenge completed, he can now move forward with more exciting features. Since we debuted the RoVerse wiki to the public last week, we've had quite a few new pages popping up for all sorts of applicant factions, subfactions, and organizations. One page in particular we'd like to highlight is the Faction Politics page, where you can track the assumed status of faction to faction relations throughout the galaxy. All sorts of different groups are already set up, with variations in style from naturally hostile xenophobes to a web of alliances, with only room to expand into the future with all sorts of different political affiliations. No more do clans have to follow the same format with varying levels of aggression, now you can be whoever you want to be, and act however you want your faction to act. 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 players be able to purchase personal residences on planets or elsewhere? A1: An early newsletter mentioned rentable apartments on stations, but never saw any advancement beyond that since then. Personal spaces aren't at the top of our list of features, but it's definitely on there. If that means that we allow landmark teleports to personally-held places, or something more complex in-game, remains to be seen. Q2: Will there be any big role-play supporting mechanics early on? A2: With all the work that factions are going to developing their own style and personality, it would be a waste to lock players into ships permanently, where they can't get a chance to express themselves. I would expect that stations would be hubs of activity for roleplay purposes, as well as faction locations on planets later on. If you have any specific requests, we can try and work them in. Q3: What sort of options do ships have for fast travel? A3: There was some confusion in the community discord that I'd like to clarify - jumpgates are placed on wormholes, that allow near-instantaneous transport billions of kilometers from system to system. Within systems, a 'jump drive' type option will be available to move between landmark locations within a system. If a faction chooses to call this movement something else, like gravity drive or FTL, that is up to them, but the mechanics are the same. Q4: Will there be logistics ships? A4: A class like that is still up in the air. If we can find enough uses for them, or capital combat requires them, then we'll look to adding ships that boost stats of nearby vessels. It's possible that we might encourage fleet formations by applying these effects, without requiring non-combat role ships in already restrictive server counts. Q5: How will repairing work in-game? A5: Energy-driven shields are your first and most flexible line of defense against attacks, and recover from damage relatively quickly. Armor plating can be repaired with consumables like 'droid workers' and recover some hull health, but not 100%. Over time damage will accumulate, requiring a ship to return to a friendly station for full repair, encouraging effective placement of Shipyard stations for maintaining fleets. Q6: What ships can we store in Capital ships? A6: Our guess at this point, anything you can fit. A while ago when we put together our rough calculations spreadsheet, we factored in mid-range kitting for hangar space to see what sort of reasonable numbers we could come up with. Since our capacity calculations are based directly on ship volume, there is no way a ship larger than yours could pop out the hangar doors, which also means that XXXL ships could theoretically hold an L within them, itself with a fleet of fighters at its disposal. Is this the most viable combat strategy? We'll see. 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 111th 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 continued work quashing bugs, dropped in the radar module, and experimented a bit with mining lasers. Lordrex fought an epic battle to the death with one bug in particular (stay tuned to hear if he survived or not) and a new member of the team made some important contributions to asteroid field generation. Let's go! Idyllic has had a list of bugs to work on this week, with varying success in tracking them down and fixing them. Switching Capitals from a direct rotation mode to an inertial system like the fighters use had a few kinks to work out, and a few test pilots died from the excessive g-forces that appeared in testing. Fine-tuning the inertia system will be an ongoing and intensive process. We'll continue tweaks until ships are flying just how we like them, which will be much slower than the nimble fighters of the Dogfight Alpha, but still recognizable as our own style. We have a new ship all rigged up, and though it isn't a military craft, being able to rig and test it is an important step for the future. We have here the WTT-017 Mining and Cargo vessel, with a pirate-modded laser turret mounted on top. We thought it interesting to show here because it shows the importance of turret transit speed - if your ship is fast and nimble and turns on a dime, a slow-transit turret may not be able to rotate to stay on the mouse fast enough. Consider spending some points boosting transit speed, rather than damage or fire rate, to ensure effective performance. "Was that a mining ship you added?" asks an inquisitive reader. "What led to you adding that specific type of ship to the game?" You may have heard the news this week about the release of the live CSG operation api - you can now code unions and negations to happen while a game is running. For those of us with mining lasers and giant asteroids in our game plan, the chance to cut a hole in real time is a really exciting opportunity. Unfortunately, the system isn't nearly robust enough to support real-time mining just yet - testing shows that even our low-poly unioned asteroids that heromaster made for us are too complex for the system to cut holes in. We'd have to reduce asteroids to cubes before it'd work, and at that point we might as well use smooth terrain. So we will wait on that feature, testing routinely, until it becomes possible to rely on, because cutting holes through rocks in space would be a really cool feature. For now, we'll stick to shooting mining lasers at veins of minerals lodged in the surfaces of the giant hunks of rock orbiting stars, planets, and other dense objects in the futuristic old-fashioned way. You may have noticed in the above images a few new features relating to Capital ship piloting - yes that's right, we have dropped in the radar module meaning talented ship captains can now home in on their quarry from beyond visual distance. Still works like a charm. When ships aren't spinning uncontrollably killing their crew, the full-range movement model really starts to shine. Attack from above, attack from below, from the side, from an angle, fly circles around your enemies - it's all possible. This isn't a 2D battlefield of naval ships, it's a battle for the stars in a completely wide open 3D world! This week lordrex faced down a bug of epic proportions, one that threatened to sink the entire project into years of debugging and re-coding. The stage was set - system asset loading and replication, the stakes outlined - 220 star systems in peril; it was a fight to the death. But who emerged victorious? Find out next week. We'd like to welcome a new member to our team - Legomadamada from over at CCS has taken on the fun and exciting task of star system generation. While we have the database of stars and planets, we've lacked any progress on generating fields of asteroids for players to mine for minerals, gas clouds to obscure and amaze, and all sorts of other fun environmental zones for the adventurous player to explore. He will be creating a system that is run by seed, but that creates a complex environment that is unique from system to system, so everywhere you turn there are new and exciting places to find. Early work is promising, such as this cluster of over a thousand asteroids of varying sizes. Each biome of asteroids is made from a set of about 8 meshes, so loading time for an entire field is not outrageous. Color changes and textures add flavor, while changing scale and rotation makes for an outstanding complexity. If you have any ideas for interesting environmental forms, send them by Idyllic and we'll see about adding them to the generation system. In the past week we finally publicly debuted the RoVerse wiki, a community-driven enterprise for players to fill out information they discover on their travels, search for important stuff to know before they head out into the black, or even discuss the various happenings of the galaxy. If you're a Faction hopeful, feel free to add a page about your faction, or look through the faction list page to find out what other players are planning. We plan to add information on planets, systems, minerals, and all sorts of other interesting fact pages as development progresses. 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: Do all the weapon types work so far? A1: All the ones shown in newsletters are passably working, but not completely polished. Mines are going to be added yet, and haven't been coded. Q2: How will shield regeneration work? A2: Similar to the way it works in the Dogfight Alpha - after a period of no damage, it starts regenerating. This exact time, and how fast it regenerates, will vary per ship. Q3: Will player-generated wormholes connect to a jump gate in an adjacent system, or pop out in a relative location? A3: The easy way would be to sync up with the closest wormhole in the adjacent system, but that sort of defies the point of making your own. So the other option is to either pick a random location in the system, or calculate the angle from where you started to where you are trying to go. With the inherent instability of wormhole travel, we'll leave that up to chance. Q4: Has the newsletter come out yet? A4: By the time you're reading this, yes. Q5: What sort of stats on turrets will be customizable? A5: While we don't have the official list done just yet, expect stats like rate of fire, transit speed, and power consumption to be on the table. Q6: Will anyone stop me from putting 50 beam turrets on the front of an XXL and firing them like the death star? A6: Layout and firing patterns will be based on ship shape, I don't think we'd try and stop you on that front - on the other hand 50 turrets is probably a little overboard for what will be possible. Q7: Will using headlights and beam turrets reduce fuel/power reserves? A7: The topic of fuel for ships has come up a few times. It would be neat to have refueling ships moving with convoys to ensure they have enough fuel to get where they're trying to go, but it does add the problem of getting stranded somewhere. We'll need a bit more time to think about it, but it's still on the table. As for weapons drawing power, we'll have to wait and see. Q8: What are the average dimensions of a star system? A8: I don't have any hard numbers for you, but we plan on using the full 100k render distance and beyond as best we can. Using our chunk system to load only assets near the player like asteroids and debris, while turning far away objects into surfaceguis will keep things manageable on the lag front. The full size of a star system will never be explored, with combat and construction focusing on a few landmark points throughout systems, like planets, gates, and asteroid fields, while mining may venture a bit further. In other words - very, very big. Q9: Will there be random wormholes that lead you to dark and dangerous places? A9: You might just have to wait and find out. Q10: Can you dock and despawn ships, or must they stay in-game all the time? A10: You'll be able to drop anchor at stations or use a feature called 'subspace parking' that shifts your vessel into another dimension while you're away. No need to worry about pirates stealing your ships at anchor. Q11: What factions do the devs enjoy the most? A11: The creative ones. Don't be afraid of gimmicks, sometimes a really cool feature makes a faction stand out. The Contagion idea that died a while back had one of the most original concepts I've seen, which was pretty much a gimmick. Any factions that go the extra mile to be unique and original are my favorites. 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 108th 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 continued working on Ship Customization, adding that category to the 'in-progress' on the Roadmap, and making quite a bit of progress on it too. We've got an update on station NPCs and their actions from Stratiz, and Lordrex has continued work on asset saving and replication. Last week we showed you the in-progress version of Idyllic's stat comparison chart for different turret mounts. Early this week, he had completed the math behind dividing the percentage of maximum value, into 5 chunks, and after quashing a few bugs related to underflowing and overflowing the chart, as well as some aesthetic changes to make the stats more visible against the blackness of space, he had a working version! In the demo below, the stats are all randomized for testing purposes, so don't write them down; also, the Blank turret variety has been set to 50% max, to demonstrate both Bonus and Penalty for turret selections. Here we have a working version, where the stats of each turret are a Bonus to the 0 stats of a blank turret location, without any overflow, as well as the system working on a different ship. Quite the achievement. Unfortunately it also brought up a bug in how previous turrets on display were removed, but that was an easy fix. Moving on from the stats, it was time to work on the interaction between players, and which mount they have selected. Previously, that involved clicking the arrows to the right and left of the selection, but clicking on buttons isn't always the most efficient way to quickly find the turret you want to change out. So on a suggestion from lordrex, Idyllic added scroll-wheel functionality, with the ability to add controller support in the future, making switching between turrets a breeze. The first iteration of camera movement that avoided clipping into the ship when a turret on the far side was selected, looked a little like the zoom was spazzing out, and wasn't nearly as fluid as we wanted. So Idyllic did a bit more research, added some more code, and added tweening. Now the camera smoothly transitions from point to point, and the user can tell just where the turret they have selected is at, with the added bonus that their camera isn't jumping all over the place making them dizzy. Continuing on his excellent work streak, Idyllic added Ship selection menus, that let you scroll through the ships that are available for purchase or unlock, also with scroll-wheel functionality. For now we only have a few rigged up, we'll be adding some more in the coming weeks. The demo layout we showed a few weeks ago featured a turret location graph, but unfortunately it would be too complicated to code, and would require renders of every ship added to the game from several angles, which could easily grow into thousands of renders, so we had to drop that feature. We figure the tweened camera movements between turret slots to be a fair replacement, as well as the ability to orbit your ship while in dock was much more functional for locating where you're putting your turrets than a graph. In place of the graph menu, we're placing a selection description for both ship selections and turret selections. In 300 characters, we provide a description of the weapon you have selected to mount to that location. Information, like their most useful scenario, to charge sequences or bullet velocity, that aren't covered in the stat comparisons fall within this paragraph, as well as the cost and confirmation of purchase. The descriptive menu is identical when it comes to descriptions of the different Capital ship options you have available, with descriptions of the ship's turret layout, the ship's expected handling and speed, and armor capacity. Factions submitting ships to be added to the Capital Update are encouraged to write their own descriptions of their ships, with useful info like mount layouts, illustrative depictions of the ships handling and armor, or it's designed use in conflicts. Just keep it around 300 characters long, so it fits in the box. Next on the list, ship stat comparisons. Please note that again, these data values are for testing purposes and aren't official stats for the shown ships. A simple matter of setting up the stat tables, and changing the pointers to the capital stats, and the math and case logic from the turret stats converts right over to ship comparisons. After fixing a few bugs regarding overflow and underflow, the stat comparison feature works like a charm. Now it's easy to tell exactly what effect changing ships or turrets is going to have on your combat-readiness, though you'll have to figure out for yourselves the right balance between speed, firepower and defenses. With as many features as Idyllic has added in the past week, it is important to test as many variables and situations as possible. With that in mind, Idyllic took to rigging and importing a few new ships to add to the lineup, including this Capital from the Cyber Sovereignty... ... which tested a new percentage of stats, as well as the system's handling of XL classed ships, the Distronian Renegade... ... which tested updates to a ship's physical model after the first rigging process, as well as revealed a bug in the stat code when a value was exactly 1/5 max power, that was quickly fixed, and the Ninazu FrigateB... ... which looked too cool to not rig up. He also rigged up another ship from the default line, one of Diesoft's ships, the Ironclad. At the beginning of this week, the extent of ship loading was a pseudo-random loadout of turrets occurring with the click of one button - very useful for deploying immediately to test capital movement and firing mechanics for the new weapon types. Idyllic's goal this week was to add as many of the ship customization features as possible, as well as getting back to the state that you could deploy the ship and fly off into the stars. With a goal in mind, he pushed through quite a bit of code and design and rigging work to make that happen, and I'm proud to say that he accomplished his goal. We are to the point where you can enter ship customization and selection, edit your loadout of turrets, or choose a different capital ship entirely, confirm your selections through the 'SELECT SHIP' and 'MOUNT TURRETS' button, and fly out of the hangar. While we're still working on transferring turret control between the two scripts, it should be an easy addition to make in time for next week. This significant step forward means that actual combat between customized ships isn't all that far off, though there are a few things that need completion first, like replication, now that experimental mode is permanently enabled. (see floating characters falling through the void instead of being invisible) And as with any good slate of testing, we didn't just launch the Avenger from the shipyard and call it good... Though in the future, deployment of Capitals will take place from the gamemode menu, not directly from the edit menu. On that front, this week, Lordrex has created a list of gamemodes that we'd like to add to the game to keep things fresh and exciting over time, as well as test out future features of the Factions Beta and Full Release stages, and we'd like you to help us out. In our community discord, we will be creating a new voting post with a list of gamemodes, we'd like you to vote for the ones that sound like the most fun, and we'll focus development on those first. Now the usual gamemodes like TDM or FFA won't be included in the list, since those are straightforward and will definitely be added, but let us know what other variants pique your interest. Through the testing process involved with launching a variety of ships with a variety of loadouts, we realized that we had the opportunity to give a graphic reason for meshing each faction ship, even though it was more work, and the efficiency of meshParts is questionable at times - our ships move through space using the SetPrimaryPartCFrame function, which, though useful, has a problem with rounding. Accuracy errors build up over time, slowly tearing the models it is used on apart, like below. On the other hand, if a ship is made out of two or 3 parts, we can fix these errors periodically by saving relative locations, and resetting the parts. With a large number of individual parts, such a process would be either nearly instant but slow you down significantly, or an extensive and ugly process at a slow rate. With 2-10 meshParts, resetting offsets live won't be a problem at all. Another benefit of meshing ships in blender, is a much more accurate volume calculation for class assignment. Below we have the Protector L Capital. Using the bounding approximation, it's volume was about 30,300 cubic studs, putting it in the L class. By meshing it, and using an inbuilt 3D printing volume calculation plugin, we can get a much more accurate calculation for weirdly shaped ships like the Protector. Using this method, the volume is calculated at 31,525 - still an L class ship, but slightly larger, resulting in higher calculations that could lead to lower speed, but higher armor. It's also a much fairer system, that doesn't rely on the rigger's best judgement. A rather simple task, one would think. Until there isn't enough seating for everyone and a fight breaks out. And easier for some to manage than others... No longer just wandering dancing and waving robots, these station NPC's have their first activity to participate in that is tied to a specific location. Exciting work. Lordrex has continued his work on asset saving and replication, running a successful test today of certain mechanics, and he may draw up a diagram when his work is completed, but for now all we get is a status update - things are in-progress, and working just fine. 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 see neighbor factions when choosing a home planet, so you don't end up next to the xenophobes? A1: There's a careful balance that must be struck between fog of war covering a map, and blinding players to everything not currently on their screen. A map of faction control and home planets should be readily available, and might even be live-updated on our website, but you won't be able to see installations or defenses in systems or on planets from a distance. Q2: Will factions be able to blacklist who can or cannot buy their ships? A2: Definitely. If just anyone could buy your ship designs, we'd have a huge problem on our hands. Pirates flying flagships, recruits in enemy fighters - truly a mess. Q3: Will there be such things as magic attacks? A3: They aren't currently on our list of planned features, but as a compromise, you could have lore and designs for weapons that involve mystical power sources or effects. A plasma cannon is basically a magic missile launcher, all things considered. Q4: Will crashing into things be a valid attack strategy? A4: Even if you have a cheap ship or lots of money, shooting something will always be a more effective attack than crashing your ship into an opponent's. We'll allow a little damage, but we don't want to encourage running over fighters with capital ships as the best strategy. Q5: Can multiple factions use the same ship design? A5: An interesting concept. I suppose there could be lore behind two factions having the same design, and while I'd prefer they have slight differences to distinguish them, it could work. Of course, you could always sell your ships to another faction. Q6: Will there be a limit to the number of factions based on the number of available colors for the map? A6: Not that I can foresee. Since it's likely that two or more factions might pick similar colors for their primary faction color, we'll probably have a way to draw edges of factions that doesn't involve just color differences. And you can always click on a system on the map to see who controls it currently. Q7: Will ships be able to cut other ships with wing blades? A7: An interesting concept to be sure, but not one the game engine could support right now. Basically due to limitations on the server end, we can only do a shell of a ship that you can shoot at and trigger damage, and with replication being inconsistent, flying close and cutting another ship with a wing blade isn't exactly possible. Cool idea though, maybe in the future. 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 104th 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 continued work on system travel and object loading systems, to bring the skies to life; we have work on the last weapon variant for the initial Capital Update - flak; and we have begun the process of meshing a variety of Capital ships in preparation for their addition to the Capital Update. Let's get started. Last week we showed you the first steps in the player persistence system, with a player's last system saved and loaded when they rejoin. As part of that test, Idyllic and Lordrex met up in a single star system by following wormholes towards each other. This week, Idyllic struck out on his own with the goal of being the first to visit every star system on the map. 220 distant and unique systems, all connected by interstellar pathways, and some code. After about 2 hours and 22 systems visited, he had to put his adventure on hold, for it was much longer than he had anticipated. Below you can trace the path of his journey. Though he only managed to visit 1% of the galaxy, he did get to experience some interesting sights, including the skybox variations that come with visiting systems in the different sectors of the galaxy. The ominous red haze of the Great Hollow, to the vortexes of the Abyss, to the clear skies of the Core Systems. Travel between systems was easy, it was the walking to the next jumpgate within the systems that took the most time. And he only got lost once! On the coding end of things, Lordrex spent this week designing and laying out his future plans for object loading and replication between servers. We'd like to clarify a design point on the number of active servers and players per server - out goal is to be able to support up to 100 players engaging in faction v faction battles within the same server, and if this is possible we might restrict the number of active servers per system, to simplify defense of faction stations, and prevent serverhopping. If it is not possible, and systems can only hold 30 or so players at a time, parallel server count wouldn't be limited. In both instances, it would be important to sync the data between parallel servers as time goes on - a faction builds a new station, an attack destroys an outpost module, a system changes ownership. The system behind this must be robust enough to keep track of numerous servers all updating values, detect malfeasance, and reply to all active servers with the current status of stations, outposts, planets, wrecks, and any other persistent objects we'd like to maintain in a star system. To demonstrate the loading system, we loaded a tree. There is a reason behind the choice of a tree - we're also saving orientation as well as location, so we needed an object with a top, and directional sides to easily determine it was loading in the proper direction. Science. The last weapon variant to be coded before the Capital Update releases is the flak turret. A variant on a missile class, at least in the code, the flak turret launches a projectile with a fuse for detonation, rather than a proximity trigger. After a short distance, the projectile explodes violently, damaging anything within range of the explosion significantly, and shredding anything beyond with shrapnel. Used as anti-aircraft in WWII, flak has a long history in taking out small attack craft, so defending your planetary bases, to keeping fighters off your capital ship's flanks will be a breeze. They also function as a useful anti-missile screening system, when deployed correctly. Their explosion leaves an invisible sphere of debris, that destroys any missiles that come into contact with it. With this extra functionality we hit a few roadblocks, but nothing that can't be overcome, and we hope to see a fully functional demo next week. Also this week, Skinny has taken on the task of meshing the 15 or so Capital ships we plan on including in the Capital Update. Ships of all sizes, from the small and fast Bolitho, to the giant Protector, all cut down from hundreds of moving parts, to under 10. While this will require extra care managing loading times, the performance increases from 10 parts moving over a hundred is substantial, and well worth the effort. In the process of meshing developer-created ships, Skinny did run into a problem - object format exports of CSG v1, where negation was used to change the color of some faces of a union, do not work, requiring that these faces be manually selected and recolored. This greatly increases the workload and the time spent on meshing models, so for faction-submitted models this will not be allowed. We recommend you turn on the 'Use Part Color' value, and add separate parts to color different areas. We also have another important update to inform you about this week - our first public roadmap. Available here, we have laid out all the progress we have made, and the future steps we will be taking as we move past the Capital Update and on to the full release. We will be updating this map as we complete features and release updates, so check back there if you ever lose track of our progress. 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 weren't any pressing question from the community this week, if you have any of your own, post them in the #dev_questions channel in the 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! |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |