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-eighth 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 working hard on quite a few cool features. We've got a close look at Skinny's new Capital ship, a release of Animula's RoVerse OST, some miscellaneous build work, and as always, some beautiful screenshots from Vedrakkerous. Also, we have an event announcement to, well, announce, so stay tuned to the end of the newsletter. First up we have Skinny's Capital ship that we showed the in-progress photos of last week. Fully detailed, this ship is truly a massive vehicle of war, and will definitely make any fleet a force to be dealt with. This ship counts as the first XXXL capital, the largest capital ships to fill the skies. Ved's been continuing his work with everything to do with atmospheric effects, with some more unbelievable photos that show just how cool this game will be. And not just RoVerse, with the right dedication, any game on the platform could be as breathtaking as these photos. Skinny and WhoToTrus have also spent some time mocking up and building a security drone, to make sure that any station is as safe as possible. As long as their AI doesn't go rogue and try to kill any innocent station visitors, civilians should feel safe with such advanced technology watching over their every move. Our other builders have been building more assets to spice up planetary bases, like these floodlights to illuminate the wilderness around your base. With these high-powered bulbs set up, you won't miss a single enemy approaching your base, or you can set up a wild rave out in the darkness. It's all up to you! Robust has been working on designing his own naval ship. I can't wait to sail it around those vast uncharted seas. We are happy to announce that Animula has released the RoVerse Soundtrack for your enjoyment! We've been holding on to these for the past few weeks, making sure they were perfect. And now the time has come for everyone to be able to enjoy these awe-inspiring songs. And be sure to nominate him and RoVerse for the Best Original Soundtrack in this year's Bloxxy's! You can enjoy the soundtrack here: https://soundcloud.com/animula_musicdev/sets/roverse-original-soundtrack You may have been wondering what happened to the Dogfight Alpha Capital Update that we talked about a few weeks ago. I'm here to say that we have not stopped working on it, it's just taking a bit longer than we first expected to perfect everything. We don't want to release an unfinished or buggy game just to meet a deadline. To make up for this delay, we're happy to announce that we will be hosting a Dogfighting Tournament to find the best pilot and team of pilots in the galaxy! You can sign up below for either the 2v2, 4v4, 8v8 challenge, just have your Roblox usernames handy. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17KKApFQwTK-EW0uWbNQlWvq0i7OXem1Hf4YVh4SVOn4/viewform?edit_requested=true We'll have more information about the date of the tournament soon. 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 be the limits of the character race morphs? A1: We'll have more information about these in the coming weeks, we're still testing the best way to do this efficiently and effectively. Q2: Will you be able to travel at high speed within a system? A2: Jumping between systems is the fastest mode of travel, but limited to between jump gates in neighboring systems. But within systems, ships can travel fairly quickly if equipped with a booster system, like the fighters in the dogfight alpha. Bigger ships might be able to travel faster, but they will use a whole bunch more power, and you don't want to slow down at the other end without any power for weapons or shields. 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-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 sixty-third 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 exciting work on the planet front, with some in-depth information from Idyllic on how planetary engagements will work. We also have some updates from lordrex on the backend systems, and a new feature awaiting implementation to the lobby. Here we have the command view of a planet's surface, as seen by the ranking officers of a given faction. The surface is divided into a number of cells determining the ownership of the planet, the more cells you control, the stronger your faction's foothold on that planet. Each cell can be claimed by building a structure of some kind, from a simple comm tower for those out-of-the-way cells that aren't too important, a ground base for those locations you want to have some sort of base to work out of, either with ground vehicles or aerial ships, up to founding a city. To claim control of a cell from an enemy, factions will need to attack and destroy their opponent's claiming structures. This could be as simple as bombing a radio station, to attacking an entire city. These structures will form the focal points for territory conquest - when a faction claims the star system above, they must be sure to root out any local resistance from their opposing faction, or they may find a well-supplied counterattack the following cycle. From this view, a battle commander can view the units on the ground, in the air, and in the water, being able to direct their movements from afar. Similar to a real-time strategy game, but with actual users manning the units. Properly trained battle commanders, and troops that follow orders are a must for a successful ground campaign. "Squad Bravo, redirect course north to comm tower defense in cell 155." "We just lost a cargo ship in the area, expect engagement." "Squad Bravo here, orders received." In this view, factions can take stock of which areas of the planet are under their control, with their claimed cells highlighted, as well as viewing opponent territory. If no factions build any sort of structures on the ground, the cell remains neutral, a place for Pirates to set up a base to trade without having to worry about the contraband or taxes of a faction. At this time, the number of cells per planet has been set at about 300 per planet, providing enough cells to create interesting borders, without creating too many cells to claim that factions have to build a structure every mile. This, of course, means that for a faction to gain absolute control of the entire galaxy, from each of the 220 star systems to the surfaces of every habitable planet, they will have to capture about 330,000 cells of terrain. I'll definitely be impressed if anyone manages to pull that off, though the goal of capturing 220 star systems seems like the more likely victory strategy. Idyllic had quite a bit of fun this week developing the cell division strategy - while it may seem simple at first, it actually was pretty complicated. Rather than going with the easy route, and dividing the planet into triangular cells, which would be really simple, he went with the hexagon approach. The planets are built from a list of each point, its location, and its 3 neighbors, so to divide the surface into cells, he had to develop a system to trace out both pentagons and hexagons, without repeating or forming deformed shapes. After many, many errors and planet generations, he finally managed to get the system working late this week. Expect to see some more cool planet-related stuff in the coming weeks. Lordrex has some good news to report on the server backend front - all the important data has been transferred from the old VPS to the new one, and work has begun on some of the important systems. He has also been toying with an interesting feature that will make it easy for the developers to post update logs that become visible in the lobby menus, using trello to create cards and descriptions, and using HTTPGet calls and the trello api to gather the information about the update, the authors, the version, pretty much anything we want to show up in game. Over the past few weeks, we've been picking up some work on updating the Lobby server that was set up all those months ago, so look forward to a fresh set of guis, and lots more feature updates moving forward. 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 are the Vaktovians to play in RoVerse? Will they be some type of galactic event? Or simply a large faction residing in RoVerse? A1: Vaktovia will be one of the factions applying to enter RoVerse, and will more than definitely be a foe to contend with in the game. The game is community driven, and we are determined to create a fair battlefield free from the problems of the current clan world, so you can count on us to not give them any advantages, even though Vaktus is leading the project. They will be a faction just like everybody else, fighting for control of star systems, invading planets, and having fun. Q2: What possible options will there be for grenade-like weapons? A2: While we haven't gotten that far on alternate weapons, we should be able to support a variety of the best scifi explosives out there, hopefully with cool effects to match. This isn't the 20th century, after all - if you're going to blow something up, might as well make it exciting. Q3: Will giant asteroid-devouring ships be a thing for miners? A3: That's one of our goals for the game. It remains to be seen how we'd go about building a ship that large... Might have to make smaller asteroids. 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-first 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 made some more progress on city generation, transplanting the flat generation to an actual planet surface, with some new skyscraper structures created by Vitreus. We also have some more information about the galactic map, that has come up in the community channel this week. You may remember city generation from a few newsletters back. For that demo, Idyllic set up a procedural growth system that worked for a small, hand-made island of smooth terrain. This week, he spent modifying it to work in detecting the ground on a sphere, which is slightly more complicated. As of yet, it doesn't quite have all the features of the other version, as slope detection on a sphere is even more complicated, and FindPartInRegion3 doesn't work with rotated regions, so further experiments are required. Of course, this mock-up may be a bit on the heavy side when considering the density of the final cities, but it's a great example of how cool the city generating system can be even when given only a simple set of parts. A faction can build 8 or 9 custom faction-themed structures, and their cities will look perfectly their own. Here we've got a lovely view from the night side of the planet, and it appears the entire continent has been built up into a city. Quite the amazing feat! For demonstration porpoises, this planet has been created very much scaled down from their actual size, so don't you worry about planets this small with this many buildings on them. We've also had some questions asked about the galaxy map, what it'd look like and how it'd work. Below, you can see the almost-working model for the map, with faction territory mocked up. We fully intend to have faction logos appear over owned territory, showing just which faction owns what star systems, in the event of multiple factions with the same colors. And finally, we have the large Cargo ship that WhoToTrus was working on last week, but didn't quite have time to finish up. Next to a standard mining or cargo vessel, this large-volume cargo transport ship is the top of the line, able to transfer huge amounts of ores and minerals across the galaxy. But even the largest ships offer little in the way of defense, requiring a convoy or protection detail to avoid falling prey to wandering bands of pirates. It's been a rather light week, with several devs being incredibly busy with school, and some recovering from the recent weather, but I am here to say, we are all still dedicated to the continuation of this project. It may not seem like there's a lot to show off, but that;s only because we've completed a lot of the work that can be shown off, the rest is coding and other under-the-hood stuff. Stay tuned for more updates, we'll keep working as long as there's still a C&G community to develop for! 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 borders work? Will it stop other factions from entering your system? A1: Faction borders will be entirely open to whoever wishes to travel between star systems. Civilians using jump-gates, cargo transporters shipping goods from one end of the galaxy to the other, anyone can come through the gate. Border security is up to the factions controlling the star system. If they want to secure their space, apply taxes or confiscate contraband, they must host their own military security presence. Of course, things can then be complicated by alliances, allowing certain factions to bypass security based on a trade deal their leaders hashed out. It should be interesting to see how different factions handle it. Q2: Will factions be able to add a cloaking device to their ships? A2: A cloaking device is an interesting sci-fi staple that we would be remiss to not include in-game in some way. We haven't quite figured out how it'd work, or how to balance it so that everyone isn't just running around invisible, but there should be some sort of cloaking available, whether its exclusive to a particular ship, or a very expensive module. Q3: How will scanning for minerals or life-forms work? A3: Straight out of Star Trek, approaching an unknown planet and turning on full scans, trying to find out just what waits below. The format of RoVerse is a bit different from that sort of thing, but scanning planets and asteroid fields to get a rough estimate of the minerals and valuables in proximity to your ship could definitely be worked into the 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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the fifty-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 got some neat new screenshots from environment building that Vitreus has been working on for the Capital Update, some boring scripting that Idyllic has been doing for planet generation, and some more information about capital weapons systems, and how factions can get in on the action. VitreusAeulous has been building environment assets for the variety of maps we've been working on for the Capital Update. Below, we have a cool city in an asteroid, a scifi staple. I can't wait to fly a fighter through the city, defending it from those who seek to destroy those who can't protect themselves. Or loading up a huge battleship and attacking the city in open rebellion that is full of pirates and low-lifes that threaten our way of life - however you'd prefer it. Planetary generation has been going quite well, with the exporter function performing excellently. Planets have been successfully generated up to 6 levels of subdivision. That's 10,242 vertices! Here's a demonstration of an icosphere in Blender with that many points. As you can see, it's not quite a high enough resolution for the mountains and plains of the planet surfaces we've been looking for. But it's not too low-res for us to generate some of the more broad features we'll be generating, like continent shapes and wind patterns. Higher-res planet features can be generated later, since they take quite a bit longer to generate. In other news, the Capital Update is still being worked on, but unfortunately it's been taking a bit longer than previously expected. Any of you that have seen the leaked version and know a bit about coding know that it's quite the messy system. Our two dedicated coders have been diving in, making sure that ship selections and gamemodes work perfectly and efficiently. But don't you worry, we're working hard, and it will be an awesome experience when we release it. Some of you may be wondering where our ship developer Sae'Tzar has been these past few weeks. The astute might have guessed that he lived somewhere around Houston, and with the poor weather around there recently, he has been otherwise occupied. Not only did he head out of town early to avoid the first storm, the past few weeks he has returned to the area with a boat, and has been rescuing those unfortunate enough to be trapped in their homes. Needless to say, it's quite wet down there, so we wish him the best, and look forward to his safe return. Now on to the part you've all been waiting for: Capital Weapons Systems Capital weapons systems are a bit more complex than the weapons available to fighters, that we've covered in newsletters before. Where fighters are limited to lasers, missiles, plasma, beams, and railguns, pending more types being added, Capitals can use a wider variety, each with their own benefits and costs. Weapons are divided into two categories - Primary Weapons that don't require ammo, just a power source, and Secondary Weapons that require the proper ammo to be used or fired. The Primary weapon types are Kinetic, Laser, Beam, Plasma, Missile, and Flak. For large ships, each of these types will need to be deployed to set turret mounting points for them to effectively perform in combat. If you set up a ship with turrets in the wrong places to properly engage the enemy, you'll find yourself in a fiery ruin of a capital ship in no time. The Secondary weapon types include Broadside Cannons and deployable mines. Broadside cannons find themselves most effective when you pull up alongside an opponent's ship, and need to fire a lot of weapons indiscriminately in their general direction. Deployable mines from Capital ships won't be exactly the same as their fighter counterparts, being more suited for taking out capital ships than fighters. The secondary weapon types won't be customizable to the same extent as the primary weapons types, acting more as a general ship system than a movable turret. In the coming weeks, we look forward to giving out more information on weapon types and styles, as we get closer to the Capital Update! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will we be able have atmospheric bombardments with non atmospheric ships? A1: Of course! Nearly all ships will be able to enter orbit, up to a certain size limit. From there, entering the atmosphere may be a drain on your shields, but bombarding the ground will be possible, if inaccurate. We can't allow just any ship to enter atmosphere, though, because some are just too large to fit. Q2: Will Space travel take a certain amount of time? A2: We want the galaxy that forms the backdrop to faction conflict to feel as large as a real galaxy full of star systems and planets should feel, if not to a realistic amount. We are aiming for a speed of transport consistent with sci-fi tropes - jumping from star system to star system takes a certain amount of time, but not an excessive amount, while travel in star systems is slowed down significantly. With jump gates constructed between systems, the majority of travel time will be based around loading time, how fast a player can load the new game, though we will try to keep loading times to a minimum. Q3: Will trees have physics with like wind speed and leaves moving? A3: I personally would love to have planets that realistic, and I'd probably get lost in an endless number of unique worlds if they were that cool. But unfortunately, a system like that would put a serious strain on either the servers running the game, or the computers of the people playing it. I might try my hand at it as a tech demo, but it probably won't make the initial release of the game, any more than a few particle effects of falling leaves. 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 fifty-sixth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! Lots of cool new stuff was worked on this week, with progress from planets, ships, an update on the ground vehicle coding, and a sneak peek at some upcoming updates to the Dogfight Alpha! Unfortunately, its also getting to that point in the year where we start to lose developers to school, but hopefully they settle into their schedules and can rejoin us soon. IdyllicDestroyer has been hard at work on planets for several months, but most of it has been behind-the-scenes coding, optimizations, and other mundane aspects, but this week he's been working on something we've had a lot of questions about. Cities! You may remember the various questions we've answered about cities and planets over quite a few different newsletters, but I think its time we condense that into the actual newsletter, along with some cool pictures. Cities have been promised since the first RoVerse Trailer, showing an interesting cityscape on a river,with ships flying around. Since then, the planets around them have changed in scale and scope, to become something even cooler than was originally imagined, and the ideas behind cities has changed as well. Initially, they were to be static structures built at a much larger scale, akin to Faction stations. This, of course, would have led to a lot of repetitive, boring city layouts. But we can do better. Our ideas for cities has evolved from plug-and-play city models, to dynamic, growing, evolving cityscapes that can grow or shrink with a Faction's success and failures. Idyllic has been at work creating the system that grows cities from a single initial founding point selected by faction or planet leadership, into a bustling metropolis. Now cities don't just grow outward ignoring everything in its way. It avoids and passes around obstacles like steep slopes or rivers, it slows down when expanding into dense forests or other biomes, and its central core grows more dense than the outer reaches. This system incorporates most of these features, and there are quite a few more features still in the works to create truly unique places for clans to call home. No longer stuck to just defending a remote outpost, clan members can take part in the defense of their own capital city, where failure means destruction. You can see here an early version of a city growing procedurally, much faster than they will in real time. When generating cities quickly the system slows down, but the cities in RoVerse will grow quite slowly, relieving much of the strain on the server. While this demo shows the placement of single block structures, the eventual goal is to support a variety of different shaped and sized structures fit to each clans architectural style, to create truly unique cities on each planet. In the case where factions wish to include lore-specific buildings or landmarks in their cities, those would be placed manually in a similar way to the foundation of the city itself, demolishing as many automated structures as it need to make space for the new structure. Landmarks like a Senate Building or Temple or Palace, whatever sort of structure fits your clans needs, we hope to be able to support! Nearly the entire building team has been temporarily retasked to work on large capital ships for the upcoming updates, so there isn't much to show from that department this week. Now for some sneak-peeks at the updates coming in the next few weeks to the Dogfight Alpha! IdyllicDestroyer has been working on coding the new HUD for fighters and capitals that KidVeggito designed, making it work to show hull health, shield strength, as well as your ship's speed. Here's a demo of a ship taking Shield Damage. Creating guis in greyscale allows us to change any colors we want at a later point, letting us make the guis reflect teamcolor, or any other color combination we want. Two new additions to our team, SmellyPencil and TheFurryFish, have been hard at work creating all the extra features we've always wanted to add to the Dogfight Alpha, including a cool new ship selection screen! I can't wait to see and share everything else they come up with, the work they've already done is astounding! Stay tuned for more updates and an official release date for the newest updates! 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 cities have meters measuring happiness and faith which could decrease or improve productivity? A1: What a fitting question for this newsletter! We are looking into ways to dynamically vary the output and expansion of cities based on real factors, not just random numbers, and happiness might be an interesting idea to look into. If your faction fails in battle, losing several systems to opponents, it would make sense that your citizens would be a bit more wary of their situation, and their productivity would reflect that. Q2: If factions can provide original theme tracks, will they be implemented? A2: We will try to support as many assets that clans wish to submit as possible, if you'd like to create a faction-controlled space background theme or battle theme, we'll try our best to make it happen. I wouldn't go spending too much money on it until you're accepted, though. Q3: Will I be able to plant, grow and sell potatoes? A3: That's a very interesting suggestion. While initially we only plan on players mining and collecting naturally generated substances, there is the possibility we could support resource farming of not just potatoes, but crystals or ores as well, somewhere down the line. Q4: Will there be naval ships for naval or sea engagements? A4: While it's not on our immediate feature list, somewhere down the line we'd like to support a wider variety of combat situations, to keep combat interesting. Battles over a planets surface would get quite interesting if water-based vehicles were involved, but we'd have to figure out how to implement them in a way that isn't immediately outclassed by flying and space vehicles. 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-eighth 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 a lot of the momentum from last week carry over to this week with some new planetary energy collectors from Robusttitan, and LordRex took the time to develop a proper scaling chart for the game, so those of you working on your own assets can get a rough idea of how big your ships will be, Idyllic has added nearly all the other minerals base ores, and Vedrakkerous has nearly completed the warp animation! Animula has been working hard on custom ambient and background audio tracks for the game, and we have a sample for you this week: https://soundcloud.com/animula_musicdev/the-big-vast-preview https://soundcloud.com/animula_musicdev/dont-go-to-far-out LordRex has been incredibly hard at work trying to get the scaling as accurate as possible, and managed to come up with this very convenient chart: This chart is sure to account for the fact that we plan on using different scales in space, on a planet, and inside a station to create the effect of a larger area. For example, vehicles in space are quite small while the buildings and stations are much larger to create a much larger effect for fighters and other craft, so be sure to keep this in mind when building a station. You will also want to be sure that you are scaling all of starting versions of your assets should be scaled to a normally sized humanoid to ensure the best possible sizing. RobustTitan has also been working on planetary power generators, and managed to come up with some of these beautiful models. The first images are the solar generator, which will likely be found in massive arrays for those seeking sustainable power without access to other sources. For those who don't want to rely on solar power, or want to avoid the massive battery banks needed for the night, geothermal energy is an effective, all-around option, especially on volcanic planets! This week, Idyllic has also been hard at work on the models for the minerals that will be found among asteroids and planetary mines. These minerals are the basis for a plethora of components that will be used across the galaxy for ship parts, electronics, fuel, and much more! The ores finished this week are listed below; Gold Magnetite Pyrochlore Bauxite Uraninite And several more minerals, that you'll have to find for yourself! In other news, we finally have the majority of developers coming back from exams, finals, and school in general, and we can expect development to continue in full swing, we are also experimenting with different, earlier times for the newsletters, and we hope to get more content out to all of you at more convenient times! The last few weeks have been incredibly exciting, and the development Discord server has been exploding thanks to the leadership of IdyllicDestroyer in Vaktus' absence, and the proactive efforts of Vedrakkerous to bring development to the point we are now at! Without these two, we would likely still be at a near standstill development-wise, and their efforts to bring the project to life with fresh faces and ideas is incredibly motivating! We look forward to what the future has to bring! Special this week, just for you, are some computer wallpapers custom made by WhoToTrus! 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 dangerous are space turkeys? A1: I think their record speaks for itself - not one single person has seen a space turkey and lived to tell the tale, all we have are rumors and campfire tales, stories of screams in the dark, and the bloody scene the next day. Someone who manages to best a space turkey, would surely be the most cunning and strong warrior the galaxy has ever seen. Q2: How will group division uniforms work in RoVerse? A2: We're still nailing down the final details on how character clothing and customization, but we should be able to support factions selling their own clothing - uniforms as well as division or high rank clothing - and have the proper controls over who they can sell them to. Q3: Will more valuable ores spawn underwater due to the increased danger on many of the planets? A3: You can look forward to a wide variety of rare minerals in all sorts of odd places around the universe, not just on asteroids and around mountains. Underwater, in nebulas, even far out in the dark voids far beyond a star's light. Q4: If a group is accepted into RoVerse, is it required to have custom content even if it isn't a major nation? A4: While it may not be required explicitly to have their own content at the beginning, we are looking for clans with the dedication and resources to create a truly unique faction - there may be some grace time at the beginning, since our list of content is growing quite long, and you may be able to convince one of our devs to help you out, but eventually, you should plan on creative everything, so your clan stands apart. 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-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! |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |