Hello everyone! Welcome to the forty-sixth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! This week we've seen an astonishing amount of visual work from Vedrakkerous and Idyllic has been working behind the scenes on the resource system for RoVerse, and has a very convoluted and terrifying spreadsheet detailing the first progression concept from basic minerals to full spacecraft and structures! This spreadsheet has been an absolute nightmare of organization and research to ensure that almost all ores and materials progress in a way that is somewhat accurate. As seen above, Idyllic is still quite far from completion, but has already managed to create the most convoluted chart ever seen, and we are excited to see what new organizational nightmare he comes up with later on. Vedrakkerous, on the other hand, has been hard at work creating, refining and optimizing particles for just about everything from space dust to entire stars! Take a look at some of these beautiful visuals that will enhance the game just that bit more: The image below is the shield effects, which flare up when your shields take damage and pulse outward around your ship based on the type of shield you use! Once a shield has been completely dissipated, it will create a form of vortex around the ship to indicate it is recharging, and once charged you will be once again safe from damage! Vedrakkerous even got the inspiration from Stellaris to make a few stars, namely some of the most common stars; The Class M Red Dwarf star: The Class G Orange star: The Class A White Dwarf star: While the stars are beautiful, and look absolutely stunning in dogfight mode, Vedrakkerous decided he wasn't done yet and decided to go out of his way to prepare warp effects for larger ships which look absolutely stunning as is to be expected at this point! And finally, he prepared a gif showing off the set status effects each ship has when under damage to provide just that little bit of additional detail to ships to show off current damage or destroyed modules on larger ships. At the time of my writing of this, Vedrakkerous is still hard at work updating and creating new effects for use, and if I were to update each time he made a change, I would be here all night! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will there be clan specific / lore-based minerals? A1: While supporting clan lore specific minerals would be cool, in the end, it'd just be unfair - either only certain clans would get their own special mineral, or everyone would have to get their own, and can you imagine how much more convoluted that flowchart would get with a bunch more minerals to start from? Q2: About how much would the largest, most fully 'decked-out' capital ship cost? Millions? Billions? Trillions? A2: This is hard to say at this point - we want it to be possible for clans to build capitals, but not so easy that there are hundreds floating around. In the end, the price should be balanced to keep them expensive, but entirely possible with the right teamwork. Q3: Will there be AI planet populations? A3: I'd say an AI population in the most basic sense - there won't be characters wandering the streets, but there may be some generalized AI, sort of like a city simulation game would have. Q4: Will there be unrest for planetary populations? A4: In continuation of the previous question, a generalized city AI would allow us to have events occur in cities, like an outbreak of plague or other positive things, like a city-wide celebration boosting profits. So unrest would definitely be a possibility to explore. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us!
If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Author's Note: Hey guys, I will be going through and organizing every newsletter published from #37 and prior to support a new category system you may have noticed on the right side which you can use to sort for specific topics you are interested in! We will try to tag every newsletter appropriately, and this will, hopefully, be the first of many overhauls to make the site more user-friendly than it already is. I've also removed the author tags on the bottom in order to have a permanent tag for all three authors (Vaktus, Idyllic and myself) on the right side under the categories. Thanks for reading this week's newsletter, and I hope you guys enjoyed all the amazing work put in by our development team! ~ Aleuvian Hello everyone! Welcome to the forty-fifth 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 quite a bit to show off from our team, and we especially look forward to showing off Vedrakkerous' work! We have received a lot of information on the planet status from Idyllic this week. He has said that the main setback for planetary generation is the time it takes to generate roughly 600 planets in low and high detail separately. We are switching from Vector3Values for the parameter storage of continents, wind, elevation, etc. in favor of a table format, which will allow all information to be accessed in a less intensive manner, therefore speeding up the generation process. Idyllic has also been constantly going back and forth to time planetary generation to find the slowest processes, and has generated the following timetable!
All of these numbers narrow down to a total time of 2.2 hours, which is still far too long for the galactic scale we are looking for, however this is definitely down from the 4 days it took to generate high detail planets in the past! RexPatriot has also been hard at work getting the Research Center finished after studying several concepts we've sent him, and he has come out with yet another stunning product that captures the feel of a high-tech laboratory! With the massive satellite on top, you can imagine a network of these structures working together to improve and synchronize tests with the top-of-the-line orbital relay technology, all working in tangent to produce an end product across the planet! This week, Vedrakkerous has been hard at work setting up the grayscale nebula images so that he can generate plenty of nebulae using various colors, and with the recent Color3 support update he is now able to generate thousands of nebulae using a large set of various textures and an absolutely stunning array of colors to blend and make each nebula completely unique! Space clouds have never been more exciting! Grayscale individual textures: Multi-layer Color3 Demonstration Layering Demonstration Color3 on a single layer Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will we be able to fly our ships into Gas Giants? A1: Spaceships are designed for a specific location, usually space. Shields would theoretically have a hard time operating in-atmosphere, where a ship would constantly be colliding with particles, and, at this point, we think we will use this as the basis for restricting both ship flights close to the surface of rocky planets, and as a limiting factor for gas giants. Now that's not to say that you won't be able to fly into them at all, it just might take a lot a power to your shields to stay there for long. Q2: How many bases will a clan be able to establish on a planet? A2: So recently, a member of our discord community did the math on the surface area of the average planet that we have planned - with a radius of 4,000 studs, each planet would have around 200,000,000 square studs of surface area. That's a lot of room - so you should be able to establish as many bases as you would like, so you can have a quick response to any attacks. Just don't put them too close to each other, or they might make an easy target for orbital bombardment! Q3: Will we be able to buy in-game 'stock' within businesses starting out in Ro Verse? A3: We haven't quite nailed down how businesses will work, but running a stock market on top of that would be extremely complicated. I wouldn't look for it in the initial release, but depending on how businesses work out, it might be implemented at a later point. I can imagine giving employees a cut of the profits might encourage them to defend your fleets, or investing in mineral acquisition could make you a millionaire. Q4: With all this talk about planets, is RoVerse no longer a space game? A4: RoVerse is very much still about exploring star systems, giant space battles between fleets of star ships, and the conflict and politics of a larger galaxy, planets just happen to be a cool part of the picture, both as a backdrop for conflicts as well as part of the economy, and the lore of clans. Big empty voids are only so much fun, but without landmarks, players lose interest fast. Also, we talk a lot about planets because we currently have a lot of progress being made on them every week, while the systems for star systems and space are less pretty at the moment. Look for more work from Vedrakkerous, as he completes more nebula effects and other space-based stuff. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! ~Written by Aleuvian ~Edited by IdyllicDestroyer Hello everyone! Welcome to the forty-fourth 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 been resolving some major roadblocks with planetary generation time, continued structures and concept work from RexPatriot, and a new member of the team to introduce! Idyllic has been running into major issues with the generation time for each planet and how impractical it tends to become. As we plan on over two-hundred systems with at least one planet per system, and with the odds of us choosing the minimum number for each being very small, the time simply ends up taking far too long, even with several computers working simultaneously. The first step to reducing the time it takes to generate planets is to reduce duplicate points of generation, which in turn smooths out the overall terrain. Before: After: RexPatriot has been busy at work this week developing a new planetary factory, which will likely be converted to a civilian factory designed to produce commercial goods from the planet's resources. He has also been brainstorming concept designs for the research center and research posts, and now has a general idea to work to make the provided concepts a reality for next week, and we look forward to seeing what he comes up with! The factory exterior: The factory interior: And finally, we would like to introduce our newest member to the team; Vedrakkerous. He is an incredibly talented builder and an absolute wizard with particle effects, and he is an active and very dedicated member of the community who we are happy to work with! Currently, Vedrakkerous is working on nebula generation with particle effects, atmospheric effects, and generally all other fine details to enhance the game further! His work-in-progress images are absolutely stunning, and we look forward to showing off his work next week! Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will we be able to fly larger ships in first and third person by choice? A1: We absolutely intend to fully support cockpit and/or bridge view alongside the external ship view, although this does depend on the limitation to the ROBLOX engine. Q2: Will large ships have segments that can be destroyed to weaken it? A2: Yes, capital ships will have modular damage systems, meaning you will be able to target specific parts in order to damage it in particular ways. For example, destroying the engines completely will make the ship unable to move until they are repaired. Q3: Will all space stations have at least some defenses, or will the military stations be the only ones with weapons on them? A3: All stations will have auto turrets for some light defense, however military stations will be much more durable and have much more powerful defenses. The owner may also deploy defense platforms for extra defense. Q4: How valuable will spice actually be relative to other resources in the galaxy? A4: Good question - just like all other commodities in the economy, prices will go up and down over time depending on the market, but generally it will be like gold dust! (There's even the possibility it may be used to craft unique health-refilling consumables) Q5: What planned strategic resources will be in the galaxy? Will each sector of the galaxy have it's own inherent resource to add strategy to claiming different regions and force trade? A5: Each star system has a primary planet type which offers specific resources based on which type of planet it is. For example, ocean worlds will have exotic fish that would never be found in star systems with a desert primary planet. Q6: Will trade be required for an empire to survive? A6: Technically no, however it would be difficult for an empire to acquire as many resources as other factions if they are not open to trading for those resources. It would also mean a very profitable source of income for the nation being taken out of the picture, so if that empire would want to gain as many resources as other factions, it would need to do a lot of conquering! Q7: Will there be a kill feed for each server? A7: If there will be a kill feed, it will only show kills in your nearby area. After all, we don't want to break your immersion by having your screen filled with text about battles you don't even know are ongoing. Q8: Will we be able to make weapons that can only be used by certain races? A8: Ships, weapons and equipment that belong to a faction's military can only be used by members of that faction's military. As for player corporations producing weapons, we hope to include a filter for the owner to select who has access to their outpost's equipment dealer. Though, we still need to advance further along in the coding process before we can give definite answers on that. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! ~Written by Aleuvian ~Questions by Vaktus ~Edited by IdyllicDestroyer Hello everyone! Welcome to the thirty-eighth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week! We have some interesting news about one of our devs, whom we haven't heard from in a while - Onigo's apartment got broken into and his PC was stolen, but thanks to rent insurance, he'll be back in business in no time. And with a new computer to boot! Rex has been very busy this week creating a variety of new elements for ground outposts, including several versions of gun nests and guard towers, as well as completed a hangar, and begun work on a command post. Keep in mind, these modules serve as generic outpost pieces, where clans will supply custom designs to set their outposts apart. Wouldn't want the galaxy to be too symmetrical! This week, IdyllicDestroyer has continued work on the planets, successfully generating them smooth terrain as a proof-of-concept at 1% scale. When planets are completed, they will be gigantic, and require significant time to generate all the details at the resolution that we want, so for now, these small-scale demos prove that the concept is entirely attainable. He even managed to create a 25% scale version, that is very low quality, but gives us a better impression of what the planets will look like when completed. We can't wait to see what he comes up with in the next few weeks! Its certainly unlike anything I've seen on Roblox before! 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: Roughly how large will a planet be compared to a Robloxian? A1: With planets, the target we are aiming for is for the player to be able to see the horizon at all times, and give the surface the feel of a real world, not just a baseplate inside a sphere mesh. Because of the limits of the Roblox platform, and the far camera clipping at around 4,000 studs away from the camera, we have chosen the rough size of planets to be a radius of about 10,000 studs, with some randomization thrown in. This will allow a significant view distance (approx. 8,000 studs), with the rest of the planet falling away around the curve of the planet, not visible anyway. Q2: Will we be able to create underwater cities? A2: Underwater cities are a staple of futurism and sci-fi, and I'm sure more than one clan out there would like to write them into their lore. I would say yes, building cities underwater would be a cool way to distinguish a clan, and will almost certainly be a part of RoVerse planets. Of course, the cities would have to be designed to look in-place underwater, with a dome or some other underwater theme - we can't just build any old city underwater, now can we? But beware, there may be creatures in the deep just looking for a tasty meal! Q3: How will water on planets be generated? A3: In the early testing phase for generating planets, when we were trying to decide whether to make planets out of triangles or smooth terrain, this question came up - smooth terrain water offers unmatched physics properties, but had one flaw. When generating a sphere of water, around the 45 degree mark, water begins to stair-step over voxels. This problem proved unsolvable in a satisfactory manner, so smooth terrain water was out of the question. So the current plans are for a sphere mesh around the planet scaled to water level, and custom physics for anything that will interact with the surface, or underwater, like vehicles and players. Q4: What is the purpose of my life? A4: This is a hard question to answer, mostly because I don't know a thing about the person who asked it. But I will say this - life is the greatest opportunity that you have ever been granted, and there is a vast, uncaring universe out there that only deals in chance - the chances that any of us would ever come to exist are infinitesimal, but the fact that we did is a miracle - so just do what you want to do, and enjoy every minute of your short, exciting existence. 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! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! ~Written by Aleuvian and IdyllicDestroyer |
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |