Hello everyone! Welcome to the ninety-fifth 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 his quest for the ultimate pew, with updates to the Auto-turrets Anti-Air gun effects, and scripting work on Vertical Launch System missiles. Lorenzo also got some work on a new capital ship. First, we have the updates to the Anti-air guns demoed last week. Last week was all about making the projectiles move and fire from the barrel, so the effects dropped in were simple particle emitters that honestly didn't look that good. So Idyllic took some time to upgrade the effects. Coming to you in glorious 60 fps to capture all the visuals, are two short videos showing the anti-air turret attached to a vehicle. The effects will work very similar in space, just scaled down a bit and without the gravity component. Now the bullets look like they're moving as fast as they're actually moving. Much better in my opinion. Up next on his list of weapons needed for the Capital Update were the VLS missiles. This 'turret' doesn't rotate or aim at your target, instead, missiles are fired in an arc away from the ship then guided towards the target. We are planning on several different types of missiles, from simple point-and-click unguided missiles that are cheap and effective for stationary or large targets, to a guided missile variant that's a bit more expensive, but better for chasing down those elusive targets, like fighters. The third type would be a bit more specialized - firing a volley of missiles to bombard a general area. Finding its best use in planetary combat against widespread or stationary targets, launching a volley would significantly lengthen reload times, but if you hit your mark you should be fine. Featuring opening doors, 8 missile loadout, and a firmly mounted launch platform, your fleets will be able to rain destruction on all those who oppose you. Along with the pretty stuff, there was some important coding on the rest of the update going on behind the scenes. Adding in states for planned and future features, adding support for the new missile turrets that have a slightly different format to Lorenzo has been hard at work on the newest addition to our growing fleet of widely-varying Capital Ships. While not quite to the christening stage, the results of his efforts are looking quite good. We can't wait to see this ship cruising through the stars. 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 single non-PVP zone, or several smaller ones scattered throughout the galaxy? A1: In the past we've mentioned some safe zones for new players to get accustomed to the game without worrying about factions claiming their cargo or pirates stealing it. There will be several 'systems' that are not marked on the current map scattered around the galaxy just for this purpose, though trading exclusively in these systems won't be all that profitable. Q2: Will there be stations designed for combat, or just the 4 supply types in the Stations video? A2: We have to walk a fine line between automating stations to the point that they become the best weapon, and their intended use as a supply point that has to be protected. If you're looking for a structure to fortify a location, the military outpost would be your best bet - smaller than the giant supply stations, and more easily defended. Q3: Will faction devs that submit ships and weapons be able to write lore that appears in a description panel when purchasing the items? A3: Definitely. If the developer puts the effort in to deepen the lore of both their work and RoVerse, we'll do our best to include in in-game. Not everyone has time to go look at the wiki. There will of course be moderation of both the designs and the lore. Q4: Will ship hitboxes be cubes, or will it more closely follow the shape of our ships? A4: The Dogfight alpha uses a standard ship, and all the planned fighters were smaller than one cubic stud, so simplifying their hitbox to a cube was efficient and simple. Since then, we've been updating our work to take into account different shapes and sizes, most notably on the capital ships where tiny fighters will be flying up and around them. With the eventual meshing process, we should be able to reduce detail slightly to create a mostly accurate hitbox for all types of ships. 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 ninety-fourth issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. The end of the school year has finally come, meaning our Devs will now have much more time to devote to RoVerse Development. Leading the team this week is Idyllic, with advancements in the turret operation systems. Taking community feedback from a gif we posted a few weeks back, he has tweaked the first person turret movement to track the mouse with better accuracy than before, most notably a smaller deadzone. The initial iteration had a mostly uncontrollable deadzone, making aiming harder than it should be. With the new system, shooting down invading fleets of fighters should be easier than ever. Also notable in the gif above, though maybe a bit hard to see, is the alternating of barrels. Since we've taken on the task of allowing factions to build their own turrets, supporting a wide variety of numbers of barrels in exotic locations is an important feature, that not only makes the system more flexible, but better looking too. As long as faction developers follow the correct format (to be released later) when designing and building their turrets, we should be able to support as many creative designs as they can come up with. A discussion about ground base buildings has also come up. Some of the prototypes from quite a while ago were very small structures that you could theoretically build anywhere, but were more suited to a 'camp' than a ground base. Bases are intended to fill the middle ground between temporary structures and cities, much like modular outposts in space are a middle ground between ships and faction stations. If a subfaction was to set up their Headquarters on a planets surface, the structure should be comparable in size and usefulness to those set up by space-bound subfactions, right? With this in mind, Idyllic has been developing a new prototype of base structures at a larger scale. Seen above, these buildings aren't quite the size of a cities' towering skyscrapers, nor are they the size of a vehicle garage. Perhaps we'll support small, medium, and large variants, to better fit different uses. While we continue to work on this slight change in direction for ground bases, we will be making sure that other base buildings, like hangars and garages are at a functional size for their use, and that they won't cost more resources to build than they will be worth. Any feedback the community has, can be directed to Idyllic in the Discord. Lordrex took a week's vacation, but I'm sure the work he has been doing to the lobby was on his mind while he traveled. Stratiz had some Computer Science Exams to study for, we hope he does well. Airwarfare has continued to work on the gravity system, working out some control bugs that occur under very specific circumstances, but we believe he'll figure them all out eventually. It's been another short week with tests and other important things to do, but that will definitely improve in the coming weeks. We wish those of you with tests the best of luck, and we'll see you around! 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 flagships work? A1: A special ship only creatable and flyable by a faction leader or other high ranking member of a faction is an important feature on our list. If anybody could build any ship, it would be utter chaos. We should be able to lock certain submitted ships to specific factions, as well as specific ranks in groups, that doesn't seem too complicated. Q2: Will camera turning on fighters be improved? A2: We're sort of attached to the camera system that fighters currently use - its a balance between complete freecam, that takes you out of the ship altogether, and a locked first person camera that doesn't let you turn at all. This blended, custom version puts you in third person, but you are still tied to the direction your ship is facing. We are working on improving the radar and tracking systems, as well as a damage indicator system that can give you a general direction for incoming fire, but I don't think we'll change to a free camera for fighters - Capitals with their more limited maneuverability are the perfect candidate for something like that. Q3: How will group applications work? Can I reject members? A3: Accepting recruits into your faction should be a pretty similar process to accepting members on Roblox groups - if you want to be exclusive you set it to manual approval, and they can send you an application, or set the default rank to ensign or citizen, and don't give them any permissions. 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 ninety-third issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. With end-of-semester tests wrapping up, our devs are back at work on RoVerse, with Idyllic pushing Capital scripting further with turret features, and a new team member has taken on the challenge of planetary character gravity, and some progress on several other scripting fronts. First up is Idyllic's Capitals, which this week received a vital update in the form of weapon firing. You can't have spaceship battles without lasers firing off everywhere, so he's been working on scripting how the cool turrets will actually fire projectiles or energy bursts at your enemies. Two different turret types have been his major focus this week - a laser turret and an autoturret fire two of the main projectile types, and have different settings for rate of fire and range, and so are a good benchmark to compare. After some fun with gravity, Idyllic set to tweaking values to match what we want from each weapon type. The autoturret class of weapons fires physical light projectiles extremely efficiently at the cost of a low resulting damage to other ships. Great for finishing off hard to hit targets with low armor plating (fighters) a few of these in every ship complement is a must. Next up will be the more exotic turret types - missile launchers and plasma turrets, before finishing off with conventional and kinetic turrets. We can't wait to see further progress. We have a new member on our team who has valiantly taken on the task of planetary gravity scripts for characters. Many of you may remember the vehicle gravity demos that had excellent results, but when it came to the player, it wasn't as simple. Humanoids are hard-coded to want to stay upright - the same actions and reactions that make you stand up after tripping or getting hit with a giant block are working against us in our pursuit of round planets. But there is hope. A few of you might know about Blobbyblobs planetary gravity freemodel - though outdated, as a concept for smooth and nearly flawless character movement on spherical objects is unmatched - proof that round planets with a nearly original character model are entirely possible. In just a few short hours, airwarfare went from completely lost to a workable prototype. Where Blobby's scripts didn't work with R15, ours now do. And scaling the character is just a small step beyond that. Exciting work! Stratiz has continued his work on a more-complex-than-normal NPC system, so that these large stations factions will be building can be full of life and activity (based on the success of the faction hosting it) rather than a cold lifeless showcase. While he doesn't have any gifs of brain-dead automatons wandering around just yet, we're sure he'll have some great work to show in the coming weeks. Lordrex has dove into a rewrite of the original Lobby system, updating old scripts to function with our backend database, pulling and pushing the data it needs and collects properly; eliminating old features that have been edited or improved, and a few that have been removed since the first few scripters placed down the first lines of code all those weeks ago. The work of the ancients may be impressive, but a few updates here and there are necessary. 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 when two nearby colonies expand at each other and meet? A1: With the procedural generation system expanding cities outward wherever there's room, two cities are bound to overlap. When this happens, the two cities should continue to expand in other areas, eventually forming a line between the two, similarly to how it works in real life. Its possible we may allow two cities to merge at some point in the future, like a real-life city would annex its neighbors to expand, but we'd need a good reason to. Q2: Will factions have a 'wallet' to purchase faction ships with, or will it be up to administrative players in the faction to hold onto a factions wealth? A2: Many of you might have heard of the horrors of EVE corporations being swindled by an untrustworthy administrator, and I'm not too sure the members of Roblox are either. With money coming in from territories and taxes, a faction bank account would balance the effort of administration with ease of play that should be the main focus. We want faction leaders planning battle strategy, not tied up keeping track of what money is where. Q3: Will there be safe places for neutral and beginning players to mine and practice? A3: We intend to create a few neutral systems that are not included in the faction conflict map where people don't have to worry about getting attacked by a war-bound faction. More on this to come at a later date. Q4: Will resources regenerate? A4: Definitely. While minecraft can get away with nonregenerating ores because the worlds are infinite, the planned systems we have are large, but finite. Resources should regenerate over a fairly long period of time, with considerations for rarity as well. Though now that I think about it, factions scrambling for limited resources sounds like it'd be fun to try at least once - maybe to stir things up if they go stale. 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 ninety-first issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week has seen continued development on the Capital Update with a few new features for Capitals, as well as some Datastore work for saving player data. Idyllic has been hard at work whenever he has free time to get the Capital Update rolling. In recent weeks, we've seen it grow from simple ship movement to having nearly all the features we've been designing for the past two years. This week, we've implemented a community suggestion, adding a toggle for the turret aim indicators... So in those situations that require fine-aiming, you can toggle on the indicators and blow enemy ships out of the sky, while remaining undistracted when you aren't in a heated conflict. Beyond that, he has been working on ship selection, which is currently in its rudimentary stages with a simple gui menu, but it allows ships to be dynamically loaded based on a selection, rather than a preset variable. Moving forward, he will be refining this feature, and adding in a process to customize the turret selection on these capital ships. When he needed a break from Capitals, Idyllic took the chance to implement the turret system onto some of the ground vehicles you may remember from a few newsletters back. Using the same system to set up the organization of the turret pieces, and attaching it to an anchor point on the vehicle, this test was a success. Get ready to shoot invading fighters out of the sky with this Anti-Air turret equipped Behemoth! Following this test, it was brought up that aiming in 3rd person from this vehicle was less than ideal - particularly when an obstruction behind the camera could be in conflict - so we made a few modifications... Including a turret-mounted camera for the driver, or potentially a second passenger acting as a gunner, to operate the weapons system. Now you can see the fighters entering atmo to bomb your outpost, and return fire as well! On Lordrex's end, there has been work done on using Datastores to save particular information, as well as work around the 260,000 character per entry limit. Rather than pay for an external server to handle absolutely everything coming from this game, we're making the best use of every feature we have available, and testing the limits to see just how far we can go. Using datastores to cache data relieves the strain on an external server, and helps cut down on those HTTP requests which are severely limited to begin with. 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 faction cities be able to be made from a variety of different styles? Like a colony vs a capital? A1: If a faction has the developers to build that many different building types, we'll try our best to support features like that. There's definitely a benefit to immersion if a gleaming capital city looks different from a border system colony. Q2: Will there be anything special at the center of the galaxy? A2: Alpha Prime is at the center of the current sector that is available for exploration, and it does have some special rare resources found nowhere else, but there is nothing to say that the current map is the extent of the galaxy RoVerse takes place in. Who knows what mysteries lie beyond the edges of the map? Q3: Will there be giant ground vehicles to act as mobile ground bases during invasions? A3: Large sandcrawler-like vehicles are definitely on our wish list, and we'll try our best to make them happen. Ask us again closer to planets being done, they'd be a great addition to ground combat and invasion strategy, if a bit expensive. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-eighth 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 been designing the character creation data systems and menus that players will use when they first join the game, to create the personification of their RoVerse character, and Idyllic has continued work on Capital Ships, with some promising work on turret transit and aiming systems. Let's take a closer look! For RoVerse we wanted to blend the characters you use elsewhere on Roblox that are supported by a fairly limited set of options, with our own more expansive system that provides more options for customization - including the possibilities for custom meshes for different species both Dev created and faction created. To blend the two, we have been working on a system that will import pretty much the entirety of the Roblox Catalog into the game for use on your character. Assets sorted into categories you are familiar with, like hats, shirts, and pants, as well as some of our own design at some point in the future. Tacked onto this are more robust character options including the aforementioned custom meshes, as well as a wider variety of colors and adornments will be possible. The backend systems to support this aren't all that new - Catalog Heaven used catalog assets in-game particularly well, and the Roblox API's are readily available to grab asset ids - and the systems used to load these assets into the character creation screen aren't all that different from what you will encounter in-game when you visit shops at stations to further customize your character. It's important to look your best when terrorizing the starways. Idyllic recently picked up the task of working on Capital ship scripting for the upcoming Capital Update, and has been making steady progress for these past two weeks. Last week saw the ship movement systems, including strafing, pitching, yawing, and rolling on the global plane, this week he has continued work on these systems, including the addition of a vector lock toggle that maintains your current heading and speed, allowing you to move the camera about to aim your turrets. Contrary to the rudimentary system in the original Dogfight Alpha, this vector lock does not rotate your ship to upright, allowing it a more versatile use in combat. Upon testing it is clear that it is hard to tell when this function is enabled, so in the future we will be looking into visualizations to show the direction your ship is locked to, in addition to the HUD toggle readout. This feature added, he moved on to more important aspects of Capital control systems - turret transit. While the previous iterations of turrets worked as long as they were oriented upright, that didn't quite work for us in space, with its 3 dimensions. Using some advanced calculation methods helped along by inbuilt Roblox functions, Idyllic managed to get turrets to track the mouse position and turn to face it as closely as possible, with the turret at any orientation. This includes turrets mounted sideways like those on the front of the Avenger below, as well as those mounted to the bottom, or any angle in-between. Another aspect of importance is the modular aspect of the turrets - a hardpoint on the ship model, and a matching hardpoint on the turret model makes adding and interchanging turret models a breeze, as well as a standardized grouping format of the turret parts should allow us to easily change between any variation of the model imaginable, whether it's developer created or created by a faction. We'll be releasing the final details in a few weeks, so you can get your devs working on custom faction turret models! Here you see the turrets independently pointing at the cursor, as close as is possible on their axis. Also included in this code is the groundwork for weapon groups, so you can turn on and off sets of turrets for various situations - turning on left or right groups of turrets if you happen to get flanked, for example. Moving forward, Idyllic will be taking on the task of turret firing, of all the various projectiles we have prepared for every weapon type, as well as beginning to interchange some of the turret models and effects to test how well the system works. 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 fighter-ground vehicle hybrids be possible? A1: While a combination fighter-mech would be cool, I'm not certain how reasonable it would be to make nor use one. In the end, it'd have to be debuffed as both a fighter and a mech, making it worse at everything than two separate vehicles would be. If there is enough interest we could possibly add it in at a later point, but until then you would probably be best off with a fighter large enough to carry a dedicated mech you could jump into when you've landed on a planet. Q2: Will cities have to be filled with skyscrapers? Will dead cities leave ruins? Could I build a bunker in the ruins? A2: Actually, no. If your faction theme is better suited with low-rise structures or other shorter buildings, you can design them like that, it's up to you. Dead cities will leave ruins as a marker of the history of the place, to add exploration interest, allow factions to rebuild their cities, and to retain more history than anything in the clan world can currently. Imagine walking among the ruins of a capital of a faction that died out years ago. If you're looking to build a small structure in a city, a base is the way to go, rather than building an entire city. Q3: How will sieges on cities work? A3: City sieges will be live-fire against whoever is there to defend, with any reinforcements you bring along. Attacking a city will be straightforward, involving shooting everything, but will be tempered by a large health pool. Defenders should also be able to conduct repairs, so your invasion force should be sure to take out any incoming cargo ships bringing resources. Q4: Will ringed planets be textured planes, or will the rings be made of real junk? A4: Since one of our primary goals is avoiding the shortcomings of previous space games, it just wouldn't be right of us to take the easy way out for planetary rings. I would expect that at a long distance, the rings will appear as a textured plane or two, while up close there should be detritus to mine, or avoid crashing into on approach. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-seventh 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 an update on the status of the Capital Update, some more planet work from Idyllic, and some more backend development and documentation from lordrex. Idyllic wrapped up this week solving a few more planetary generation problems, with continued work on moisture distribution. While some generation systems just randomly place biomes wherever they want (looking at you, minecraft), we weren't happy with that process. Instead, we opted for a relatively simple process that generates moisture for every 'tile' on a planet based on whether its land or water, then in a few cycles, moves that moisture around. Using the wind vectors we set up, water moves over land, dropping out as it goes, with more dropping when obstacles like mountain ranges are encountered. This creates realistic rain-shadows behind mountains where deserts are more likely to form. Desert biomes will be dry because they don't have consistent access to water, not because a random point generator picked a spot. It also takes into consideration the heat factor we've generated - the poles will be cold and snow-covered with little precipitation, while mountain valleys with the right shape and direction will collect excess water, forming rainforest or swamp biomes. And with continued work, each of these biomes should end up with unique foliage forms suited to their stats, to better immerse the player in the planet surface gameplay. While some may say that working on such complex planets isn't worth the effort, we don't agree. The exciting gameplay experiences possible with planetary invasions, or exploration of the four corners of the galaxy, pushes this game beyond the arcade shooters that have come before. Lordrex has continued his work on backend systems as well as the design of the finer details of faction interaction. This week, we've ironed out the details of how a faction leader will go about running their faction, from how they use an expanded galaxy map, to what information will be available on that map, to how they can orchestrate raids and battles from a central command point with their HRs. Along with this came further discussion about how faction conflicts will be run, and we believe we've settled on a compromise solution that solves the problems we have identified with faction warfare, as well as allowing players to attack anytime, anywhere. In other words - no set battle times restricting participation. Further details will be released at a future time. Many of you may be wondering about the status of the Capital Update. We are working hard on catching up on the 3 months of work that we lost when craft left the team, but progress is slow because of the school year. Our dedicated team is doing the best they can, and we'll be continuing to provide updates as we go. Of note this week, Capital ship movement has been refined from NoCollider's Demo, with some added features like collision detection. Idyllic has also begun to help out with Capital Development, to speed up the process. We should be seeing promising results in no time. The two gifs here are comprised of a total of 1 day of work on the refurbished system - Capitals aren't all that complicated on their own, but the most challenging features are replication, and collision detection with minuscule fighters. Also of note is a simplification of the process of setting up Capital ships for easy implementation. As long as the model has a core part and a bounding box, it should be able to fly. Prior systems, including the original Dogfight Alpha were very poorly set up to accept different ship models and turret models, which we had to re-write for the Capital Update, which was well worth the time we put into refurbishing that part of the system. 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? A1: While we could implement a system that bars people from flying into your systems automatically, that really wouldn't be in the spirit of giving Factions a realistic playing field on which they can do as they please. If a faction want's to secure its borders, it'll have to hire security forces, or recruit members to patrol these territories, and should consider the extra area to cover before invading every system they can - if they can't defend their territory, they won't hold it for long. Q2: Will there be HIGHSEC or similar? A2: Continuing from the above question, the security of systems will be up to the owning factions. There won't be an automated law system anywhere, because factions can have their own set of rules, which they are free to enforce. While we will rank systems based on their hostility towards new players for initial spawning purposes, there will be no interference by us in how players act. Q3: Will we be able to keep systems independent from faction control? A3: With the newly decided details of Faction and Subfaction abilities, it is likely that this will be possible - if enough people residing in a system want to keep faction influences out, they should be able to attack any faction installations that try to be assembled, whether that means that individuals or organizations keep the entire system free, or just a planet surface, is entirely up to them. Drawing inspiration from the Browncoats of Firefly, or the Hutts of Star Wars, there is a wide range of possibilities for uncontrolled systems. Each planet acting entirely independent from one another, or whole systems run by a powerful mob boss, the possibilities are pretty cool to think about. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-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 have some outstanding progress on the planetary front, some more design work for economic systems, and a new planetary structure that will be vital to establishing colonies. Let's get started! Idyllic has been hard at work this week wrapping up the final updates to his old system of planetary generation, marking the end of the old and slow system, and the beginning of his explorations into new processes of making planets as varied and realistic as possible, both to keep them interesting, and to immerse players. This time last week, he had been solving continent growth and collisions, this week he has completed updates to that portion, as well as the wind generation, heat generation, and default moisture generation systems that will all go into generating realistic biome conditions on the final planets. In the process of debugging the collision code, Idyllic generated a few planets and was surprised with how cool they were, even without refining the different variables. Here we have a shallow continent meeting an ocean, which would form a beach, while in the background rises a high continent, meeting the ocean with steep cliffs. Also during his work, he accidentally generated a 5-step planet, which would have taken 3 hours to generate using the old system, but it managed it in about 15 minutes instead. It does have some unique formations, like land-locked plates surrounded by high mountains that will be toned down for the final system, as well as an exceptionally tall mountain visible at the south pole in the image above that could be cool, but isn't quite realistic. As with any new creation, sometimes you find cool things about it that you didn't plan for, and are neat in their existence. Like the insides of the planet, giving you an inverted view of the mountains and continents on the surface that you otherwise couldn't see. Look at the depth of that oceanic trench! And this neat mountain with a lake! Now that he is all caught up with the updates to the old system, and has cut generation time by 80%, Idyllic plans to move forward with planet biome generation, where heat boils ocean water, that is then carried by wind and deposited on land masses, resulting in various climate zones in various places around the planet. We can't wait to see what he comes up with. Idyllic, Skinny, and Lordrex have also spent some time this week developing exactly how contracts and purchasing of goods from other players will work. Every detail from the expiration of requests, how factions will make a profit off of transactions they host, to where transactions can be made, fulfilled, and who gets to know about them. Exciting stuff! This week, Brad has constructed a new planetary structure to assist in the transfer of planetary goods to the far-flung stations of any faction - the Capital Spaceport. Modular arms built like any structure and rising high into the sky will connect with telescoping gantries to any Capital ship small enough to enter orbit, allowing cargo to be loaded and unloaded, machinery and equipment, vehicles to be transported from their construction location to where they're needed, whether that be fighters for the front, or miners for the asteroid belts. Expensive to build, but worth the cost to offload cargo from planets on a large scale, or bring in materials for city building. 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 subfactions be able to sell 'salvage' or 'ugly' ships scrapped together from pieces of other ships? A1: If the Ravager appearance is the sort of style you or your band of mercs want to go for, you will definitely be able to submit ships that are unusual in style, you might even be able to get permission from another faction to use their ship parts, or create your own custom pieces. As for in-game mechanics allowing you to piece together broken ships, I wouldn't expect that anytime soon. Q2: Will we be able to move outposts from system to system every once in a while? A2: While we don't have any current plans for moving outposts around, the suggestion has come up quite a few times and would be worth considering. I can see the use in a pirate outpost moving around the asteroid belt to stay hidden, or an outpost for storing and shipping large volumes of cargo wanting to stay in the most efficient place. If outposts prove to be useless if locked in place, we'll look into a semi-movable sort of system after release. Q3: Will there be any sort of 'training mode' for factions to practice with their recruits? A3: While we would prefer you drop them in real combat, that wouldn't be the best process for every sort of training. We'll look into either providing a separate place for practice, or release some scripts for factions to use in their own training simulations, or perhaps we just have a toggle for a Mirror Dimension where nothing is permanent. Q4: Will you have to worry about maintaining orbit around planets like KSP? A4: Not really. While realistically simulating gravity is a cool stunt, I'd think by the time they've developed gargantuan capital ships, they'd at least have figured out a computer capable of keeping the ship hovering in place over a planet, rather than needing constant pilot input. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-third issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week has seen some great progress on our scripted systems, including a remastered chat system from davness, and some continued work from lordrex on the VPS backend data retrieval system. We also have some unfortunate news about the status of the Capital update as well, which we'll cover at the end. A few months ago, Idyllic roughly mocked up an edited chat system that modified the Roblox-provided scripts to try and customize the format and the look of the guis to better fit our theme, in a very short time frame. The system worked passably well, as long as you didn't look too closely at the edges. Since then, we've spent quite a bit of time building our own system from the ground up, with the features and design that we've always wanted. Developer Davness has been creating this system, and the progress he's made has been exceptional. Creating a custom chat system is more complicated than it may seem - there are lots of little features included to make sure that use of the system is as smooth as possible for all users, features like multiline chat messages and supporting usernames of any length up to 20 characters that are easy to ignore in a good system, but make use horrible if they are overlooked. He's also set up the system to easily scale with screen size, so that all users get the best experience possible. He has also set up an early demo of a shout system, so that RoVerse Admins can shout important updates, faction leaders can relay messages to their fleets, all with an easy-to-use system. Lordrex has successfully gotten our private server to read data from Google sheets, marking an important step in the development of our backend systems. Reading from saved data, making decisions about where to place people and fleets based on recorded information, sending star system data from the database we showed a few weeks back. A critical feature, and one that must be done right. Idyllic has continued remastering planet generation, this week taking a stab at table sorting as a way to easily grow continent shapes by having a handy list of all the closest points. While not completely solved yet, it does have some pretty results. We can't wait to see what else he comes up with. So many of you have been asking about the status of the Capital Alpha over the past three months since the originally planned release date passed. Since December, 90% of the update has been completed, including fighter models and rigging, gamemodes, all new custom maps, everything that would improve on the original system ten-fold... except for the mechanics of the capital ships. Since we couldn't release a Capital Update without Capital ships, we had to push that release back. To complete a rework of the system that NoCollider made nearly a year ago, we hired on craftsmashbuild, who had demoed several versions of his own ship flight scripts for his own project, that showed great promise for a robust and fun capital ship system fitting for a project as ambitious as RoVerse. Since then, craft has run it many, many personal problems, and has been unable to handle the stress of working on a professional development team with expectations and deadlines. Because of this pressure, he has chosen to leave the team permanently, and shows no sign of allowing us to use any of the progress he's made over the past 3 months, if any exists at all. While he had asked us to remain civil in the explanation of his departure, he proceeded to post several entirely incorrect tweets since then, and blocked all the RoVerse Devs, so civility is not something I can provide him. When we hired him in December we were clear with our expectations - while we understood he couldn't have made the original Christmas deadline, which we proceeded to push back, it was made clear that the Capital ships would be an important feature of this project, and if he didn't think he could manage such work in the required time, we would hand that portion of the project over to SmellyPencil and TheFurryFish, two talented devs who have done an exceptional job on the rest of the Capital Update. He insisted that the assignment was well within his grasp, so we hired him on to let the others do the final polishing of the other systems. After pushing back a planned release to the end of January, and now to the end of February, with no visible progress since the demo we showed of a capital ship doing donuts, the managers of this project, namely Vedrakkerous and IdyllicDestroyer, obviously had questions and concerns about the status of the project, that were always met with 'can't talk right now' or 'Ill have something to show by the newsletter' without any progress. Since it didn't seem like the completion of his project would occur within a reasonable amount of time, we initiated our backup 'plan B' - having the Update Dev team complete a rudimentary Capital system effective enough to release as the Capital Update in a limited capacity, to give craft enough time to complete the official and robust Capital system. It was at this point that craft decided he didn't want to work on this project anymore, due to the pressure of developing in such a public position. So don't worry, craft's sudden departure doesn't mean the Capital Update won't be coming out, but it does mean that it will take a bit more time than previously expected. In the future, we will be making sure that the devs we hire for such an ambitious game understand the expectations prior to assigning them any significant portion of our project. And to craft - if you had properly communicated to us at any point in the past 3 months that you didn't think you could complete the portion of the project we had expected of you, we could have provided support, or reassigned the parts that were out of your grasp, rather than having wasted our time for three months before deciding you wanted to work on your own space game more than you wanted to work on ours. Also, we are not the type of people to become vindictive to those who have legitimate reasons for leaving the team, as several members have come and gone over the development of this project without incident. But you spreading falsehoods in an attempt to slander us for who knows what reason is not something we take lightly, and as such I have written out the proper sequence of events for the public record. Had you be clear with us, or communicated when we asked, and even remained civil as you asked of us, this could all have been avoided. Let the facts stand as they are, and if they 'destroy your development career' as you claim we said, it is naught but your own fault. And on that note a quick recap - chat systems are progressing nicely, with lots of neat little features tucked inside. Backend development is progressing slowly but surely, with an important step towards our end goals being made over the past few weeks. And Idyllic has been playing around with planets, as he has always been. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ Q1: Will there be indicators of ground combat from space, like explosions and stuff? A1: That's a great idea! We'll have our scripters look into how expensive it would be to send a notification to star system servers when and where ground combat is breaking out, but having little explosions appear on planets would be a cool little feature to notify people of things going on down below. And as always, ships 'in orbit' in the planet server will be able to see combat directly. Another light week on questions from the community. If you want to know more, feel free to ask in our community Discord. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-second issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we've got continued progress on both the planetary generation and vehicular miniaturization development. Idyllic has picked back up with the old planetary generation scripts, continuing work on updating them to use tables instead of objectvalues, improving loading times substantially. He undertook this project last year when the generation of high-detail planets became too long to be sustainable, taking significant amounts of time to generate just the subdivisions and continents, not even terrain details. Generating 539 planets in that fashion would've been nearly impossible, so a change had to be made. This week, he managed to retrofit the continent selection system, and has moved on to fixing continent collisions, all to speed up generation times. Off to a promising start! He's also continued work on miniaturizing our fleet of ground vehicles, this week shrinking an armored cargo truck and a mobile artillery platform, each with a significant number of wheels to make work. Oddly enough, 6-wheeled vehicles seem to have even less traction than the 4-wheeled vehicle completed last week, probably a side effect of the middle wheels raising the rear ones off the ground - problems to solve another day. The Cargo truck, codenamed the Behemoth, is designed to carry your important cargo cross-planet - carrying important munitions for a planetary invasion, carrying resources to resupply outposts on or past the edge of safe space, or just protecting your usual shipments from pirate attacks, it will undoubtedly come in handy in a variety of situations. The mobile artillery platform is a study but slow vehicle designed to mount and transport the heaviest turrets used to do the most destruction possible to enemy ground forces, from heavy missile launch systems to anti-air guns, this vehicle is sure to be a vital part of ground force defensive and offensive strategies. Shipbuilder SkinnyThePimp has headed off on his continued military schooling, so we won't be hearing from him as much in the coming months. We wish him the best of luck in his duties, and await his return. 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 Idyllic destroy the universe? A1: While it is too soon to tell, we have our suspicions... This week, the Community dev_questions channel had a lot of questions and a lot of answers from both Developers and community members, and as far as I can tell, they all got answered, or were questions that had previously been answered. As always, feel free to drop by with any questions you may have, and if its a particularly notable one, you may wind up finding in a newsletter. Until next week! You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Hello everyone! Welcome to the eighty-first issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. Continuing off of the excellent work with vehicle gravity last week, Idyllic has continued to improve the system, as well as take a first stab at miniaturizing the vehicles, which didn't turn out to be as easy as first expected. To go with his work, a new, larger, generated planet, has been created, with Vedrakkerous working on the details of both planet biomes and other atmospheric effects, like a day-night cycle. After some important tweaks to a scaling plugin to scale the effects of attachments properly, and setting up a specific grouping and process for welding, miniature vehicles got off to a bumpy start. With some interesting results that looked more like a foal trying to stand for the first time, than a suspension system, tweaking of forces was necessary. That was the earliest, most promising results, because when it didn't spasm out like the above, it would either just disappear completely, having been launched out of view in a single frame, or explode into individual pieces. So it may not look like it, but it was very important progress. After extensive work balancing variables, Idyllic managed to get a vehicle that could stand under its own weight, and operate as designed when driven. There are still a few things that need to be smoothed and tweaked a bit more, but the results are looking good. The suspension is a bit rigid going over obstacles, and prone to breaking when hitting anything exceptionally hard or at a weird angle, but nothing unfixable. Idyllic was also able to tweak the radar system to work with planets, the major change being that anything that is at your elevation is displayed as such, even if it is around the curve of the planet making it seem to be below you. So ships strafing you overhead will appear with a riser, showing their location. We look forward to more work on that system moving forward. While Idyllic was working on the technical systems for planets, Vedrakkerous took to improving the green, grassy boring planet Idyllic had been testing on, filling it with biomes like the polar zone, a desert, and some rocky plains. While not officially generated procedurally, these test runs will provide a basis for designing the systems that will generate biomes, using a variety of terrain materials and colors to create unique, and sometimes alien environments. But it wasn't just painting terrain. Other atmospheric touches include a transition from clear at night, showing the thousands of stars, to nearly opaque during the day, resulting in a nice blue sky. And since the day-night cycle moves around the planet, rather than using the Roblox-provided one, the math behind finding where exactly the player was, turned into an interesting challenge that proved to be no match for the two devs. And what's a desert without a pyramid rising from the dunes? Next up on the list of features are a more dynamic camera than one fixed to the back of your turret, and the big challenge of getting characters to rotate to match the surface. We can't wait to see what our talented devs come up within the 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 there be scanning of planets to get extra information about them from orbit? A1: Having a readout full of useful, and maybe some not so useful, information display when looking at a planet from orbit would be really cool, adding a bit of extra depth to the universe you're exploring. We'll look into putting important information, like a rough estimate of resources, hazardous conditions, and day length, when we get closer to implementing those sorts of guis. Q2: Will faction members be forced to wear a set uniform, to avoid those embarrassing ones? A2: It will be left up to factions whether to require members to wear a specific uniform, with the possibility of certain accessories being allowed, so characters keep their identity. Or, alternatively, we leave it up to factions entirely to manage their members - there's nothing stopping you from kicking members that violate your rules. Q3: Will we be able to make hovering land vehicles? A3: Of course! Wheeled vehicles may be what we're working on now, but only because they were expected to be the most problematic. Hovering vehicles are a staple of sci-fi, we'd be remiss to not include them. They will of course handle much differently, and will have certain situations where they excel, as well as situations where they hold you back. Q4: What benefit will AI colonists provide to factions? A4: Building a colony on a new world will be a significant step in a factions growth, making them as an interplanetary force to be reckoned with. Besides the boosts to the economy, and increasing faction population statistics, a city on another planet is a significant stronghold should that planet come under attack. Taking care of a colony will reward you with a better presence, and an improved economy that could mean the difference in your military campaigns. Q5: Swarm Missiles over traditional single-shot missiles? A5: We'll look into it, because they're sure cool to watch. Q6: Will there be unarmed combat? A6: In the hopefully rare occurrence that you run out of all ammo while invading a planet's surface, you'll be able to scavenge for other weapons or ammo, bring in shipments on friendly cargo ships, possibly even call down a consumable drop pod with supplies. When that runs out, you'll be provided with a weak laser pistol, that should hold its charge for a significant amount of time. While hand-to-hand combat would be cool, it's not really within the scope of RoVerse, and probably wouldn't work exceptionally well at the tiny scale we're working with. 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 |