Hello everyone! Welcome to the 104th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we have continued work on system travel and object loading systems, to bring the skies to life; we have work on the last weapon variant for the initial Capital Update - flak; and we have begun the process of meshing a variety of Capital ships in preparation for their addition to the Capital Update. Let's get started. Last week we showed you the first steps in the player persistence system, with a player's last system saved and loaded when they rejoin. As part of that test, Idyllic and Lordrex met up in a single star system by following wormholes towards each other. This week, Idyllic struck out on his own with the goal of being the first to visit every star system on the map. 220 distant and unique systems, all connected by interstellar pathways, and some code. After about 2 hours and 22 systems visited, he had to put his adventure on hold, for it was much longer than he had anticipated. Below you can trace the path of his journey. Though he only managed to visit 1% of the galaxy, he did get to experience some interesting sights, including the skybox variations that come with visiting systems in the different sectors of the galaxy. The ominous red haze of the Great Hollow, to the vortexes of the Abyss, to the clear skies of the Core Systems. Travel between systems was easy, it was the walking to the next jumpgate within the systems that took the most time. And he only got lost once! On the coding end of things, Lordrex spent this week designing and laying out his future plans for object loading and replication between servers. We'd like to clarify a design point on the number of active servers and players per server - out goal is to be able to support up to 100 players engaging in faction v faction battles within the same server, and if this is possible we might restrict the number of active servers per system, to simplify defense of faction stations, and prevent serverhopping. If it is not possible, and systems can only hold 30 or so players at a time, parallel server count wouldn't be limited. In both instances, it would be important to sync the data between parallel servers as time goes on - a faction builds a new station, an attack destroys an outpost module, a system changes ownership. The system behind this must be robust enough to keep track of numerous servers all updating values, detect malfeasance, and reply to all active servers with the current status of stations, outposts, planets, wrecks, and any other persistent objects we'd like to maintain in a star system. To demonstrate the loading system, we loaded a tree. There is a reason behind the choice of a tree - we're also saving orientation as well as location, so we needed an object with a top, and directional sides to easily determine it was loading in the proper direction. Science. The last weapon variant to be coded before the Capital Update releases is the flak turret. A variant on a missile class, at least in the code, the flak turret launches a projectile with a fuse for detonation, rather than a proximity trigger. After a short distance, the projectile explodes violently, damaging anything within range of the explosion significantly, and shredding anything beyond with shrapnel. Used as anti-aircraft in WWII, flak has a long history in taking out small attack craft, so defending your planetary bases, to keeping fighters off your capital ship's flanks will be a breeze. They also function as a useful anti-missile screening system, when deployed correctly. Their explosion leaves an invisible sphere of debris, that destroys any missiles that come into contact with it. With this extra functionality we hit a few roadblocks, but nothing that can't be overcome, and we hope to see a fully functional demo next week. Also this week, Skinny has taken on the task of meshing the 15 or so Capital ships we plan on including in the Capital Update. Ships of all sizes, from the small and fast Bolitho, to the giant Protector, all cut down from hundreds of moving parts, to under 10. While this will require extra care managing loading times, the performance increases from 10 parts moving over a hundred is substantial, and well worth the effort. In the process of meshing developer-created ships, Skinny did run into a problem - object format exports of CSG v1, where negation was used to change the color of some faces of a union, do not work, requiring that these faces be manually selected and recolored. This greatly increases the workload and the time spent on meshing models, so for faction-submitted models this will not be allowed. We recommend you turn on the 'Use Part Color' value, and add separate parts to color different areas. We also have another important update to inform you about this week - our first public roadmap. Available here, we have laid out all the progress we have made, and the future steps we will be taking as we move past the Capital Update and on to the full release. We will be updating this map as we complete features and release updates, so check back there if you ever lose track of our progress. Each week we compile a Q&A section here whenever there are any new questions posted on the RoVerse Community group wall or in the Community Discord Server. Be sure to join if you have any questions about RoVerse: ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290 Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ There weren't any pressing question from the community this week, if you have any of your own, post them in the #dev_questions channel in the community Discord. You can support us by joining our Community Group or Discord server! So far, the community has been absolutely amazing, supportive, and very friendly. We are very appreciative of all the support you guys show us! If you want to catch any of our developers streaming, you can always follow our official Twitch channel here! Remember, we are always looking for new, talented builders, scripters and artists! If you’d like to help us you can always get in touch with us through RoVerse_Official on the ROBLOX website, or by contacting an Administrator in the community Discord! Don’t worry, we don’t bite! Comments are closed.
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AuthorsVaktus: Leader of the Vaktovian Empire and head of the RoVerse Project |