Hello everyone! Welcome to the 107th 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 continued on a variety of fronts on the Capital Update, from menu coding to ship spawning. Lordrex has continued work on the asset loading system, with good progress on that front. Skinny has continued with meshing the line of ships for the Update, with some interesting one's at the end of his list. Up first is the menu interaction Idyllic's been working on. A few weeks ago we showed you the menu mockup for editing capital ship loadouts, and since then we've been finishing up the turret varieties. With the 8 turret varieties all wrapped up for now, we could move forward with the coding for the menus. Here we have each of the varieties of turret being interchanged on a Capital ship while in dock. The first piece of the puzzle this week was getting Capital ships to spawn at a specific location. Before now, in the demo videos, Capital ships have been spawning wherever they were placed into the game - if we want to make it a working game, being able to place spawning players wherever we wish is an important bit of code that just hasn't been at the top of our list yet. Now, we can spawn a husk ship in a dock to allow players to edit it, then a full ship can be deployed as they enter the game, with all the proper data being set to allow for the proper position, as well as turning and pitch angles. At this stage, we've updated the code to set the ship name in the player's menu, with the corporation being pulled from a database - loading its stats will be the next bit to be added on that front. Here we can also see the beginnings of the turret stat comparison guis, which has been some complicated math for Idyllic, but it's beginning to show promising results. One of the less obvious additions this week was the addition of a 9th 'turret' type, the blank. Blank turrets are placeholder turrets for when you don't really have the power to weaponize every spot on your newly purchased capital ship, or when you just don't want to. It also solves a problem that was brought up in our community in the past few weeks about the number of turrets to place on ships. With a wide variety of ship designs, and the possibility of points being assigned to a ships power systems allowing more or more powerful weapons, there has to be a way to support different numbers of turrets. That's where the blank turret comes in. Faction designers can put as many turret mounts (within reason) on their ship, with only limited numbers of turrets being mounted at one time. Any turrets beyond the mountable number, or those that you just don't have the money to purchase yet, will show as a mount, but not have an active weapon. Beyond the visuals, Idyllic has continued work on bridging the gap between the dogfight and capitals, working towards the next major milestone of flying a fighter at and around a capital ship, possibly with some combat involved. We can't wait to see his continued progress. Lordrex has been working for several weeks ensuring that the asset loading and replication systems are as efficient and robust as we will need, knowing that RoVerse will probably put a serious load on any systems we put in place. You let a faction build a station, they'll try and build 100, so to speak. He is currently working on two divergent models with differences in http request lengths, and time will tell which one is more useful for our purposes. Skinny has meshed most of the line of ships we intend to add to the Alpha, and even though he got quite busy in real life, he had some time to work on the last, and most complicated, models on that list. The designer of these ships was going for a uniquely alien and foreign set of designs when he created these ships, and using his patented method of union duplication and offset, created some truly unique designs. These ships, intended for any sort of player-vs-entity gamemodes we might make, don't follow the same standards as the rest of the ships. The most obvious trait is the weird angles, that make meshing complicated - though not impossible - and are drastically different from the flat and angular designs pretty much every faction has created so far. There's also the matter of their reflectivity, which when in the night sky, makes them hard to see. This detail won't be allowed for faction assets, but could bring some interesting situations to Capital Update battles. 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 events outside of RoVerse have an in-game effect (clan wars)? A1: While the concept is interesting, at this point it is hard to say what in-game effects a war taking place in individual bases could have on the game at large. The easiest effects to add would be changes in group diplomacy, and factions could certainly pay out resources as a result of that loss, but RoVerse will play no part in enforcing any agreements like that. If anyone has any specific cases after release, the admins will surely see what they can do about it, though. Perhaps the landmark for that base could change colors for a week? We'll see. Q2: Are animated mech going to be added? A2: Mechs have been on our wish list from the first time planets were announced. Being able to support a scifi staple vehicle would be a cool feature, and we'll continue trying to add such features. I don't see any reason yet why mechs couldn't be added, seeing as Vortex Security managed them years ago. Q3: Will jetpacks be available? A3: Planets should have a variety of options for on-foot travel across the surface, from hoverbikes to jump assist, to expand the exploration aspects of the game. There's nothing more satisfying than stumbling upon a bit of hidden treasure in a hard-to-reach place. Q4: Is there anything requiring that our faction species must be humanoid-sized? A4: While the character that you operate in-game must be approximately the size of a default humanoid, there's actually no limit on the size of your species in lore - you could be a race of giants, operating humanoid forms remotely, or a regular sized bird, piloting a bird-shaped robotic suit. Be creative! Q5: Will there be bounty boards on planets? A5: While we don't have immediate plans for any NPC structures on planet surfaces yet, there should be a way to construct a bounty interaction board on the surface to find nearby players to hunt down for the reward. Who knows, you might stumble upon a strange wanderer in the wilderness, who needs some resources in exchange for a reward. Q6: Will faction builders be able to fix bugs they find in ships after submission? How about make visual updates over time? A6: While we'd prefer the ships be perfect the first time around, we can't expect that from everyone, so there should be a way to make minor adjustments after launch, as long as it doesn't mess with database data, like changing the number of turrets, or cost of production. As for updates over time, we should be able to support changes like that at some point, but hopefully that won't happen for a while. And unlike galaxy, significant changes in design will require a new ship, not replace an old design. 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 |