Hello everyone! Welcome to the 113th 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 exciting news in the custom character department, with a working proof-of-concept for custom species models. We also have continued work on replication, with a system to send tagged data between servers now in progress. This week, Idyllic managed to create our first successful proof-of-concept for creating custom character models. Creating and texturing a custom species character model was fairly easy and straightforward, while one of the important features that needed to be implemented was supporting the default roblox clothing template. If people go through all the effort of designing uniforms and clothing to be sold in-game, it would be very important to let any new characters wear them. As long as the new models are low enough poly, mapping the uv to the roblox clothing template is a simple, if time consuming process. At this point, we'll recommend factions either figure out how to create their own meshes, or contact Idyllic for more information. Important details to consider when designing a new package are that the joints remain in the same place, to avoid requiring completely new animation sets, and that the pieces be roughly the same dimensions as the default character, or smaller. Creative license can be taken, as with this bird species' offset shins. As for hitboxes, the default character will be used to keep things fair, while allowing the most flexibility when it comes to species design. Above we see a few features made possible by our custom system - extending details like arm feathers or tail feathers, in addition to the 15 base parts, and flat double-sided pieces that are a bit more flexible for texturing. So overall, good news. Factions can be as creative as they want with their species lore - plant people, bird people, robots, or amorphous gelatin. All on the table. Any uniforms you might have should work regardless of mesh shape if properly set up, with only minor distortion, which also means the entire Roblox catalog is available for character clothing. Works with a variety of faction uniforms! (Courtesy of BSD, Inikan Legion and Ninazu Collective) Some might see this feature as extraneous, not worth the effort, and a waste of time. The way we see it, is that a little bit of effort on our part opens up a whole world of possibilities for the community. No longer are you stuck as identical and indistinguishable lego people, fighting each other in a red and black base over the same flag terminal every other base has. Packages are the unexplored frontier of character customization - what Roblox has now is fine if you're into the redcliff genre, or want to look like a penguin, but if we can open things up to the truly creative members of the wider community, we can do all sorts of amazing stuff. Factions distinguished by their lore, as well as their physical appearance, given a permanent battlefield on which to fight for glory and recognition. That's what RoVerse is all about. On the Capital Update front, this week was spent focusing on backend systems, making sure that replication of ships and fighters works in a coherent way. Beyond that, work has also progressed in the area of collisions, with the avenger getting its very own low-res hitbox. Used for colliding with objects, and bouncing conventional shots, this low-res bounding box makes physics calculations much simpler, and more importantly, faster. While having full-detail collisions would be nice, unfortunately it's not something the engine can support at this time. We can reduce the detail here, in exchange for better performance, and more players in the same server at once. I guess it's important to mention a developer tip - if you have objects that don't need to be solid, turning cancollide on helps improve physics performance, by reducing the number of objects that have to be calculated each step. Anything from background details around the map, to asteroids way off in the distance, can be turned off. Lordrex has moved forward, taking on the task of replicating live data across server boundaries, which has a variety of applications, most notably station health. Sending a station's location when the server checks is one thing, sending and receiving updated health information live, and comparing and adding several server updates at once, is a much more complicated process. We'll be seeing more progress from him in that area in the coming weeks. 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 NPCs in stations be able to spawn their own ships? Will they be able to move goods, sell to stations? A1: Right now, station NPCs are there to provide environment to the insides of stations, where there might not be a lot of players, but there should be a lot of people. The point of their existence is to assist in regular player gameplay, either as passengers on a transport ship, or quest givers in stations. For now, NPCs will be relegated to station environments, running around looking at things. Q2: Will Capitals be able to spawn at any faction station or just shipyards? A2: While shipyard stations will be able construct, repair, and rekit Capital ships, factions will be able to store them at stations of any type. It's still uncertain whether the ships will be contained within the station, and able to be destroyed in combat, or just anchored nearby, since they tend to be rather large. Further information to follow. Q3: Can factions make different types of station models for the same function? A3: Factions should at minimum have one of each type of station design, but if they feel the need to build more, or just that ambitious, they should be able to submit more designs. This goes by the same rules for ships, in that you shouldn't go overboard with the number of versions you're submitting. Q4: What is the scale of the ships in meters? A4: The Excalibur, for example, is 17.5 m long at full scale, but only 2.5 studs long miniaturized. As a guide, 1 stud = 7 meters, so when building your faction ships, keep that scale in mind. Planet scale will be different, but we'll take care of that for you. If you build to scale with a character that fits in the cockpit, you'll be fine. Q5: Will we be able to have a targeting system like phantom forces? A5: A cool concept that we'll definitely look into implementing in some way for planetary combat. Identifying vehicles and infantry crossing the field of battle, calling their locations out to other units, or even ships in orbit to coordinate strikes, would be pretty cool. It might not look or function exactly like it does in PF, but conceptually, it's a good idea. 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 |