Hello everyone! Welcome to the 114th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic went back to work on Capital Ship mechanics, with an excellent expansion on projectile physics, while Lordrex continued to push live stat modification forward. A few newsletters back, in the midst of Idyllics work on turret scripting, a wonderful idea was brought forward, a combination of community suggestions and wild thinking. The idea was this - physical turrets should behave with a bit more realism than their purely sci-fi counterparts, and to do so, their physics should reflect their form. We have all this first-hand data about what happens when a solid projectile encounters an armored surface at high speed, everything from battleships to tanks are designed on the same principles, so why not make these weapons a bit more realistic, and a bit more interesting - have these projectiles bounce off in shallow-angle collisions, doing partial damage, while steep-angle hits penetrate and do significant damage. So using the low-res collision boxes we've been working on and combining them with the new raycast mechanics and a bit of math, we were able to create such effect. Here the projectile is slowed down to demonstrate the effect, and also at significantly reduced range, but in combat it should function the same. Large physical projectile turrets, like the conventional turret seen here and the railgun, will use this feature, and if testing shows it is efficient enough autoturrets may be able to occasionally reflect shots as well. Now this isn't to say that you should be rushing to redesign all your faction ships... This mechanic is rather minor in the grand scheme of combat, and not something you should plan on exploiting or defending against. A spherical ship design may be able to reflect many shots, but hits will still do damage, though slightly reduced, and if you're in any sort of fleet, the reflected shot may do more damage to your allies than you'd like. This function will also work in chain, being able to bounce off several times before losing momentum, though the chances of this happening in combat are pretty slim. Either way, the code is there to support such instances, increasing immersion. Throughout development, Idyllic made sure to put it through rigorous testing to ensure it functions correctly. When doing normal reflections, it's easy to lose a negative sign and have incorrect bounce angles, but fortunately we were able to avoid that. You may have noticed it in the first gif, but another important feature added this week is delayed raycast. Instead of a hitscan system that raycasts immediately to the target the mouse is pointing at, for physical projectiles it is a requirement that they have travel time. In FPS games you're at such a small scale that bullet speeds are instantaneous, but in space, everything is bigger, and fast things don't look that fast. But we can't physically simulate movement and call it a day. The physics engine is notorious for not handling physics updates between players well, and the .Touched event is spotty at best when any sort of speed is involved. The answer, of course, is segmented rays, that fire sequentially, and are only as long as the projectile should have traveled in that time. Balancing will of course involve adjusting that length of time to keep performance when casting a lot of rays up, and having enough resolution to hit small moving targets, like fighters. An update on lordrex's project, this week he has continued writing the code to modify and replicate object data across servers, all managed from the back-end server. Ugly temporary UI has been added, but it's not something he'd like to show off. The rest of our devs have been keeping busy, we hope to have more pretty pictures from them in the near future. 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 would happen to players who chose a species whose faction ceases to exist? A1: Excellent question. Selecting that species would be done at character creation, and would be permanent. If the unexpected occurs, and a faction no longer exists, the option at creation will cease to exist, but players who were former members will continue to be that species, creating interesting opportunities for exiles and renegades, even the last martian-esque occurrences. Q2: Will foreign communities within a factions territory be possible? A2: Anywhere a group of people band together can be a community. If a group of ex-Hylotl set up shop on some planet, and are diplomatic enough to not be considered a threat, they should be just fine. Q3: How do research stations work? A3: The research station type functions as a repository for blueprints, and a collector of research points. The as-of-yet undecided tech tree will allow factions to purchase different tech and upgrades, and some designs will be required to be stored on these stations scarif-style, to make them a strategic asset to have and a valuable target to attack during a long campaign. Q4: Are corporations and vendors a thing? Do they require infrastructure? A4: We've been working towards distinguishing between factions, subfactions, and organizations for a while now, and this question is highly reflective of that. While certain in-game organizations may require infrastructure, like a security firm or a cargo transport company, others may not. If you're just planning on submitting ship or clothing or weapon designs, you'll be able to sell those, but unless you're building your ships for a client, you won't need a specific base of operations. Q5: Will corporations require a host faction? Can they be standalone? A5: Corporations can absolutely be standalone. While having a faction to protect your enterprise may be beneficial to some, it does create problems for those that would sell goods to enemy factions, creating interesting diplomatic situations. It's recommended any organization with infrastructure have a host faction, so they don't have to protect their own stuff while worrying about performing their service, but it's not required.
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 |