Hello everyone! Welcome to the 121st 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 progress on the menu systems from Idyllic, news on the ship meshing project from Skinny, some pretty atmospheric shots from Ved, an update on the NPC system from Stratiz, and some general status updates from others. Let's get started! This week Idyllic has continued his work on the ship loadout system, combining features developed in the last few weeks into a functioning system. Now, each turret mount location has a class value for light, medium, and heavy turrets, determining which size turret can be mounted to that location. This is most apparent when you're using the Bolitho, as seen below. The Bolitho has 3 mounts intended for medium conventional turrets, with the rest being light flak, like the one visible on the forward side of the ship. Previously, all turrets were pulled from the same folder, regardless of turret location, and it led to some unusual looking turret mounts - for example, this Medium conventional turret mounted precariously on the side of the hull. Along with this addition of classes, came the need for the player's options list to update with each turret selected. We had two options - graying out unavailable options, or trimming the list to just the available turrets, which was the option we went with in the end. There is also a handy little indicator screen center to tell you which class of turrets you're currently selecting from. On the technical side of things, the list of turret options is created at the beginning, listing every option, that is then trimmed down to available options, and the menu is set up using a UIListConstraint set to horizontal. When an option is not to be listed, its visibility is turned off, and the constraint automatically restructures the list towards the center, not leaving any gaps, which Idyllic found to be an amazingly well thought out and executed feature. Also in the Capital ships department, Skinny has completed the meshing of a few more Capitals, including the Bolitho, the Dauntless, and Ironclad, reducing their part counts from 146 to 10, 117 to 5, and 525 to 3, respectively. Quite the significant reduction, that should make piloting these ships in combat a much more lag-free experience. This also means that these ships are now available to be retextured with skins, though a bit of code will be needed for multi-part models, since the Avenger was only a single mesh. With the new triangle limits, we were able to import them as fewer parts than we could just a few weeks ago, so that's quite the improvement. Ved has continued with atmospheric effects, including lighting and particle-based gas clouds, as well as experiments with textured-mesh nebulas. We'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Lego has continued work on his asteroid field generator, which produced this lovely asteroid ring during his testing. On the Station NPC front, we'd like to cover the progress Stratiz made over the past few months. We last left them off with a collision problem, where they'd run into each other and push each other around, which is a dangerous thing to do in a station full of outcasts and criminals, that has since been at least partially resolved. They are now capable of long-distance travel, rather than being localized to one room on the station. Stratiz has gotten really busy in the last few months, with school and developing his own game taking up most of his time, so this project is on hold for the time being. Good news though, we started early on a feature that won't debut until Freeroam at the earliest, so there is plenty of time to get it working. Last week we demoed station health replication across the server boundary with a gif showing the station exploding about 8 seconds after it had been triggered in its home system. This week, after a bit of code optimization and elbow grease, lordrex has managed to cut that time down to 2 seconds, in a best-case scenario. This of course requires more frequent HTTP requests to be sent, which may impact our limits in the long run, so will have to be turned down again, barring Roblox increasing the request limit. 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 incendiary weaponry? Napalm? A1: This is a definite possibility - from hand-held flamethrowers to vehicle-mounted turrets with explosive or flammable ammunition, ground combat could get quite hot. Testing will be necessary to determine if the effects are purely splash-based to players, or if we could get fires burning through alien forests without impacting performance significantly. Q2: Will building a ship with different ores give it different armor stats? A2: The construction of a ship will have the same requirements every time and wherever you build it, but there will be options for bolt-on modules that increase a ships armor stats, that could have varying ore requirements. Save up some rare titanium for armor plating to make your cargo ships easier to defend, or a strike-craft that can survive planetary defenses to drop a bomb on a base of operations. Q3: How will control work on the surface? A3: In a very similar fashion to how it works in star systems. Factions are given an influence measure based on the amount of infrastructure and their activity in a system. Factions that build stations and outposts in space, and bases and colony cities on planets, will receive a significant bonus if they keep that infrastructure up. With planets, though, territory will be divided into a grid of hexagons, as we demoed in a newsletter a while back, allowing borders and fronts on the surface. Basically all you need to begin capturing territory is to build a transmitter tower in whatever zone you wish to claim. Unclaimed territory will be the 'wilds' where anything could happen. Q4: Will players have an in-game profile that others can view? A4: This is a planned feature. It will show your Faction, rank, and some other information about you. Possibly to include any dishonorable discharges, available funding, KDR, or player titles. We want to provide security forces with the information they need to catch smugglers and spies, faction recruiters with information they need to see before recruiting them into their faction, and what any other interested parties need. Q5: Will ship explosions be bigger if you're carrying explosive cargo? A5: While that would be a cool feature and all, I think you'll be a little busy exploding to notice any difference. Either way, a ships drive systems exploding would probably be more violent than any cargo you'd be carrying. Q6: Can players be members of a corporation while being members of a Faction? A6: Corporations are a tier below full factions, belonging in the organizations/subfactions category. This means that you can be a member of both at the same time - if your faction allows that, of course. We don't want to limit factions that are fine with their members joining a bunch of organizations, and factions that want to be exclusive can mandate and enforce that on their own. Q7: What happens to players whose ships die in battle? A7: If they're a faction member with piloting permissions, they can take a ship spawn out of a nearby carrier ship, if it has any left, or if they eject they could be picked up by friendlies and taken back to another capital ship, or worse case scenario, they are spawned at the nearest friendly or neutral station. Q8: Will planets have moons? Will they be habitable? A8: Definitely. I think we can make the gravitational system robust enough to support multiple celestial bodies, and there should be a wide variety of biomes, from habitable moons to barren chunks of rock. Q9: How will air support effect ground combat? A9: Fighters will be able to enter atmosphere and fly around, both for exploration and to support ground troops in combat, but we don't intend for them to become the absolute best method of conquest. To that end they will have a few debuffs, notably poor accuracy when firing weapons. Ground forces can also install anti-air defensive systems, to attack airborne ships, or scramble their own fighters for some intense dogfighting in the skies. 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 |