RoVerse Development Newsletter #129

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 129th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week, Idyllic and Juszl collaborated on some big details for the new map, Idyllic continued coding the fighter spawning functions, aiming to fix the fighter spawning system so we can spawn whichever ship wherever we want to. We also have some clarifications regarding attribute points for ships.

Juszl has continued to work on his map for the Capital Update, this week completing the iconic central station that is the landmark for the map, where most battles will take place around and through. While not a station of any specific type, it certainly is full of cool details.

Idyllic helped out, using blender to texture an energy beam mesh to spin around the top of the station, with beams used to create the pulsating effect. Pilots are warned against getting too close to this high-energy phenomena, as it may lead to malfunctions, ship destruction, and death.

We're still solving the problems created when a developer left the team after obfuscating the code - we appreciate the work he did, but the state he left the code in leaves a lot to be desired, and that's why it's taken Idyllic two weeks to finally accomplish the surprisingly daunting task of modifying the system to spawn any of the new fighters on command.

But good news! He has accomplished his task!

In the end, it took choosing the nuclear option to disable chunks of code that ran the old hangar system, delete a folder of facade ships that the old system was based off of, and hunting down all the errors from there to find where to hook up the deploy button for the new and entirely rational format of the new hangar system.

While this may seem like a minor and unimportant bit of progress, it is actually quite important to the completion of the game. As with any project picked up by a different coder down the line, things aren't exactly where they should be, and features have been added that weren't originally planned, but you still have to keep moving forward, hunt down what you need, and remove the excess, which we will keep doing.

This week in the discord, a conversation brought up some questions about how 'attribute points' will work, which led to a discussion among a couple devs about their place in our plans. The problems involved dynamic attribute points making a tech tree redundant, or vice versa. Our decision on the matter proceeds thus: attribute points will be used exclusively by faction ship developers submitting ships, allowing them to tweak the stats of their ship from a baseline for the class, depending on their intended future use in their fleets. These points will be spent once and are not changeable by the end user. Further modification of ship stats, however, will still be possible through the purchase and installation of modules, unlocked by research that is available to both faction members and the solo player through station interfaces. Kitting is also a method available to modify stats - constructing a ship with a carrier kit selected will increase stats like hangar and cargo space, while decreasing armor and engine power - either as a selection during the building process, or as a rekit at a shipyard for added expense. Further details on these systems will be released in the future, but for now this is a rough guide on the current plans.

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​​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 incentives are there for exploration?

A1: We'd like to think that a sense of adventure would be all the incentive you'd need to explore the far corners of the galaxy we're carefully putting together for you to explore, but if that isn't enough then there might be other rewards, as well as the tactical bonus you get for extensive knowledge of various systems. And who knows, maybe you'll find a mysterious artifact somewhere out in space.

Q2: How dark will space be?

A2: At least 7 dark. Really, though, space has it's extremes - fly too close to the sun and prepare to be blinded, explore the furthest reaches or in the shadow of a planet, and it will be dark as night, or more.

Q3: Will there be a coded limit on how many large ships a faction can have?

A3: Nope, the limits are all down to how much money a faction can rake in, how many resources they can collect, and how many pilots they can find to pilot capital ships. There may be a limit to how many XXXL capitals can be in a system at once, since they are exceptionally huge, but not to how many you can build at once.

Q4: Can we scuttle our ships?

A4: I wouldn't recommend it. Using your ships to combat enemies is still the most effective use of them, otherwise don't even bring them out to battle.

Q5: How does warp work?

​A5: Idyllic is still in the process of coding the various portions of intra-system warp, but we can go into a bit of an explanation here. Warp isn't an instantaneous jump system, instead your ship moves at high speed from one location to another, requiring line of sight and minimal obstructions. Triggering the sequence, you select a destination that is provided on your HUD calculated as the shortest distance between two points of interest. You can always fly there the old fashioned way, and see what gets missed by those just rushing about, find asteroid fields plentiful in ores and establish a station as a new jump location, even. The image below shows a variety of flight paths through a hypothetical system, with dashes showing intrasystem warp engaged.

Q6: Will there be warp bubbles or interdictors?

A6: There won't be anything like that, no. Bring enough firepower, and you'll take down any target that gets in your way before they have a chance to flee, or be tactically-aware enough to know when to retreat without having to worry about the enemy having a magic bubble stopping you.

Q7: Is there a cap on the number of factions allowed?

A7: We originally planned on having a set number, but as we've been developing that has evolved - if you can carve out a niche in a far-flung corner of the galaxy, and stop any other factions from destroying your stuff, you deserve full faction status just as much as anyone else. Factions may rise and fall, there may be periods with lots of small factions, there may be times with only a few gigantic factions, fully dynamic.

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​​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!