Hello everyone! Welcome to the 131st 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 at work on the Capital update, implementing a universal credit system for the purchase of more powerful and higher tier ships, weaponry loadouts, and skins, while Lordrex has patched a few bugs with several of our gamemodes. Idyllic also put in some work on the intra-system warp system and radar, as well as refactored the menu guis to scale with the user's screen. First up, the new menus. A member of the RoVerse Discord community mentioned this past week that the images we were showing in the newsletters lacked the appropriate scaling features necessary for game guis to work on screens of all sizes, and that in a few studio testing gifs and pictures the UI was crowded and out of place. Taking this advice, Idyllic spent a little time this week setting up the UI to use UISizeConstraints and UIAspectRatioConstraints, to allow our hand-made guis to scale with the size of the user's screens. Going to show that even the most knowledgeable developers can still learn new tricks, the use of the Aspect Ratio Constraint was instrumental in the success of the gui modifications. Without it, any sort of design goes out the window when a player with a 4:3 square screen starts resizing gui elements defined by scale. Changes were also made to the top menu bar, where we opted for a more condensed icons-only version. Previously we had both icons and the menu name spelled out, and Idyllic developed a collapsible version to save screen space on smaller screens, but in the end it just didn't seem necessary. The icons themselves, if properly selected, should be able to tell the story of what they do, otherwise they're pointless. The Description panel and Stats panel were anchored appropriately to the bottom corners of the screen, with only a few tweaks needed to allow the stats panel to scale by its parent element. The centered arrows used in loadout editing and ship selection also scale, but keep their aspect ratio and are still anchored to the center of the screen. You may have noticed another feature tucked into the corner of the new menus. A mysterious number and symbol, but what could it mean? That's right! Players can now purchase ships and mount weapons to their ships for a fee, and the interface tells you right there how many energy credits, or €, you have remaining. Prices are still to be negotiated and calculated, don't expect to buy a Heavy Fighter for 10 credits. On the topic of credits - the fighter refactor did include the addition of credits, and functions to award the player credits for kills and other gamemode events, so tying into that system was straightforward. Lordrex spent the week patching bugs and making modifications to our existing gamemodes, and making preparations for any new ones we plan to add in the future. Currently there are three gamemodes - the Team Deathmatch you all know and love, a Free-for-all match, and a Team King of the Hill. A nice variety to get us started, while we work on the extensive list of gamemodes the members of the Community have voted for in the discord voting channel. Spending a bit of time on Capital features, Idyllic expanded the feature set of the radar system we debuted quite a while ago, adding in the ability to see important landmarks outside of the ships natural radar range. You'll only be able to pick up enemy fighters within a range of about 500 studs, but we want you to be able to find your way around a system easily too, so planets and wormholes/jumpgates will also appear on your minimap, giving you a heading to steer your way to wherever you want to go. Along with this update, Idyllic added the ability to toggle these icons on the player's HUD. No longer is there just your selected target, but also distant planets and other celestial bodies you might want to warp over to and take a closer look. Fortunately enough, the planet radar icon created by Mikey is an excellent fit for highlighting distant planets on the HUD, as it gracefully encircles the target, getting the information it is trying to convey across simply and elegantly. And I can't imagine trying to find a wormhole out of a system without any sort of guide, as you can see by comparing the photos above and below. These new features are still in their early stages and have a few bugs to be worked out, but working on them was a nice change of pace from working so hard on fighter mechanics. 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 are the benefits of using fixed vs gimbal weapons? A1: The difference between the two weapon types is fairly straight forward - fixed weapons are mounted directly to a ships air-frame, and cannot turn to lead your shots, whereas gimballed weapons require a mounting structure that can turn in place, with several angles of motion. Your fixed turrets will generally have better stats, like more damage and better accuracy, while gimbal weapons have more aiming freedom and don't require lining up your ship with your target. Q2: Missiles, how do they work? A2: We plan on having three types of missiles - the homing ones demonstrated a few newsletters ago, a guided version that tracks the cursor, temporarily called rockets, and an unguided version called torpedoes that fire in a straight line. Q3: What happens when you reach the edge of a system? A3: I think Juszl put is best - "The inherent subspace gravitational field of each solar system is minute in most forms, but when concerning the pull of the sublight drives relying on the ambient gravity signatures of celestials in the core of the systems, it renders them increasing inefficient the farther out a craft goes, to the point of it becoming dangerous to venture any further. Coupled with this the already present dangers due to the lack of proper equipment to deal with deep space operation, this can pose quite a threat to spacecraft." Sure, we have technical reasons for limiting the map size, but that doesn't mean we have to slap up a wall and say turn around. So go and write your own lore about it. Q4: Will Capitals ever get combo turrets? A4: Unlikely. Combo turrets are still on the board for vehicles and armor on the ground, because having an auto turret to support a main battle cannon is an important feature to have when you're limited to a single turret mount. Capitals, on the other hand, have plenty of mounts to allow players to select the proper assortment of weapon types, making combo turrets unnecessary. 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 |