RoVerse Development Newsletter #137

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 137th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week, Lordrex spent a lot of time working on the code, with progress in ship and loadout saving, and wrapped up the coding aspect of multi-part engine effects; Idyllic kept on the hunt for the turret replication glitch, while skinny took to meshing the set of default fighters for the Capital Update, and Juszl is working hard on yet another map, this one code-named 'cataclysm'.

​​Lordrex has taken on the important task of making ship selections and loadouts save between lives and on return visits, on a per ship basis. Currently, ship loadouts are entirely client-side operated from a gui - when you die or the round ends, the menu is reset and all your selections vanish. But not for long. Lord has laid the foundation work for a system to save the loadouts as you pay for them, attaching that table to that particular ship.

He also put the finishing touches on the engine effects system we talked about last week. Engine particles are now supported across several emission points, for those multi-engine ships I am sure you're making, and to make the whole process easier on the developers, engine smoke effects scale dynamically with the size of the engine part. So instead of manually adjusting the numbersequences to match the engines, an automated bit of code does it for us.

Skinny has taken on the task of meshing all the default (and a few faction) fighters in preparation for the Capital Update. This process cuts down on the number of moving parts your computer has to move around at a distance significantly, which means smoother flight and no ships falling apart due to rounding errors. He was able to cut down the Halbert from 30 parts...

...to a mere 8.

While we could have started on this task sooner, it was important to flesh out all the features we wanted fighters to have before we went through this process, and to make sure that meshparts were as performant as possible. And good thing we did wait, since the addition of Juszl's suggested 'shaders' feature would have thrown a wrench or two into our plans.

Some of you may recognize the term 'shaders' from destiny, and the concept is quite similar. We debuted this feature a few newsletters back with Juszl's Snow-Camo Dervish. The idea is that decals are applied to one or two parts of the ship on all sides, rather than skins, which are painted on and asymmetrical. Shaders allow us to do something like this:

While Skins do something like this:

Earlier this week in the community discord, we posted our meshing process for those in the community that are thinking of meshing their faction ships, or just to help out any other roblox devs. It's a bit much to look at if you don't use blender, but we'd like to post it here as well.

​​Process for meshing ships in Blender is as follows:

• Export as obj from studio
• Import to Blender
• Join all meshes to one
• Remove custom split geometry data
• Remove Doubles
• Limited Dissolve
• Change to Surface Select mode
• Select outside faces with circle select by orbiting and selecting all faces, be sure to get all the little corners
• Invert selection
• Delete faces
• Fix any missed zfighting faces

​Ship Texturing: 

• In edit mode, select all vertices 
• 'U' Smart UV Project 
• Islands to .1 
• Let that unwrap the file 
• In the UV editor, create a new image with any name 
• On the render tab, find the bake section 
• Bake Textures
• Save that image (f3 in UV editor window) 
• Delete all existing materials 
• Create new material 
• Add a texture - Image - Open previously saved file

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• Either export <5000 triangles or split into parts of less
• Import to studio, yes to move to location data

We've already seen some successful tests, with ManikuCalex using this process to mesh and texture his ships.

Be sure to keep parts that need to be separate, separate. For instance, on these fighters the landing gear need to be able to appear and disappear, so they have to be re-imported as a meshpart separately from the hull. Any other questions about this process can be directed to Idyllic.

In another bit of exciting news, after hours and hours of pouring over code looking for the problem with weapon replication, Idyllic has finally managed to identify and correct the error that prevented you from seeing other ships firing, which is a pretty important feature to have, I think.

Weapons are now properly replicated and attached to other players ships when they spawn, allowing the system that shows their bullets to have something to shoot out of.

Juszl has jumped to work on another map, this time going for a dense asteroid field theme. Code-named 'Cataclysm' the map is the scene of horrendous destruction. But what could possibly have caused such a mess?

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 the bar showing ship stats ever double back and keep going?

A1:  Right now, stats are calculated as a percentage of a max value, so there shouldn't be any instance of that value exceeding 100%. But that's not to say that there won't ever be the possibility, considering stat-boosting modules could come pre-installed.

Q2: How will hull armor work?

A2: Hull is set to a specific value, and as you are hit damage is subtracted. Much like the dogfight alpha, ships usually have shields to mitigate a lot of specific types of damage, but your hull may eventually wear down and require repair. En-route repairs can be undertaken, but with decreasing returns damage will pile up and require docking at a station for full restoration.

Q3: How will factions update ship appearances over time?

A3: If it's purely an aesthetic upgrade, we will just swap the models out. If it is different enough, though, a new ship will be added - a 'Mark II' so to speak, and will need to be purchased and built as normal.

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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!