RoVerse Development Newsletter #154

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 154th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week we had another round of intense testing and bug fixing and feature adding, with the addition of interaction sounds to the ship modification menu, the addition of round victory rewards, and general bug patching.

​A suggestion from the community recommended that we add a few sounds to the menu system for better immersion. To that end, we added a satisfying clicking noise when switching between ship selections, a wonderful ding when making a purchase, and a disappointed dong when you try to purchase something you can't.
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The mute button has now seen full integration with the menu bar, with a delightful toggle icon that pops in and out when toggled. This feature now also carries over into matches, which was a slight bug in the last version.

The first menu button to actually do something!

The problem with the deploy button not updating its text when you joined while a match was in progress has been patched. It was tied to update when a value changed, but the part that was to initially load the value when you joined wasn't set up correctly. This has been remedied and should be good to go.

​One feature added this week was a rather important one - when a round ends and your team wins, you get a reward. Sounds simple in concept, but in application was a bit tricky both on the design side and the coding side. We want to reward players both for their participation and winning, but we don't want it set up so you can sit in a game all alone and win the prize over and over. So, the reward scales both by number of players on the winning team, and how close they got to that round's goal - whether that be holding the hill for 100 seconds or killing the enemy team 25 times.

There is yet one flaw in the system that is being tracked down as we speak, in that it calculates your reward to be infinite money, which simply won't do.

​Idyllic spent several hours intensely staring at a single 10-line function that is supposed to control how far turrets can aim in any direction, which was brought up in testing as a bug. Vector math takes a very special mind to figure out, and trying to figure out what magic some other coder did to make a function work is not a pleasant task. If you don't know what you're doing, you either end up with nothing happening, or something incredibly bizarre happening, like so...

At least for now, though, you're going to have to live with the incredible freedom unrestrained gimbals give you. The original solution, designed for vector3 values, doesn't cooperate with the welds cframe requirements, and simple conversions didn't work. We'll keep working on it, but in the meantime there are more important features to be working on.

Visually, the hangar was much too bright during intermission causing it to be impossible to see your ship. This has been remedied by removing the excessive color correction filter that just generally made everything burn your eyes. Our legal team is still opposed to this for some reason.

In the ship selection menu, you can now freely rotate your camera around the ship you're looking to purchase. This was originally locked in place as an aesthetic choice and to allow the scroll wheel to cycle selections, but we can now lock the min and max zoom distance to prevent the camera zooming in and out while you make your selection.

​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: ​​​Could we give ships a respawn timer instead of having to rebuild?

A1: Unfortunately that would lead to one inevitable problem - an ever-increasing number of ships as factions build as many as they can all the time, and the ones that get destroyed returning without effort. No, destroying ships needs to have some sort of permanence for the stability of both the galactic economy, and our datastores.

Q2: What are the benefits to establishing mining bases?

A2: Well, bases are handy to have around to support your ships out in the field - no one wants to fly halfway across the galaxy to offload their cargo. Build a base in the middle of your mining fields for all the nearby miners to stop off at and restock, maybe invest in building a base where other people are mining to get first crack at any rare ores they find.

Q3: Will murphy's law apply in game?

A3: The old adage - what can go wrong, will go wrong - is not something developers usually have to code into a game, but it very much will apply. You need a fleet to defend control over a system? They'll get waylaid on the way and dispersed. You find a rare ore? Pirates.

Q4: Will RoVerse be console compatible?

A4: Not until Roblox adds groups to console.

Q5: Will capitals be plane-locked with only smaller ships flying over and below?

A5: Nope! We've given you the full range of 3 dimensions in which to maneuver your ships. Surprise attack from above? Go right ahead! We expect most conflict to happen around a single plane because that is the shape of the systems, but that doesn't mean you're locked into that plane during battle.

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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!