Hello everyone! Welcome to the 182nd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, Idyllic took a deep-dive into a tech demo for planet mechanics, from improving player gravity to shrinking players down and there is a new faction ship rigged and ready to deploy to the dogfight. First up, the new faction ship: the SOL-1 scout. The only other faction ship submitted this week was not a fighter, so it'll be a while before that one gets added. This past week saw a fantastic expansion on the early planet demo revealed last week, with many new features being thrown into the mix. Overall, Idyllic managed to throw vehicles, ruins, base components, day-night cycle, atmospheric effects, character scaling, and a pre-generated planet surface all into one game. Now it didn't all work flawlessly on the first try, as that never happens in game development, but it did work well enough that we are highly optimistic about the future of these features. One of the first upgrades was a tweak to the gravity system. Originally it was more of a magnetic-boots system where the player would stick to any surface they wanted to, which wouldn't work for planets all that well. A simple raycast filter to only check the planet's surface quickly solved that particular issue. One question that has remained has been how long it takes for a player to walk around the surface of a planet. Last week we demoed how long it would take a ship to fly around the entire planet, but that made them seem much too small. This week, we had a volunteer community member take up the challenge. Tzleo was up to the challenge, and has earned the honor of being the first to circumpediate a planet in RoVerse. This is the documentation of his journey: After he passed the horizon, Idyllic added a target icon to keep track of his progress. Since the planet was, as yet, a featureless green sphere, it could have become very boring constantly walking forward with nothing but the studs moving beneath his feet to mark the passage of distance. As he neared the end of the journey, a target was added to Idyllic, who had remained at the spawn point, to mark the finish line. The journey was completed, with a final time of 55:43. So, on a flat, featureless sphere at nearly the max size, a player is able to walk around the entire thing in an hour. If there was any sort of terrain or obstacles in their way, that time increases significantly. I think these planets will be just large enough to support the gameplay they need to, without breaking too many computers. The next treat revealed was the pre-generated low-res planet surface, complete with oceans, continents, and islands. Basically, this version is a low-res triangle visualization of what planets will eventually look like, where the complex generation function that calculates continent shift and collisions to generate realistic mountain ranges creates elevation differences that will later on be filled in with detail when it becomes smooth terrain. It was very exciting to be able to walk around the planet for the first time. A simple change in color palette is all it takes to drastically change the feel of a planet. From a green and vibrant planet to a dry and dusty one, with only a single command. We have plans for a wide variety of environments across the 835 planets in the RoVerse galaxy, to keep exploration exciting. Next up was moving the sun in the sky, and blinding everyone with sun rays. A few higher-res versions of planets were generated to add some variety to the tech demo, and will be arriving shortly. The next important feature was getting fighter launches to work for everyone. One small tweak to the code, and they were available for everyone to fly. Here we have a VAK fighter floating ominously behind a player. Then the world was turned into a lava planet... ...and later on, some miscellaneous junk was added to the sphere. Small, unimportant stuff like landmark ruins, jeeps and trucks, and base elements... Vehicles have been added to the game, but they don't quite work just yet. Player gravity crushes them under the weight of the character, which will need to be toggled on and off as players enter and leave vehicles - luckily that's nothing too complex to achieve. Some early miniaturization tests were also carried out, but the results aren't quite where we'd hoped. Even with maximum friction, the players slide about the surface and get pulled to the lowest elevation across a triangle, which doesn't feel very good. We'll keep trying, but we'll be happy with whichever size works the best and is the most fun. We also managed to import the day-night cycle system we've had in our back pocket for quite some time. Since the normal Roblox sunrise and sunset obviously wouldn't work on our planets, we had to improvise - moving the sun around the equator horizontally, using a bit of complex math, allows days and nights to move around the surface like they really would. The far side of the planet even grows dark at night! Race the sun anyone? The latest feature added to the game was the thinning of the atmosphere as elevation increases. From atop the highest mountains, or as your spaceship clears the atmosphere, your view of the galaxy will be unobstructed by the light-deflecting gasses of planet atmospheres, bringing the stars brightly into focus. All in all, a very busy development week. We've finally gotten the chance to combine all these features that have been developed separately over our development cycle into one single game. Still upcoming are the colony city generation demo's, the bug fixes for vehicles, higher-res terrain and biomes, and vegetation. Check back next week! This week, there were 91 kills, 49 with laser, 21 with railgun, 10 with plasma, 6 with auto, and 5 with beam. The top ship this week was the Sentinel, making a return to the battlefield with a vengeance, with 44 kills. Excalibur was next in line, at 12. The most dangerous map this week was The Great Hollow, with 45 kills. The pilot that takes home the trophy this week was Imaboss2122 with 57 kills, 8 deaths, and a 7.12 KDR. Fantastic work! 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: Do cities have any sort of city planning involved? A1: While recreating cities skylines in Roblox would be an interesting technical feat, it would really go beyond the depth of RoVerse. Instead, cities will grow pretty much on their own after you place the foundation point, and without any user input. If you want to go around placing industrial buildings by hand, that is up to you, and will replace the automatically generated skyscrapers. Q2: Could there be tidally-locked planets? A2: That's a fantastic idea! Scalding hot on one side, absolutely frigid on the other. Easy enough to implement. We'll make it happen. Q3: Will there be mountains? A3: Are you kidding? Q4: Can we jettison cargo? A4: Maybe? Q5: Can you arm cargo/trade ships? A5: You can, but you'll be trading cargo space for turret mounts, which might not be worth it in a lot of situations. Find a friend or hire a fighter escort to get you safely to your destination. Q6: Will you be able to send credits to other players at-will? A6: We currently plan to allow that, yes. It's an important part of the economy for players to be able to pay others for certain actions without having to write up a contract (that we'd have to code in). Stuff like escorting ships, or paying bribes. 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 |