Hello everyone! Welcome to the 191st issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. This week, we have an update on how dogfight cycles are going to function, including the weekly leaderboard rewards and the cycle reward. Other progress work includes system development, with the first fully-flyable system demo available as a new map in the demo dogfight. This week we've begun work another important milestone - setting up system layouts. For quite some time now we've had all the assets built, and the design of systems down on paper, but we haven't had a centralized place to put all the pieces together. That is a problem no longer. This week, Idyllic assembled an entire system as a map for the Dogfight Development. Here, Idyllic will be developing all the mechanics necessary for Freeroam and Capital gameplay, from intra-system warp to fighter spawns on Capitals, as well as finishing out the Capital ship controls. The system is also fully-equipped with jumpgates, asteroid belts, and planets, as well as the system's star. These landmarks, as well as other temporary landmarks like spawned stations and outposts, will eventually be the subject of a gamemode designed specifically for this map. We'll have more info about that gamemode in the coming weeks. We would like to discuss the latest details of how systems will be laid out with you, but as always we're open to feedback. The image below is a good basis for understanding system layout - a star in the center, with three bands of stuff 'orbiting' around it. The main, central band contains an asteroid belt with the most common of ores and a medium density, and is home to most planets, with jump gates being on the outer fringes. An inner asteroid belt would have a higher concentration of rarer ores, more densely populated asteroid fields, but would be much more dangerous because of its central location and easy access. An outer band of asteroids would be very sparse, but have rarer ore to find spread over it's wider area - relatively safer, but less productive. There will be variations to the different star systems, with lots of unique and interesting landmarks, different biomes of asteroids, different star types, but their underlying structure will be similar. Some early feedback from the community touched on an important aspect of systems that is still in development - the size of planets relative to the central star. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of Roblox, there is a real limit to how big we can make star systems before floating point errors pile up and make your ship vibrate all over the screen or make weapons miss their mark. On top of this, objects more than 100,000 studs away vanish from the screen at the far camera clipping boundary. While this is much better than the 10,000 stud limit we used to have when we began this project, it still limits the size we can make things - particularly the stars at the center of each system. To make them a realistic size is an impossible task - as with scaling up, there is also a limit to how far you can scale things down. The goal, then, is to make things as big as possible, while they remain within the 100,000 boundary. As you can see in the pictures above and below, the scale of stars to the player's ship is not an issue - an Excalibur the size of a single stud is dwarfed by the size of the star. But for planets, there is a problem. Planets need to be small compared to the central star, but believably large compared to Capital ships. It just wouldn't work to have an XXXL Capital that is larger than a planet. But we do have a trick up our sleeve! We are able to dynamically scale objects in the distance based on your distance away from them. That means that as you fly away from a planet, it will shrink into the distance faster than it should, but making the scale look much more appropriate when looking on from a long distance away. This week marks the 35th week of the Dogfight Update, and a rather quiet one. The Outpost gamemode was offline for most of the week as Idyllic developed the System map, so not even the Outpost saw a lot of combat. Regardless, here is the leaderboard for this week. A new challenger, restlesspell, earned the top spot in both Outpost and non-Outpost lists, with 14 kills, 7 deaths and a 2 KDR. Nice work pilot! There were 43 total kills, 16 with laser, 9 with missiles, 8 with beam, 7 with auto, and 3 with railgun. The Excalibur was the most dangerous ship, with 30 kills. Pillarum was the most dangerous map, with 24 deaths. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 35) This cycle, there were 3,272 kills total, 46% of which were by the Outpost. Since the Outpost can't really pilot a ship very well, we'll have to drop down the list. Next up was Idyllic with 571 kills, 273 deaths, and a 2.09 KDR. But since most of those kills were in testing the Outpost, the title in the Outpost mode this cycle goes to CptJaller with an outstanding 471 kills, 137 deaths, and a 3.43 KDR. The title in the non-Outpost mode is less contested, with Idyllic taking the top spot with 105 kills, 9 deaths, and a 11.66 KDR. Since these actually came from honest gameplay, a developer taking the cycle is allowable. We can't wait to see what sort of ship skin he cooks up for himself. Now for the stats! Pillarum was by far the most dangerous map, with 3007 kills. Followed by Ecumenopolis with 112. The Iridium was by far the favorite ship, with 335 kills, followed by the Avenger with 235. These two were followed by several closely matched ships - the Silencer with 140, Koguun with 133, Excalibur with 124, Cardinal with 120, and Hahlarn with 115. Very interesting statistics. The top weapon was unsurprisingly the Torpedoes, with 632 kills, mostly Outpost Turrets, 533 Plasma, 236 Beam, 127 Auto, 116 Laser, and 109 Railgun - a nice spread over weapon types. If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Championship Series 5) And the usual stat graph updates: After 5 cycles, it is now time to change up the rewards system for those topping the leaderboard each week. Earning an exclusive skin was all well and good, but it had no repeatability - once you topped the leaderboard and earned a skin for your favorite ship, there was no reason to keep trying. To that end, and with the assistance of community feedback, we will be changing the weekly and cycle leaderboard rewards system up a bit starting next week. Each week, the top 3 players on the leaderboard will earn a brand new ship, unique to each cycle. The overall champion of the cycle will then earn a custom skin designed to their specifications for that ship, making it that much more exclusive. The ship for Cycle 6 is below, turned to glass in true RoVerse fashion. 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 there be ship customization from parts in-game? A1: Unfortunately, no. Ships are designed and built ahead of time, and discretely purchased in-game. You'll be able to socket modules and things to tweak the stats around a little bit, but overall an Excalibur will be an Excalibur. Q2: Will people not affiliated with a faction get to pick their species? A2: There will be a selection of default species available for those who haven't found a faction yet. Think of the basics, like lizard people, or rock people, or bird people. We encourage Factions to be very creative with the species they develop in lore and models. Q3: Naval combat? A3: Potentially in an expansion somewhere down the line. We want to support surface-craft and underwater exploration, as well as building colony cities under the waves. There are lots of cool things we could do with ocean gameplay. 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 |