RoVerse Development newsletter #203

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 203rd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week, Idyllic hopped back on Capital weaponry, continuing the task of converting the demoed versions of Conventional and Flak turrets and ensure that they operate correctly with the fighter weapons code.

We announced last week that the Bolitho has been rigged - this week it is ready for action with its standard complement of weapons - three Conventional turrets and a collection of flak turrets. But a major step to making this happen was the coding of these two turret types.

With most of the turret types, code could be repurposed from the fighter turrets to just use a different turret model and effects, however, there are no fighter conventional nor fighter flak turrets to build off of. This required some new code to deal with the special properties these two weapons have. Conventional rounds ricochet off of solid object when fired at a shallow enough angle, and flak rounds burst after a short duration or distance.

(sped up for dramatic effect)

Making the turrets shoot was easy enough, modifications to the fighter code allows multi-barreled turrets to alternate shots, and adding in the special ricochet effect followed shortly after. We have set up the system to allow shots that bounce to do partial damage to the thing they're bouncing off of, since we can't penalize players too much for indirect fire in a combat scenario. Consider it as bonus damage for any direct-fire shots that hit their mark head-on. 

There remains a bit of timing and projectile velocity to work out, as you can see by the projectile outpacing the white raycast visualization line. The above gif also demonstrates our new silky-smooth zoom transition we mentioned last week - the power of zoom and enhance is now in your hands, ready to help you pick off targets at extreme distances.

Next week, we plan on having all the Capital weapon types ready to go, with their special mechanics and particle effects as we march closer to the update. Check back next week for more progress!

We also have a special gif from Skinny's environment work, that he released to the community last week.

_lense flare_

​The community dogfight continued again this week, with members of the community coming together to blast each other out of the sky. Here are a selection of screenshots from the event - send in your own if you have them. Join us next week at 8pm EST and earn double credits for the duration.

On to the dogfight - this week, there were 220 kills, 123 with laser, 52 with plasma, 36 with beam, 7 with railgun, 2 with auto, and 0 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Sentinel, with 66 kills, followed by the Gladiator with 54. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 83 deaths, followed by Classic with 48.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were Imaboss2122, with 69 kills and 28 deaths and a 2.46 KDR; devOmegax with 54 kills, 27 deaths, and a 2 KDR; and FangABXY with 29 kills, 63 deaths, and a .46 KDR. Nice work pilots, you've earned the cycle-exclusive ship Stratus Squall!
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If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 47)

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: How detailed will the ricochet system be? Can I design my ship hulls to maximize deflections?

A1: Ship hitboxes are actually a simplified mesh approximating the shape of the ship, rather than every single fine detail on their surface, so you won't be able to design any tricky shapes. You can certainly design your ships to take into consideration direct fire, or which direction attackers are most likely to attack from in the design process, but keep in mind conventional turrets are only one of many different weapon types.

Q2: How will a Capital ship counter fighters?

A2: The most powerful weapon in the Capital's armory is the flak turret - an explosive shell that sprays debris over an area and dealing high damage to any small ships unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast. Beyond that, Capital ships have significantly more health than a fighter, and should be able to withstand a decent number of hits before being destroyed. The Capital gamemodes in the dogfight alpha will help us balance these stats to make sure ship operate as we intend them to.

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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!