RoVerse Development Newsletter #233

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 233nd issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

​This week, ship shields expanded to cover a limited selection of fighters, and loadout saving is well on its way to complete. Also, the Calexian Community Challenge and the next Cycle also begin this coming week. Lets get started!

Last week we showed the Bolitho energy shields taking damage - this week that effect has been applied to fighters as well. Of course, with there being over 100 fighters, meshing the shields for each will take an extensive amount of time, but we started with the most-used default ships, like Iridium.

It's an easy enough process for symmetrical ships, to cover them in a low-poly mesh slightly larger than the ship itself, however Idyllic does not look forward to the more amorphous and asymmetrical models. It will be an arduous process, but we'll spread it out over a longer period of time so no one gets burnt out.

The effect uses the same system as the Capital ships do, which includes replication of the effect to all other ships. It also includes a recharging animation, which helps a pilot know when their shields are coming back online.

There was a bit more code needed to get shields working on fighters - the Capital shields just used a maximum value when determining the percentage of shield left to recharge, however with fighters and their wide variety of shield health, that number had to be read directly.

The second important feature worked on this week was ship loadout saving. With the press of a single button, you'll be able to save and recall different ships and their weapon setups for quick deployment into whichever gamemode comes your way. Now there will be no more extensive delay as you quickly try to add torpedoes to your ship when an outpost strike gamemode pops up.

Quite a bit of effort went into making these quick buttons work, as they were bypassing quite a bit of the code that runs when you edit each turret and ship individually. Two different attempts were made, with one going completely off the rails and breaking most of the ship menu code, and the second finally working as intended. 

Next on the list was adding descriptions of the loadouts to the menu, so that you can see at a glance which loadout has which weapons, and which ship they are mounted on.

And the last code to be worked out, was making the quick loadout buttons work across ships. Jump right from your reliable laser-studded Excalibur into a top-of-the-line beam-covered Iridium at the press of a button!

The Calexian Community Challenge has begun!

Before the end of cycle 12, the community must strive to complete the following two challenges to unlock a Calexian ship for all to use. 

​The challenges are: Destroy 5,000 Outpost Turrets, and Destroy 2,500 Fighters.

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 1pm and 8pm EST and earn double credits for the duration.

This week in the dogfight there were 157 kills, 58 with auto, 0 with beam, 94 with laser, 5 with plasma, 0 with railgun, and 0 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Iridium with 56 kills, followed by the Asterus with 51. The most dangerous map was The_Great_Hollow with 149 deaths, followed by Pillarum with 46.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were PreadaterX51, with 65 kills and 31 deaths and a 2.09 KDR; IdyllicDestroyer with 53 kills, 32 deaths and a 1.65 KDR; and ManikuCalex with 12 kills, 3 deaths, and a 4 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Nihilos Asterus in the Alpha Dogfight. Nice work pilots!

If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Week 77)

Now, for the overall cycle stats!

The Great Hollow was the most dangerous map, with 911 kills, followed by Pillarum with 527, and Blue Spaceway with 491. The top ship was the Excalibur, with 231 kills, followed by the EHAs7-_Sensha with 282, and the Evoker with 237. The top weapon was the Torpedo, with 732 kills, followed by Laser with 719, and Auto with 231. Beam marked up to 152, Railgun with 87, and Plasma with 67. Overall, 36 pilots participated this cycle and earned at least one kill, while 70 players died at least once. The lowest KDR belongs to The_CultVault with a .02 KDR. The dogfight has seen 6,699 visits, with an 82% approval rating (141-30) and 342 favorites.

This cycle there were 1,988 kills total. Topping off this cycle's leaderboard was FangABXY, with 543 kills, 82 deaths, and a 6.62 KDR. He was followed by PreadaterX51 with 390 kills, 157 deaths, and a 2.48 KDR, and devOmegax with 260 kills, 79 Deaths, and 3.29 KDR. These three pilots have unlocked the exclusive Golden Asterus Skin, coming soon to a dogfight near you.

If you'd like to check out the rest of our data, you can find the spreadsheet here: Phase 1 Data (Championship Series 11)

And as we do every cycle, here are the cumulative weapon usage stats, and some stats for the Outpost. 

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: What do levels do?

A1: We added a level/xp system a long time ago, and you can see it pop up every once in a while in-game. However, we didn't really have the content necessary to lock stuff behind levels - heavier ship classes were gated by cost already, xp would just be a double barrier to the bigger stuff. However, soon we will have a wider variety of content, some of which we can definitely put behind unlocks - stuff like ship skins that require a high level to unlock, or some of the more fancy weapon types.

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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!