RoVerse Development Newsletter #266

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 266th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week, we updated the Outpost code to make use of a very cool new Roblox feature that released with pivot points, and we have quite a few new Akatanan ships.

Recently, Roblox released the pivot points feature, which allows you to select a specific position to rotate a model. While not the most useful feature ever added, the Api that they added along with it was the real treasure - PivotTo. Previously, the turrets on the outpost all used the SetPrimaryPartCFrame to move the different parts of the turrets based on nested models and an anchor point that it pivots around. Unfortunately, this function has never been a great option for one particular reason - floating point errors.

When repeatedly setting the cframe of a model, over time very small errors build up, and with Outpost turrets sinning around and aiming at ships circling overhead, this was inevitable. We even had to cap the duration of the Outpost Strike gamemode based around how quickly the errors started appearing, as you can see in the above photo, the barrels have already started drifting out of their sockets, and twisting away from being level. This was also the downfall of one of our earliest Capital ship tests, since the ships themselves would pull apart in as little as 15 minutes, even when stationary.

A good visual for the problem can be found in this devforum post, from 4 years ago:

This wasn't a bug, SetPrimaryPartCFrame just wasn't designed to do the things we made it do. It was designed to teleport a model once or twice, not thousands of times. But at long last, there is a solution. Since people kept using code for things they weren't supposed to, Roblox built into the Pivot Api the PivotTo function, that can easily replace its predecessor, and has the added bonus of not tearing models apart with rapid position changes.

And we don't have to take their word for it - we left this test running overnight, and so far it has rotated over a hundred thousand times, without even the slightest of gaps between the individual parts.

So now the Outpost shouldn't tear itself apart after a long round of combat, and in the future Station defenses will not have the same problem when they're defending a system 24/7.


The Akatanan's have released the Ritojin-kai line of ships, themed to several different factions:

​This week in the dogfight there were 182 kills, 33 with auto, 0 with beam, 8 with laser, 44 with plasma, 0 with railgun, and 97 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the VSa1-1_Kazan with 132 kills, followed by the SSA-3-2_Ritojin_Kai with 33. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 134 deaths, followed by The_Great_Hollow with 32.

And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were FangABXY, with 129 kills and 3 deaths and a 43 KDR; IdyllicDestroyer with 36 kills, 0 deaths and a 36 KDR; and doombomb1655 with 16 kills, 6 deaths, and a 2.66 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Asimov 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 110)

Calexian Community Challenge
​​The challenges are: 6000 Outpost Turrets, and 3000 Non-Torpedo kills

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 star systems look as cool as the capital shots in the old newsletters?

A1: That is certainly our goal. Ved made some great pictures with FiB and lighting settings, and while some of them only work from one point of view like a picture, we'll do our best to make them work for entire systems.

Q2: Are you going to implement voice chat?

A2: We might. We're not opposed to the idea that someone might be able to use it, but the number of people willing to go through the whole verification process right now is fairly small. If they want to annoy each other, we'll let them.

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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!