RoVerse Development Newsletter #271

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 271st issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week, Idyllic worked on some super secret stuff we cant show you, screamed at blender for half an hour, and got a little teaser of a side-project done to show you all.

When not taking out his frustrations with the new Blender interface, Idyllic was hashing out a proof-of-concept for our future website - a ship hangar viewer. 

It started simple, with just a lovely Excalibur on a white background. However, a member of the community recommended that we add in the hangar background, to make it feel more at home. So we did. A bit of finagling, and the ship and hangar rotate in unison.

Hosted entirely within your browser, the ship viewer will let you pan around any ship in the game, and try out color schemes with the click of a button and the drag of your mouse. While we had considered extremely complex options that could import an .obj file and render it in 3d, they just didn't suit our needs, mostly by being very complex and, while very cool, not that useful for our limited needs. However, we found a happy medium in our current planned solution that can run easily on any platform, mobile included, and just show the most important bits.

The solution is 36 rendered images from a circle around every ship, and an underlay of the hangar rendered the same way. Some clever javascript to get the motion of your mouse, and we have a beautiful hangar view! Solutions to automate this process are ongoing (and part of the reason for the yelling) as we find the best way to render 150 ships, and skins. And on the bright side, if Roblox ever shuts us down we have the option to become a flash game as a backup plan.


Some bugfixes this week include fixes to Inikan ships, their hardpoints, and their manufacturing companies; a replacement for the Akatanan ship hangar, without the errored decals; and a fix for a handful of Akatanan ships that mistakenly required a badge to unlock.

And since you've all been such a lovely community, a teaser for the super-secret project Idyllic's been working on.

What could it be?

​​This week in the dogfight there were 374 kills, 38 with auto, 55 with beam, 54 with laser, 39 with plasma, 14 with railgun, and 174 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Aether_Mk1 with 120 kills, followed by the Silencer with 46. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 176 deaths, followed by The_Great_Hollow with 104.
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And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were Screech9791, with 133 kills and 16 deaths and a 8.31 KDR; FangABXY with 94 kills, 8 deaths and a 11.75 KDR; and tygrys202 with 51 kills, 1 deaths, and a 51 KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Cosmos Vostok 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 115)

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 we be able to intra-system warp to asteroid belts?

A1: Asteroid belts are large and pervasive, filling the voids of star systems between planets and warpgates and structures. As such, they won't have a dedicated way to warp to them, mostly because they will always be around you. Building a station in the middle of a belt will allow you to warp there, and scavenge the rocky wastes outward from there with ease.

Q2: Will stations be orientation-locked to the solar plane?

A2: We don't intend for them to be. Whichever way you're facing when you go to build the station, will be the direction it faces when completed. With the plane-lock function, players might find it easier to build and arrange structures aligned with the solar plane, but by no means will it be mandatory.

Q3: Does solar exposure impact station production? Do my solar panels have to face the sun?

A3: While it'd certainly look better if they did, we won't be coding solar panels to care whether they have line-of-sight to a star. The only stat that matters will be proximity to exotic phenomena for research stations, and proximity to a star for farm stations. We don't wan the meta to be factions cramming as many solar panels on their stations as possible, which would end up very ugly.

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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!