RoVerse Development Newsletter #297

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 297th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week.

This week was a busy one, with several members of the Dev team gearing up to add the new features to Hyperion we talked about last week, we talked with the community about ideas for the Hyperion Arcade, and Idyllic quickly added a ship-unlock notification menu to let you know when you've unlocked a free ship.

In the midst of coding an April fools day joke spaceship, Idyllic noticed a small oversight we'd made in the code a long time ago that was supposed to be a temporary patch, but had become permanent. The original dogfight code would automatically award all players joining the game any ships that had a cost of 0 credits, regardless of whether they had access to that ship or not. To fix this, we set the cost of all unlocked event ships to 10 credits - an irrelevant amount of credits for any players who completed a challenge and unlocked a ship, but still a weird user experience if you didn't know why.

Now, we have added a simple unlock alert popup, to let you know when you've unlocked a free ship, and where you've unlocked it from. This involved a lot more research than Idyllic was anticipating, but we think we've nailed down exactly where each free reward ship came from. Now, the ship will be automatically unlocked for all eligible players, and they'll get a handy popup letting them know. No more searching the event ships sort for unpurchased ships, they're all yours without any effort.

Hyperion's renovation has gotten underway, with Maximus taking on the tasks of building new trains and a black market hangout, two new recruits helping with the storyline and bounty systems, and Idyllic beginning to lay out all the new areas. A discussion of ideas was held in the Discord this week, with members of the community contributing simple game concepts for the Arcade. The community was quite helpful, and we've now got a concept list for over 30 simple games - hopefully we can find the room for all those cabinets.

One of the first things changing will be the train station location - instead of blocking off the Faction Hall area, the train stop have been moved into the tunnel. The Sherriff's Office will be located in the far corner, and the security checkpoint will be getting a cell block to hold unruly stationgoers.

The largest new section will be the refinery and cargo dock, home of the Tortuga. You may recognize the ship from last years Hallows Eve event - it's the Stationmaster's ship that players can borrow to mine asteroids with before they have bought their own ship.

And Vaktus makes a guest appearance, with a concept addition to the Faction Hall - the Hexagonal Galaxy map we developed displaying a live-view of system ownership.

​This week in the dogfight there were 199 kills, 0 with auto, 1 with beam, 0 with laser, 6 with plasma, 0 with railgun, and 192 with torpedo. The most dangerous ship was the Chariot with 81 kills, followed by the Godship with 80. The most dangerous map was Pillarum with 108 deaths, followed by Blue_Spaceway with 55.
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And now, the moment you've been waiting for...
The three players that topped the leaderboard were devOmegax, with 95 kills and 0 deaths and a N/A KDR; tygrys202 with 61 kills, 2 deaths and a 30.5 KDR; and SabineWrenDemo with 31 kills, 0 deaths, and a N/A KDR. They have unlocked the exclusive ship Radiant Corps Moonray 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 138)

Calexian Community Challenge
​​The challenges are: 10,000,000 Kill Distance, and 100 Outpost Victories

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

No questions in the discord this week - head over to #dev_questions if there's anything you're dying to know.​

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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!