RoVerse Development newsletter #305

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 305th issue of the RoVerse Development Newsletter, where we keep you updated on the progress we've made over the past week. 

This week, we've continued working on the crafting system and added new stuff to flight mechanics in preparation for the future.

Last week, we showed you a pretty simple demo of the flight mechanics boiled down and extracted to run on a baseplate without any gamemodes going on. This week, we added on from there lots of exciting things, starting with getting Capitals working correctly.

So after remembering to set the folder to the large versions of ships correctly, we got the Bolitho up and flying. 

There will be a few graphical things to fix, like scaling up engine particles and increasing how solid they look, but we're well on the way to having functioning Capitals working as intended. While there won't be many Capitals besides the Bolitho showing up at Hyperion any time soon, it will serve as our proof of concept and test bed for Capital features moving forward. Speaking of Hyperion, we needed a new function added that correctly locates Capital ships when they spawn, because they just don't fit at all inside the Fighter Hangar Launch Bay. So we added a bit of code and a reference point, and now Capital ships can spawn properly at the berths in the docking arm.

It works with both Port and Starboard docks, as long as the ship fits in the area, which at Hyperion is unfortunately very small. Capitals any larger than Bolitho don't quite fit...

...like the Avenger, that sorta has to sneak in at an odd angle to make it fit. Just watch the large step from horizontal gravity to vertical gravity at the jetway.

The code is flexible enough that we can pick the specific location to spawn any new ships, based on what class of ship is spawning and whether the bays are already occupied by someone else. Capitals spawn on the Docking Arm, Transport ships spawn at the Docking Ring, and Cargo/Mining ships spawn at the Refinery Sector. Mining ships like the vaunted WTT-017-MI-CARGO, which has been rigged and added to the boilerplate to help us test out mining lasers and drills.

Here we have the first mining ship test, which unfortunately used the fighter flight code, and was very nauseating. The Capital mode is much more suited for normal flight and mining operations.

Last up is the changes we've made to the crafting system. This week, we've added categories to sort crafting recipes so they're easy to find, and we've refined the menu a bit more, making the scrolling frame scale properly with the recipe contents, improving the visuals of the recipes pane, and tying the number of require materials to the quantity selected in the center pane.

We have also done quite a bit of math to figure out the base-cost of the different fighter classes. Creating a fake ship with 0 stat points in every category gives us a base cost of about 14,000 credits, with the points adding up from there - points in the hull and shield category increase the cost much faster than the points spent on speed or agility. However, the goal here is to get the cost as close as possible to the cost of the ship in the Dogfight, if not exactly the same, and I think we were fairly successful on that. Ships are crafted from a reasonable amount of raw materials, and while 5000 credits to make something fly is a pretty low bar to cross, I don't see anyone getting very far with a zero-stat ship.

On top of all that, we've added a few more constituent pieces to the crafting table, things that aren't used directly, but are an intermediate step of the crafting process for more complex and expensive final products. In particular, the different advanced machinery used to construct different variations of turrets. Progress in all these areas is moving fast, and we hope to get a working demo out soon.

​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 this week - hit us up in #dev_questions if there's anything you'd like 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!