RoVerse Development Newsletter #57

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

This week has been a little slower than average, with several devs returning to school, and all that entails. We should see quite a bit more progress once we release the Capital Dogfight Update, and they get settled in.

This week, we do have some more news on the planet front, and we should be seeing quite a bit more about them as Idyllic gets back to work. We also have another sneak peek at the Capital Dogfight Update, that I managed to sneakily take a screenshot of! Also this week, we have another preview of a music track that Animula has been working on.

We left you several months ago with updates on how planets were progressing. About that time, Idyllic found a glaring efficiency problem, and dove into it trying to reduce the time planets take to generate. Several days was an exorbitant time cost, and with 220 star systems, each with multiple planets, an unacceptable one. With his optimizations he has been making, generation time has improved by a significant percentage, and he has also identified further avenues for improving the system - most notably, the pre-generation of a high-poly icosphere generated and saved before the application of continents, wind patterns, and elevation changes, could be loaded and re-used by the generation system for each planet, with only variations in size. This should cut loading times by upwards of 40%, making the generation of planets in time for release a much more realistic goal.

We would include photos of the script in action, but that wouldn't be very interesting...

So we'll show you an older picture, to refresh your interest in imagining just how cool these planets will be!

Animula has been working on many more music tracks for RoVerse, but we've been keeping them under wraps so that everyone has the chance to experience them as they were intended to be experienced - in game. But this week, we've got another preview to help tide you over until we release!

soundcloud.com/animula_musicdev/full-speed-preview

We can't wait to show you everything else he's been working on, so stay tuned for a few more sneak previews, and for the full release!

The Capital Dogfight Update is coming soon, and we don't want to show off too much of it too soon, so this week we only have a little bit more to show than last week. You may remember the gif of the ship selection screen - this week, we have a view of the menu itself, nearly completed!

Here we have one of the biggest ships that will be available in the Update, the Kobune-Yoi Cardinal. While not very fast, it has the armor and the armament to more than makeup for its slow pace and handling. All those cool ships we watched HeroMaster build, are finally getting the attention they deserve.

Also coming up in this update will be several unique gamemodes to participate in. You've all played the Dogfight Alpha, and we all know how boring it gets after one or two rounds. We've listened to your feedback, and have prioritized several features to keep things interesting for weeks and months on end. You can look forward to a variety of unlockable ships, several gamemodes including team and free-for-all modes, as well as the most important part - the Capital ships!

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 there be buildings in cities that you can enter and have apartments?

A1: There will be a wide variety of faction structures making up each city, and while allowing players to enter every one of them would be pretty cool, the limits of the system would put a limit on that. So we are looking at finding the middle ground on that - factions can build city landmarks around their cities that may or may not provide a function of some kind, which can have interiors and everything. The procedural cities will then grow around them.

Q2: How would you go around traveling with other people?

A2: Players will be able to form 'squads' with a few other close friends, and will receive server priority when travelling between servers. For in-server travel, we are working on supporting multiplayer ships, from the simple transport ships where they are just passengers, to military vessels, where they can control turrets to defend the ship they're in.

Q3: Is it possible to not be affiliated with any nation, but not submit any custom assets for my sub-faction?

A3: It is very much possible for you to form your own subfaction without any assets, that would only make sense for corporations that sell ships or weapons. For the mining clans and trade syndicates, just their name and fleet would be needed.

​Q4: Will RoVerse be in Experimental mode?

A4: RoVerse will be developed with Experimental Mode off and/or Filtering Enabled on. Developing this way is not only more professional, it's also more secure by design. Limiting the interactions between clients and servers limits the vulnerabilities to the basic trolling and exploiting. That doesn't mean it's completely secure, just that it's a step in the right direction, that everyone should be taking.

Q5: Ringworlds? Dyson Spheres?

A5: These sci-fi staples are definitely a possibility, somewhere down the line. The best chance for one of these would be if you could convince Idyllic to make them an official planet, rather than a faction-built structure.

Q6: Does RoVerse supply the standard turrets and cannons?

A6: We will be supplying the turret models that attach to the faction-submitted ships, all you will have to do is mark the locations you want them to be. This is both for fairness, less work for submission moderators, and ease of coding. Players will be able to see what sort of weaponry you have equipped, and there won't be any tricky business between different factions, plus there's less setup in the long run to get your ships off the ground.

Q7: Do Space Station interiors need to fit into the stations or can they be made separately.

A7: Faction space stations will need to have interiors, and they should approximately be the same size. They will use a similar system to outpost stations, with their interiors in separate servers, so they don't have to actually be inside them, but their layout should roughly be the right size. We'll be releasing more information once we finalize the submission guidelines closer to launch.

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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! Don’t worry, we don’t bite!