RoVerse Development Newsletter #67

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

This week we've been keeping on strong with the exceptional boost of productivity from the last few weeks, and have quite a lot to show you. We've got some nice new visuals from Ved showing capital ships in space; We've got some news on a ship skinning demo, a new capital ship from Skinny, a new scripter has joined the team to work on miniature characters, and some word from Animula, who we haven't talked about in a while.

​And off we go!

Vedrakkerous has been spending quite a bit of time working on everything to do with spaceships, from their particle engine effects, to sun flares to finishing out the HUD players will use to fly them. When you are trying to make as awesome a game as we are, it doesn't help to cut corners. We want every aspect of the game to push the envelope for what a game can be on Roblox, which means catering to not just those of us with high end computers, but to everyone in between. While some of these in-game photos may look too good to be true, they were all taken in-engine, with a little help from 'the Future is Bright' Demo, and show the best the game can look. But I must restate, we will have detail level settings so nearly everyone will be able to participate.

​Here we have some lovely sun flares that Ved and Skinny worked on, combining the removal of the sun texture, the use of sunrays, and a scripted sun flare screengui with custom sun flare texture. Quite fancy indeed.

​We should have some more cool pictures in the coming weeks, as he further develops the aesthetics of RoVerse; we can't wait to see what he comes up with!

Demo of these effects in-engine.

On the shipbuilding front, Skinny has been working on a Capital ship design for this style of ships, and he has been working in a completely different style to what Ved does, that we talked about a while back. 

For Skinny, he starts in blender with a sphere or a cube, and starts moving vertices to where he wants them. From there, he separates out colors and imports them into studio.

In studio is where he puts all the finer details in, like lighting neon, superstructures, and weapons systems, to finish out the design.

And there you have it. While Skinny is still working on his design, the process is quite interesting, and could help out those of you who've wanted to start building your own capitals in anticipation of RoVerse.

We'd like to welcome Sutic to the team on the scripting front. He's elected to take on the enormous task of developing our custom character systems, that will drive everything from the spherical gravity to handheld weapons, all at 15% scale. We wish him the best of luck in his endeavors, and can't wait to see what cool stuff he comes up with!

IdyllicDestroyer had a bit of free time between lighting planets on fire and developing other core scripts, to test out a ship skinning process. He exported the Avenger, loaded it into blender, unwrapped all the faces, and baked some textures. The end result was a rough but workable first version of a ship skinned with custom decals.

While the process was fairly straightforward on the blender side, importing the textures proved to be a little bit more rough around the edges, so to speak. The high res texture got scaled down automatically by Roblox, causing some of the edges to bleed over, creating these weird lines around the outside edges of faces. While not a huge problem, there should be ways to work around this in future tests.

The important things we learned by this demo was that the texturing process was harder than first expected, text doesn't show up very well on the sides of ships, turning ships from bricks to meshes is a little harder than it should be, and blender stencils are the bomb.

We look forward to the awesome skins we'll be able to create for all the ships in RoVerse, so you can make your ships your very own, flying across the sky in style.

You may have been wondering where Animula has been hiding out all this time, but don't you worry, we've finally tracked him down. He's been working hard making more and more theme music tracks for RoVerse, and we can't wait for you all to hear what he's been making. Unfortunately, you'll have to wait just a bit longer to hear the 20 or so tracks he's created. They should bring just the right ambiance to RoVerse.

ROBLOX Group: https://www.roblox.com/My/Groups.aspx?gid=2948290
Discord server: https://discord.gg/npxBGwJ

Q1: How will planetary garrisons work?

A1: A military force would be instructed by their faction commander to guard a given planet's surface or star system, and it would be up to them to protect that area. They could construct fortifications to help defend a location, or just protect it by their presence. If you don't have the members to protect something important 24/7, consider hiring a mercenary group to take over while you're away!

Q2: Will there be electronic warfare ships, to slow down or disable ship systems?

A2: We've considered this a few times, and we'd really like to include it in the game, though it will need extensive testing to make sure it's not overpowered. While there wouldn't be a ship specifically designed to be an 'electronic warfare' ship, it would probably come as a ship kit that you could add on to a specific sized ship.

Q3: Will starfighters have repulsor lifts to move vertically?

A3: This great suggestion came from our Community channel this week. And I'll admit I hadn't thought of how ships would fly off of planets. Being able to hover vertically would be an important feature for any fighters that land on the surface, and it could be a useful tool in evasive maneuvers in space combat, along with the strafing we've already added. We'll definitely be adding a vertical movement aspect.

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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!