RoVerse Development Newsletter #99

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

This week, we have continued work from Idyllic on refining the turret systems, including a repaired aiming function, added details to missile turret firing, and begun work on menu UI coding. Lordrex has hit a milestone for the back-end and lobby integration, and on the building side Bradford has constructed a turret model for the beam weapons.

​The past few months the aiming mechanism for the capital ships has been a bit finicky, with several cases where they would not point exactly where the cursor was aimed. In the turret-scripting save file, this bug did not appear, so Idyllic spent some time this week tracking down the bug. Along the way, he also discovered that he had left the accuracy at 5° intervals, so as the player moved their mouse around, the turret would try to track to within 5° of the cursor. On top of the aiming glitches, this further reduced the accuracy with which a player could aim their turrets.

With the previous types of turrets, like autocannons and lasers, accuracy was never intended to be high in the first place, but with the introduction of the beam turret, where one of its key features is accuracy at long distance, improvements to this code became necessary.

Standard turret accuracy has been increased to 1° for now, and might be raised higher in the future, as well as the ability to vary the tracking accuracy on a per-type basis.

Here you can see the increased performance of tracking. Previously, there was a 10° dead zone around the turrets current location, so fine adjustments to aiming at your target were nearly impossible. We'll continue tweaking this value until we find the perfect balance between accuracy and performance.

In a fine addition to our arsenal of default ship turrets, the beam turret makes its mark on the battlefield - high transit and elevation speeds, coupled with near-perfect accuracy and exceptional range make it a dangerous weapon in the hands of a skilled tactical officer. The turret model, built this week by Bradford, makes clear its use with a slender barrel engulfed with the energies it pours forth, and the requisite neon so you know it's futuristic.

In an update to the VLS missile mounts, the bay doors now open with each volley that launches. This detail had been planned since the mounts were first rigged, but its importance compared to other work was minor. But fortunately, the organizational scheme worked, and the doors blow open in time for the missiles to be launched, then close after firing stops.

Delaying the closing of the bay doors until after firing had stopped completely was a deceptively complicated. If you were to just open them every time a missile fired, they'd open and close 8 times in rapid succession in the current setup. By attaching a separate function that tracks the time since the last missile was fired, the doors can be closed without any weird artifacts like missiles firing through shut bays. Beauty is in the details.

​NPC's have gotten an upgrade in the form of character skins. The demo last week had empty robots wandering around the void waving at each other and dancing - this week, the NPC's have stolen the looks of several famous, and several not-so-famous robloxians to use as their own.

We'll be making a nice, large list of NPC character skins so your stations will be filled with life, but for now, Stratiz's demo uses a list of a few playerId's to show how well characters and their attachments load.

Noobs everywhere!

A significant milestone today for lordrex, as he compiled all his tweaks and updates in the lobby and the back-end server's connected scripts, and performed a test that ran with a grand total of 0 errors. Those that code often know how hard such a feat is, especially cross-platform, but it marks a great step forward for the continued work on the full game.

​Last up is an update on the load-out-editing menu debuted last week, describing the back-end code that will make it work.

Here we have the comparison bars showing 5 important turret stats that you'll want to compare when switching out the various turret types. With a single bar, doing a percentage of max stat values would be simple, but with 5-segmented bars, the math becomes a bit trickier, though not impossible. Using modulus and the percentage size and position properties of gui objects, scaling the dark 'current' bars in simple, the trick lies in scaling and moving the orange 'difference' bar dynamically.


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: How will minerals be refined into spaceships?

A1: Right now we're leaning towards a simpler crafting tree than what we originally designed, focusing mostly on resources in, vehicles and weapons out with variation coming from which machines a layer uses. A refinery on a factory module at an outpost would be required for turning ore into base metals, that could then be taken to a workshop to be turned into a ship or other vehicle.

Q2: Will players have access to system sensors that give you a readout of the players in your vicinity?

A2: The server player list provided by roblox is always accessible, but as for telling you exactly who's there and what ship they're piloting, wouldn't that take some of the fun out of patrolling for ships and enemies?

Q3: Will we be able to disguise military vessels as civilian?

A3: If you're at war with someone, I'm not sure being a civilian cargo vessel would be any safer than looking like a military ship, in that a civilian ship would be an easy target for pillaging. You might be able to design a set of ships that look similar to each other as a faction theme, or use civilian cargo ships in a limited war-time capacity, but I don't think we'll be supporting any camo like that anytime soon.

Q4: Can ships dock with other ships to improve them?

A4: No, you will not be able to combine your ships into a giant robot, but smaller ships will be able to dock in a large enough ship's hangar area for refueling, repairs, or filling up with cargo or fighters.

Q5: Will RoVerse be providing factions with battle songs to play in-game?

A5: Unlikely. Due to copyright problems, and the cost of uploading stuff like that, we won't be doing it for you. You could always play your battle anthem in a group voice chat or another staging place, but it won't be in RoVerse directly.

---

​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!