devu

There's certainly a bit of KSP in there as well IMO..

Hope I'm the first one! 
 
 
 
This months DevDiary includes info on the (Pre-) Alpha, a view at the game menu, a glimpse at the inventory system, redesign of the cockpit widgets and several things about building and scripting!

Here it is... finally had a chance to get my hands on professional orchestral sound library ( and some spare time )and remade the main theme piece with it.
Sounds way better than synthesiser hope you enjoy it too.
 
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-wasilewski-4/homeless-march-of-giants-1
 
Will leave old versions for a while but ultimately will replace entire album with new flavour

Here it is... finally had a chance to get my hands on professional orchestral sound library ( and some spare time )and remade the main theme piece with it.
Sounds way better than synthesiser hope you enjoy it too.
 
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-wasilewski-4/homeless-march-of-giants-1
 
Will leave old versions for a while but ultimately will replace entire album with new flavour

I've done my duty
 
And the thread is about Polish people getting together for pre-alpha regardless of org membership.

It all sounds like more reasons for more cores

Well I wouldn't call starting with static construct and expecting it to fly a bug
 
But will take your word for it, learning curve is expected for sure, and some orientation indicators are a must have. But unresponsive UI? ... hmm

Hi Folks,
 
I had some time on my hands to do my hobby. And I have to say this, it is fist time in my life I decided to share with you some tunes I've created being inspired by this game. Even created account on soundcloud, yay!.
 
I really like the music behind this project but I was trying to add more diversity. You know... some faction related stuff
 
Here it is, faction anthem.
 
Hope one day all my friends from Organisation will fly to it together
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-wasilewski-4/homeless-march-of-giants
 
And this piece.. I would imagine yourself in deep space, out of oxygen, resources, energy but...
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-wasilewski-4/homeless-never-give-up
 
Apologies for some glitches, levels out of balance etc... This is very rough material, still trying to figure out how to record this properly from my moXF6. 
 
And if you got inspired, created some music, art, please share it with us!
 
Here is the link to entire collection I occasionally updating with new song:
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-wasilewski-4/tracks

The DU gameplay at Gamescom was really amazing. I learned so many new things from talking to JC and actually playing the game that I would like to share them with you.
I’m very surprised no one else started a topic about the Gamescom jet, as there were people who spend much more time at the NQ booth then me…
 
Disclamer: None of this information is official! It’s just my interpretation of the conversation I had with JC. Also none of the features are final! I got the impression that a lot of details are not fully thought out and will be changed during development.

I hope we can freely discuss features “as seen in the Gamescom” without violating any pre-alpha NDA… I just think this will be interesting for those who were not there.
 
Orbital mechanics:
In space there are actual physics calculations like in Kerbal Space Program! I managed to catapult my ship into orbit with atmospheric engines, but it was pulled back in a parabolic curve by the gravity.
JC said that atmospheric engines are actually a bit overpowered, as you could reach escape velocity with them and fly straight into space… without any control… because the engines only work in atmosphere… xD
I have to say that I really liked the atmospheric flight mechanics; they felt very realistic just like a real airplane.
 
Damaging system:
Functional parts get damaged on impact and are supposed to lose their function until they get repaired by hand. (currently tweaked as it’s a little bugy)
 
Lua Scripting:
We already know about the minigames you can create in DU, but what about the multiplayer capabilities? Interestingly enough it’s already possible to connect multiple programming units together by just using global variables, which are shared inside one core unit.
Thereby multiple sup-components on a big ship can be interconnected and exchange information between each other.
In theory it could also be possible to communicate to another construct using the same mechanic, but with a growing distance the update rate of the data would be decrease…
They are thinking about creating a component that can be accessed “globally” by any programming unit in range… but the whole topic about distributed systems will be another milestone that has not been considered jet.
Another thing I asked was if we could use an external IDE for programming, as the ingame one was kind of limited… JC said in theory you could import an external library in the ingame interface, which should access the Lua scripts directly from your PCs hard drive.(not sure about the Lua limitations inside DU though)
Or you just copy the code over to the game for testing.
The Lua development is also tied to the ingame IDE as each connected component actually provides predefined event-function-blocks that are triggered by certain events (e.g. a switch has an on, and an off block) and you have to place Lua code in the corresponding function blocks.
I’m sure in the long run NQ will develop a fully fledged IDE for the game, so this will become no issue at all….
The breakout minigame was also simply some code executed in the “start” function that was able to receive keyboard inputs and generated svgs that were displayed on the screen-unit.
 
Rendering/Performance:
Ok, the game is not the prettiest rendering wise.
All vegetation and functional components get only rendered up to a certain distance (few 100 meters) than they get de-spawned. Also all lighting and shadows are only active up to this distance.
Further away voxels also get simplified a lot… I honestly don’t care about the visuals that much, but I’ll admit the space station looked kind of squashed from far away.  But JC said they are working hard on improving the rendering.
On the flip side flying around was very smooth! In god-mode I flew to the moon of Alioth in 2 seconds without any noticeable frame drops!
 
 
So, that’s all that was new/interesting about the game for me. Maybe most of this was already known, but it wouldn’t hurt to share it here…
I actually did not have enough time to cover all my questions. But others are probably able to share a lot more insights from Gamescom, so feel free to post them to the rest of the community!

The thing is, regardless of the reasons the stuff that happened to be already implemented into game as we have seen on dev diary videos is way above my expectations.
They have been polishing content already... wait what? Seriously, that was the least thing I was expecting to see in Alpha. 
 
Physics momentum and shock-wave damage - didn't expect that at this stage at all.
Functional logical blocks - I was expecting to have a LUA API at this point. Those extras are nice to have but again non expected.
Voxel building system improvements - it only shows me how much attention they paying to usability but again wasn't expecting that at Alpha!
Custom UI and in game screens that supports html/css/svg - seriously? Who did expect that. It is crazy cool feature but in alpha?
All functional blocks redesigned for new look - placeholders is the thing being used in Alphas  SE took 2 years to replace them to call it Beta.
 
The list goes on and on but about 9 months ago when was clear to me, the Alpha will be just a server stress test and voxel building exercise.
 
It shows me that JC is a perfectionist and maybe we all worry a bit too much

Hi Harbonah and welcome on the official Dual Universe forum:
 
1. Yes, if you purchase a gold supporter pack before 7th of September 2017, you will get access to the game later in September.
2. End of September
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

I would like to point out that the alpha version which will be available in September is a testing phase and will not be a complete version of the game. If you want to help test the game then you'll enjoy it, but if you're looking for the finalized, finished product that won't be out till the end of 2018

would be easier to ask who isn't

This Devdiary is really amazing news. The "game in a game" part was one major reason for me to pledge this game. These customizable interfaces will actually not only be useful for games, but even allow us to build quite complex machineries in stations/spaceships that will serve all kinds of functions. The best part is that NQ doesn't have to develop any of these, as they provide a universal development-platform which allows to create everything!
 
But first I'd have one question: which ways are we able to interconnect different "Programming Units" together?
I get that you can connect things to the DPU by dragging lines to various components. But what was not shown is how different DPUs could talk to each other. Obviously there are various technical reasons not to simply allow a DPU to get access to another DPU. But a very simple component (e.g. comm-antenna) could function as input/output interface between DPUs.
 
For the Arcade games that would mean that you could play against other players, and even create tournaments to win some Qunata!

For the Screen element it would also be nice if the screen itself could be used an input device (aka touch screen (ok. maybe for a later expansion...)
The possibilities will be endless! 

Hi everyone,
 
Here is the official stance of Novaquark regarding the wiki made on Gamepedia. We launched the wiki on this platform with the goal in mind to let the Community fill/improve/complete it. we really thank  all those who have already participated in it. However, the wiki was never meant to reference player-created content (hence organization descriptions). It's made to describe official content, game mechanics and possible emergent gameplay.
 
Here are the reasons for our stance:
 
1) To keep some meaning for each website.
- The wiki is there for the gameplay and the game mechanics and the official content.
- The community portal is the place for all the community-created content (as it will evolve a lot with the arrival of a dedicated web developer joining the team soon).
 
2) If we start to include Organizations description, we will have to do it for every organization or none of them.
Referencing a few organizations will raise a ton of issues while referencing will gave the wiki contributors an unreasonable amount of work.
 
3) To keep a certain neutrality and peace on the wiki.
We aren't blind or naive. The moment some player-created content (especially organizations description or history) is included on the wiki, it will become a battlefield and we don't want that. The wiki is not made nor designed for that. Remember what happened recently on the Community Portal with a system not (yet) fully implemented to take into account attempts of sabotage.
 
So for all these reasons, we don't want to see Organization pages appearing on the Gamepedia wiki.
 
Other wiki mentioned in this topic are, in our opinion, not relevant examples:
- World of Warcraft is a theme park MMORPG where Guilds are not in direct competition (sure, there are Battlegrounds and Arenas for PVP, but there is no reason to reduce the visibility of any guild, while there can be in sandbox MMORPGs like EVE Online or Dual Universe).
- No Man’s Sky is not a MMORPG. Not even Multiplayer, so there are even less reasons for this case to go wrong.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

What is the point of contacting Gamepedia about this? It's not their game. The only voice that should matter in this is Novaquarks.
 
That would be like asking Discord employees about the layout of any given Discord server. 

Hello @ZipSnipe
 
Welcome to community.
Knowing you coming from Empyrion Galactic Survival and probably familiar with SE as a similar type of game you may have a certain expectations.
But you also know about what's wrong with SE and Empyrion. Those games do not provide one thing everyone after a while will start looking for.
 
A goal.
You can gather with few friends, build your base, ships. But after a while you ending up wandering around aimlessly. No matter how much you like building stuff, the most exiting stuff in Empyrion and SE is first 2-3 days of game play. When you building your new cool project or idea coming along.
 
I know that from experience, as I played both of those games a lot. What personally attracted me to DU was the fact they started with MMO in mind first. Sure there are sacrifices needs to be made in physics, battle system etc, but server technology behind DU is impressive. Having thousands of people on the same server is something that SE or Empyrion will never ever be able to achieve. And this is a first condition to add a sense to the game play.
 
I have seen many attempts to build bigger servers, provide some scenarios, economy systems, build worlds and there was many nice ideas, even multi-instances to overcome limitations of those games came into play. But ultimately those games cannot handle more than 50k dynamic blocks/voxels at the same time to provide a smooth game play. No matter how hard they will try those games will never be a truly multiplayer games. More co-op category kind of thing. Even single player can build massive construct that will drop sim speed to unplayable levels.
 
DU on top of promise of being proper MMO game will give you economy, politics and players itself will build a world and scenarios around themselves. As oppose to trying to convince you to 1 scenario or give you aimless game play. Only because long term game play in single server will be possible. How many wipe-outs did you survive on the other titles? As many to bring you back to the beginning, to the most interesting part of those games ;). But we all wished for a bit more. And this is why we ended up here.
 
I see you jumping to conclusions early, in fact nobody here knows how well it all perform. But if you spent some time around the dev blogs you would recognise the spirit behind NQ developers and understood the vision behind the project. With this understanding you would recognise that comparing DU to Empyrion many here could take as an insult and react a bit to harsh.
 
Think about DU as a combination of SE/Empyrion, Minecraft/ Eve Online/ Entropia Universe and you will see how much more is into it. Do not expect realistic physics simulation on grand scale, or welding blocks in stages (that I would argue about realism of it anyway  ) there will be simplification in many areas crucial to run this smoothly. But one thing for sure, the goal will be to accommodate as many players at the same world with a assumption each may have some firepower and start a epic battle at some point. I don't think anybody gives up on this part here

As a noble idea it sounds, it might also lead to something else. Some people will stockpile DAC's on a low prices and resell later when expected price will go up over a time . Because of that I say no. If you consider possibility of market manipulations. We don't wont this game to be pay to win right? But to some extend that would be one of the kitchen doors to influence by having more money.

The wiki suppose to be about valuable information for the player. 
If pointing out where the biggest city lies or some trade hubs and who they belongs to is the valuable information... so be it.
At this point non of this exist. So not sure exactly why we debating this.
 
In other hand we have community portal here, developed by NQ and I am sure there will be lots of goodies coming from NQ and system will improve over a time and will be one place to go for all community business.
 
As I understand ATMLVE desire to have some place to put some historical record or track on what is going on. Again nothing wrong to write under DUH umbrella, those who stumbled upon it even today can easily find it. The only problem is there is 0 posts last time I've checked

I was beginning to find it frustrating trying to hunt down little bits of information in videos in order to help people out so I thought that I would make a summary of the Dev Diaries.
 
December
Dev Team Territory Units Rendering/Lighting Beginning bot test server Ore Scanning  
January
Biomes Day/Night Cycle Smoother & Undo Tool Building Jetpack Engine Force Physics POV details Test server with 100s of bots  
February
Ship element redesign Some example ships Ghost Preview of elements Copy tool Started cockpit widgets (HTML/CSS) New Texture Baking Alpha moved to September  
March
Further cockpit widget work Atmospheric/Orbital Physics Improved Interpolation Detector & Logic Gates Interactive Component Demonstration (Laser Trap Puzzle)  
April
€650,000 milestone (construct vs. construct) Refined total flight Physics Ice Biome Crafting Basics Build Mode Detailed Information (w/ live element ghost updating)  
May
3rd Party Play-Testing Interplanetary Flight Work Stardust & Trajectory Monitor (Orange Sanic Rings) Artificial-Friction Generating Retro Engines Reentry Heating Effects 3D Planet map w/ hexagonal tiles Bookmarking Destination Tracking Pulser Unit & Pressure Plate Logic Component Redesign  
June
Alpha Information Building Brush Shapes Building on 2D plane Remote Ship Control Player Momentum Continuity 1000 bots & 100 constructs test server  
July
LUA scripting
Control Unit & Script Editor Window
Element Events & Functions
Screen Unit
Text & HTML/SVG
Imported Images
LUA programing
Emergency Control Unit Simple Damage Model & Repairing  

I would like to compliment the artists who are designing the elements.  I thought the early placeholders where good, but when I see the recent designs, I am impressed that they have become even better.  In a science fiction setting, it seems easy to make things appear either too mundane or too fantastic, but I feel the artists are getting the balance just right and giving the elements a strong sense of believably. 
 
These are obviously very talented people who put a large amount of care into their work and I thank them for their contribution to DU.

Hi ZipSnipe and Kirtis, 
welcome on the official Dual Universe forum!
 
- It's true the introduction post was a bit brutal. It's understandable as many developers released games promised a lot and didn't met the expectations of the players, and now every game projects having any significant ambition is welcome with caution, suspicion and/or disbelief. And that's okay. We don't ask to be believed just with words. We force no one to support us before having seen the game. We understand your decision. We have no problem with that.
 
- It's also true vylqun's answer was a bit brutal as well. It's understandable as we had many aggressive introduction in the past from people who think to know what Dual Universe is about and bash it, before even inform themselves on the game. So those who took the time to inform themselves have sometimes to a hard time to answer kindly to this kind of introduction post.
 
- Regarding the role of the veteran community members (and especially the members of the ATV group):
True, we are happy to get feedback from the active members, but we are also happy if they welcome the new members and help them to integrate the community: "welcoming new comers and reply to their questions, even obvious ones without being rude" is one of the factor on which the ATV members can be selected as mentioned there. 
 
Now to answer the main question of the topic:
 
Games like Space Engineers or Empyrion were originally designed to be multiplayer for small groups of players, hosted on private/personal servers. Going this way has its pros and cons. Among the pros, there are some that made the popularity of these games like the physics applied to voxels where you can ram into a spaceship with another spaceship and breaking it in two parts moving independently. It's this kind of "waow" effect who made Space Engineers well known for example. The problem here is this kind of things is hardly compatible with massively multiplayer technology (if you want to avoid big lag problems), at least with the current level of technology across the world and the average internet bandwith of a player. 
 
In Dual Universe, this is the kind of topic that we decided to "sacrifice": where Space Engineers put physics applied on voxels at the top priority (and it makes sense if you aim for a multiplayer game with a few friends), we put the priority on the massively multiplayer environment, while physics come second. This is essential for a single-shard universe (where the whole community is gathered on one server cluster). If we can implement physics in some aspects without stressing too much the server where we are in a situation with hundreds or event thousands of players gathering at the same place, then we will probably implement it. However, physics applied to voxels, water physics and other type of realistic features that are "unfriendly" with massively multiplayer environment will most probably never implemented unless there is a technology breakthrough to handle that properly in a MMORPG. 
 
Large scale battles of Planetside 2 are also a great achievement, but they can't push much further as FPS real time mechanics can become a factor that limits the massively multiplayer environment. That's why we opted for a "lock and fire" mechanics in PvP combat similar to EvE Online, instead of FPS Mechanics a la Planetside 2. "lock and fire" mechanics enable us to refresh the position of players very far away less frequently without making it a gameplay issue = less data to transmit to all clients = more massively multiplayer friendly.
 
In the nutshell:
- We are favoring massively multiplayer environment (trying to avoid as much lag as possible) over physics.
- We are favoring massively mutliplayer environment by chosing massively multiplayer PvP mechanics optimized for it ("Lock & Fire").
 
So we are not trying to make a perfect game impossible to make.
We had to take tough design decisions to make the best game possible while keeping in mind the constraints to make it doable.
 
That doesn't mean either we promise there will never be any lag: so many factors come into play that there might be situations where you will have lag, depending on your computer configuration, your internet bandwith, the ping you have, etc... But we will do our best to minimize the lag whenever it's possible. That's one of our priorities.
 
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.

I would say, common sense. If someone is crossing the line they should intervene and they will. Because no matter how much we love to detach ourselves from RL and live rest of our lives in imaginary world, reality is here on the ground and we must act accordingly to our social standards.
 
All I'm counting on is NQ will not use a ban hammer blindly. 

Hi all, 
sorry for the lack of updates on these charts, I have been extremely busy in the real world (that exists, I always forget) with studying, finding work, etc, etc. 
I had come to a conclusion that these charts weren't great enough and stopped whilst I was ahead. Mainly due to the fact that I was unable to stay on top of input, reading and looking through it all. It got fairly hectic for a time and I had to take a forced break.  

Though, with the possibility of Alpha coming along soon, I am thinking about starting up again, anew. As this gives me the chance to better watch the alpha through release stages of growth. 
I suspect that the data will be greatly affected by the ability to play the game, seeing as real dynamics within Organizations will be used, seen, heard or abused. 

So, keep watching this space, the charts will be coming back soon.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today I am the bearer of good news.
Today at 17:18 GMT-7hrs, a 3 year long issue, has been finally set down and resolved without any hiccups. r/DualUniverse subreddit has been successfully transferred over to the community with full permissions and ownership. 
This message is to inform you all off such, and that as per the agreement, r/dualthegame will be archived (has now been archived) and be redirecting everyone to r/DualUniverse.
 
I would like to welcome you all back to r/DualUniverse, it shall now serve as the official subreddit for Dual Universe from here on forth!
 
Cheers,
Comrademoco