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Novaquark is pleased to announce its partnership with NVIDIA GeForce NOW to make Dual Universe as accessible as possible to our players. GeForce NOW is NVIDIA's cloud game streaming service that instantly transforms nearly any PC, Mac or Chromebook into a powerful PC gaming rig.
 
If your PC specs are below the minimum requirements for DU, this is for you!
 
Dual Universe has been thoroughly tested to ensure the experience is optimal on GeForce NOW. You can now play DU at its best, in all its graphical magnificence.
 
To do so, you will first need a subscription to Dual Universe. Then, simply head to the GeForce NOW website. GeForce NOW offers two membership options: Free and Priority.
 
Anyone can sign-up for a Free membership, and start playing instantly. If you would like to upgrade your membership to experience the best of GeForce NOW, including priority access to game servers and extended session lengths, you can upgrade to the GeForce NOW Priority membership.
 
Dual Universe awaits you, Novean!
 

We’re making some changes to the way organizations work. 
 
Currently, organizations can cascade within themselves thus making it possible to create a near-infinite multitude of sub-organizations. This poses a problem from both a design and cost perspective as it removes any form of scaling limit to the amount of constructs and organization that can be in the game. It also leaves the door open for various ways to circumvent limitations needed for balancing. 
 
These changes will address these issues as well as clear up a number of anomalies that are affecting some existing organizations. They will be included in the 0.26 update, which gives you more than a month to reorganize as needed. 
 
New regulations for organizations will be:
Each organization must have a player as its super legate. An account can only be the super legate of one organization. Nested organizations will still be possible but will require a player as super legate of that organization, and that player cannot also be the super legate of the parent organization.
  To ensure a smooth transition and have things set up the way you prefer, we encourage you to restructure your org(s) accordingly. Organizations that have not been updated will undergo an automated modification process. This will be done in a prioritized order as described below. 
 
For players that are the super legate of multiple organizations:
One organization will be selected as the player’s primary organization according to the following parameters: The number of players in the organization. The number of constructs in the organization. The age of the organization. The player will become a designated legate for any other orgs to which they belong.
  To address situations where an organization is nested within another so that there is no player designated as super legate, these are the solutions we’ll pursue: 
The legate with the most seniority that is not already a super legate of an organization and has connected over the past month at the time of the change is promoted to super legate. If no legates exist, the oldest member that is not already a super legate of an organization and has played within the past month at the time of the change is promoted to super legate. The oldest legate that is not already a super legate of an organization is promoted to super legate. The oldest member that is not already a super legate of an organization is promoted to super legate. If none of the above apply, the organization will be disbanded.
  Constructs and territories for any properly structured organizations or organizations that are assigned a new super legate will be unaffected and remain in ownership of that organization. The constructs and territories of disbanded orgs will be reassigned to the first former super legate in the chain of organization parenting. Any other construct will be abandoned, and territories will be unclaimed.

 

Hello Noveans!

The announcement can be found here.
 
And the video can be found here.
 
We would love to hear your feedback, so discuss away!

Looking to quench your thirst for quanta? Today we are launching update 0.25.8 "Hermes", which is codenamed after the messenger of the Greek gods, as a reference to the newly-introduced Mission System. "Hermes" marks the final phase of the 0.25 update and introduces three features that will fatten up your wallet in no time. The Mission System and Job Forum were the topics of this devblog. Challenges were mentioned in The Future of DU: Finding the Fun.  
 
Hauling Missions - Your Alioth hostess with the mostess, Aphelia, or other players will request delivery of goods from Point A to Point B. You’ll be handsomely rewarded for successfully completing the mission. These missions adhere to a particular list of parameters that includes specific locations, time limits, and collateral.  The Job Forum -  Earn some cold, hard quanta by accepting freeform contracts from fellow players to perform a service, such as fuel deliveries or providing security.   Challenges -  This repeatable, solo-player activity takes place outside the persistent game world, making it a perfect opportunity for new players to get a feel for maneuvering a ship without compromising a “real” one. More experienced pilots will also find challenges fun and financially rewarding. Enter a designated VR surrogate station, complete the objectives, and watch your wallet swell with pride.
Note: Additional challenge types will be added over time. 
  Watch this video for a closer look. 
 
 
Last but not least, you will notice some spiffy new VFX thanks to our integration of PopcornFX. We’ll reveal more about this in an upcoming article. 
 
Full patch notes are conveniently available in the launcher so you can read them as you update the client, or they can be found here on the forum. 
 
We cordially invite you to join the discussion where you share your feedback about the Hermes release.  

Despite our recent efforts to expand and clear out Market 6, we are still getting reports about performance and clutter. We want to assure our players that we understand your frustration and are still working to find better permanent solutions. 
 
Meanwhile, we will be addressing clutter across Alioth this weekend. Our plan is as follows:
Dynamic constructs that have not had direct interaction with their owner over a set duration (currently 30 days*) will be hidden.  Constructs at the market that violate our rules,  Code of Conduct and EULA will be removed.
If your construct is hidden, you can unhide (recover) it by using the Fetch tool. To do this, right-click on it in the Construct list on your Map screen. Any constructs that you own, whether visible or hidden, will appear on this list.
 
Fetch functionality now works for organization-owned constructs as well. For hidden constructs that belong to your organization, your legates can retrieve them via that same functionality. 
 
Our customer support team is at the ready if you still need assistance recovering your constructs. Simply ping our Live Support staff in the in-game help chat with “@GM” or file a ticket on our support page and we will dispatch help right away!
 
Please note that this is intended only as a temporary measure to aid performance and improve your experience when visiting these areas. 
 
We look forward to seeing the results from these changes over the weekend.
 
May your frames be plenty.
 
 
*Duration may change based on our findings 

NQ has been quite clear since the beginning of Beta that there was no promise that they would never wipe.  They have always said they might if they need to.
 
And IMO they really, really need to at some point.  Some might quit, yes, but I bet a lot who have already quit will come back as most of us quit because of the schematics and the related debacle that gave other orgs a SEVERE advantage over the rest of us.
 

THE FUTURE OF DU
We’ve seen a lot of positive feedback following the release of our devblog series on the future of DU. We’re  thankful to our community for the great feedback and encouragement. We’ve collected what seem to be the most burning questions following the publication of the blogs and wanted to do a follow-up to address them the best we can. Not all questions have an answer at this point, and we’ll try to fill in the gaps as we’re able in future communications. 
 
Are you going to launch the game in 2021? 
Realistically speaking, we have too much to do with the time that’s left  this year to get to a state where we feel the game is ready for launch. Our current plan is “at some point in 2022”, and we’re targeting mid-year. That projection is tentative, depending largely on our progress and  the feedback we get from our community, so please don’t hold this as a commitment. It could be sooner, it could be a bit later. The state of the game will dictate the date.
 
Why is the game not working on Shadow (cloud gaming platform) and do you plan to support it?
We believe cloud gaming platforms are a great way to enjoy DU if you want to play the game but don’t meet the proper PC specs or want to benefit from the latest hardware improvements without investing in upgrades for your gaming rig; however, we need to clarify that we are not yet officially supporting cloud gaming platforms, including Shadow. Our releases are not tested on these platforms or Windows emulations on Mac and Linux, and we can’t guarantee compatibility at this point. The game is still in beta, and we are focusing our efforts on native Windows PC support.
 
We plan to officially support these platforms at some point, and would like to ensure that when we do we are able to offer ongoing compatibility with adequate testing and collaboration with the platform holders to make a long-term commitment. 
 
We recently started working with a cloud gaming platform in an official manner, and we are hopeful to announce our official support of that platform soon. In the meantime, compatibility with cloud gaming platforms can’t be guaranteed. We log bugs and look at potential quick wins, but we can’t commit to a timeframe for fixing them. Please also note that there is a waiting list of one year to have access to one of the machines of Shadow, which makes debugging all the more difficult.
 
Will there be an updated roadmap?
At the moment, there is no plan to release an official roadmap with dates. We tried to explain why in the three devblogs. We’re changing many things in the way we develop DU, and it’s hard right now to have a clear idea of our future velocity. We don’t want to give you dates that we might not hold. We think it’s more important to have the freedom to adapt to your feedback rather than trying to hit the dates on a public roadmap. We hope you will see this as a sign that things are changing for the better and that we’re being more realistic in our approach.
 
Why don’t we have more frequent releases?
Dual Universe is an extremely complex game to develop. Many of the systems we have already in place are interdependent, and changing or adding a feature has ripple effects on other features and systems both in terms of code and in terms of feature design. For example, RDMS has to be carefully considered in many things we do, as does  the role of organizations in the introduction of new features, etc. Most of the tech we use is custom and not off-the-shelf. It’s one of the secret sauces of the game, and it also makes features much more difficult to work on because we develop the tech AND the features at the same time.
 
Now, with the introduction of the PTS, we hope to make more frequent releases, including releases of prototypes, such as the Lua technology for screen units. How frequently will depend on what goes in these releases and how much work needs to be done after we receive feedback from the PTS. We estimate that you can expect three to four additional major releases in 2021, and smaller releases in-between, but that’s only a ballpark estimate for now.
 
What’s going on with long-standing beta bugs? Are you going to fix them?
Yes we will fix them as quickly as possible although we aren’t able to pinpoint an exact date. Some bugs are easier to squash than others, and some even require a rework of an entire complete backend system to resolve. These processes need to be scheduled accordingly, also taking into account that we want to avoid reworking the same thing multiple times if we suspect that the development of an upcoming feature will force us to rework the same system again. The more critical the bug, the higher the priority. When we’re focused on fixing bugs,  that means we’re not working on the plan we presented to you, so it’s a balancing act. We wish we could give you a list of bugs and a timeframe for each one, but that would be highly unrealistic. These bugs are not being forgotten, that’s the best we can tell you right now.
 
Can we expect a more frequent communication from Novaquark?
We’d love to, just understand that the frequency of our communications really depends on the cadence of the game releases. The way it works is that as soon as the content of a new release is established (at least a content draft), we sit down and make a plan for how and when we’re going to talk about these features/this content. Often we have to wait until a feature is stable enough in terms of game design and/or coding to be able to talk about it or show it, as a feature can evolve a lot along the development process and the unfolding of our sprints. We simply want to ensure that the information we give you isn't misleading, as early communication means the end result may differ significantly once development is complete and the feature is released.
So between releases, there is indeed a communication gap. 
 
There are different general topics we could discuss between releases, but they wouldn’t really bring anything concrete to the table and that communication could be seen as shallow and vague. It’s actually an interesting topic we’d like to explore with you: what is it exactly that you expect in terms of communication? How can we balance having meaningful content to present with what seems to be the need of our players to see ongoing communication? Based on reactions we’ve seen in the past, we  believe that communicating simply for the sake of it when we have nothing really new to talk about is never well-received.
 
What about PvE? Are you planning to add PvE features to make the game more varied?
Our current focus is on enabling emergent content between players. PvE is not one of our priorities at the moment. This doesn’t mean that it won’t ever come to the game, but it is not going to be added before the official release of the game. That said, one could potentially consider the challenges that we’re currently working on as some form of PvE, though not in the sense that you’ll be shooting NPCs or wildlife.
 
Will we see a return of NQ employee Interviews and AMAs?
We would love to do things like livestreams and AMAs again when the time is right. We feel like these formats are better suited when there is a clearly defined topic to focus the discussion, such as a major release for instance. It is duly noted that these interactions with the community are appreciated, and we will include them whenever possible.
 
You mentioned the changes in the industry gameplay, but it wasn’t clear if schematics will stay or go?
The honest answer is that we don’t know yet. When we introduced schematics, it was a major disturbance in the forc… in the economy of the game.  We don’t want to rush into more changes after that, especially given that players invested a lot of hard-earned quanta in buying them. Removing schematics is ONE of the options we’re looking at, as well as changing their prices or adding more recipes. Reverting to the way it was before the introduction of schematics is also on the table. We know we want to do something with the current state of the industry to add back some of the fun that was taken away with 0.23, but how exactly we’ll do it is yet to be decided.  
 
Is there going to be a wipe?
We see that the debate on the topic has been pretty hot in the community for a while, and it’s about the same at Novaquark. We’re uncertain if the changes we are planning to introduce will require a wipe or not, and we’ve started (intense) internal discussions on the topic. Our priority is to try to preserve the time and effort that our players have put in the game since the beta started. Once we’ve got a better idea of how much the changes we discussed in the third  “Future of DU” devblog will impact the game’s economy, we’ll make a decision. If there is a wipe (and it’s a big IF), it may be a partial one only affecting certain aspects of the universe. Our  priority will be to mitigate the impact for long-time players.

Join us in our feedback thread here!
 

True. But is there a point here? 
Dont we all know the game is not currently viable? 
It is assumed the project is rebooting with this new managment and reboots take time. 
 
From the player perspective, was there a choice? Do we want to play a non viable game? 
 
The only thing worth asking is:
What about the investors and funds? Havr the investors agreed with a new round of funding and the extended time needed to fix this game? 
 
If yes. Then im quite happy with it. 

This is all very nice sounding. Progression.. gameloops... these are the things we wanted to hear. Thank you! I hope you guys keep talking to us rather than having an unnecessary veil of secrecy going forward. Transparency goes a long way. 

Sounds good to me
 
By the way, if you need more ideas about the "BREAKING THE MONOTONY" part, I wrote a post on reddit sometime ago about a way to promote exploration & pvp for people who are not interested into mining.
 
I hope you'll read it :  here's the link.
 
Of course it's probably not so easy to implement, but you could keep this as a side note for later
 

Discuss the final chapter of this series below!  What are you most looking forward to? 

PART THREE: FINDING THE FUN 
 
In this third and final segment of this series, we’ll take a look at Dual Universe gameplay and how we’re aiming to improve it. There’s a delicate balance to strike between staying as true as we can to the original vision, making smart design and production choices, taking players’ feedback into consideration, and creating more opportunities for community engagement. The game needs to be challenging but, most of all, fun. It can be a tall order sometimes, but not an impossible goal. 
 
This is far from being a comprehensive list of everything we’re working on, but we think it’s a good starting point for sparking conversation with the community. You’ll also notice that we have intentionally stayed away from precise timeframes. We would rather stay flexible and give ourselves the opportunity to revise our plans based on the feedback of players. 
 
Now, let’s get to the good stuff!
 

BREAKING THE MONOTONY 

Even if the main pillars of the game aren’t quite finished yet, the launch of the beta allowed us to see how the various systems work together, how fun they are, and what actually works or sometimes doesn’t.
 
Analyzing data on player behavior and reading the copious amount of feedback we receive (thanks for that!) have pointed to two main objectives we’ll be addressing in the coming months (in addition to continuing to fix bugs and balancing issues). These are: 
 
First, emend gameplay loops that are tedious for some players. We call it “fixing the player routine”, so that playing DU doesn’t feel like “going to work”. Up the stakes, adding meaningful opportunities for conflict so that the in-game economy, social components, and building aspects come together. 
  Some elements of gameplay are more fun than others in Dual Universe. Mining can often be seen as a must-do for many new players, and because it is perceived as mandatory it can rapidly feel tedious. Earning quanta is fundamental. When we launched beta, it seemed like mining was almost the only way to get money, especially for new players who didn’t have much in the way of resources or allies. 
 
To make it more interesting with a real sense of progression over time, here is the high-level plan:
 
Make it easier for newcomers to gather resources from the surface of planets without the need to dig; Then, transition players to deploying mining units once they’ve claimed a territory. Mining units will supply a steady stream of ore, depending on the specifics of the tiles the player has claimed. These mining units come in tiers and should add a sense of progression even to early mining. There will also be a production optimization gameplay if you want to use several mining units. For players who want to specialize in mining, we will introduce asteroid mining. Think of asteroids as epic mining with high reward potential. Asteroids will be spawned in the universe. Players will be able to scan clues in space to discover where they’re located. Some asteroids will contain not just regular ores, but also rare and valuable ones. Once discovered, there will be a delay before their location is broadcast to all players. This is an opportunity for explorers who find these asteroids to reap their resources first or monetize their location. The control of valuable asteroids will also create opportunities for combat, information trading, and collaboration between players. Please also note there will be asteroids in safe zones with lower-value ores.
  THE QUEST FOR QUANTA   
Another way for players to earn quanta is the previously-announced Mission System, coming in version 0.25. It will include two components: a job board to facilitate interactions between players (for example, “I need gold delivered to this location”), as well as a secure framework for player- and NQ-created hauling missions. We hope that this will kindle the game’s economy with increased specialization and proper tools for exchanges between players. The upcoming introduction of in-game challenges will also add fun ways for players to earn cash. 
 
On that note, we plan to revise the way the markets work, considering different ways to improve connections and making it less painful to trade for goods. This should make markets more accessible and fluidify trade.
 
We are looking into how we can rebalance the industry. The reaction to changes introduced in 0.23 told us that there is more work needed here. The role of schematics is definitely one of the areas we’re looking at; whatever we do with schematics, we are particularly sensitive to making a fair move for players who have invested in buying them. 
 
Builders haven’t been forgotten. We just delivered new tools for them in 0.24, and we are already working on new ones that should let builders enhance their artistic arsenal to create more amazing constructs. We’re pretty excited about them, but should forewarn you that it may be some time before they appear as higher priority changes will take precedence. 
 
The first-time player experience will get a full overhaul to facilitate the onboarding of new players. We’re doing away with the long monologues from Aphelia and the length of time it took to get into the action. The tutorials will be more contextual, and the experience of new players should get them into the core gameplay faster. As it is now, new players sometimes need to travel long distances to find a tile free of neighbors and suitable for future expansion. The redesign will allow these new pioneers to start with their friends in a location of their choosing in a more streamlined fashion. They will also be able to select an outpost design and receive startup resources. 

STOKING THE PVP FIRES 
We know a lot of players want to hear about PvP. Once we’ve fixed the main gameplay loops, this will be the next thing we’ll tackle. Our goal is for space warfare to be one of the driving forces of the emergent gameplay, fueling the economy of the game, including for players who don’t want to directly partake in combat but might want to provide ships, ammunition, and services for those who do. 
 
While there are PVPers who are in it for the thrill of the pirate’s life, there are others who aren’t pirates so much as protectors who enjoy defender-type PVP scenarios. In its current state, PVP can be seen as gratuitous, devoid of reasons to fight beyond pillaging a bested ship’s cargo. The current PvP mechanics will be modified with the addition of construct shields and a rebalancing of weapons, among other things, as well as introducing territory control in space and, later, on planets. Controlling space territories will give players benefits such as the ability to acquire highly-lucrative space resources (i.e. rare gas, singularities) and a worthwhile reason for organizations and solo players to fight. Not only that, but you’ll be waging war in style with an array of new, unique cannons and skins. 
 
GLITZIER GRAPHICS
Admittedly, graphics improvements have been on the back burner for a while in favor of building the main gameplay systems. Upgrading the visual immersion has now taken a more prominent position in our priorities, the goal being to give more “life” to Dual Universe. 
 
This ongoing process began in 0.24 when we overhauled many of the assets used in world generation (i.e. trees, rocks, ground textures, etc.) We’ve also undertaken a big push on visual effects, with a slew of new and improved visual effects planned for gradual release in the near future. Continuing our efforts with the recent addition of new voxel textures for builders, we will freshen up many older elements in the game to bring coherence between older and newer assets, as well as between voxels and assets.
 
We are also investigating longer-term visual improvements. For some time, we’ve been working on prototypes for a new planet generation technology to make sure that our planets are interesting to explore. Before we can roll this out, we will be doing an overall pass on the existing planets, like Jago, with improved terrain and more varied environment assets. There is also a project to improve lighting with the inclusion of global illumination.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
Again, please remember that all these changes will be tested first on the public test server. The final versions of these features may vary depending on your feedback and our own thought  processes. In terms of timing, most of the “player routine” fixes are planned to be gradually introduced before the end of the summer while the space warfare and PvP revamp should begin rolling out sometime after.
 
As you hopefully see, a lot of these changes are based on your feedback and a more grounded, pragmatic approach to game design. We realize that many of these topics require additional explanations and that they will probably trigger more questions. We will answer them in due time, as we’re able, in future devblogs. Until then, we look forward to hearing your thoughts in this discussion thread. See you there! 
 

PART TWO: UNDER THE HOOD 

In our previous blog, we spoke about improvements we’re making to our processes in order to get more efficient use of our resources and deliver the best game possible. Today, we’re taking a look at operation costs and how we’re working to make improvements in that area, too. 

THE COST OF DOING BUSINESS 
The server and database architecture behind Dual Universe is new and quite complex. As we had about the game itself,  we had made assumptions about how much running a game like DU was going to cost in various areas. What we found was that our estimations proved to be far too conservative. We had to confront the actual cost of scaling up operating costs for a larger, global player base. And that’s okay. We have a plan. 
 
After reevaluation, we determined that some of our design decisions have had a major impact on our operational costs (i.e. what it costs to run the servers). In particular, databases are a major part of these costs. For example, because the world can be entirely edited and every edit needs to be stored in a database then communicated between the server and the clients, it eats a lot of our I/O allocations, which in turn increases our database costs. 
 
THE IMPACT ON UPDATES
The consequence is that, in the upcoming months, we will be rolling out significant backend improvements in order to optimize these operational costs. We made the conscious decision to keep pricing low in order to make the game more accessible for people who want to play, but that means that we need to keep operational costs in check. Developing these optimizations is time-consuming, but it is fundamental if we want to have a viable game as the playerbase continues to grow. 
 
It’s important to make players aware of this because some of our upcoming releases may not seem like much to you. While they won’t appear to include much in the way of new features, they will be updates to deploy these fundamental under-the-hood changes. For instance, the upcoming 0.25 release will be primarily focused on introducing a “game-changing” incremental storage mechanism for edits to the game world that will have a major positive impact on our database costs. The good news is that we think that some of these modifications will improve performance for the players.
 
Speaking of performance: that’s another area where we’ve been doing a lot of work, using the in-game telemetry to optimize areas where performance was dropping. There are several projects in the works to address performance. Although these may not seem particularly sexy when you read about them in the patch notes, the difference in how much better the game runs and feels while you’re playing should convince you it was worth the time and effort we spent on them. 
 
One example is the in-game screens. They ended up being quite popular among players, but the use of HTML for screen customization has proven to be quite a performance bottleneck in areas where there are a lot of screens. We recently started testing a new system using simple Lua draw commands instead of HTML to achieve the goal of screen customization. This change should seriously alleviate performance issues in areas with a lot of screens while providing the added benefit of unifying customization languages in a more user-friendly way.
 
There are other optimizations like this in our pipeline, and they will be presented in due time. 

MORE IN STORE
Tomorrow, in the third and final part of this series, we’ll talk about DU gameplay, and the challenges of maintaining a delicate balance between staying true to the original vision while taking player feedback into consideration. 
 
Discuss today's blog here!

PART ONE: REFINING OUR PROCESSES 
As promised last week, we would like to give you a glimpse at the changes, improvements, and additions we have in store for Dual Universe. 
We’ve learned many lessons since our beta began seven months ago.  Going from a backer-focused game in alpha, under NDA, to a public, wide-open beta with many new players gave us a lot of insight in several areas: processes, economics, and gameplay. In this blog, we’ll focus on processes with the latter two being the topics of subsequent blogs. 

THE LONG HARD LOOK
At Novaquark, we’re still a fairly small team. Given the ambition and complexity of this game, it can be quite a challenge to make the right decisions on how to make the most of our resources. To date, we’ve been focused on bug fixing, stabilization, balancing, scaling, and improving our server and database infrastructure - plus firefighting when necessary - to make the game work better. 
 
Not to say that this is all behind us; it never will be (such is the way of MMOs), and we know some bugs and exploits still need to be addressed - this is a beta after all. Still, we paused earlier this year to ponder what the next phase of development of DU should be, to stay the course of the original plan or adapt to how things have evolved since beta began. After taking a  long hard look at everything we’ve learned from the beta, we decided where we need to focus next, based on what we think will be best for Dual Universe and its community. 

“IF IT’S BROKE, FIX IT”
Maintaining a live game while we continue to develop it ended up being quite the leap from our tightly-controlled alpha environment. As much as we prepared for it, actually doing it was a whole different beast. That’s probably one of the areas where the reality check was the most brutal for us. The world of Dual Universe is a persistent one, and every time we introduce something, it impacts the player and the delicate balance of its economy. There’s no safety net, and player feedback often came once bugs or balancing issues had already impacted the game’s common universe. 

Let’s start with how we plan to improve our processes and quality control, because this is an area where doing something wrong can have a major impact on players. We have three goals in this area: 
 
 
Gather feedback from players earlier in the process, so that when new features and changes are introduced in the game, their impact on the persistent universe is properly measured.  Have a more flexible and collaborative development approach that will allow us  to take player feedback into consideration, modifying plans when we’re able.   Overall, improve the quality of our releases, which means fewer bugs and exploits, and less hot-fixing.
  When it comes to gathering feedback from players earlier, we are evaluating some options on how we might get feedback on game design ideas from players at an earlier stage before they have actually entered the production pipeline. We are already seeing significant improvements in this area since the launch of the public test server (PTS), which lets us test prospective new features, improvements and bug fixes in a non-persistent environment where it won’t impact players’ progress on the Live server. If enough players test features on the PTS, we’ll be able to prevent bugs and balancing problems from making their way to the persistent universe. 
 
When we deployed 0.24 on the PTS first, players gave us invaluable feedback, helping us to identify several issues that we were able to address before they reached the production server. Although  our PTS-to-production process isn’t perfect yet, we are still working to improve it and think it’s getting significantly better with each iteration.  In the future, we will expand the use of the PTS to testing prototypes of features, outside of regular releases, so that all players can give their feedback as early in the development process as possible. 
 
Another major improvement to our processes that we are addressing is flexibility. On our way to beta, we had a fairly rigid roadmap that was dictated by the necessity to lay the foundations for all of the gameplay pillars for beta as well as fulfilling our promises to our backers. While the overall plan and long-term goals for DU haven’t changed, we need to be able to adapt to the feedback of players along the way whenever it’s feasible. For example, if we decide to make a major overhaul of our mining mechanics, we need the flexibility to iterate as much as necessary until we find the right formula before we move on to something else. 
 
Although they may not be visible to players, there are many other things happening internally  that have already proven to improve our releases. First and foremost, our internal release process is undergoing a revamp, based on the learnings from our past launches. We’ve allotted more time for QA than we used to, and we will postpone a release if we think it’s not ready (as we did  with the 0.24 update.) These new processes are still being refined, but we’re seeing improvements already.
 
We remain steadfast in our promise to deliver the best game possible. We feel confident that the changes we’re making now to our processes are a big step toward making that an attainable goal. 

Ready to discuss part 1? Click here.
 

Hello again Noveans!
We have heard your initial feedback on the screens and we want to elaborate on some of your major concerns.
 
Will this affect both screens and content written to the players screen (HUDs)?
No, this technological change will affect only screen units at this time.

Will all player created work on screens suddenly become non-functional?
No, this technology will be available side-by-side with the current technology, both first on the PTS in a prototype state, and eventually also on the Live server.
We strongly recommend everyone does test and experiment the new tech on the PTS, as your feedback and testing will help shape this feature.

How will this make a difference on performance?
The main reason being that the current implementation does not allow for much control over the performance impact of screen renderings. Complex 3D transformations using a combination of HTML, SVG and CSS has a significant impact on render times in the client. Adding to the fact that screens are often condensed with multiples of them in close proximity to each other, there is an increasing drop in performance on the client with more screens using the current technology. The new system allows for more precise control over rendering time allowed across screens and allows us to safeguard the level of performance impact the screens have on the client.

So you will be removing HTML support entirely?
Not necessarily, the two techs will run side by side for an as of yet undefined period of time. Eventually we may introduce a phase where we make the rendering of HTML on screens an option for players along with a warning that it can significantly degrade client performance. Players with that option disabled will simply not see any HTML content and not suffer performance degradation because of it.

Why not improve the current HTML implementation instead of the new technology?
This is a complex topic, HTML/CSS/Javascript is a group that forms a UI technology. For reasons beyond the scope of this topic we do not allow the use of Javascript inside the screen units. When you remove Javascript, the group effectively becomes a not so efficient vector image drawing technology which we have very little control over in terms of rendering. We have previously implemented a lot of small limitations here and there to reduce the impact of the screens, but there are (and likely always will be) edge cases which will eventually crop up using that technology. As such, the new technology has built-in limitations on how taxing a screen unit can be, and if a screen unit goes over the limit it will simply stop drawing. This is why we ask you all to go and test this, and help us find caveats and where you run into things you can and can’t do.

What about bandwidth? Are you doing this to reduce data transfer for screens?
The current implementation does not address this, the current implementation is a way for us to collect your feedback on this concept. Eventually we may change the way data transfer for screens is handled, where we may increase the size of the defined “template” inside a screen unit itself. Followed by a lower limit on the amount of data transferred to the screen from external sources. Allowing the screen element to do the rendering and drawing work, using parameters fed to it by a control unit.
For example: You would draw the design of a fancy instrument panel using the screen element, and a programming board or control unit just sends the values for all the instruments to the screen. This is currently not in the current implementation however, but may give you a better idea of why this technology has a lot of potential for more intricate and powerful designs.

What about artists who draw using external programs and import their SVG’s into the game?
One of our hopes is to provide a good enough set of commands in the screens API so that our system can express most SVG graphics converted to these commands through for example a small conversion tool. It is unlikely that we will develop and maintain a conversion tool for this, but this is also why we want your feedback on this new API for you to let us know what commands you really want to see included to make this process easier.

We sincerely hope that this answers many of your initial questions and concerns.
I personally can’t wait to see what you will all come up with in your designs!
 

Dear Noveans,
 
We would like to address the recent speculations that have arisen in our community, and openly disclose some changes that are happening at Novaquark.
 
First and foremost, Novaquark continues to be supported by its long term investors to allow it to launch Dual Universe in line with its original vision. It also puts us in a position to attract experienced talent to complement the team that’s already in place so that we can continue to improve the game.
 
Next week, we will share with you what we think our priorities should be for Dual Universe and how we hope to approach the development of the game with improved processes going forward.
 
An important change to note is that Jean-Christophe, the founder of Novaquark, has transitioned from the day-to-day management of the team to better focus on his position as a board member. Over the years since the creation of Novaquark, JC designed and set the standards for the structural and conceptual foundation of the game, and he feels now that a solid base is there for him to move forward as a strategic advisor. The recent changes in the administrative presidency of the company only reflect the transition of JC to his new role. We’re excited to have the team he has built deliver on his vision for the game.
 
Rest assured that Novaquark’s future is in good hands, and there is a strong partnership between our long-term investors and our team. We believe that the future is bright for the game and for the company, and we cannot wait to tell you where we want to take Dual Universe.
 
With our warmest regards,
The Novaquark team

❤️ Glad to hear it very much appreciated NQ! Will the PTS be a duplicate of the current server? If not how will we get stuff to test with?

Dear Noveans,
 
With the opening of the Public Test Server (PTS) available to all DU players come a few guidelines, if you want to give some feedback.
We wanted - for a long time - to give the opportunity to anyone among you to give your opinion on features before they hit the Live Server.
However, as the time window to give feedback on new features deployed on the PTS will be usually limited, it's important to get structured feedback to be taken into account by the Devs, in order to make possible changes before deploying the said features on the Live Server. Note: having a new or modified feature deployed on the PTS doesn't necessarily mean that the same will be deployed on the Live Server. Community feedback may change the Dev Team course of action.
 
In order to facilitate the follow-up of your feedback by the Dev Team, it's really important to talk about one topic/feature per forum thread.
Additionally it's highly advised to follow the template below when giving feedback on a specific topic/feature deployed on the PTS:
 
Naming clearly the feature / game mechanics involved. Your feedback on the deployed feature (what you like / what you don't like about it (in this case, please give an explanation why you don't like it)). What kind of improvement you would see for such feature.  
If your feedback is about a bug report, please follow this template:
 
Subject: [BUG] <Issue name here> Current Version Number: <Can be seen when closing the client> Impact: <Game breaking / Crash / Corruption / Item/Data loss / Inconvenience / Cosmetic> Summary: <Short outline of the issue> Description: <Description of the issue> Reproduction: <Steps taken to make this bug happen>  
Reminder: there will be no official support for the PTS.
This means you can report bugs you found/experienced on the PTS (preferably in this forum section).
It's encouraged to report bugs found on the PTS, to make sure they won't be replicated once the involved feature will be deployed on the Live Server.
However, do not send tickets to the Customer Support to fix issues you encountered on the PTS.
Why no support? The reason is quite simple: in their experimental state, things may be broken.
The Novaquark Team prefer to allocate 100% of the Customer Support resources to the Live Server, where the "real game" happens.
 
We hope you'll understand our stance on the matter.
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
 

Hello again Noveans,
 
While this year may be winding down, the Dual Universe team is winding up for all the great things players can look forward to 2021.
 
 In this video, Creative Director J.C. Baillie highlights a number of upcoming features and improvements that will take DU to the next level, including: 
 
Beautiful graphics enhancements A mission system that will create more emergent gameplay Wallets for organizations let you share (and protect) your organization’s financial assets Territory warfare to entice more gritty player-versus-player action  
Watch now to hear more about all of this and much, much more! ❤️
 

 

The points will be applied after a brief downtime starting at 9 am UTC | 4 am EST on December 17th.  
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
 
Hello Noveans,
 
December is halfway over, meaning the arrival of the new year is tantalizingly close! 2021 is sure to usher in some big changes, and we couldn’t be more excited to experience those with you. ?
 
While we were rolling out 0.23.1, we noticed that players who had talents in training lost what was accumulated during our downtime. So, in the spirit of bringing out the old and ringing in the new we would like to offer everyone 1 million talent points (~1 week’s worth) to not only replace lost points, but also as a bit of a holiday gift! Build, explore and be merry!
 
Thank you for your continued support. We sincerely hope that you and yours enjoy a restful holiday season!

Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team
 

One of the long time discord rules is that you dont DM NQ directly because they cant/are not allowed to read DMs. In fact, random tagging and DMing gets you muted on discord.

Grow up. All they had to do was report the bug. If you use bugs for gain without reporting I have no sympathy for those banned. Good riddance. 

Man guys, be real. They didnt expose a bug. They broke down a market including its link to the market system which was never intended to be deleted. They never reported, they only intended to break and remove. 

Hilarious would've been leave it intact but add something funny to it like a meme.

Hello Noveans, 
 
By now, some of you may be aware that unlucky number Market 15 has been stripped bare and left to create ugly memes for generations to come. We’re trying to look at this in good humour as, from the front, it appears to be an issue that was created when we moved the markets, making it editable by players. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (though we know there are a few of you out there) to understand that the markets are not a community construction, and as such not intended to be handled by players on this level. The destruction of the build isn’t a quick fix, and was clearly done knowing it shouldn't be. 
 
An important aspect we are considering in all cases and investigations is intention. The intention behind this destruction is very clear to us. The players involved did not report this bug to us, but instead simply filled their pockets. Had this stopped with a single voxel removed it would be a different story.  This is, at its core, a violation of the EULA and against the intentions of beta. We have been as understanding as we can until this point, but there must be a line.
 
Let us be clear, we will not tolerate this kind of behaviour during any phase of the development of Dual Universe.
 
The players responsible for the destruction of the market have been permanently banned from Dual Universe, and all salvaged materials and assets gained will be removed without compensation.
 
Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team
 
Follow up statement: