Atmosph3rik

Im excited to play DU!

11. Permanent ban from the game.  A full refund.  NQ actually comes to your house and takes your computer so you can't play any other games.
12. Electrodes are placed at strategic points on your body...  

11. Permanent ban from the game.  A full refund.  NQ actually comes to your house and takes your computer so you can't play any other games.
12. Electrodes are placed at strategic points on your body...  

11. Permanent ban from the game.  A full refund.  NQ actually comes to your house and takes your computer so you can't play any other games.
12. Electrodes are placed at strategic points on your body...  

One of the core concepts of the game is that everyone plays in the same world all the time.  
 
But don't worry.
 
The Safezones and Sanctuary Moons are basically DU's version of PVE mode.  And it sounds like there will be plenty of safe areas to mess around in.  The game world will be HUGE.
 
But some of it will be dangerous. 
 
For me at least it really feels like the best of both worlds.  If you don't want to PVP you get huge areas to play around in with not a care in the world.  But you still get the excitement of a dynamic world full of other players and danger.
 
Here's the most recent info
 
https://www.dualthegame.com/en/news/2018/01/30/our-toughts-on-territory-protection-mechanics/
 
and
 
https://www.dualthegame.com/en/news/2018/03/02/more-info-on-sanctuary-territory-units/
  

I miss Landmark.
 
A little context for that video.  In case anyone is wondering what a "Mr. Voxel" is.
 
Mr. Voxel was a machine built by players inside the game Landmark, that helped other players visualize and create unique voxel shapes that would require more advanced voxelmancy knowledge and many more steps otherwise.
 
It basically did what is suggested in this trello for DU.  https://trello.com/c/wXSJEWVx/35-building-tool-voxel-control-points-edit
 
It was pretty awesome what people accomplished in Landmark in terms of gaining control over the voxels.  And it was a lot of fun discovering new stuff.  But I do hope NQ just gives us a voxel editor.  It's so silly that we could have had full control over the voxels in Landmark all that time and instead we had to figure it out for ourselves. 
 
By the end in Landmark we were using huge vector libraries that looked like this to build shapes.
 

I miss Landmark.
 
A little context for that video.  In case anyone is wondering what a "Mr. Voxel" is.
 
Mr. Voxel was a machine built by players inside the game Landmark, that helped other players visualize and create unique voxel shapes that would require more advanced voxelmancy knowledge and many more steps otherwise.
 
It basically did what is suggested in this trello for DU.  https://trello.com/c/wXSJEWVx/35-building-tool-voxel-control-points-edit
 
It was pretty awesome what people accomplished in Landmark in terms of gaining control over the voxels.  And it was a lot of fun discovering new stuff.  But I do hope NQ just gives us a voxel editor.  It's so silly that we could have had full control over the voxels in Landmark all that time and instead we had to figure it out for ourselves. 
 
By the end in Landmark we were using huge vector libraries that looked like this to build shapes.
 

I miss Landmark.
 
A little context for that video.  In case anyone is wondering what a "Mr. Voxel" is.
 
Mr. Voxel was a machine built by players inside the game Landmark, that helped other players visualize and create unique voxel shapes that would require more advanced voxelmancy knowledge and many more steps otherwise.
 
It basically did what is suggested in this trello for DU.  https://trello.com/c/wXSJEWVx/35-building-tool-voxel-control-points-edit
 
It was pretty awesome what people accomplished in Landmark in terms of gaining control over the voxels.  And it was a lot of fun discovering new stuff.  But I do hope NQ just gives us a voxel editor.  It's so silly that we could have had full control over the voxels in Landmark all that time and instead we had to figure it out for ourselves. 
 
By the end in Landmark we were using huge vector libraries that looked like this to build shapes.
 

I miss Landmark.
 
A little context for that video.  In case anyone is wondering what a "Mr. Voxel" is.
 
Mr. Voxel was a machine built by players inside the game Landmark, that helped other players visualize and create unique voxel shapes that would require more advanced voxelmancy knowledge and many more steps otherwise.
 
It basically did what is suggested in this trello for DU.  https://trello.com/c/wXSJEWVx/35-building-tool-voxel-control-points-edit
 
It was pretty awesome what people accomplished in Landmark in terms of gaining control over the voxels.  And it was a lot of fun discovering new stuff.  But I do hope NQ just gives us a voxel editor.  It's so silly that we could have had full control over the voxels in Landmark all that time and instead we had to figure it out for ourselves. 
 
By the end in Landmark we were using huge vector libraries that looked like this to build shapes.
 

mostly useful data, but I'm going to quibble.
 
A Voxel is not the corners. it is the space defined by the eight corners. It is far better to think of a voxel as a center point with 8 corner points.
The center point does not move relative to other voxels. each voxel is exactly the same distance from it's neighbors. 
Each voxel shares each corner point with the relevant adjacent voxels, so when you change the location of any corner point you effect the corner point of 7 other adjacent voxels.
 
There are air voxels. they have the same corners but no fill map.
visible voxels are filled with some texture/color map

Tutorial: Voxelmancy Essentials
 
This tutorial was made for Landmark. I didn't make the tutorial or play the game but, since it's based on the same technology, we can assume that it will work pretty much the same.
It starts with the very basics and ends with some more advanced concepts.
 
Whether or not you have already tried Dual Universe, this tutorial should be able to help you to understand this awesome (but very difficult to master) technology which is the Voxel.
 
As a voxel beginner, I think I am not the only one who yelled at these crazy little voxels, "WTF happened?! I didn't ask you to do that!"
 
 
 
The Inner Space of Voxelmancy
Voxel Characteristics
First of all…and this might hurt your brain a bit…a voxel is NOT a shape. It’s not the 1x1x1 cube shape you add with the smallest ADD brush.
 
Actually, a voxel is a point. The different points (voxels) are connected to each other by lines (vectors). Those vectors form the outlines of the “cubes” that you see in the world when you use the ADD brush. (In other words, it takes many voxels to add enough vectors to make a shape.)
 
When you use the building tools to change the shape of the cubes you see in the world, what you’re actually doing is dragging one (or more) of those voxel points into a new location…and then all those connecting lines move too, thus changing the outline of the shapes you see.
 
There are only TWO voxel characteristics that matter to builders.
The position of the voxel The material applied to that voxel’s cube space Also, for the purposes of this document, there are only four terms that matter:
Voxel : The point in space that is the end point of one or more vectors. Vector : Any line connecting two voxels together. Shape : Any collection of vectors that outline an area thus creating a contained shape. (The default shapes are cubes, but voxels are easily moved around to create almost any shape. See below.) Cube space: In game terms, the natural "cube space" around a voxel is the same volume of space used by the ADD brush when you place a 1x1x1 cube into the world. Voxels *usually* live within their cube space, but can also comfortably live outside of it. However, the voxel is *always* associated with that cube space.    
 
What data is in a voxel?

Imagine a grid of dots. (Each dot is a voxel.)



Now imagine that each of those dots is connected to its neighboring dots by lines (vectors).



Now, stack that up so that it’s in three-space. Voila. You have a decent representation of the voxel points in their natural “healed” cube-like state.


NOTE: The positions of the voxels, in the rigid formation shown above, is the natural “healed” state of the voxels. The resulting shapes created by the vectors connecting them are what we normally see as “cubes” (and which, erroneously, we all have been calling voxels even though those shapes are actually composed of voxels instead.)
When you move one of the voxels, the vectors connected to it also move. Thus, you change the shape of any cube seen as soon as you move a voxel.



So just remember…everything is connected. You can’t move one thing without moving another. All the different welding, recopying, and smoothing tricks you may hear about are just different techniques to get these dots to end up in positions that make cool shapes.

Last but not least: Cube space. The world is gridded out into cube space. (NOTE: Cube space is the same size as the smallest ADD brush when in cube mode.) By default, voxels live along the edges/corners of these cube spaces and the resulting vectors connecting them look like cubes.

Normally, voxels need to stay within their cube space. However, there are building techniques that let a voxel wander out of its normal cube space. This is how shapes that are bigger than a cube are created. Voxels can also be smashed down into the center of that cube space, which allows the creation of smaller shapes as well. Roaming vectors let voxels wander WAY outside their normal cube space, but that gets pretty hairy to explain so we’ll discuss it some other time.
 
 
What Material is on the Voxel?

Material, in this case, is the material you chose from the Element Tray. (Example: Red Lumicite is a material. So is Hammered Gold or Raw Iron.) When a material is specified for a voxel, that changes its appearance in the world.

That’s it. There’s only two special cases that might not be immediately obvious:
Air. Yes, air is a material. Air voxels act *exactly* like regular voxels. They are just painted with a 100% transparent material, which is air. Default terrain. Everything in the world that has notbeen changed by a player is designated as “default terrain”. It has less data than a user-changed voxel so that we can optimize the heck out of stuff that players haven’t changed. The important characteristic about this default terrain is that it cannot be copied. (Its data structure is simpler and doesn’t have all the dots/vertices described earlier.) The other important thing to remember is that HEALing a voxel returns it to this “default terrain” material. And that’s why you can do nifty stuff with healed earth. These latter two special cases (Air and Default Terrain) cannot be directly selected with the selection tool. So the only way you can “grab” them is by also grabbing another nearby shape that’s painted with any of the other materials in the game.

Side Note: What is a Roaming Vector?

When we added Roaming Vectors to the game (6/26/2014), we increased the precision of lines and shapes quite a lot. This was done by “borrowing” nearby voxels and letting them “roam” outside of their normally allowed cube space. This means that nearby shapes sacrifice some of their own definition so that another shape can get one or more extra voxels added to it, thus providing more possible vectors, which enables that shape to have more detail.
 
 
Pasting Dominance

There is one thing to keep in mind as we go through the rest of this doc. Any item that you are pasting into the game is dominant. All the voxels within that copied area will keep their relative positions. This means that any shapes nearby are likely to change shape slightly as their voxels reconnect to these new voxels, and the vectors connecting them are changed.

This “dominance factor” can be very useful when fixing any warpage that occurs, because any current data is overwritten by a paste. That lets you “re-weld” voxels and vectors by pasting in small bits that are the desired shape.
 
 
Voxelmancy Techniques

Okay. Now let’s talk about the various building techniques the community is using.

Micro-shapes & Anti-shapes

NOTE: Players have been calling them microvoxels and antivoxels, but that makes this discussion harder to follow when talking about voxels in conjunction with these shapes, so we’ll refer to the microvoxels as micro-shapes, and antivoxels as anti-shapes. (Sorry for the switch.)

Both of these kinds of shapes are really just normal shapes that appear to be different. (It’s still useful to give them names for easy reference, but the point is…they’re still just normal shapes composed of voxels and vectors.)

When you smooth a regular shape down into a micro-shape, you’re essentially just taking all the voxels the cube was composed of and squashing them down toward each other so that the resulting shape is a very small cube.

Side note: Just to expand your mind, you’re also enlarging the air cubes around your brand new micro-shapes because you’re dragging those connected voxels away from the center of those shapes. Right? Everything is connected.

Still, it’s cool, right? That voxel *looks* smaller and that make it useful for lots of building stuff.

So what’s an Anti-shape? It’s exactly the same thing as a “micro-shape”. But its material is “air”. So it’s (currently) tricky to make, but it behaves in all other respects exactly as a smoothed-down (micro)shape. You just can’t see it or select it directly, because it’s made of air.

Why do micro-shapes warp other nearby shapes?

Remember how the voxels in a micro-shape are squished toward the center? Well, when you copy that micro-shape, you are really selecting the positions for the voxels that constitute that micro-shape.

When you copy that shape into place near another existing shape, the vectors of the existing shapes are forced to attach to the voxels in your micro-shape. The game knows that what you *want* is for the thing you copied to paste as true as it can, so it connects the vectors from other nearby shapes toward the voxels you smashed into the center of your shape and this can cause warpage on the neighboring shapes. Make sense? Again, everything is connected.

“Strings”

So now let’s paste several of those new micro-shapes in a row, one cube space apart from each other. What happens? They stretch into strings! So cool!

But no, that’s only what it looks like. What’s actually happening is that you pasted one micro-shape down (composed of a bunch of voxels and vectors) and then you copied another identical micro-shape in the cube space next to it. When you did that, the vectors from the previously pasted MV stretch out to connect to the voxels in the new one you pasted, and the resulting shape looks like a line. (Remember, the last shape pasted is dominant and everything else warps to it.)

There is a convoluted process that force the end points of the string to align to the normal voxel borders. This technique creates “Antivoxel strings” and is Example 4 in the section below.
 
 
Warping vs Non-Warping Shapes
 
There’s a bunch of techniques designed to create objects that don’t warp neighboring shapes, but ultimately, there is only ONE way to avoid warping.
 
That way is to ensure that the voxels in the shape you are pasting are aligned in such a way that they don’t cause the vectors of a neighboring voxel to move.
 
That’s it. Just don’t make the vectors move and your shapes won’t warp.
 
To make that seem simpler, here’s a few images. These images don’t show all the voxels. They show the shape instead and the normal “cube space” that the voxels for that shape live within.
 
Ex 1: Micro/Anti voxel
Regular “microvoxel” or “antivoxel”: This shape lives in the very center of its normal cube space. It will warp EVERYTHING IT TOUCHES because any neighboring voxel will extend its vectors out to reach the voxels in your micro-shape.
 
 
 
Ex 2: Microvoxel strings
Any “string” that is created by pasting two of these centered MVs together will still cause warpage everywhere it touches because the end points of that string are in the center of the cube spaces they represent.
 

 
Ex 3: Any shape with a “normal border” flat edge
This shape would not cause warpage *if* it is pasted onto something along its bottom side. (Example: If you pasted it onto a flat floor.)
It would cause warpage if it was situated next to any shape above, or to the left/right of the shape, because those neighboring vectors would be forced to extend outward to connect.
 

 
Ex 4: Antivoxel strings
This is the shape that many people call an “AV string”. This is a useful shape because it still looks like a thin bar, but its ends are exactly at the “normal” cube space border and is in the center of the shape. Because it’s situated properly, any normal cube connected to either end of this string will not cause warpage of the block it’s touching.
 

 
So What’s a MegaShape?

Honestly, it’s just the exact opposite of a microvoxel or antivoxel. Players have been calling this a Megavoxel. (And again, for the purposes of this document, we’re going to start calling this a “Megashape” instead to avoid conflict with “voxel” conversations.)

Instead of crushing the voxels in your shape down toward the center, you’re stretching them outside the normal cube space borders of your voxel instead. (In other words, you’re making all the neighboring air voxels smaller so that your current voxel can seem bigger.)

That’s it.

But the shapes are still useful because they create the appearance of behavior that you normally can’t achieve.

So how on earth do you go about stretching the voxels of a shape outward? Answer: You don’t really. Instead, what you do is you crush in the voxels of a neighboring shape, thus dragging the voxels outward in the shape you want to enlarge. That’s why people create a megashape by pasting micro-shapes nearby. They are forcing the voxels to drag outward toward those micro-shapes.
 
 
Warpage in General
 
Isn’t it annoying that you can create a really cool shape, it looks totally awesome, but then it deforms the heck out of stuff when you paste it near anything?
 
Well, the truth is…you’re just *seeing* the warpage for the first time when you paste it in next to the new shape. That same warpage was occurring originally also. You just couldn’t see it because when you made the shape, it was surrounded by air. Those nearby air shapes *did* warp, but you couldn't see them.
 
Voxels always connect to other voxels via vectors. When one voxel gets dragged outward or inward, it tends to drag neighboring voxels along with it slightly to smooth out the “curve” of a voxel face as much as possible. And that’s just about it. But it’s happening on EVERY voxel all the time every time you smooth shapes or paste shapes or even when you remove shapes.
 
 
Inlay Technique

The last major building technique to cover here is the “Inlay Technique”. This is probably the coolest trick that any builder can learn, as it allows you to do a ton of curvalicious detail that's not possible to do otherwise.

We won’t take the time to describe applications of this (there are many player tutorials), but here are some details of how the process works:

Step 1: Select any-sized area of non-air shapes as long as that area is only one cube space thick.
Step 2: Take any other area of any design and paste it once above your object from Step 1, and then once again below it.

This forces the “sandwiched” object to realign its vectors and voxel positions to match the object that was pasted above and below.

Why? Because the game is trying to preserve the data of the object that you are pasting. It’s NOT trying to preserve the shape you created in Step 1. Thus, the sandwiched object in Step 1 gets all its voxels realigned to match the object above and below and when you copy that slice out of the sandwich, you’ll see that it has been transformed accordingly.

Make sense?
 
Sources : Smokejumper, forums.daybreakgames.com
 
 
 

Don’t see any Fredelas circles. What kind of shop is that?!? Lol. 
 
We’re trying to get back into the voxel swing of things. Hit up / join the Prophet Rocket Foundry (full of ex-landmarians) and we can see about getting it done.  We’ve got some stuff going on.
 
https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/prophet-rocket-foundry#tab-description
 

@Rom35700
 
1) I have 16G, so I can not say how it runs on anything less.
2) The language is Lua.  You do not need to code to play.  It is an option that makes more things possible, but not essential.
3) There is an NDA.  Players can not post videos or screenshots anywhere.  We can not discuss our experiences during the test sessions outside of private forums for those who have access.
4) The basic pack does not give you immediate access.  Only the patron pack gives access now.  The contributor and sponsor packs give access to later stages of testing.  We do not yet know when those stages will start.
5) Because of the NDA, I can not describe what the sessions are like now.  The purpose of the current sessions is testing the game, not providing a fun experience.  That does not mean they are not enjoyable, but the game still is in an early stage of development.  Anyone who expected a complete game they could start playing right now would be disappointed.
6) The time needed will depend on what you want to accomplish.  It is still too early to know how time will be needed for what a typical player wants to do.

So this was a project i started in Landmark right at the end of Beta.  I was going to get back to it eventually after the last wipe but never got around to it.
 
It was meant to be a sort of Scifi condo that would be part of a modern city in a hostile icy environment.  I know weirdly specific.
 
https://imgur.com/a/bZobv
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

hi,
 
I'm a big fan of sci-fi and a lot of series, game, movies... who happen in this theme have ships, building... with a lot of neon, bright color.
it could be interesting to have a new material, a neon we can change the color and the brightness to add some beautiful glow to our daily gaming session.

How to get ideas:
Go for a walk
Find the meaning of life
Sacrifice to a god of your choosing
Enter the Dark realm to make a deal with Dormammu
Restore Asgard to its former glory by using a pseudo-time stone.
Let Odin beat the shit out of Thanos.
Gamora and Quinn get to live.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 releases.
World peace ensues.
 
General consensus: Tree hugging does, in fact, save the world.
 
The end.

Thanks for your reply Wilks, I loved EVE so I'm more and more excited with DU every day, I have 400 members or so gaming site and I'm bringing them all to the game. At least promoting the game in the community! 

In DU new players will be called Lildudes and veteran players will be called OldmanMcgrumpypants
 
It is decided.

So one handy tool would be the capability to bullnose square or edged voxels. The tool would identify the nearest edge to the cursor and when activated bullnose that edge, extra credit if you could have multiple bullnose sizes! 

@Orius
It's a bit difficult to recommend a box-only voxel editor, as voxels, in general, in games such as LandMark, carry slant information, as such creating angular models like this should be possible:
 
 
With that in mind, I recommend you simply use Blender, or any other free 3D modelling program.
In Blender, using the 'Remesh' modifier on an object will give you voxel-like behaviour, with the Blocks mode showing you which 'voxels' would be mostly full in box mode: 
Keep in mind, they've shown in the videos for the player construct voxel-density to be 0.25m, so if your goal is to create game-feasible models, make sure scale your model to fit roughly 4 of these boxes in a single grid line (which you can consider as 1 meter in blender).
 
Then flipping the modifier into Smooth or Sharp mode will show you how your Blender model might look recreated in a voxel engine:

 
As you can see, my model had very thin detail in the rear, that was smaller than the voxel engine could handle, which means I would have to reduce the detail in that part of the model, or increase the overall model size, increasing how many voxels I have for detail:

That is actually very interesting. Dynamic events like that could suddenly turn a known low value zone into an hotspot, bringing new conflicts and interests into play. 

Minerals get washed downstream by rivers. Crystals like diamonds grow very slowly. Crystals grow by solute evaporating from a solution leaving the precipitate behind

Do you think it's too much to ask for the majority of my play will be in the vein of Firefly?  Yeah, I'm a hopeless geek. (Just like the rest if you reprebates.) Sp? I'm kinda drunk. 

@ostris I think I need to clarify my thought process....
 
I wasn't implying that PVP is less important. What I meant is DU has many features/ things you can do, and together all those features together form this complex sandbox game. No feature is more important then the other. My impression is that Novaquark intends for there to be a sort of symbiotic relationship between the features/play styles, where they effect each other in an dynamic an organic way. Hence the use of emergent gameplay to describe DU.
 
In Physics, a Complex Machine, is a combination of Simple machines.... PVP being like one of those simple machines, that makes up the Complex Machine that is DU...  thats was my thought process when I typed that. Not sure if that makes sense? but, apologies on my part lol. 

It is important for NQ to say that DU isn't a "PVE" game.  So people understand that there won't be monsters or raids to beat or whatever.
 
But in some ways I feel like DU is actually even more PVE then those games.  By the literal definition of the words at least.
 
I mean there will definitely be an environment.  And it's probably not going to make things easy for us.  But PVP is a part of that.  Not something separate. 
 
It's not a PVE game in the sense that the point of the game is to beat the environment.  And it's not a PVP game in the sense that the point of the game is to kill other players.
 
It's just a game.  You do whatever you want.  
 
Edit: It may be impossible not to alienate the type of PVE and PVP players who need a clearly defined and usually easy to attain goal to go for.  But I don't think  that is alienating PVP or PVE players.  It's just alienating people who aren't ready for a different type of game.