Anonymous

Hi all.
 
Ok - this is simple, old school, forum based roleplay.
 
Play nice, give people chances to take actions, don't power play, all that type of thing.
 
I've deliberately set it over 100 years ago so people can play whatever character they like without having in-game character issues etc. It's all for fun. Please only post in-character - any out-of-character questions etc, start a new related thread please.
 
Anon.
 
<<Datetime: 24240124-19360000Z11>>
<<Location: geo:-31.2,136.816667>> 
 
Over one hundred years ago...
 
It is a dark and stormy night when you arrive at Port Drum. If you are a regular of the three day trip to or from from Armstrong Crater, you know this is always the case, a side effect of some 20 moon-shots and returns a day.
 
Port Drum is one of the world's busiest lunar transit sites, handling most of the non-commercial traffic bound to or from in-system. As a transport hub, it is intensely busy, and one would be forgiven for not realising that not even a kilometre away was the end of a teeming transient populace and the start of desert for as far as the eye could see, until one eventually hit Perth some 2500 kilometres (around 1600 miles) away. Originally it was a military testing range, this sprawling space port covering an area larger than England named Woomera by the original inhabitants – now gone centuries past when the Australian mainland had become too damaged by climate change to sustain human settlement. Perth, the closest real urban centre, was now the most isolated (and subterranean) city in the world – a last stubborn holdout against a Southern Hemisphere summer which would kill an exposed man in under an hour. People finding themselves in Port Drum aren't like the huddled masses scratching out an existence in the camps around the Arks - people here have stories to tell.
 
Aiken’s Bar is typical of the drinking holes one finds in places which people never really call home. Dark, smoke filled and possessed with the quiet murmur of people who don’t like or trust the general patronage, and prefer to huddle in their own small cliques, talking amongst themselves.
 
You pause at the top of the steps, wondering if you are making the right choice entering. This was not your place, not your world. Your mianzi – your social standing and reputation, mean nothing here. But it doesn't look at first glance that those within give a tinker’s cuss about saving, or losing, face, or indeed, what level of social influence they exert at all. These people are Belters for the most part – miners and spacers who provide much of the raw materials required by a high technology society, let alone the Project Rebirth, which can not be sourced natively on Earth.
 
As you descend into the darkness, the details of the bar become clearer. Behind the bar stands the bartender, a short, skinny and mostly toothless Latino who you take took to be the bar owning Aiken in question, (by simple virtue of his black tool-jock’s shirt with his name stitched in cursive white over the pocket). He nods at you uninterestedly.
 
Scattered throughout the crowd are the obvious Alphas, easily spotted – off duty ship-security types, mercenaries, one or two off duty UMF officers, some escort pilots and more than a few of what you are pretty sure are pirates of various shades. Violence has remained, despite the calm of the world, surprisingly common place once one leaves atmosphere.
 
In other corners you spot Ethereans, discussing art, philosophy and politics, Emporeans cutting deals and more than one drunken Luminous academic debating with their peers, and every other representation of humanity one can think of.

Hi all.
 
Ok - this is simple, old school, forum based roleplay.
 
Play nice, give people chances to take actions, don't power play, all that type of thing.
 
I've deliberately set it over 100 years ago so people can play whatever character they like without having in-game character issues etc. It's all for fun. Please only post in-character - any out-of-character questions etc, start a new related thread please.
 
Anon.
 
<<Datetime: 24240124-19360000Z11>>
<<Location: geo:-31.2,136.816667>> 
 
Over one hundred years ago...
 
It is a dark and stormy night when you arrive at Port Drum. If you are a regular of the three day trip to or from from Armstrong Crater, you know this is always the case, a side effect of some 20 moon-shots and returns a day.
 
Port Drum is one of the world's busiest lunar transit sites, handling most of the non-commercial traffic bound to or from in-system. As a transport hub, it is intensely busy, and one would be forgiven for not realising that not even a kilometre away was the end of a teeming transient populace and the start of desert for as far as the eye could see, until one eventually hit Perth some 2500 kilometres (around 1600 miles) away. Originally it was a military testing range, this sprawling space port covering an area larger than England named Woomera by the original inhabitants – now gone centuries past when the Australian mainland had become too damaged by climate change to sustain human settlement. Perth, the closest real urban centre, was now the most isolated (and subterranean) city in the world – a last stubborn holdout against a Southern Hemisphere summer which would kill an exposed man in under an hour. People finding themselves in Port Drum aren't like the huddled masses scratching out an existence in the camps around the Arks - people here have stories to tell.
 
Aiken’s Bar is typical of the drinking holes one finds in places which people never really call home. Dark, smoke filled and possessed with the quiet murmur of people who don’t like or trust the general patronage, and prefer to huddle in their own small cliques, talking amongst themselves.
 
You pause at the top of the steps, wondering if you are making the right choice entering. This was not your place, not your world. Your mianzi – your social standing and reputation, mean nothing here. But it doesn't look at first glance that those within give a tinker’s cuss about saving, or losing, face, or indeed, what level of social influence they exert at all. These people are Belters for the most part – miners and spacers who provide much of the raw materials required by a high technology society, let alone the Project Rebirth, which can not be sourced natively on Earth.
 
As you descend into the darkness, the details of the bar become clearer. Behind the bar stands the bartender, a short, skinny and mostly toothless Latino who you take took to be the bar owning Aiken in question, (by simple virtue of his black tool-jock’s shirt with his name stitched in cursive white over the pocket). He nods at you uninterestedly.
 
Scattered throughout the crowd are the obvious Alphas, easily spotted – off duty ship-security types, mercenaries, one or two off duty UMF officers, some escort pilots and more than a few of what you are pretty sure are pirates of various shades. Violence has remained, despite the calm of the world, surprisingly common place once one leaves atmosphere.
 
In other corners you spot Ethereans, discussing art, philosophy and politics, Emporeans cutting deals and more than one drunken Luminous academic debating with their peers, and every other representation of humanity one can think of.

Hi all.
 
Ok - this is simple, old school, forum based roleplay.
 
Play nice, give people chances to take actions, don't power play, all that type of thing.
 
I've deliberately set it over 100 years ago so people can play whatever character they like without having in-game character issues etc. It's all for fun. Please only post in-character - any out-of-character questions etc, start a new related thread please.
 
Anon.
 
<<Datetime: 24240124-19360000Z11>>
<<Location: geo:-31.2,136.816667>> 
 
Over one hundred years ago...
 
It is a dark and stormy night when you arrive at Port Drum. If you are a regular of the three day trip to or from from Armstrong Crater, you know this is always the case, a side effect of some 20 moon-shots and returns a day.
 
Port Drum is one of the world's busiest lunar transit sites, handling most of the non-commercial traffic bound to or from in-system. As a transport hub, it is intensely busy, and one would be forgiven for not realising that not even a kilometre away was the end of a teeming transient populace and the start of desert for as far as the eye could see, until one eventually hit Perth some 2500 kilometres (around 1600 miles) away. Originally it was a military testing range, this sprawling space port covering an area larger than England named Woomera by the original inhabitants – now gone centuries past when the Australian mainland had become too damaged by climate change to sustain human settlement. Perth, the closest real urban centre, was now the most isolated (and subterranean) city in the world – a last stubborn holdout against a Southern Hemisphere summer which would kill an exposed man in under an hour. People finding themselves in Port Drum aren't like the huddled masses scratching out an existence in the camps around the Arks - people here have stories to tell.
 
Aiken’s Bar is typical of the drinking holes one finds in places which people never really call home. Dark, smoke filled and possessed with the quiet murmur of people who don’t like or trust the general patronage, and prefer to huddle in their own small cliques, talking amongst themselves.
 
You pause at the top of the steps, wondering if you are making the right choice entering. This was not your place, not your world. Your mianzi – your social standing and reputation, mean nothing here. But it doesn't look at first glance that those within give a tinker’s cuss about saving, or losing, face, or indeed, what level of social influence they exert at all. These people are Belters for the most part – miners and spacers who provide much of the raw materials required by a high technology society, let alone the Project Rebirth, which can not be sourced natively on Earth.
 
As you descend into the darkness, the details of the bar become clearer. Behind the bar stands the bartender, a short, skinny and mostly toothless Latino who you take took to be the bar owning Aiken in question, (by simple virtue of his black tool-jock’s shirt with his name stitched in cursive white over the pocket). He nods at you uninterestedly.
 
Scattered throughout the crowd are the obvious Alphas, easily spotted – off duty ship-security types, mercenaries, one or two off duty UMF officers, some escort pilots and more than a few of what you are pretty sure are pirates of various shades. Violence has remained, despite the calm of the world, surprisingly common place once one leaves atmosphere.
 
In other corners you spot Ethereans, discussing art, philosophy and politics, Emporeans cutting deals and more than one drunken Luminous academic debating with their peers, and every other representation of humanity one can think of.

I just can't get why people think "Alpha" testing is the same as being in the "Alpha" teams that are first on Alioth in game (which really, is Beta). I think you should all be really clear - these CCP's are about Beta onwards, when game persistence matters.
 
Scenarios you can reasonably expect from Alpha testing based on extensive experience:
Expect the server to be wiped and reset daily.
  The concept of "starting level" - expect that you'll be able to create OP characters at, in some cases, max level cap.
  Expect that they will want at least a couple of load tests where everyone gets on at once and goes to the same location.
  Expect that they will want to do the same thing, but with combat.
  Expect that they will want to do the same thing but with building / construction.
  Expect that if you are in Alpha, it's not about fun, but hard work, breaking the server and/or pushing it to it's limits.
  Expect that in Alpha, they may also want to test the Org system, which may involved people making, joining and disbanding orgs to test Legate/Role mechanisms, trading, permissions etc.
  If you are in a real Alpha test, you are by extension, essentially an NQ employee, so in game orgs and loyalty to same is pointless. (To put it another way - people may look a bit silly going to all this effort only to find Alpha is actually "everyone is in the same org and makes characters that don't last longer than 12 hours..." )
 
tl;dr - Make this all about Beta, and remove references to Alpha testing. Trust me.

"
If your combat is half as good as your role play, I look forward to the Alpha.
 
I believe Wilks was simply trying to shield those with no interest in combat and for the right price, I would do the same.
 
Combat is in our blood and conflict is older than man. I'm anxious to see what people are capable of fielding in the Alpha - and more importantly whether their actions will be as heavy as their words.
 
If I may be so bold, please keep up with this way of posting, Kuritho; it makes reading a lot more lively.
"

isn't combat a feature.. and one of the things we're meant to test in the alpha? 
 
shouldn't we be testing all aspects of game play looking for ways to potentially exploit game mechanics in undesired ways so they can be fixed? 
 
if NQ doesnt want us testing those features, fine, but I will not be agreeing to limit my game play and testing based on the moods and desires of self imposed community leaders. 

First, and most importantly, this isn't an official NovaQuark project, and I don't have any idea what the interfaces in the actual game will look like, I'm basing most of this off of the LUA Dev blog and my knowledge of how C/C++ bindings are exposed to LUA. If they want me to change the name of this I'll be happy to. Secondly, I have no idea where this topic belongs so I'm posting it here in General. I think we need a programming-related subforum but that likely won't happen until Alpha at the soonest. 
 
 
Over the Holidays I was thinking about tools I could work on now that might be of some interest to people out there. Things like a ship crew scheduling app, a wiki for programmers, a timeline site keeping track of DU events, a ship delivery scheduling utility, etc. Ultimately, however, I kept coming back to this idea, as it would help me while learning a new language for my job and it would help people who don't know much about LUA (or programming in general) start to wrap their head around what it might be like in DU (as well as help some of those AI-projects out there). 
 
 
I came up with the idea to create a Core Unit "Emulator" as a standalone web service that people can target with LUA scripts. 
 
I'll try to explain what this looks like... 
 
A programmer would set up LUA on their computer, install the LUA sockets module, as well as copy a piece of code into their own projects that would bootstrap them into being able to communicate with a server over the net.
 
From there, function calls into an object would act as calls to a "Core Unit", which under the hood would really just be some socket communications going on to a server doing all of the actual work. 
 
From the perspective of a programmer, they get access to various details about a ship (speed, velocity, pitch, yaw, rotation, etc) that they have to adjust to meet a set of parameters (per round) after a simulation is run. So your scripts would have to account for things like losing an engine, running low on fuel, turbulence, etc. and ultimately get the ship into a given set of passing parameters within a given period of time. 
 
Alternatively, I could write a standalone program that you use to run your scripts against, it doesn't particularly matter to me if it's a remote service or not. 
 
 
 
How does this help new programmers? It would give the ability for people to try writing LUA in a way that resembles what LUA programming in games is actually like. 
 
It won't be what Dual Universe is exactly like, none of us have the ability to write something like that because we can't know what the interfaces actually are. However, it will give you enough experience in LUA to be able to adapt what you learn very quickly. Ultimately it comes down to having a set of elements giving you information via function calls, processing that information, and being able to do things with said elements via other function calls. If you can get around that basic concept then you'll be in a much better position overall. 
 
 
 
 
It would give people an excuse to start learning LUA now, but it won't be very "fun" or realistic, and you'd have to use it knowing that it's not like Dual Universe at all. There probably wouldn't really be graphics either, you'd be flying by sensors only... 
 
I'd even love some help building it on the server side, which I'm currently doing in Golang because I have to learn it for my job. It's not super difficult to program in, but it would certainly be cool to have a helping hand on programming the actual physics side of things. I just don't want to do it all myself, although things like this tend to go that way. 
 
All in all, I'd be willing to help people learn LUA along the way as well, provided you have some knowledge about computers already. You could easily take what you learn and apply it to other games that are scripted through LUA as well (WoW is one of them). 
 
 
Who would be interested in even using something like this?
 
 
I guess I should make a video explaining all of this, as this wall of text is probably too verbose. 

"
"Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, 
But unto your name give glory, 
For your mercy and for your truth's sake.  
Our vespers ascend to you only. 
Grant us strength in times of trouble , 
Let us in your courage and will partake.
Deliver us from the snare of the enemy, 
And ever keep our hearts glad and joyous."
 
--Arelian Benediction. 
 
The Aether welcomes Melophobia, Heptar and Anonymous to the Family. 
 
Aether Eterna; 
Always and Forever.
 
"

"
I was told never to say something nice unless I meant it. 
 
Congratulations on your story, Kurock. It was a nice addition to Dual Universe, and I wish you further success at the end of January. 
 
Cheers.
"

Believe the lie

Greetings all! I come before you all today with a new addition to our community: The Dual Universe Historical Society.
 
Several things struck me over the past few months:
If other such games are anything to go by, the history of Dual Universe shall be grand and intriguing, and as fascinating as that of any Age or Empire in Earth's history. Why? Because this game will not be made of just pixels but also of every person who plays it. It will be built from the tears of every person who watches their Empire crumble, the sweat of every person who stays up late grinding time into this game, the cleverness of diplomats, the creativity of artists, and the inspiration of leaders. Hope, Anger, Revenge, Happiness, Greed, Humor, and Loss will all exist in this universe. To put it simply, this game will be filled with everything human, and a story with this much humanity deserves to be told, and to be remembered.  There are a lot of wonderful people here from all over the world, from all over the political and social spectrum. There are young people, older people, students and businessmen, truckers and programmers, and this diversity will only grow as the community does. I have already had a few very good political discussions with people from other parts of the world, who have different perspectives on things than I do, and it has been a fantastic opportunity. There are a lot of people here with an interest in history, economics, politics and other such related fields.  And so, I would like to create a place to bring all of these things together for the benefit of the community. I would like to create a place of scholarship, of learning and debate. I would like to create a place for us to take a break from the battles and learn more from each other. That's what the Dual Universe Historical Society will be. That's what it is.
 
Because this is our story, and it deserves to be told. 
 
Discord: https://discord.gg/ecErPae
 
Note: I am still setting all this up, and can't do it all alone. I am always looking for more people to assist with this project and will also be putting together a group of writers to produce content for the group. Check out the Org page and the Discord for more details. 
 
https://community.dualthegame.com/organization/dual-universe-historical-society#tab-description

The fireworks sounded like two armies firing all their muskets at once...
 
Happy New Year from Melbourne, everyone. Come join us in the future.

Happy New Year from Indonesia

From Canberra, Australia Sound off!

Firs-
 
oh wait.
 
Still a few hours here, mate.
 
You have a good one, you future person, you!

For feedback and/or community/NQ endorsement.
 
Proposed terms:
 
BCE - Before (the) Collision Era
CE - (Post) Collision Era
AE - Alioth Era
 
 
Key Dates:
 
0 CE |  (-9854 AE ) -  August 8th, 2538 - The Final Collision - Earth is destroyed
 
(0 CE - 9,854 CE) - "The Long Second" - The Arkship is in transit for 9,854 years (310,968,590,400 seconds) before it enters the system containing Alioth.
 
9854 CE | 0 AE - "Year 0" - Landing on Alioth - Game "Launch" (could be Beta if that's when "Alpha Teams" enter play.) In real life terms, the year 12,392 A.D. Dates after this point will progress as a measure of seconds (Unix style) since the server goes "live".
 
Why?
The Gregorian calendar is based on the Earth's rotation around the sun - .
The sun no longer exists, making the Gregorian calendar essentially irrelevant at best, and stupidly complicated to implement on a new world at worst.
Astronomy (and logically by extension, the astronautical industry) uses the Julian calendar.

In astronomy, the Julian year is a unit of time; it is defined as 365.25 days of exactly 86400 seconds (SI base unit), totaling exactly 31557600 seconds in the Julian astronomical year.


As a game mechanic - using a static Julian system is a nice way to deal with the idea that Alioth may or may not rotate at game launch. It then becomes a universal reference standard, with any given planet's rotation (if rotation is implemented) being able to, depending on how the game implements objects in space, be measured in seconds and turned into a local Julian (i.e. fixed length) calendar.

Feedback welcome.
 

Excellent work You continue to be the DU bar I aim for in my writing.

I like the idea. It creates good gameplay
- engineers setting those antennas up
- repairing them
- planning the locations
- giving thought of the actual usefulness of antennas for your faction (as pirates you maybe don't want a local chat and anyone to know that you're here or you want to make them feel perfectly safe because there is a local chat but you use small ships yourself to go under the radar)
- building a network for perhaps better/more boni
- as intruder you would have to gather intel carefully, hack or kill some antennas and then send the fleet
- antennas should come in different sizes/variations. Size = radius, variation = basic,mediocore,advanced. Basic=only radar for example, medium= radar+local chat, advanced= radar+local chat + how many player per ship for example.
 
Problems i see with this:
- could be too op (you just build fail-safe grid or at very hard to attack positions like inside a moon with a TCU so noone can dig there) but then again - just put more effort to attack it.... difficult call
- depending how it's implemented it could be annoying to run those things

Well, given some people in here are not familiar with the Local Chat in EVE, I will explain real quick so you can understand.

Local Chat, is the chat in which you join upon entering a star system in EVE after a jump. That may seem non-important, when you realise the chat covers the entire star system. That means people can simply check Local and have advanced intel of your presence on the system before they can actually have a scan of your ship (which in Wormholes it's needed, since in Wormholes there's no Local Chat). Even in an invisible ship, you will still show up in the Local Chat.

Now, the arguement can be made that in EVE's universe humanity has colonised the star systems nad put up comm-arrays and all that. But in DU, it's not the case. So, here's my proposition.

Comm-Arrays, set up by a faction, enable a Local Chat within a cerrtain radius of them, with the Comm-Arrays acting as radars as well, meaning, that if you set up a Comm-Array, you got both comms for the masses that are not in your org's chat (like traders for example), with the org owning the Comm-Array acting as the adminstrator of said chat. I mean, if I want to be the Emperor, I must have a way to censor people within my Empire. I R ebil.

Said comm-arrays, of course, can only detect ships not cloaked, and cloaked ships, above a certain mass, will show up in the Local Chat, but not on the radar of the faction owning said comm-array, so no cloaked battleships sneaking up to comm-arrays.

A string of Comm-Arrays, that are interconnected, could even enable an entire star system to have a common chat room - which I guess most EVE veterans will find as a proper excuse for nuking at least ONE of those arrays to stop the scam-spam on said Local Chat in a trade-hub.

Beyond that, said arrays can act as an alarm, for when an enemy fleet arrives at your system, so your fleet can mobilise in time. Likewise, said enemy fleet may want to send forward a scout in a stealth-ship, to take down one Comm-Array by hacking it, in order for the fleet to arrive without being immediately detected. Every second counts on a blitzkrieg after all.

Furthermore, said arrays will need repair, which is an excellent reason to have jobs and duties like maintenance, with a monetary incentive for people to do said jobs, while factions would have a pretty good reason to pay high for such jobs.

One extra feature, could be for the Devs to have asteroids refresh high value minerals if no Comm-Arrays are present, with less and less quality asteroids refreshing on the system the more Comm-Arrays are present, thus creating the Risk / Reward nature of EVE's high-sec (ultra-safe systems), low-sec (relative safety system) and finally Null-Sec, which is pretty much the Australian outback.

Down the line, if NQ decides to add Sovereignity Towers for a faction to lay claim on a star system, said Comm-Arrays can be used for that, via an "upgrade" system, but that's just an afterthought.



Sorry for the long post, here's an astronaut potato :

@Anonymous: While you won't be eligible for the Novaquark and the community prizes, you will still be considered as a participant if you post your fan fiction before next Monday. See below the rule clarifications for more details.

@Temerian: The first fanfiction you wrote has been added to the list. See below the rule clarifications for submitting several fan fictions for the contest.   @Aetherios, Lethys and Devious_T: A participant may win a Novaquark prize and the community prize. See below the rule clarifications for more details.   Rule clarifications: - If a participant wants to provide several fan fictions for the contest, he totally can. However, he will be able to win only one Novaquark prize. - As Novaquark prizes and the community prize are totally independent, it may happens that an author wins a Novaquark prize as well as the community prize because the jury is completely different. - If a fan fiction made for the Novawrimo contest doesn't meet all the necessary criteria to be eligible (not reaching the minimum word limit, missing the deadline by a few days, etc), the author won't considered as eligible for the Novaquark and the community Prizes. However it may still be considered as a participant to the contest. It will be up to the Novaquark team to decide on a case by case basis.  - In the case of having missed the deadline for the current Novawrimo contest (November-December 2016), if those in this situation post their fan fiction before next Monday, they will still be considered as participants (but won't be eligible for the Novaquark and the community prizes) - All the participants to the current Novawrimo Contest will have a small reward (independently from having won a prize or not), to thank them for their participation and their hard work. The reward will be announced next Monday, at the same time as the final list eligible for the Novaquark and the community prizes.   Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Tough decision, good luck to all participants and thank you all for writing those stories. I had a great time reading them.
 
And remember: the cake is a lie!

I feel that the community team may have quite a bit of work on their hands with all the "HE DONE GRIEF ME" reports. Lets just hope they don't get a shoddy automated system to deal with it.
 
In terms of the definition of certain actions (robbery at sea = piracy, killing someone is murder, etc.), none of them will be against the rules as NQ has no rules for ingame activity. It's when you start doing things whilst not in character (like verbal harassment in chat or disclosing where you live and threatening to kill you irl) is when NQ becomes involved. Yes, your character can vow revenge against their character. No, you cannot threaten/blackmail them with irl information (especially if it is personal or sensitive).
 
As a butler once said, some people (griefers) just want to watch the world burn. As long as it does not spill into real life (or bypass ingame systems, like a bug), then NQ does not need to do anything.

I do like any easy to answer discussion.
 
Piracy =! Griefing , however Piracy ∩ Griefing ≠ ϕ . 

The Hill has Its Eyes.
 
And just as the Dude Abides,
 
It Hails The New King,
 
Still on the Hill
 
and The Hill Chills

I do like any easy to answer discussion.
 
Piracy =! Griefing , however Piracy ∩ Griefing ≠ ϕ .