starrusbohemiaIV

To be more precise:
- Crowdfunding campaign: it will be launched before end of 2016.
- Alpha Launch: early 2017.
 
So yes, for the time being, we're still on schedule
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone,
 
Just to clarify on this topic:
We totally understand that First Person Shooter gameplay would be more immersive.
However, we have to take everything in account. And when we do, then we have to make some compromise.
We want combat, but combat is not the main feature of the game. Only one of the main features, equally important with building, real massively multiplayer system in a single-shard universe, exploration, trading, etc. Once this was sorted out, it was logic that we wouldn't sacrifice things like the massively multiplayer aspect just to have the best First Person Shooter possible. In that case, even if it's not the best combat mechanics (we totally agree on that), target locking combat gameplay is the answer for the best compromise. So it's not a decision led by personal taste, but really the most relevant decision on the technical aspect in our case.
 
We totally understand that it won't appeal to every player.
We are aware that our game won't satisfy everybody, and it's the same for any game.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Well... It will be always our word against his.
But here is our side of the story.
 
Just the facts:
- We posted two comments on his second video asking why he was deliberately spreading disinformation and diffamation about our game.
- In both comments was a link to our video proving the big spaceships were voxel-made.
- They weren't validated to become public, despite the fact that comments posted after by other posters were.
We don't exactly know how BlueDrake42's channel is configured, but if comments require validation to become public, that means he sees every comment before chosing to validate one (or not). It seems to us really unlikely that, in this situation, he hasn't seen the comments who were pretty straightforward and posted with the name "Dual Universe". Maybe there is another explanation but from our side, we don't see any.
 
In the end, with his video "GG Dual Universe", BlueDrake42 showed he didn't mean to misinform (despite the fact that the result was exactly that). We personally recognize we were wrong in thinking he had ill intentions toward our game. Sketpicism in his first video was totally ok and we perfectly understood that (as not much about our game has been presented yet). Presenting personal assumptions as the truth (saying our ships were just meshes bought from turbosquid put in our game and not voxel-made spaceships) in the second video was where a line was crossed.
 
There will be soon a blog post explaining our unexpected presence at E3 (that wasn't even expected on our side a month ago) and how it came to make some choices that seem weird from the outside. We also totally agree that there have been several mistakes in our communication like the fact we should have pointed out that the big spaceships design weren't home made but available on Turbosquid. There was no intention to hide it. We truly didn't see it as a problem a few weeks ago, as the teaser was meant to present what players would be able to build, not to present what the players will find in game.
 
So there is no hypocrisy here.
 
To avoid feeding the troll any further, this topic will be locked now.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

@Tnecniw:
 
If it can reassure you, no, we're not making a Sci-Fi version of Ark, without Dinos
There will be safe zones for those who don't wan't to have PvP activities. We won't force PvP on players, we want to avoid that at all costs.
We also plan to provide basic resources (necessary to make all the vital items or basic constructs) available in (really) huge amounts, so no one can have a monopole.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

We are always open to Q&A.
It would be a good moment to start a new thread to compile all the most pressing questions with all the new members who arrived in the last week. Prepare your list, and we will discuss soon about it. However, keep in mind we can't promise to give you a precise answer for all questions as, as always, we are just in pre-alpha and many things are far from being finalized
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Well, it's a noble goal to warn fellow gamers of a possible scam.
But be sure to check the honesty of your source before following him blindly in his diffamation and misinformation speech.
There are some points that don't add up in the scam theory:
If we tried to scam and deceived people, would we opt for a monetization model where we plan to make a free trial before starting a monthly sub? Obviously, it would be suicidal to give access to the game, even temporarily for free if we wanted to scam people. 
 
On the other hand:
- Bluedrake42 seems to present only information that could back his side of the story.
- He hasn't even tried to contact us to check his assumptions.
- When we asked some explanations on his Youtube channel, he didn't validate our comment on purpose (he has validated other comments, more recent, since then) for some reason known only from himself. Transparency seems to bother him.
- The tweet pinned on his twitter account is self explanatory:
 

 
In short, he's proud to say that he doesn't care if he's right or wrong, if he's loved or hated. All he cares is visibility.
 
 
In the end, the bad guys are not always those who appear to be in the first place.
Not all indie developers are scammers, not all youtubers have good intentions.
Do not follow blindly what others say.
If you have a doubt, ask the involved persons before accusing them.
Indie developers generally answer to the questions.
In other words, make an opinion by yourself, do not just follow an opinion made by someone who has visibility.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Yes, there will be different sizes for each type of weapon turret
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

There's currently no plan to create a voxel editor to develop character weapons.
At the moment, character weapons are planned to be mesh-based, and defined by developers.
The Dev team has already a lot on her plate with our current goals. Maybe far in the future, but we can't promise anything for now.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! 
 
This topic raises very important ideas and concerns.
 
We are perfectly aware that not every player that will be interested in Dual Universe will be a naturally talented voxel-based spaceship designer. or even interested to be one. That's why, right from the beginning, we plan to have generic blueprints available, to avoid that - even it's a very improbable scenario - some organizations recruit all the builders to build only for them.
 
We are planning to do the exact same thing for the LUA scripts: having some decent generic ones available to all players right from the beginning, to avoid any monopolistic situation, because not every player is a natural born developer.
 
That way, we expect each player to be able to build, buy and use decent static or mobile constructs.
 
We want to promote creativity freedom, not monopole. Monopole is not fun.
That being said, creativity freedom comes at a price: in order to remain fun on the long term, a game needs to be balanced.
We don't want to sacrifice everything on the creativity freedom's altar. There's a need to find the right balance. So as much as we don't want to intervene, it might happen that the dev team will implement some limits to LUA scripts at some point, if this is really necessary for the sake of the game and the global fun experienced by the community. Or maybe it won't be necessary. We'll see. The thing is the team can't anticipate all problems... but we can definitely react to them.
 
Will the organizations having talented coders in their ranks get an edge over others? Probably.
But the same could be said for organizations having pro-gamer level players, that can win fights on 1 vs 3.
The same could be said for organizations having 10, 20 times the number of people than others. There is strength in number as well.
This is part of the game too.
 
Best regards, 
Nyzaltar.

Hi Rodier,
Welcome on our official forum!
Yup, our Kickstarter campaign is planned for the end of this year, with video footage
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone!
 
We plan stealth technology in Dual Universe (even if it's not planned soon).
 
Afk cloaking is indeed a problem in EVE.
Psychological warfare is interesting, as long as it involves activity from the player wanting to do it.
 
From what we have analyzed, afk cloaking has been possible because of a few things:
- the fact that all players in the solar system are displayed on the local chat. If you see someone you don't know, it migh be a spy, or someone planning an ambush.
- the fact that a player can leave from a safe area (space stations) from a unique point (easy to ambush). 
- the fact that a player wanting to leave the solar system generally needs to use a stargate (also an easy place to ambush).
 
As Dual Universe won't work "solar system by solar system" and there won't be only one point of entry/exit for a safe area, this kind of abuse should have a lot less impact in Dual Universe. And if it still does... well, we keep your suggestions in our papers as possible ways to handle it
 
Thanks for the feedback!
 
Best regards, 
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone,
 
As said in another topic, technically anything on the planet is destructible (except what is built in safe areas).
However, there is also some gameplay balancing concerns.
 
 
This sentence sums up the problem.
+ the fact that having safe zones would be pointless.
 
So the clear answer is no, there won't be weapons powerful enough to destroy planets.
And yes it will be possible to destroy anything on a planet surface that isn't in a safe area (assuming the agressor has the means to destroy the defensive measures put in place).
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi AstroFerret,
 
Here are the answers I can give you at the moment:
a ) The research gameplay mechanics are in a stage too early to give you a proper answer. However, we have taken note of the ideas you mentioned
b ) If you build something in a safe zone, it won't be destructible by other players. We are also thinking of ways for player to not abuse the mechanics in a military way (an undestructible military fortress wouldn't be fun).
c ) That question is quite vague. Could you develop a bit more?
d ) Ideas of NPC: primitive creatures born on the planets you explore and NPCs helping bootstrapping the economy are the most certain types that will be implemented. We remain opened to discussion for other ideas, but keep in mind Dual in Universe is not a game where the main activity will to interact with NPCs. The goal is to incite to interact with other players.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone,
 
On this topic, we have already in mind a list of possible physical goodies that might be included in the kickstarter pledges:
- Poster
- Postcard
- Sticker
- Arkship Passenger ID Card
- T-shirt
- Keychain
- 3D Print
- Physical Artbook
- Original Soundtrack CD
- Dual Universe USB Key
 
Of course, we remain open to other ideas!
 
Important: materializing these ideas will depend on several factors.
We will need to find the appropriate partners to make these goodies
The cost will need to be decent as it would kill the purpose of asking help through crowdfunding if physical rewards take a part too big of the pledges.
The involved goodie needs to be popular enough among the community.
 
To have an online store where we would sell Dual Universe goodies is an interesting idea too.
However, we don't see this as something we would have right for the alpha. This costs a significant amount of money to put such thing in place. And we currently prefer to put that money in developing the game.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone!
 
This is indeed a delicate topic.
 
Hype helps a lot an indie game developer cause, but it can also undermine it in case of overhype (nobody likes to be disappointed), as much as if there is no hype at all. Hype is something very hard to control. All we can do is to keep transparency as much as possible. We think it's the best approach. True, some things might displease the community, but it's perfectly fine: If something is not appealing, we are open to discussion. It's better to know the topic as soon as possible. The earlier it is brought to the developers attention, the higher the chances are to improve it through the development cycle. There will be also times where the dev team will not change what has been planned, but in these (rare, we hope) cases, we will always give an explanation about the reasons.
 
We also don't judge practices seen on other game communities.
There are generally many hidden factors that could have lead to unfortunate decisions (as well as the fact they have been reversed). 
 
All we can say here about how we approach this topic:
- We are open to any feedback, even those negative as long as it remains constructive and polite.
- We made our forum moderation policy as clear as possible and it can be found here.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

As said in another thread, we will soon announce something for the guilds, better than a sub-forum section.
More info in the coming weeks!
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi Zen001,
 
I'm pretty much here for that reason: making the "liaison" between the community and the devs.
While not being a developer of the game myself, I have some programming knowledge enabling me to understand the technical suggestions (and transmit them in a proper way). Si if you have some specific requests, just let me know and I'll pass it to the devs
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi Alexwright,
 
If I understood well what you meant, this is something that some devs are already discussing:
Having the ability to "mirror" a pattern (a saved voxel shape) is something that is definitely worth considering
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Welcome UC_Nuni!
 
Unfortunately the game is not planned to be localized in any other language than English before a long time (meaning it might happen but this will be after the official launch of the game) for several reasons. On the very long term, we do plan to translate the game in several other languages (German, Spanish, French, Polish and Russian are the potential languages that we might support in the future, but again, if it happens it won't be any time soon).
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Hi Cavadus and welcome!
 
We can totally understand your concerns.
Alpha & Beta are phases meant to test the game mechanics, track the bugs, etc. We totally agree with it.
It will be possible to enter these phases by several means, explained more in detail in this topic.
 
 
As much as we would also love to have a real autonomous development cycle, we also have a limited budget.
At some point we have a choice to make:
 
- We can ask to private investors or a publisher to raise more funds... but the more we are opting for this option, the more we take the risks to see an investor taking a decision not in line with our current game vision and enforce it (nothing wrong here, it's just natural that an investor might want to see his money spent as he expects).
 
- Or we can raise additional funds with the help of the community to ensure that our game vision stays as it was from the start (which is generally what attract people to the project in the first place, the original vision of a game).
 
In all honesty, we prefer the latter. We strongly believe that staying independant is the only way to bring real innovation in the genre nowadays. What would be the meaning to start an ambitious project, trying to innovate, if in the end we have to deviate from our original vision? That's why we plan a Kickstarter at the end of the year. Not to finance the whole game, but in order to be sure of keeping the original vision that appeals to the growing Dual Universe community. We hope you'll understand our point of view.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

Be careful...
Did some prophecy not predict that furyan people attract necromonger raiders?   

Hmmm a bit greedy, aren't we?
Gameplay? not today... but soon.
2nd wave of invitations in the Alpha team? I need to check with the management. I will keep you informed
 
And now the announcements for today!
 
1) Our new website is now officially launched. We finished a few modifications today.
 
2) Dual Universe spacesuits reveal  (for both male & female, no discrimination!) 
 

 
3) First in-game screenshots are planned for... early next week!
We think (or we hope at least) that you'll be positively surprised by the pre-alpha screenshots!
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

(Posted Friday 24th of May 2016 on the DevBlog) 
 

 
Today is an exciting day! We are proud to reveal the first images of Dual Universe, our futuristic MMORPG where players coexist in a single unbounded game universe (with no instances or loading zones), with the added ability to modify the game environment in ways never before seen on this scale and in such great detail.
 
The images below are all the first publicly available screenshots of the Dual Universe, all images were captured "in game" and represent the game engine and gameplay features in its current pre-alpha state. To put this into context, all the constructions can be built in game by players, all the terrains can be mined and terraformed by the players and all the distant planetary systems can be reached.
 
It all starts on a planet called Alioth, where, as the story goes, you step out of the arkship ready to embark on your adventure and rebuild civilization.
 
      
 
 
As you can see, there are several environments on the planet, like dense forest and arid desert. If you look to the sky you will see neighboring planets with their own unique biospheres awaiting to be explored. While we update the game, we will also add more and more diversity to the many different planet types, so explorers can be sure to encounter a rich and varied world full of surprises (we won?t say any more, because, you know, they are surprises!).
 
Dual Universe is, among many other things, a game where players can get creative and build things. Here is a typical situation where a group of players are collaborating and working together on the construction of an outpost.
 

 
As player?s ambitions grow and the materials required become more obtainable, cities and building will be built. The images below shows how the end result may look.
 
 
    
 
 
Then come the creation of ships and space stations! For example, you can build small personal spacecrafts...
 
  
 
 
...in which case you get a Cockpit UI when you enter one of these.
 
  
 
 
But you can also build far bigger, multiplayer ships...
 
  
 
 
...to the point where you can build really huge behemoths! This is something that has never been done in any builder game that we know of, especially not in a continuous single-shard MMO.  When we say ?behemoth?, we mean a space station that is 1.5km long, entirely made with voxels, as in the images below.
 

 
Perhaps even more importantly than size, which of course matters, is the fact that multiplayer ships and orbital stations are inhabitable: you can walk in it, meet some friends in it, discuss, play and coordinate your actions with them.
 
You can see below a screenshot showing an interior command room of a space station.
 

 
Then, there is space. The big vast blackness of space interrupted by the enigmatic flickers of light from distant stars, each one representing a possible new world to explore and conquer. This exploration will most likely arrive in a later stage in the game, when players will have mastered the technologies for warp drives and even later, stargates. But we give you a taste of it, because we find it awe-inspiringly beautiful.
 

 
That?s it for now! We hope you like what you see. Again, remember that everything you see here is in-game, all constructions can be built and edited by players. Add the fact that everything takes place in the same continuous universe and we believe that we have a game that is really new and exciting. But the only thing that matters for us now is what you think! So feel free to give us feedback and suggestions. We won?t be able to integrate all ideas in the short time that separates us from the alpha, but we will keep in mind and care about everything you say.
 
By the way, we have a new official website.
If you haven't seen it already, you will find useful additional on it!
 
JC Baillie,
Project Lead.

We can't trick you, can't we?
Indeed, for testing purpose, the planets are very close to each other. 
You can expect to have them more spaced in the official release.
 
Also yes, as we are in pre-alpha, these screenshots do not represent final graphics of the game.
A lot of work remains to be done on the planet environment, as well as lightning tweaking
 
Thanks for your support!
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

For those who don't follow us on social media, here are a few more updates about the art direction posted in the recent weeks.
 
A preview of available Elements to make a small (single player) spaceship:
 

 
Some examples of concepts showing modularity when using these Elements on a voxel construct to make a minimalistic spaceship:
 

 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.