MarkusT

We recently introduced the first wave of an ongoing effort to enhance the visual effects (VFX) in Dual Universe, thanks to the integration of PopcornFX, a middleware solution for creating stunning particle effects. 
 
Players celebrated the difference when the first VFX improvements debuted as part of the 0.25.8 Hermes update on June 18th. This video showcases just some of the cool new effects, from ‘sparklier’ particle explosions to ‘glowier’ holograms. 
 
 
The Novaquark Art and Rendering teams took a few moments away from their visual ventures to talk a bit about the PopcornFX implementation and what it means for the DU community. 
 
Q: How will Dual Universe players benefit from the new visual effects? 
Our primary goals have been to improve immersion and increase the wow factor. Being an MMO, immersion is key, a layer of life added to our game. For that reason, we are always exploring different ways to improve graphics to make the world more believable and give it a sense of spectacle. Our new VFX are made with PopcornFX Editor. It gives us full control and makes it easy to experiment and iterate new versions that will improve the player experience.
 
Q: Why did Novaquark choose PopcornFX?
Dual Universe is being developed with Unigine, which we like since it allows us to do heavy modifications to achieve the desired results; however, those modifications have also prevented us from being able to benefit from Unigine’s latest visual improvements. PopcornFX is the perfect solution to fill that gap. It has exactly what we need technically for its implementation, top-notch visuals, and excellent performance results. (We promise they didn’t pay us to say this!)
 
Q: Considering the proprietary technology behind DU, implementing off-the-shelf technologies can be tricky. What technical difficulties had to be overcome with this integration?
It required several iterations and cross-team collaboration to ensure that integration was working properly so that it would be in an acceptable state for rollout to players. It first took the effort of the Rendering team to have the main pipeline working, from loading an effect file, launching the particle simulation, getting the buffer data back, and directing them to the right places and the right shaders. We’ve been able to build onto this and support more and more features requested by the Art team. We also worked with the Gameplay and Tool teams to supply a clean integration with variables from the game to provide a deep connection between the effects and the game itself by exposing all the parameters VFX artists can use.
 
Q: Which VFX are we currently focusing on and what is the roll-out plan for future VFX updates?
Our most recent update, Hermes, included a long list of our first PopcornFX-generated graphics. 
 
Tools: harvest, mining, directional detector, scanners, deploy ground element, refuel, maneuver, flatten, build mode tools. Industries: assembly lines, refiners, electronics, chemical, refiner, glass furnace, smelter, honeycomb refiner, printer, metalwork.  Decorative constructs: plants, holograms. Miscellaneous: Arkship effects, elevators, an element explosion.  
Our goal regarding VFX is to apply them in almost every aspect of the game; sometimes they may be quite noticeable and others may be so subtle they are almost imperceivable. The layering is what adds that necessary depth of flavor to be well-rounded. 
We will continue to introduce new VFX to enhance the gameplay experience, for example the piloting experience and the PVP experience, and to breathe more life into some older elements that need it while introducing new elements along the way, too. We’ll also give some motion to the HUD and our complex interface that we know can really improve the immersion.
 
Q: In addition to the VFX improvements, what other visual enhancements can players look for in the coming months? 
Since we began using PopcornFX, we've been seeing the game world through a new lens, brainstorming the possibilities and prioritizing all the improvements we want to make. The stellar views within the universe will be even more stellar as our ‘biome beautification’ efforts continue. The compliments we’ve been receiving from the community have been inspiring and encouraged us to take DU’s visuals to the next level. 
 

Dear Noveans, 
 
We’d like to take a moment to talk about the communication on the forums and in Discord. We appreciate the passion each of you bring to our community and don’t want to diminish it; however, we’ve seen an increase in negativity, specifically attacks, unconstructive complaints, and disrespect to fellow players and our team. This is not okay. 
 
We’ve always invited community members to speak their minds. We’d like to remind everyone that we require a certain level of decorum and respect. Participants in our community areas (forums, Discord, and our social media accounts) are expected to voice criticism and concern constructively and communicate with courtesy and respect.
 
This is a warning that we won’t tolerate attacks on staff, volunteers, or members of this community. If you can’t play nice, and with respect, then this isn’t the community for you. 
 
With love,
SpaceMom
 

Space can be lonely, and, if some adages are to be believed, no one can hear you scream out there. You may want to bring along some friends, maybe not so much for the screaming but for sharing fuel and good times. That’s where docking and boarding comes in. 
 
Previously referred to with the blanket term “parenting”, breaking them off as boarding and docking clarifies what they are and what they do. Just as the name implies, boarding allows passengers to come aboard your ship. Docking makes it possible to have ships connected to other ships, even when both are moving. This boarding/docking relationship basically has the same functionality and behaviour as before but with the added benefit of rights management.
 
In its original design, boarding or docking a construct was not consensual. Neither the player who owned the construct being boarded/docked nor the player whose construct was being attached to another could decline. They may not have even been aware it had happened in some cases, it simply occurred due to their proximity. 
 
This was a problem for a few reasons, most notably that it opened the door for bugs and exploits. In addition to negating those, revisiting the feature also gives us the opportunity to make it more intuitive and purposeful. 
 
ASSIGNING RIGHTS
Owners can use the Rights & Duties Management System (RDMS) to assign Right to Board or Right to Dock to their constructs that will let others board or dock, or to forbid such requests. 
 
Dynamic constructs have the ability to move, as opposed to static constructs - like buildings - that are immobile. With the necessary rights, avatars will be able to board dynamic constructs, and smaller dynamic constructs (let’s call them shuttles) will be able to dock with bigger ones (aka carriers). When boarded or docked, the player or the shuttle moves with the carrier, and their mass is added to the carrier’s physics. 
 
A player or a shuttle will need to be near the carrier in order to board or dock, it can’t be done from a distance. The distance is commiserate with the size of the target vessel, the minimum distance being 32m and 128m being the maximum. 
 
BOARDING
Players are able to board any inactive dynamic construct. This makes it possible for them to tour constructs on display in a marketplace or the like. The construct will go into the “active” state when the owner or someone else with piloting rights jumps into the driver’s seat, and unauthorized passengers will be automatically ejected.
 
If a player enters a dynamic construct with the proper rights or when the construct is inactive, they will become boarded and can move freely around the construct. 
 
The UI display may look something like this: 

This is a sample of the UI that is still in progress 
 
If the construct is active and the player attempting to board does not have the necessary right to board, they will be repulsed. The effect is similar to hitting an impassable barrier with no damage taken. The UI display may look something like this:

 
DOCKING
Once shuttle pilots with the necessary rights are within range, they can manually dock to a carrier. This is done through a contextual menu that is accessed via right-click. The shuttle will then be invisibly tethered to the exterior of the carrier. 

 
Without that clearance, the shuttle will be repulsed.

 
Authorized shuttle pilots will receive an opt-in confirmation to signal when they are within docking range. 

 
The “Docking” widget in the piloting UI informs the pilot of the shuttle when they are in docking range through this small open chain link icon.
 

This is a sample of the UI report to show a shuttle’s docking status.
 
PARENTING ADVICE
The owner of the carrier is considered the parent, and those who are granted boarding or docking rights are children.   
Just as real-world moms and dads, construct owners can give their “kids” the old heave-ho when it’s time for them to leave the nest and fly solo. This is done in a Build Helper’s submenu where all boarded players and docked shuttles are listed.
 

 
Buh-bye! Boarded avatars can be ejected at any time directly through the carrier’s Build Helper interface. 
 
This results in ejected players suddenly finding themselves adrift, possibly in deep space. Here, they have two options. Jetpack to a safe place. Depending on the distance, this could take quite a while; however, it’s safe (they can’t be attacked) and they will arrive with the inventory in their nanopack. The second option, suicide, will get them on terra firma faster, but they will lose whatever they were carrying. Probably a good idea to stay on the good side of the carrier captain to avoid being in this predicament. 
 

 
With a few simple clicks, the carrier pilot can easily de-dock shuttles, too. 
 

 
TAKE IT FOR A SPIN
These changes will be featured in an upcoming release on the public test server (PTS). We highly encourage our community to explore it when it’s available, then let us know what you think about the ease of use and convenience. Until then, feel free to join the discussion on our forums.
 

0.23 and What We Learned

In reading through the reactions from our community regarding the recent 0.23 update, we’ve gained some valuable insights. 

Before we talk about the changes we’ll make in our processes going forward, let’s get back to the fundamental reason behind the update itself. What we did in 0.23 is at the heart of the vision for a game where a society of players is interacting directly or indirectly with each other through an elaborate network of exchanges, cooperation, competition and markets.
 
As it was, the current state of the game consisted mostly of isolated islands of players playing in almost full autonomy. A single-player game where players happened to share the same game world but with little interactions.
 
It’s hard to imagine how the appeal could last for more than several months for most players once they feel they have “finished” the game. It is also a missed opportunity to try something of larger proportion, a society of players growing in a fully persistent virtual world. For this to work, you need more than isolated gameplay. Players need to have viable reasons to interact and need each other.
 
In many single-player space games, you have ways to make money, and the game then offers you ways to convert this money into whatever you need in the game to progress, mostly via markets. This is the state in which we should end up for Dual Universe once all the necessary ingredients are in place, You get into the game, you farm a bit of money in fun ways, and you buy more and more powerful ships, equipment, weapons, etc., to help your character grow. The difference is that here, the ships or equipment you buy have been made by other players, instead of the game company. On the surface and during the first hours of gameplay, to a new player it would look similar to any of those other space games, but it would in fact reveal itself to be much deeper once you spend a bit of time in the game. Everything you would do would be part of another player’s or organization’s plan, everything would have a meaning. And soon you would realize that you too could be part of the content creation and, somehow, drive the game in the direction you want.
 
In its current beta stage, DU doesn’t have enough ways for people to make money because we haven’t yet had the opportunity to implement all of the necessary features. There’s mining, of course. Trading is not as good as it will eventually be because markets are not really used to their full potential. As a consequence, players rightfully turned to a solo or small org autonomous game mode. 
 
We tried to nudge people out of this with the changes introduced in 0.23. While necessary, many players expressed that the changes of 0.23 came too soon because it lacked a variety of lucrative ways for people to make money outside of mining.

What We’ll Do Now
 
The vision expressed above still holds. We want people to consider going through the industry specialization only if they intend to become industrialists and not necessarily to sustain their individual needs; however, we understand that it’s too soon to press for intense specialized gameplay considering the lack of sources to earn money. 
 
Here’s our plan for now. We will modify the formula of the schematic prices to make it considerably more affordable for Tier 1 and still challenging and worth a commitment but less intense for anything Tier 2 or above. 
 
This will allow most factories focused on T1 to resume their activities rapidly while keeping an interesting challenge for higher tiers, spawning dedicated industrial facilities aiming at producing to sell on the markets. We will also reimburse players who have bought high-priced schematics since the launch of 0.23 (please give us some time since it may take a few days as we go through the logs).
 
We will keep monitoring the price of schematics to see if it makes sense to increase or decrease the costs. The right approach to set such a price would be to evaluate how much time it takes to recoup your investment by selling the products that the schematics allow to produce. It should be a few months so that the investment is a real commitment and it makes sense to plan for it.  We currently lack the metrics to properly assess this return on investment time. We need a player-driven market price for the components and a market price for the products to assess the profit made by each run of a schematic. This will come when the markets start to work as intended, and we can gather more data about them. 
 
Feedback and Testing

The release of 0.23 also taught us that we need improved ways to test new features, both internally and with community participation. The Upvote feature on the website was a good start, but it’s not enough. 
 
To address this, we have two courses of action that will be taken. The first will be to set up an open public test server, hopefully with shorter release cycles, for players to try out new features. This will also allow us to explore ideas and be more iterative. If all goes according to plan, this test server should be introduced for 0.24, the next release. It will mirror the content of the production server with regular updates to sync it. 
 
The second important initiative is to revise the role of the Alpha Team Vanguard (ATV), getting them more involved in early discussions about new features and the evolution of the game. We are still defining the framework, so more information will be released as available. 

What is to Come
 
In the short term, we will push a few corrections to improve 0.23, which include:
 
Ships will now stop (be frozen) when their core is destroyed in PvP, making them easier to catch. Element destruction will impact the restoration count only when it occurs through PvP, at least for now (not when the ship is colliding/falling as we want to avoid having players penalized simply for crashing their ships because they’re learning how to maneuver them, for example). Recycling of un-restorable elements through a recycler that will take an element as input and grant a small amount of the schematics required components as output.
The next major release is already in the making and will be about the mission system, a first step toward giving players more fun ways to earn quantas. We will reveal about it shortly so that we can get as much feedback as possible.
 
We also want to reassure you that the mission system is not the only answer to offering more varied ways to earn revenue in Dual Universe. Things like asteroid mining and mining units will be introduced in the next few months. 

This list is by no means complete, but should be a good jumping off point that gives players reasons to fight and to explore, opportunities for pirates, new ways of making money, and a plethora of other activities our creative community will think of even if we didn’t. 

That’s it for now! We want to thank you again for your support and patience as we progress along this beta road! See you soon in Dual Universe!

Want to discuss this announcement? Visit the thread linked below:
 
 

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
 

I have zero experience with PVP, due to zero interest in it, so I will not comment this.
 
In regards to items being destroyed, especially outside of PVP, I don't think it is a very good idea.
I think most people commenting here, saying that it would be a good idea have vast DU experience and serious issues to change their point of view when it comes to DU beginners. Some have indeed addressed the potential impact on new players and the possible consequence of losing them permanently. One already said, no players = no DU. One time subscribers and a few PVP focused ones will not keep DU and NQ alive.
 
A common argument is that the economy is broken and requires a resource sink to fix it. I think proper PVP with permanently destroyed items would be enough already.
In my opinion a greater problem is the current market system, respectively the lack of information when it comes to prices and production cost. I'd guess that many people, if not even most,  that sell produced items at the markets, don't check production cost and also don't consider the transportation costs. Otherwise I've issues to understand why so many sell orders are way lower than the actual ore prices to produce said items. It is utter nonsense to sell an item for 100k when I need 200k to produce it. Even if I mine the ore myself, I still need to do that calculation. My interest lies in industry and I'd love to produce and sell goods with a small margin and even hire a trader or partner with one. DU makes this for me impossible right now because the prices are a joke. Selling ore brings the most profit so I have to go mining, although I'd love to do something else. I'm forced to do that as I cannot make proper profit with the goods I can produce. So I need to skill mining, need to skill container range, piloting and many other things I did not want to specialize in. Just to point it out, I literally sell nothing on the markets, it's just not worth it.

Implementing destruction will not fix the economy. Larger Organizations will just adapt and continue to produce their own stuff. The ore they require, they will mine and therefore, zero impact on the economy. The random, solo or new player will suffer.
 
NQ: If you really want to fix the market you need to implement more information. When I inspect an item, it needs to show the production costs (quanta), based on the average price of all sell orders of each ore amounts required to produce that item (just without skills). The average needs to exclude the 10 cheapest and 10 most expensive ones on the planet the player currently is. As you refer to IRL, you can also prohibit selling prices under creation costs, which is in IRL illegal in some countries. The same info needs to be in the create sell order screen ( info based on all markets of the planet the player currently is on) and tadaa, no one will sell an item under creation costs. You may take the skills into consideration but this will make it for new players a lot harder to produce and sell. It is unreasonable that players have to lookup such essential information at player made webpages, if they are lucky enough to know about them. Also, add an information text that reminds the seller to consider the costs for transport and the market tax (why actually, for a market on an otherwise basically empty planet?) as well.
 
This will set the ore prices realistically, the item prices too and the PVP destruction will be an appropriate money / resource sink. No need to grief players with painful crashing penalty. Repairing a hauler is already painful enough, especially when you compare it with a PVP XS Cube. I'm sure that may players will quit DU if they have to replace all elements on their ships over and over again, just because of crashes.

Next step, remove the stupid buy bots where people are selling honeycombs to for example, or at least, set all buy prices that low that no more profit is possible. Of course you need to think about some quanta generating mechanism after doing this.
 
This probably would also render mining automation unnecessary as there will be a valid marked for people specialized in mining. I'd be happy to buy ore if I could sell the products with a small profit in turn. This may finally trigger the other niches you were hoping for, protection service providers for miner / hauler etc.
 
Just my two cents, I'm happy to read your opinions about this.

I have zero experience with PVP, due to zero interest in it, so I will not comment this.
 
In regards to items being destroyed, especially outside of PVP, I don't think it is a very good idea.
I think most people commenting here, saying that it would be a good idea have vast DU experience and serious issues to change their point of view when it comes to DU beginners. Some have indeed addressed the potential impact on new players and the possible consequence of losing them permanently. One already said, no players = no DU. One time subscribers and a few PVP focused ones will not keep DU and NQ alive.
 
A common argument is that the economy is broken and requires a resource sink to fix it. I think proper PVP with permanently destroyed items would be enough already.
In my opinion a greater problem is the current market system, respectively the lack of information when it comes to prices and production cost. I'd guess that many people, if not even most,  that sell produced items at the markets, don't check production cost and also don't consider the transportation costs. Otherwise I've issues to understand why so many sell orders are way lower than the actual ore prices to produce said items. It is utter nonsense to sell an item for 100k when I need 200k to produce it. Even if I mine the ore myself, I still need to do that calculation. My interest lies in industry and I'd love to produce and sell goods with a small margin and even hire a trader or partner with one. DU makes this for me impossible right now because the prices are a joke. Selling ore brings the most profit so I have to go mining, although I'd love to do something else. I'm forced to do that as I cannot make proper profit with the goods I can produce. So I need to skill mining, need to skill container range, piloting and many other things I did not want to specialize in. Just to point it out, I literally sell nothing on the markets, it's just not worth it.

Implementing destruction will not fix the economy. Larger Organizations will just adapt and continue to produce their own stuff. The ore they require, they will mine and therefore, zero impact on the economy. The random, solo or new player will suffer.
 
NQ: If you really want to fix the market you need to implement more information. When I inspect an item, it needs to show the production costs (quanta), based on the average price of all sell orders of each ore amounts required to produce that item (just without skills). The average needs to exclude the 10 cheapest and 10 most expensive ones on the planet the player currently is. As you refer to IRL, you can also prohibit selling prices under creation costs, which is in IRL illegal in some countries. The same info needs to be in the create sell order screen ( info based on all markets of the planet the player currently is on) and tadaa, no one will sell an item under creation costs. You may take the skills into consideration but this will make it for new players a lot harder to produce and sell. It is unreasonable that players have to lookup such essential information at player made webpages, if they are lucky enough to know about them. Also, add an information text that reminds the seller to consider the costs for transport and the market tax (why actually, for a market on an otherwise basically empty planet?) as well.
 
This will set the ore prices realistically, the item prices too and the PVP destruction will be an appropriate money / resource sink. No need to grief players with painful crashing penalty. Repairing a hauler is already painful enough, especially when you compare it with a PVP XS Cube. I'm sure that may players will quit DU if they have to replace all elements on their ships over and over again, just because of crashes.

Next step, remove the stupid buy bots where people are selling honeycombs to for example, or at least, set all buy prices that low that no more profit is possible. Of course you need to think about some quanta generating mechanism after doing this.
 
This probably would also render mining automation unnecessary as there will be a valid marked for people specialized in mining. I'd be happy to buy ore if I could sell the products with a small profit in turn. This may finally trigger the other niches you were hoping for, protection service providers for miner / hauler etc.
 
Just my two cents, I'm happy to read your opinions about this.