DarkHorizon

I know this is going over my head right now since I haven't played EVE long enough and I'm also ignoring the premise behind the movie War Games, but let me humor this from an ignorant perspective. That sounds like a bad thing from a game developers perspective. So, we all want to win, do we not? If loosing is your thing, blaze your own trail but me, I like winning. Everybody uninstalls the game and therefore wins. Dual Universe is shut down. NovaQuark (theoretically) goes out of business. People loose their jobs. JC's hopes and dreams are destroyed, or at the very least put on hold. None of this sounds good! I've also read some stories about how the game sometimes leaks over into real life and... well, you're doing all of this so you can 'win' in some video game?

Quick point of personnel privilege... - DSA Huh, so someone who made some money comes across a job they don't like dealing with, therefore they purchase the time of someone that likes dealing with that problem, and exchanges their time for money. Sounds kinda like capitalism to me... Those people with the DAC's found people with the blueprints and materials, both sides traded for the things that they wanted all supply and demand like, and went on their merry way. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I think 'capitalism'? Oh, and that whole going from needing 100 people to 10, it's kind of like how farming changed with the advent of technology and the ability to specialize your trade. Food, water, shelter, once you've accounted for the basics, people can afford to branch out. I have space drugs, you have money. I have an exotic alien body, you have money. I have a heat ray, you have a heck of a lot of money (see above flag). People have done worse things for money, much, much worse things that I can't describe on this forum. Your moral implementations aren't as big as they seem. as mentioned previously, Slavary. Someones whos choices are stop playing the game or work for some.. leaving the soul with little to no choice, which is degrading. Not to mention it doesnt benifit any1 if they do stop playing, in the long run. It's a callous model that favours making money rather than immersve game play. like i get that everyone would rather play for free, which makes these Dac the only thing worth.. well anything!! which is why its so broken Slavery won't even be much of an issue in DU. Find something you like and go after it. Someone forces you into submission, log off and play something else for a half hour then log back in. If they don't get bored, respawn and try to avoid those players/org. If you don't have a choice in what you're doing in the game, then are you even playing the game? DAC's are only worth as much value as people give them, if they are worthless (see PLEX) then is it pay2win? See capitalism which I mentioned in reply to the first quote. Do you have any suggestions on what to replace the current subscription / DAC scheme (which sounds fitting in the context of the topic) with? If people pay once then never again, the game will die quicker than it would with a subscription. If they included a premium shop then they would need to keep coming up with new gear (and thus less time spent on the core game) for the shop to keep the money coming in. Maybe in those three months you will have put in enough work to utilize DAC's and resources on the market to actually continue your subscription free of charge. Don't cut yourself short, but nobody is keeping you here either... Game development is fun. Something tells me that the team was just a little too optimistic on that initial schedule though. Oh well, I mean, it's not the first time a set schedule for something has ever been pushed back now right? I'm not saying that making money is the worst thing in the world. As an American, I for one would know that making money is pretty nice. You can buy what you want, travel wherever, enjoy a eight ounce medium steak dinner with fries that don't need ketchup. I like seeing the fruits of my labor. For NovaQuark, that means a game people are interested in playing, a technology successfully implemented into a game which allows that technology to be implemented elsewhere, game designers and developers that get to explore their passions and do what they love... ...So yeah, being a money maker is at least somewhat important here. Since EVE and 50k players is constantly being brought up in the context of this thread, I'm assuming we're talking about concurrent players as represented on the linked website. Since that website updates every half hour by the looks of it, I'm assuming this is players online at any given moment, not any larger metric like day, week, month, etc. Sure, 50,000 unique accounts (unique accounts, not people) might not be much but you're looking through a fairly narrow lens. Consider all the people that might have an account, but just aren't playing at that moment. You can probably step foot in that universe and not meet the same person again for a fair while. There's lots you can do with 50,000 players. Spread them out over a hundred systems, that would be five-hundred players each. Say five planets makes a hundred players per planet. Might not sound like a lot but a hundred people don't even need to be working together to make something fun happen on that one planet. Zooming back out again, that's 500 unique planets and a lot of space in-between. What can you do with all that? And we're not just talking about the same 50k players either, folks are constantly logging in and out, waking up, going to bed, returning from work, leaving for lunch, wiping the babies bottom and so-forth. Again, too narrow of a perspective here folks. EVE is dead, yet they've been alive for over 15 years? Okay, what would you consider not dead? Also, DU isn't your typical shooter. Send unto me these people with their straw hats and pitchforks, I wait for stuff like this! To further this, NQ is only sticking to cosmetics because anything more than that would be pay2win, contrary to the argument that the OP is making where DAC's are concerned. Buying say a weapon that's 10% better with stat xyz for example, now you have a leg up on every other player that doesn't have that weapon, pay2win in it's simplest form, which is why we're sticking to cosmetics. Oh lord, we're getting emotion involved? Okay I'm done, last quote then I'm out. If you're going to inject your emotion into this, well I don't know what you're expecting, but emotion makes people irrational. That underlined bit right there is what the person you were replying to in that quote was referring to. Your condescending nature isn't winning you friends or changing minds.

Weekly Update - January 13th - 2020 Three rescues were made this test, that's 42 rescues for Alpha 2 and 56 rescues overall. ---------- On Friday evening I had heard a distress call from @Driktheviking who, for real life reasons, ran out of fuel on their trip to Sinnen. Lucky for them, I was active on the DU Discord and saw their message. While I hadn't decided to participate in the test (sacrilege, I know!) due to other DU related activities, this proved to be just the push needed. With the rest of the team either offline, not responding, or not as close as I was, I decided to set out with fuel on hand. Having gone to bed earlier in Europe, and nearing Midnight in middle America, I flew the entire way and refueled Dirk's tanks before retiring myself for the night, and considered rescue 54 a lock. Rescue 55 proved a bit interesting where various problems had presented themselves throughout the process. Respawning the day after at the north pole of Alioth, @Melvin requested a rescue to return him to one of his constructs floating up in space. Since this construct was still whiten Alioths gravity, this presented a minor technical problem which required a retrofitting of the rescue craft being used thanks to me committing a mathematical rounding error. We landed back at base to refit and this is where problems started occurring. I won't go into any detail about these issues in particular, but it was enough for Melvin to summon a squad-mate of theirs to pick them up. After a bit of bug testing by all three of us, I had a small list of things to submit to support by the tests end. Haunty set out from Alioth to assist @Develon who ended up stuck in space a little over 100 SU from Alioth. Their refueling wrapped up rescue 56. ---------- Minor progress was made on the fuel transporter this go around, alpha 3 being most of the reasoning but my lack of creativity the other. Both side rows of fuel tanks have been removed since I don't yet know how I want to integrate those into the construct. The more I think about it the more I'm considering splitting this construct up into a handful of different types. The smallest variant retains only the bridge and top level small construct bay. It's purpose simply being the transport of the smaller construct and a minor contingent of crew. The second variant, which I have currently reverted to, is a compressed version of the fuel transport I initially intended to design. Capable of carrying half the fuel of the extended version, this is a lighter dual purpose craft made to serve multiple light to a single medium craft. Since this variant still features the small construct bay up top, an alternate will also be created which either removes this bay outright (and henceforth becomes the first outlined variant above), or serves as additional fuel storage. The expanded version I initially intended to create, again, doubles the fuel storage of the compacted variant and is intended to serve small fleets or a light warship. I think further major work will be put on hold until Alpha 3 comes out, which I'm being led to believe shouldn't be long now. For the time being, all that's really being done is adding elements, I'm fairly content with the hull design as is and don't anticipate too many changes going forward for now. The bridge looks plain yet modest, all it needs now is coloring, a bit of fancy Lua and some more buttons to press, a lot more! Now, if I was allowed to publicly say what I thought the future held, this would probably be a bit longer, but since I'm not sure if I'm allowed to discuss such, I'll just leave it off the table until then. You'll probably get further details news once more Alpha 3 news is publicly available. ---------- That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

Yes, as a matter of fact we're always hiring. If you're looking to join, feel free to scroll through the positions we have currently available, then both fill out the google forum in the description tab on the community site, and submit an application.

The game isn't online currently. The server is only online during specific periods and not 24/7, we actually just wrapped up our rather lengthy holiday test so @Atheos you in particular just missed testing. Don't worry, the next test will come up again on the 9th. https://www.dualthegame.com/en/server-status/

50 Rescues - Weekly Update - December 30th - 2019 8 rescues were made over the past eleven days since holiday testing began on the 19th. That makes 39 rescues since Alpha 2 started, and 53 rescues since Alpha 1. We hit our late goal of rounding out 2019 with 50 recorded rescues which, in my opinion, is pretty darn incredible. We're only a small team of do-gooders helping people out in the testing phase. Having come this far off of people getting stuck out in deep space, burning up on re-entry (haven't had a lot of these rescues surprisingly), or simply being re-spawned somewhere they shouldn't have and needing a lift to more familiar territory. For the most part, these random or unexpected accidents are just a small start. I think after PVP comes out we'll be seeing a lot more requests for assistance. Don't worry folks, we'll be there. ---------- As for rescues, @Armedwithwings was our first rescue of the test by Haunty with a simple pickup on Alioth and a return to their base and a lock on rescue 46. I would take care of rescues 47 and 48. A recently placed structure at a NQ designated respawn point proved useful when @ilodev sent out a call for help. I flew over and we were just about to take off again when @RJ respawned as well. After hearing their stories about how they were both doing their respective thing before a bug got in the way of their activities and respawned them, I dropped both off at their desired points on Alioth. Rok would pick up @Brahmnz the very next day at the same spot. Ardes provided @BaileyVandenbroek with some fuel and building advice. No doubt it proved useful and scored rescue 50. On Christmas day Ardes would meet up with @Jack_Blade who crashed underwater. Sounds like someones soft water landing didn't go as expected, luckily Christmas miracles do come true. While on Symeon, Rok assisted @vihalvor with a repair and rescue 52. Finally, rescue 53 happened out in space near Symeon where Rok supplied @Protius with some fuel and netted rescue 53. --------- No major updates on my end. My new hardware didn't exactly play nice in the days after the previous update. Without boring you with the detail, everything culminated in the corruption of about 2 terabytes worth of video recordings I've done of my testing since alpha 1. I'm recovering what I can but I'll just try and be positive and think it no big loss. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

If you use xsplit gamecaster for recording and streaming your gaming footage, they got a promotion out right now, feel free to check it out if you haven't already. I think the only way you'll beable to get this is through their newsletter. If you're already signed up, check your email, search 'Xsplit". If you're not signed up, consider doing so and you might get an email. The promotion should be wrapping up sometime in the new year so you should have at least the next two weeks assured. https://www.xsplit.com/blog/claim-your-founders-license-now-for-free-xsplit-gamecaster-for-life 'Free' is my second favorite word for all you wondering.

Weekly Update - December 16th Four rescues were made during the past test, that makes 31 rescues for Alpha 2 and 45 overall. ---------- @maxamized started out strong and notched his first rescue early Friday morning by running some scrap out to @Reaper07 on Alioth. @Dr Rhubarb also scored their first rescue after 283 days in the organization. A lack of being in the right place at the right time both in-game and in real life made his first rescue so elusive. Nonetheless, he was able to aid @Context with what our logs say is a "full ship repair". Not sure how big, but I hope the service was appreciated! Haunty came to @Erquilenne's aid on Sicari with a resupply of fuel on Sicari. Finally, maxamized rounded out the rescues this period with another fuel run to @TheMaGoth on Alioth. The first three rescues were notably in a span of only six hours, more or less with me being totally stuck at work thanks to a change in scheduling. I will say that I was quite happy to turn up during my lunch hour to see the team had handled themselves well during my absence. While this is more or less all individual work, I hope that this is a trend that can continue into the future as the organization and team grows and develops. ---------- This is another short and frank update since it's late in the day for me and I wasn't able to attend testing over the weekend due to some conflicts between my old and new hardware (think it's RAM), hopefully that will be resolved soon though! That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

Tutoring in general is not something that has been or is currently being considered as it currently isn't in the organizations purview. Maybe for some dedicated organization or group with a lot of members, but not us. We will teach members the basics of Dual Universe, should they be new, along with the ins and outs of our organization. Aside from that, in the future I will also be adding an additional page to my website consisting of best practices to observe so your risk of needing our services are greatly lessened. I know what you're thinking about that last part, we're just like any real life emergency service provider. Nice to have, but something you don't want to need.

Was bored, so I took some notes of all the curious and interesting stuff I heard during the podcast in the latest news update. If you don't want to listen through the whole hour and forty-six minutes, feel free to read everything I skimmed off and enjoy. Also, feel free to post or message me if you got something I should add to the OP. Here's a quick rundown on what I got. PVP Social Features Piloting Revamp Industry Changes Surface Gathering Territory Units Visual improvements UI Roadmap Update Player Questions NDA Lift PVP === CVC is on track for January. First version of CVC: Large -temporary- arena in space only Will be expanded to atmospheres, then the entire game world. More versions in the future? Pillars of CVC: Lock+Target - operating at long range, one way of dealing with lag Destruction - piece by piece, physical holes Multi-crew - No battleships controlled by one person Future Improvements to CVC: Repair Units - Rebuild your ship at 'last snapshot', Shipyards Separation between PVP space and safe zones. Construct vs Avatar: If a player is hiding behind a wall and you shoot the wall, the player will die because of the blast radius. Explicit player targeting will come later (if needed). Social Features === Some features may be coming sooner. Legates: Legates will have the right to decide who should do what in an organization. A voting system for Legates You can have other organizations among Legates Someone in an organization can be chosen as a representative - A Super Legate Ownership: Everything in the game has an owner. Will be expanded to individual items in the player's inventory. An engine belonging to a specific player can be held in another player's inventory. New filters will be applicable. Organizations can now own constructs. Players can formally trade and transfer construct rights between each other and organizations. Partial revamp of RDMS: New types of rights introduced Legates will have rights to manage an organizations RDMS Three specific groups: Actors: Groups of people put together to define people. Miners, pilots, etc Rights: Construct based, territory-based, item-based, and more. Tags: Ability to tag items, constructs, territories, etc, to target a policy Chat system being worked on. A solution will be made for people in organizations that are non-testers. Piloting Revamp === All changes will be given a dedicated dev blog, this is just some of them Wings will be able to cause torque Script generation in control units redone Flight with mouse Autoconfig script will need to be run on A3 release "G" will trigger gears without the need for scripting. Cruise control will control your ship with velocity instead of thrust Different 'mode' Easier to control ship Easier for new players in space, more feedback, easier to understand what you're doing Not a 'better way' Balancing Space engines unbalanced, very overpowered Rocket booster fuel cost and materials adjusted Player specialization will start to increase Industry Changes === New Modes: Maintain - Indy linked to out container, will attempt to keep a number set of whatever the unit is building (always maintaining a set 30 ore then stopping) Set Number - Indy will make a specific number of parts, then stop. Recipes revamped, will now make sense, parts will have actual names, "burner", "case housing", etc Ore distribution altered New Specialized Indy Units: Glass, metal, etc New Indy designs, animations soon. Surface Gathering === Extension of existing game play Collect surface resources, fairly low value Resources may, depending on where they are, but not always regenerate Intended to be a more casual experience and help new players Rocks, crystals, trees Initial seeding will be done, then more refined over time New Tool: Surface Gathering Tool Walk up to a surface element, activate the tool, charge up, gather resource Territory Units === Making a comeback Who has rights to mine, build, etc Visual improvements === Space lighting 'too dark' Nebula added to brighten things Will be able to see other ships at a distance in space UI === Not all UI elements will be changed in A3, all however will be improved over time. Entire revamp planned for more consistent interfaces Roadmap Update === Consolidation and stabilization will be focused on after A3 Some beta features may be postponed New things will still be added User Experience Ensuring things work well Information provided when the player needs it Onboarding process further polished Beta 2 Need to introduce features really important to coherence for all gameplay pillars Release will be an acknowledgment of the maturation of the game, not necessarily addressing more issues. This was done with the unannounced 'pre-alpha' stage. Fast Travel Options: Visit a place once, unlock a 'fast travel' option. Planets moved closer together. Speed limit increased. Other ideas open to player feedback Planet Revamp: Exploring in DU gives a sense of wonder. Well underway. Destined for alpha 3 but was pushed back. Biome design, more realistic textures. How things look today are still considered placeholders. Ongoing effort. The geometry of planets will not be changed after the beta, no wipe, no regeneration. It will be the final version of where mountains, forests are, etc. Mining: Bigger variety of mining veins. From mega veins over multiple territories, to tiny pebbles, regular nodes, etc. Territory Warfare: Design not completely set. Claim enough territories around a territory you own, one in the center becomes a 'temporary safe zone'. Destroy the territory unit to claim it for your own. Evolution of combat V2. Expanded to the whole system, not just the PVP arena. Mission System: Nothing more than a player given quest system allowing players or orgs to design missions for others to complete for rewards. Will help address the need for things for new players to do, mine ore for an organization, etc. Exploring 'NPC type' missions that only new players can do (TBD). Release and Post Release: An indication of what NQ wants for release with some features coming after release. Some features might be ready earlier. Player-owned markets were pushed back due to challenges; what happens if you store your market in your inventory, destruction occurs, having player owned markets be in PVP areas or not. Energy management will come with specific challenges. Create groups of people who are not parts of the same organization to work, play, fight together. Player Questions === Will Beta be feature complete: What is 'feature complete'? It's really hard to say for a game like DU. What do we need to make a release ready game? We have our priorities for release. As company size increases, we'll be able to do more things. Things will get better the more successes occur for the game. Will gameplay look much different after release from alpha? Crafting times, recipes, talent costs, space station placement, restrictions, and so on. When will we see these changes before release: Balancing things will always be occurring, new things will always be here to fix for changes to old features and after introducing new ones. As much balance will be pushed as needed to keep the health of the game where it needs to be. We try not to revisit things that we consider are 'in a good state'. How many features we need vs how many we want. When there is a feature that is pretty good or where it needs to be, great, let's shelve it and work on other features that need help. Loopback if we need to. Preception of less communication in NQ since Kickstarter ended: It's been busy, the team hasn't exactly been happy with this lack of communication. Dev diaries reintroduced, would like to do one every month, but we need to gather high enough quality footage for these videos, this is why we introduced the podcasts, we're still trying to find the tone and type of content for podcasts, but the idea was to have a forum where we can speak to the community, talk about the game, give them an inside look at what we're doing, give them access to the developers. We've had a great reception, this is something we'd like to do more frequently. Hopefully all this we've been putting out to answer more questions from the community. We have a second podcast, we're planning an AMA, all to reinitiate that communication. Hopefully, this is something we'll be doing in the next few months as we head into another incredible year. Maybe as a reassurance, we spend quite a bit of time reading the forums, maybe we don't respond always, but when we think about new features and are balancing things, we spend quite a lot of time on the forums seeing what you're thinking and saying. As often as we can, we make changes to act positively to what you're saying. Our ticket system is carefully monitored and various things are given priorities where everything will be handled at some point. The problem is the limit of how much we can do in a given time so sometimes it might take a lot of time to fix something you think would be easy to fix, that's not the problem. The problem is other things need to be done before this because we've judged there are more needing. Think of it as a hospital, you deal with the most urgent first so even though you are in pain, you're not going to die, you're not first. Not just on the forums, we also spend time reading YouTube and Discord, something I can say and I'm going to give them credit, we have a team of community managers who are advocates for the players inside the company. They are extremely vocal about making sure the community and its concerns are heard, and you can be assured they have your best interests at heart. NQ-Nomad is one of them, he works on this podcast. I want to thank them and close this podcast by thanking the community for helping us move forward and for their support. We put that in every video and communication, we want you to know that we mean it and its not just a gimmick. This is something we all believe in, starting with JC and that culture of 'community first'. The community is our most precious asset as what this game and vision are based on, and this is distilled to all employees at NovaQuark. Nothing pleases me more than reading Discord on release days. Sometimes the feedback is good, sometimes bad, but as someone who works on the game, when players get their hands on what you've been working on and just break it instantly, we expect that, I just love reading everyone talking about the features and things I've had my hands on for a while. More community questions will be answered later in the second podcast along with the AMA. NDA Lift === Will come next year when the game is ready, closer to early March after A3 is released. We need to make sure people outside the community are ready to enter the game. Stabilizing everything, improving user experience. These new players won't spend as much time as Alpha players understanding the development process and will just jump in and judge the game by its current state. Need to polish performance, visuals, improve onboarding, etc. This needs to happen before beta which creates a hard limit. We hope to be able to do this in March but it is hard to say if we will be able to meet this deadline.

Another one man org? Oh well, what's one more grain of salt in the salt heap...

Weekly Update - December 2nd Five rescues were made this test, this is the new highest number of rescues made in one session since breaking four on the week of October the 14th. This brings our total to 27 rescues for Alpha 2, and 41 rescues overall! With only a month to go, only nine more rescues until we crack 50 total, which I think is a very achievable number to cap off 2019! I'm not asking you guys to crash into the moon so we can get some arbitrary number, or am I? --------- The first rescue of this test was also one of our newest members of the team! While on my usual watch I had spotted @Rok in the 911 channel in the middle of his first unsanctioned refueling mission. After assisting @FU3GO out in the black sea near Madis, we had a bit of discussion and I brought up the organization which he promptly decided to join during the flight back home. Haunty went out for the 38th rescue to transport @archerer8791 back to their camp. I myself went out on back to back missions, first to transport @LISPYxLUNA to a far off construct, they then the followed me around as I picked up another player and dropped them off at their mining site to cap rescues 39 and 40 respectively. @Flamm made their first rescue during the Alioth Aerospace Expo which was held this weekend at Objective Driveyards base on Alioth. @Kasper_DU was supplied with a fair 2000L of fuel. ---------- In the downtime I put in a fair bit of work on the medium hauler over the course of this test. The single person 'bubble' cockpit was replaced with a three person bridge. Mind you're head since headspace is somewhat limited. This combined with the cockpits distance from the windows in favor of a viewing port to the ground necessitated lowering the windows, so feel free to either crouch, or go out to the launching bay if you want a good upward viewing angle. This is somewhat by design given more or less the function over form utilitarian feel that I'm starting to go for. A new crew compartment is situated in-between the bridge and launch bay with seats for a tight group of twenty with ample leg room unlike most real life coach flights! Aside from a couple of windows into the launching bay, doors in and out of either the bridge or bay, and some screens which I'll put to future use, nothing all that special here. The voxels didn't exactly turn out as clean as I'd like, but the game is still a work in progress. Finally, as the test was wrapping up, I painted the entire front section black, in line with the small transport that the hauler was designed to carry in its bay. Of special note, on Sunday, I had a small stroke of genius. Normally, if the game is having an issue and you end up getting respawned, it's at the north pole of Alioth. It's here where I've positioned what I like to think of as a storm shelter of sorts, in particular I was thinking of a blizzard given the environment. Aside from some signage that details out a few things and a couple of fuel tanks for those who'd like to donate fuel, a second floor was added with accommodations to make it a sort of living space and less gloomy. A bed, a desk, a TV with no reception, and a keyboard with an attached screen with a few words on it's display. No facilities, if you gotta go, go outside and don't stink up the place. Exposed roof access is available giving you views of the scenery and a great place to watch for our rescue team on those crystal clear nights. Above all this shelter serves as a means for other people to call on us for transport to some location on Alioth. It's one of those 'nice to haves that you never want to use' sort of thing, so if you get stuck up in the snowy white, you know who to call! ---------- I hear that the Alioth Areospace Expo was quite the thing. It sucks that I missed it because those pictures that were taken of the event look quite great, hopefully I can attend and run around next year. I wasn't entirely inclined to stop by because the last event that was held, the DICE race to the moon and back, lets just say my computer wasn't up to spec to handle it. So, in spite of this, I may or may not have purchased me a ryzen 37x and gigabyte x570 for today, cyber Monday. I should have the two parts in time before the next test which I'm sure NQ is keen for feedback on. Before you say anything, no, I didn't make this purchase because of the event. It's something I've had on my mind since earlier this year, finally pulled the trigger on the main two components. Cant wait! --------- Finally, I wrapped up work on the website and have pushed it to the public. It's mostly the same thing aside from a few additions of various design elements, and some new odds and ends like our mission, a manifesto, and a charter on the About Us page, the new Sponsors page, some solid stats and additional stories of survival on our Stats & Stories page, and added more of Eyes & Ears history to its Our History page. The Index page has been condensed down to lower the amount of scrolling needed and as a matter of fact, I did that as a part of the overhaul in general. Paragraphs were split up into blocks to increase readability and breakdown walls of paragraphs. Aside from a bit of rewording of some other phrases throughout the site, that should about cover everything major. I might push out a few smaller things but those would be largely inconsequential overall. The banner image at the top I'm still looking at. It's not as much of a work in progress as before, it's actually something I could publish right now, but its something I'm still thinking about. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

That's where you're wrong, alien creatures have always been a part of your story, muwhahahah. Also, I get the inkling that this topic should be locked, or is it open to discussion?

Weekly Update - Nov 25th One rescue was made this test, that's 22 rescues for Alpha 2, and 36 overall. Annabella made the fourth (27, 33, 35, 36) and final rescue of their career on Saturday. @Sigtyr 's construct had a breakdown near one of the markets, after making some repairs they were back in business again. We wish them all the luck outside of Dual Universe. ---------- Bugs, don't you hate them? What should have been a simple trip from Alioth to Sicari where one round trip could have been completed in a gaming session turned into a day long excursion. I can't go into detail about the bugs but lets just say I had to make three trips instead of one. Not the best experience, but what can I say, it's alpha. The rest of the time was spent on design elements around the fuel hauler. A bit of color and new materials were added to it's largely white canvas of a hull. Couldn't figure out how to make it visually distinctive from the small transport that can dock inside of it so I opted to go with a somewhat similar color layout. I'll work on it a bit more next week and we'll see how that turns out. I've been really leaning into the gallery for some inspiration to jump start this brain of mine but for the past few weeks, it just isn't happening. I'm thinking about taking some adventure over the test this long holiday weekend (at least for us americans), but for now, the drought persists. ---------- Finally, work on updating the website is wrapping up. All that remains is interlinking all the pages together, some touch-ups, spellchecking everything (if you spot anything, let me know!), then finally having my team preview it to gather their suggestions for any additions before publishing it live. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

For the love of his holiness Lord JC (praise be!) please don't quote an entire post. So I'm writing about a hypothetical battle I participated in last night, and give a play-by-play of everything that happened. "I'm flying out of the mothership in my fighter and right out of the gate, two guys get melted, my BFF accidentally presses the eject button, a squad-mate gets EMP'ed which sends him full throttle (how exactly does this work?) head on into another enemy, our miners which returned at the worst possible time get destroyed by a black hole torpedo, and our kamikaze team gets hacked and explodes still inside the launch bay, all before I can get my first shot lined up. ..." I go into paragraphs on top of paragraphs of detail and the post is probably twelve feet long by the time I'm done. Then you come along and you shamelessly quote the entire thing from start to finish. First off, I and probably half the forum collectively facepalm. You've basically duplicated my twelve foot post which is a lot of unnecessary scrolling that I doubt most will be fond of. It's also not the best forum etiquette. Additionally, how is the OP or other readers supposed to know what you're talking about? Is it something specific, or is it generally the whole thing? If it was the whole thing, was the quote really needed to begin with? Having to figure out what you're referencing can make it difficult to reply back and keep discussion moving. If you're going to quote an entire post and make references to multiple specific parts, don't be afraid to quote specific sections and respond to each one after the other. Post-start, Quote, response, quote, response, quote, response, etc... post-end. Having multiple quotes in your single post doesn't make it bad or hard to read so don't be afraid to do this. Same thing if you're quoting multiple people in a topic, try not to break up what could have been one post, into multiple posts so you can reply to multiple peoples quotes. You'll also probably, hopefully, get the attention of a forum mod who will either ask you to cut it down or will do it for you. Oh, and don't forget to paragraph. No one likes a wall of text, nor do we want to paste your text into notepad and paragraph it so we don't strain our eyes so much. Yes, I do resort to this when the situation calls. Anyways, I just wanted to make this public. I know this is the internet and all, but lets not make things harder than they need to be. The real world is already hard enough. Thanks.

Weekly Update - Nov 11th Two rescues were made this test, that's 21 rescues for Alpha 2 and 35 overall! I took off on Friday evening to transport @Kasper_DU from the North Pole to a marketplace where they were subsequently picked up by their organization. Having quickly fulfilled the request and needing no further assistance, I returned home and marked down rescue 33. Annabella secured the second rescue as the test was ending. Lowly space traveler @Redneckwombat got stuck in the black void between Lacobus on their way to Alioth due to computer problems. With some real world technical support and a fuel resupply, Anna helped the player fix a problem for them both in, and out of the test environment. That's what I call a team player, and a lock on rescue 34. ---------- Not a whole lot happened this test on my side of things. Work was mostly done on the fuel transporter which to me doesn't feel like much progress was made, but I'll let you be the judge of that. Starting out with the main feature being the raising of the landing platform in the docking bay allowed for some additional room for fuel storage in the storage deck. Seven medium space tanks and six medium atmospheric tanks were added while the large tanks and their carrying cages were raised higher up where the ceiling used to be. I threw on some screens by each tank, hopefully sooner or later I can implement some proper Lua gauges but that will require a bit of coding. I'll also have a master gauge that will combine all the fuel tanks for the construct on one screen. This will help make things more at a glance instead of needing to whip out your tool and check each tank individually. For those of you that have never looked into it or implemented someone else's code, Lua can up your game a fair bit so I'd strongly suggest at least looking into it! Container storage space that was formerly at the back of the constructs fuel bay is extended to the front of the docking bay and only a short walk from the bridge. The bridge itself is currently designed to seat only a single person with full ~200 degree view from side to side as well as ~30 degrees down and ~80 degrees up. I might just expand this head and neck of sorts to more of a wide bridge section for a small three to four person crew that's more or less the width of the craft. Texture was added to the floors while depth was added to the now four voxel thick walls around the windows. A bit of black and white contrast was added to the boarders around the windows and along the baseboards meanwhile some lighting elements were either tucked into the walls or extended over walkways for optimal brightness. It was here that I had realized that I didn't have a lot of design skill so I went out and had a look around at what people had created in times past for a bit of personal inspiration. While I still believe in function over form, I'm trying to come up with some utilitarian design ideas but just not coming up with any at the moment. I'll have to look around for some real life examples, perhaps that can kick something into action. Perhaps instead of voxels, more elements? ---------- With all the work on the interior, the exterior hull got very little love. What I did get done, however, was mounting some engines, vertical ones in particular. With 55 medium plus 4 large tanks, an awful bit of fuel will require an awful dozen engines or so. Aside from two large engines, several medium ones were also placed on either flank of the craft with some initial and rudimentary support structure for one. Final placement is of course up for debate as they don't in any way appear structurally sound so I might just lower their placement and design around it. ---------- Finally as far as the Lua front goes, aside from fuel tank gauges, I'm planning on also implementing @Melvin 's artificial horizon script which I sadly didn't get to play with since I was too engrossed in design. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

I get to be a heritic, whoooooooooo!!! Consider me very willing to buy tickets to see what unfolds when two religious organizations meet in-game.

Weekly Update - Nov 4th Apologies for the delay in my usual weekly update. A combination of real life work and a poor mood on Monday and Tuesday respectively restrained me from my usual posting. Four rescues during this testing period raises our Alpha 2 count up to 19 and our total rescues to 33. Haunty carried out the first two rescues to kickoff Friday. The first being a fuel run to the new spaceman @Emyrs1701 who encountered a few problems on their way back from Teoma and ran out of fuel. A two hour journey into the black void was all it took before they were on their way back home. With a fancy jetpack strapped to their back, players can effortlessly EVA around or in-between constructs, or just float off aimlessly into space as one @sadmandono accidentally did. Haunty was able to pick them up a few hours after their previous rescue and expedite a return to their craft. This concluded the days rescues 30 and 31. A mishap on Sunday afternoon found myself picking up @Madrummer after they also got separated from their construct in space. With the position I found them in on Alioth in relation to their construct all the way on the other side of the planet, I took an easier half orbital route around Alioth and expended a minimal amount of fuel to fly the short 2 SU distance where a successful recovery was made to conclude rescue 32. Finally, as the test was wrapping up on Monday morning, Annabella assisted a new player who got trapped in space (yes, this is possible) on a friends construct. After providing some more technical assistance, they were able to respawn back on Alioth, and so capped off rescue 33. ----- On the second of this month, @Haunty claimed 6th place in a race hosted by the DICE organization in his construct named "Scrambulance" among . Congratulations for the great showing! This race started and ended on Alioth, and featured a checkpoint where racers had to land in a designated zone to get a secret number before returning back to the finish line to claim their place in the rankings. Reading in a correct secret number would cement their position among the pack of twenty. An incorrect number on the other hand... nobody knows. Three additional prizes were given out: The best looking ship which was a Halloween themed human skull created by @helvetian. The best crash at the start / finish line was awarded to @Grimmethy. A random prize was given out to @Dhara. Congrats to everyone who was involved. The success of this event excites me greatly for the future. ----- Aside from all this, I did put a small dent in my medium fuel transport after a bit of thoughtfulness. With some ingenuity I've been able to boost the fuel carrying capacity and even add on some storage room to boot. This particular construct, as mentioned in a previous post, has been sitting largely unfinished for months now, it's really about time I start working on it. Still batting around an idea for that large fuel transporter I was talking about a few posts ago. I can't wait to start working on it. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

I'm assuming this is german, but please post in english please in keeping with the rules of the forums.

Weekly Update - Oct 28th This will be a relatively thin update compared to past updates. No new rescues were made and aside from resource extracting I didn't do anything worth discussing. Most of this past test was done in preparation for this coming weeks test. The main spectacle as you all know will be the upcoming DICE race, scheduled for November 2nd. I wasn't able to complete as much as I had hoped to but I suppose it will have to do. As far as the future is concerned, I've floated the idea for another team meeting at some point during the next test, both in-game and through Discord. Our previous meeting we had on October fifth went well and I've already implemented some suggestions that were pushed forward by the team. Some of these changes will be previewed in our next agenda while a few new things will come up including: The upcoming DICE Race A preview of the changes to the logo that was pushed during the previous meeting A list of values held by our organization Ideas for a PDF to distribute to those we help and post publicly in the forums This is of course preliminary and will be expanded upon as the week progresses. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

Weekly Update - Oct 14th 4 rescues during one testing weekend. This is so far the most rescues we've made over any one testing phase which brings our Alpha 2 total up to 15 and our total rescues to 29. This is also a somewhat special event seeing as we have now surpassed our number of rescues made during the Alpha 1 stage, 14. Congratulations to all members of our team who have taken part in helping people in the testing process. While our impact may be small, we sincerely hope it's meaningful. Now, lets get on with those rescues! ---------- Haunty started out Friday morning flying alongside @WhiteMEat in assisting them move two XS constructs from Teoma to Madis on a lengthy three hour journey. These constructs WhiteMEat described as "priceless" made the journey safe and sound to their destination which completed rescue 25. @Annabella marked their first recorded rescue on Saturday when @Rabbyte overshot his destination, the planet Symeon. One fuel run later, rescue 26 was completed and you can view their feedback included further down the post. Later that day and quietly beside myself, I got a call for help in general chat by @mghtyred after they had run out of fuel away from home. Fifteen minutes later they were on their way. Finally on Sunday I had assisted @Phyzic who, after encountering a sudden problem six kilometers above ground, ejected and found themselves suddenly separated from everything they had created since they had started testing. There's a saying around the Dual Universe Discord, you can always tell who is new to the testing experience, with elements stacked on elements, Phyzic proved no different. Not being outfitted for hovering in low orbit, we had to return to Base Alpha at District 1 to refit for two vertical engines and stow some additional fuel. We flew up to where the construct was and while some might think that the hard part was done, not quite! The way the small rescue vessel is designed is so that a fuel bay door and a rear crew door automatically close once the construct detects no surface a short distance beneath it, think of it as a safety measure against jumpers... Having not foreseen this ahead of time since previous times players have just rode on top, with no way to open up the doors from the cockpit unless I exited and performed some acrobatics which surely would send us both plummeting, we elected to land while I coded this oversight into oblivion. With doors that now open from the cockpit, Phyzic was able to make a short leap to his construct and maneuver it safely to the ground which rounded out the test and our 29th rescue. ---------- Here's the feedback that was obtained over the course of this last test! ---------- Outside of rescues, much of this test was spent looking at code. With the assistance of a private individual, a few minor yet very useful improvements were made to the small rescue craft. The starboard side of the craft features dual screens which sport an animated GIF of the Eyes & Ears banner (thanks again @Geo!). To increase the sense of role-play, this banner can be toggled to an alert styled animation designed by @Spiridon with the press of a key-combo. - Flashing lights warning - A bit more work was required to transfer this from a single sign element to two split screens of comparable size, but I think the noticeable definition upgrade is worth it in the end. Vertically positioned engines can be used to easily give constructs vertical take-off and landing capability as opposed to needing a long stretch of runway to takeoff and land, or enough brakes to stop on a dime. While very handy, they can act like driving a car with a missing gas cap and waste precious fuel which is not only expensive, but can cut down on critical operating range. With the help of the same individual, the status of VTOL engines are now displayed on the HUD! I'm hoping to have something similar to this show the state of gears, doors, and even flashing lights on the hulls exterior to give it more of that emergency response look. All of this will come in due time. Speaking of the HUD, I scraped up some code off the DU Discord and after some tinkering, all my fuel gauges are off to one side, while everything else is off to the other side. Orderliness demands it! I can't wait to see what other possibilities in Lua await us for the future. I've seen some of the things people are working on, both in person and through shared pictures and videos. It's all very much exciting. ---------- And finally wrapping things up, a group contacted me during the test about a potential future partnership. Things are still shifting around but I can't wait to see what they bring to the table. No details for now so keep an ear to the ground! That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

Weekly Update - Oct 7th With one rescue made over the course of this recent test, Eyes & Ears has secured its 25th rescue. Perhaps it was luck that more rescues didn't need to be made this weekend! Due to a bit of admittedly poor planning on my part, a meeting that was intended for the test prior was held over the course of this test where our members availability was more conducive to allow us all to meet at one place in-game and at the same time at our base in District 1. Our agenda (link) which was initially focused on only a few topics that I expected to take no more than 15 minutes quickly expanded and ended up taking over an hour in-between questions and what I think was some productive discussion about various topics. I ended up getting some good, actionable feedback which I will be working on over the course of time as my empty time allows. I'm already bubbling with ideas and have even written some of the good ones down for future work. Among some of the changes or additions you can expect: A slightly modified look to our current logo and banner in favor of something a touch more recognizable with our real world counterparts. A few updates to our website: The 'About Us' page will see the introduction of a manifesto, charter, and a list of values held by Eyes & Ears. This may get an entirely separate page, I will be discussing things further with my team. Our Mission will be expanded upon. A PDF file which we will distribute to those who call upon us with best practices so they need not call us again, or at the very least, as frequently! Additional graphics in our Description tab on the community website More media created from with in Eyes & Ears @Spiridon has offered us his expertise Finally, after gathering input, our website itself will be undergoing some minor changes. With a focus on speed and responsiveness, I dialed back some features of my website like parallax images (archive) in favor of static ones like which you see in our current design. These features and more will be returning in a future iteration as all members that I had interviewed said that they were more than happy to wait a second or two longer (in my testing) for more design elements over the purely static website of today and will announce when these changes roll out. Encouraged with this meeting, I'm already planning a second and already have a list of things I want to ask in my head. ---------- @Ardes refueled a dried up Novean with a quick spot of fuel on the far side of Alioth where civilization is perhaps more sparse. With this Sunday rescue being the only interesting activity aside from the meeting, coding took up the greater bulk of the rest of testing. One of our members in collaboration with a partner cooked up some LUA that allows us to switch between two images at the press of a single button. For Eyes & Ears this purpose is quite clear. It allows us to alternate our banner image between an emergency and non-emergency state. If only I could share this with you all! Flashing lights are next on the menu. ---------- Three new members were added in an unprecedented time frame over the course of the test! A big welcome to: @Annabella - Rescuer @JackTricolor - Rescuer, Dispatch, Supplies Manager @maxamized - Rescuer, Pilot JackTricolor receives a small bit of praise for having joined only a day prior to our meeting. By all accounts he stumbled into our meeting in voice chat even though he was not on our schedule and immediately started participating. I like this get-up-and-go so a round of applause for them. ---------- Always open to content suggestions as usual. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

Weekly Update - Sept 30th No rescues were made this test so that allowed me to work more on ship design. The small (core) craft that I mentioned previously, it will have a medium (core) mothership that also serves as a bulk fuel transport with over... 600L of fuel storage? I think it was 20 medium tanks and 2 large tanks apiece for both space and atmospheric fuel, so if you know the numbers, you do the math. I added some small fuel tanks because round numbers are nice. This craft was originally devised in Alpha 1 testing as I was looking into future game play of larger ships needing resupply where three small tanks and half a medium simply wouldn't do. After the original concept was created and I realized I had a large empty upper deck that I didn't know what to do with, I decided to turn it into a storage space to launch and stow the smaller rescue craft mentioned in last weeks test. This of course increased the size considerably, but I feel like it will prove useful further down the line, especially in more crowded areas and cities. I'm also considering a second version of this craft which is simply the one deck for fuel and maybe a small living quarters. After recoloring the entire craft with a base white, I took to more real life inspiration for my design. On the back left and right third of the local fire trucks I noticed upward diagonal patterns in a yellow/red banded color. With an easy, flat backside on my construct, it was a logical place to start. While I decided to invert with the bands converging downwards instead of upwards, I may change this in the future but for the sake of different yet familiar, I'm sticking with it. With this out of the way, I decided to do some work on the sides with a red trimmed Z stripe that is present on various emergency craft. Since we're dealing with space, it's an added spot for illumination and a glass covering. Prior to adding lights, I pondered just leaving a gap exposing the internally alternating space and atmospheric fuel tanks. The jury is still out on this as to which I like more so I'm open to community input. Inspiration: 1 2 3 Given the width of the small rescue craft in the upper deck, the construct is divided into two separate decks; the upper being wider and slightly taller, while the lower is narrower from the front and lower. With the doors underneath the bridge, both aligned to the center, and the top being non applicable to design since it serves as the small constructs service entrance, the construct is broken up into eight zones. Stern, lower/upper port and starboard sides, left and right bow sections, and the 'neck' area between the bridge and upper decks hull. With the rear and lower starboard (soon port) faces featuring designs, I'll be working more on the remaining faces and further working on the interior. ---------- The entire construct for the most part is very heavily in its initial design phase. From there I'll be working on creating enough fuel to fill all the tanks (donations always accepted!) so I know how much in the way of engines I need unless I actually decide to whip out a calculator and math the whole thing. Then from there will come the flight testing. I'm not concerned at all about the smaller construct, if anything, I'm waiting on new elements... ... before I decide to make any serious changes to this particular construct as element size, engine power and other variables require. While the larger construct is now taking priority, I already have an idea for a space only, large (core) fuel transporter that would work in low or zero gravity environments. With no need for atmospheric engines, I can stick more fuel on board. As this idea is still way off (probably late A2 early A3), I'll leave that for a future discussion. -------- In the non-testing space, I'm hoping to have some meetings with the team this Saturday. In-game +/or over discord will be great. Of the four that have given me times, I'll be seeing two members around the same time, potentially a third if they're available. While two others will be entirely separate and most likely one on one discussions. I have yet to throw out any formal agenda, but points of discussion will again be logo additions, and some additions to the website. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this description of my activities this past test regarding Eyes & Ears. If you have any content suggestions, I'm always open to hearing them. That's all for now, until next time, fly safe everyone! - DarkHorizon

No safe space is complete without a blanket, crayons, coloring books, and stuffed animals. Out of curiosity, why the new thread?

Nice to see these changes. Will it be possible for us to use this bot on other servers for the same purpose or will it remain entirely confined to the DU discord?