FireSoul

Hey there, Noveans!

As we ramp up for the next Dual Universe update, we wanted to begin sharing information about some of the interesting new features you can look forward to with the arrival of 0.24.
 
One of the key highlights of 0.24 is the Mission system, affording the movers and shakers an opportunity to, well, move and shake their way to a wealthier DU lifestyle. And who doesn’t love the delicious sound of quanta cascading in their coffers? ?
 
OUR MISSION

In listening to player feedback, we know that players have been looking for more ways to make money. The Mission system will provide those opportunities in a number of ways that suits a wide swath of playstyles and experience.
 
The intent of Mission system is to:
 
Offer new ways for players, especially new players, to make money. Allow merchants to focus on creating goods rather than spending time traveling to markets to sell their wares. Give those who enjoy traveling more than making things a lucrative reason to take to those beautiful, wide-open skies. Create more traffic in space, hence more opportunities for pirates. Help organizations to coordinate internal work.
  The long-term goal is to enrich the Mission system with more mission types, starting with “taxi” missions, SoS, and later adding PvP and various other “formalizable” activities. For now, we’re introducing the Mission system with transport-type hauling missions.

It all starts with the Mission Panel, a dedicated dashboard tab for job and hauling missions. It is equivalent to other dashboard tabs such as the organization dashboard tab. Within the Mission Panel, you’ll find the "Job Forum" section and the "Hauling" section. Each of these contains a similar page: a home page, a search page, a creation modal, etc.

THE JOB FORUM

The Job Forum allows players to create jobs with various specifications. (Please note that the UI for the Mission system is still in progress. The images below are samples of what it will look like.)


 
The upper part of the interface lists “Aphelia” jobs, which are created by Novaquark to provide information about game events, like discovering new wreck ships, etc.
Players can inspect job details in a dedicated window and engage in a conversation with the job issuer in a mini-chat integrated to the mission.


 
You will also find Aphelia (NPC) missions that will provide new ways of making money. And, lastly, issuers can limit their missions to fellow org members only as a way to keep transactions and missions in-house.

HAULING MISSIONS

These come with formal guarantees on the rewards, collaterals, time, etc. It is tightly-coupled with the possibility to create sell orders so that you can express your intention to sell a good on a distant market and simultaneously create a transport mission to arrange transport of the goods to the said market.
The definition of a hauling mission includes:
 
Start/end point + indication if this is in PvP zone or not. Collateral (lost by the mission responder if the mission is not completed). Time limit. Reward.
The game enforces these, picking the rewards and putting collateral in escrow when the mission is created. The content of the mission is to be retrieved either from a “mission container” (a new type of container dedicated to hauling missions, think of it as a mailbox) or from a market container. It is then stored as a package with the content hidden for the mission responder. (Opening the package voids the mission and the collateral is paid.) The package can be retrieved or delivered by interacting directly with the associated container (via context-menu entries) or within a 2km range by using the controls on the interface.

Failing a mission can occur if:
 
The responder does not deliver within the given time frame (including if the package is destroyed). The package is opened by either the responder or someone else (i.e. pirates). The destruction of the destination container does not fail the mission. Instead, the mission responder can keep the package and open it without penalty; however, this means the mission cannot be completed anymore.
  CAVEAT EMPTOR

What is important to remember is that negotiations about rewards, or even the job description and purpose, are entirely declarative and non-binding. It is there as a statement, made clear with various warnings and “Are you sure?” windows.
 
There’s often an element of danger involved when doing business. For some, the lure of pulling one over on an unsuspecting stranger has an even larger allure than the money to be made. Sure, you can scam sweet, trusting little lambs for a time, but eventually you’ll be the one to pay the price. Both the Job Forum and the Mission system have the possibility to rate the interaction for the issuer and the responder. Scores between 0 and 5 are attached to players as responders or issuers of missions (both formal and jobs), which will help to identify and potentially weed out scammers.
 
YOUR FIRST MISSION STARTS HERE

Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to head over to this section of the forums to share your thoughts about this devblog. Which do you anticipate doing the most: creating missions, doing missions, or pirating missions?

Hello Noveans,
 
With release 0.23, we have introduced a long-due system to protect and manage the intellectual property rights of construct creators. This is not just a variant of the existing . Rights and Duties Management System (RDMS), which is mainly in the hands of the owner of a construct. Instead, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) system is in the hands of the creator of a construct, who might be another entity than the current owner. Let’s have a look at how it works.
 
Creators and DRM flags

When a construct is created from scratch, that is, when someone deploys a core unit, whoever deploys this core unit becomes the construct creator. This can be an organization, if the deployment is done in the name of the organization. This notion is crucial because when interacting with a construct being the creator will give you certain privileges. 
 
Note that if the creator is an organization, any legate of this organization will be considered as the creator. It’s a great way to share “creatorship” between several players and be more resilient about people not being in the game for whatever reason.
 
There are four things you might want to protect as a creator when somebody else is going to buy/use one of your constructs (with the caveat that we may add more things in the future if needed):
 
The creation of blueprints The copying of voxel structures out of the construct The edition of Lua code in Control Units The edition of HTML content in Screen Units  
However, we wanted the creator to be able to select which protection to activate or not, to give them more control, and also to allow to make a distinction between Control Units/Screen Units that might have been added after the purchase of the original construct (and which should, obviously, not be subject to any protection). So, we needed flags on elements to be able to say yes/no regarding each of the above protection abilities. That’s the purpose of  the DRM (which is a commonly used acronym for copyright protection of digital assets in the real world).
 
The DRM flag for blueprint and voxel copy protection is held by the Core Unit. Otherwise, each Control Unit and Screen Unit has its own flag.
From there, the rule for accessibility of any of the above four actions is defined by: 1. Is the player performing the action the creator? If yes, authorization is granted, if no: 2. Is the DRM flag of the corresponding element activated? If yes, authorization is NOT granted, otherwise it is.
 
Note: Historical constructs, created before the introduction of the notion of creator signature in construct (roughly around April 2020), do not have a creator. In this case, we chose to disable DRM entirely. Since there is no easy way to guess who was the creator (we can’t easily trace back the history of a construct, originating from several blueprints, etc.), we will leave it at that.

Blueprint creation and DRM management
 
How do you set the DRM flags? It is done automatically for you when you create a blueprint of the construct. By default, all DRM flags are set to “activated” on the Core Unit, all Screen Units, and all Control Units;  however, you have  a relatively hidden (because relatively dangerous) right-click menu option in “Construct/Advanced/Create Core Blueprint without right protection” that allows you to create a Core Blueprint that has no DRM flag activated, which means no protection at all. We will see below in the “use cases” section that this is not quite as useless as it sounds.
 

 
It is important to understand that the flag configuration is held by the Core Blueprint. Any construct that will be spawned from blueprints originating from the Core Blueprint will inherit the flag configuration: either all activated or all deactivated.
 
Once a construct has been created with such a blueprint (or even on the original construct if need be), the creator can still individually unflag any of the flagged elements (with the right-click menu “Advanced/Release DRM Protection”). Unflagging the Core Unit will release the DRM protection for blueprinting and voxel copying. It does not mean that anyone can now blueprint the construct, since now the owner (who is not necessarily the creator here) can use the usual RDMS restrictions on blueprint creation to define who can use this ability. In the same way, a DRM-free Control Unit is still subject to the RDMS as for who is allowed to edit the Lua inside it. But again, this is now a consideration for the owner, who is managing the RDMS, rather than the creator.
 

 
Once unflagged, a Core/Control/Screen Unit cannot be re-flagged by the creator. So, be careful when using this, it cannot be reversed.
 
Now, if the owner of a DRM protected construct decides to customize the construct and add some Control Units or Screen Units, these elements will be deployed without the DRM flag activated. In effect, it means that the owner will be free to edit them, as expected. There will be two types of Control/Screen Units in this construct then: those coming from the original DRM-protected blueprint, with their flag activated and therefore not editable, and those coming from the owner’s personal additions with no flag activated and full edition rights.

Use cases

Let’s be practical here and see some patterns of usage that we believe will be quite frequent.
 
1) The ship designer: This player/org typically intends for their constructs to be sold and fully protected. A Core Blueprint will be created with full DRM activation, and constructs made from the Blueprint originating from this Core Blueprint will be ready for sale and fully DRM-protected.


 
2) The org internal ships: Those ships are meant to be used by org members and should be created in the name of the org. A special blueprint without DRM would be issued to create ships for the org’s internal use. RDMS would play its role in managing internal org rights as usual.


 
3) Voxel library designer: By definition, selling or simply sharing a voxel library construct would imply the creation of a blueprint without DRM, otherwise the voxel copying will not be possible.

4) Special customer deal for a ship designer: It could be that the designer of a ship accepts to unlock some aspect of the DRM for a given customer. In this case, the creator will have to access the sold construct and operate on it to deactivate the flags wherever needed.

Still to Come
 
We are still missing some important features to fully cover the DRM mechanism. In particular:
 
We need to improve the way to find out who is the creator of a construct and provide an easy way to contact them. (You can currently find this info in the “Construct Information” tab of the Build Helper, but it should be easier to find.) We need a way for a creator to be able to transfer their “creatorship” to another player/org. We may need a way to separate DRM protection for blueprint and for voxel copy. We may need a way to allow the creator to activate the DRM flag, not only to deactivate it. (This means the construct should remember what was an original Control/Screen Units in the list of elements of the construct.)  
This will come in future updates. Until then, we hope you will enjoy this new addition to the game mechanics related to constructs and that, in particular, ship sellers will now be able to mass-produce and sell their creations without fear!

Want to discuss this? 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
 

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:
 
 

Hello Noveans, 
 
Time for a new update and here's the release note. Dual Universe is now in Beta1 r0.21.3 version.
 
Improvements
Improved minimap rendering performance Players are now able to share a territory with a right-click menu, for friends, organizations, nearby players or everybody [FTUE] Fixed and improved the input reminders during First Time User Experience
Gameplay Balancing/Changes
The login screen roadmap is now localized in all available languages Added a new "health warnings” disclaimer in the login screen
Crash Fix
Fixed a crash related to minimap performances
Bug Fixes
Fixed the ‘Loading rights’ query bar which was visible when looking at a foreign construct from a cockpit Updated assets for harvest rocks and fixed Natron that looked like Malachite Fixed invisible market markers on Madis Moon 2 Fixed a bug where the current core/skip tutorial was not restarted after getting out of a sandbox tutorial Fixed an exploit with Lua scripting
Known Issues
Windows certificate is not up to date. This issue will be fixed soon. This may prompt a warning message for new players in the first install. It can safely be ignored Uninstalling the game directly from Windows will leave the game’s files on the disk anyway. Please use the game's dedicated unins000.exe uninstaller in the game's directory for that. This will be fixed soon! Beta keys system to distribute codes to your friends doesn't work for existing accounts yet. This will be fixed in the coming days Numerous French and German localization issues have already been spotted and we’ll fix them as time goes by In some situations, you may not be able to place a Static Core Unit on your claimed Sanctuary Territory. An error message saying that it's too close to another construct is even displayed. It may be due to being too close to a District. Trying again from a bigger distance should solve the issue for now A random rendering crash can occur in some places because of some exhaustion of GPU/driver resource Voxel crash about disk/memory exhaustion [PvP] Slight difference between radar and 3D marker distance displays because radar uses the construct center as origin while 3D markers use the player position [SFX] Only blue fireworks may work for the moment The image upload feature is not accessible via the website and will come back soon [Disclaimer] Health warning message is only localized in English for now. It will be translated into other languages next week  
Cheers, 
Nomad

Why adopt an anti-cheat system?
It’s no secret: Cheating is prevalent in many multiplayer games. It’s an even bigger problem in a Single-Shard metaverse with PvP, like Dual Universe. Therefore, we needed to put several safety measures in place to ensure a fair game for all players. Our client anti-cheat implementation is one of these measures. The main goal of the EQU8 anti-cheat system we adopted is to prevent modification of the game client as a lot of cheats rely on these modifications in order to access hidden data, automate actions, or display extra information to the cheater. For example, a "wall hack" usually reads the other players positions in the game memory and overlays these on the game’s interface. The anti-cheat system has other roles too, but we don't want to enter into too technical details here. We’re no anti-cheat experts, especially client-side. On the other hand, EQU8 has a dedicated team working on it full time. They also gather experience from other games, so it makes sense to use their solution, which is already up and running, as well as their experience and availability to help us in that regard.  
Why using a client side solution instead of securing the Server ?
 
Client-side security is usually considered a bad thing, as the computer is controlled by the player. Indeed. In an ideal world, all controls and all security measures should be server-side. 
 
However, there are two good reasons to also use a client-side anticheat:
There are controls which are difficult to implement server-side, and which we don’t have any clever solution yet, nor the time to work on for now. For example, loading the game physics for all players at the same time, and ensuring no one is passing through walls, is nearly impossible to do in real-time. In security, there is also a notion called “in depth defense”. It acknowledges a system can never be 100% secured and thus requires several layers of security. If one fails, the second prevents further escalation.  
We know a client-side anticheat cannot be 100% bullet-proof. However, it does increase the technical requirements of any client-side attack. The better the anticheat solution is, the more skills and time are required… up to the point where the effort is not worth the gain.  This means two things: less active cheats in the game, and more time for us to identify those who fall between the cracks. Of course, it does not mean we are leaving our Server unprotected; Another reason why we delegated the client-side anticheat to an external partner is that it leaves us more time to work on the Server. And just to be clear, what we’re saying is not a challenge to attract any sort of attack here ?
 
Why EQU8?
It’s less intrusive than other, similar third-party solutions, and aims to respect players' privacy.
For example, EQU8 only gathers information when the game is running (and few personal data altogether). They also insisted to not get any personal data from us (like players emails or username); we only send an anonymous player identifier. You can check their FAQ at https://equ8.com/faq, and their privacy policy at https://equ8.com/assets/privacy.pdf for more details. It has low performance impact (actually, it’s almost imperceivable) and good reputation regarding false positives and potential crashes. The EQU8 team is very responsive and engaged. This is a big strength of theirs, and we greatly appreciate their unconditional support! The solution is very flexible and configurable, which is important because Dual Universe is a complex game that often requires specific tuning. Oh, and the most important: it detects cheaters efficiently. ?  
Launcher changes
The anti-cheat needs to install a Windows service on its first run to work properly. This requires administrator privileges, which is why the launcher requests them. This service only runs with the game. If the game is stopped, so does the service. Please also keep in mind that stopping the service on purpose triggers a kick, as it’s interpreted as a cheating attempt. The launcher currently requests administrator privileges on each launch. This is a bug which will be fixed soon. With the introduction of the anticheat, the client will refuse to start if run directly from the binary (Dual.exe). This is expected and is a technical constraint. You need to start the game from the launcher every time.  
What is authorized or forbidden
Modifying the game files is forbidden, (except for the "Game/data/lua" folder (this is the only location where you can add or modify files). Modifying the game cache is forbidden (by default it is located in the directory C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\NQ\DualUniverse\) ; Reading or modifying the game memory is forbidden. Disabling, modifying, or attempting to evade the anti-cheat in any way is forbidden. Playing at the same time with two or more accounts is authorized, but please note, that any form of automating multiple accounts is forbidden Helping someone, or driving someone, to do forbidden actions is obviously forbidden too. Discovering or knowing an issue, bug, or exploit and benefiting from it instead of reporting it to Novaquark is forbidden. Sharing accounts between different people is forbidden. Any action performed on your account is the responsibility of its owner. The Customer Support team won’t be able to help regarding any issues happening due to account sharing. The owner is responsible for any action made with the account. Trying to degrade the game performances of other players for any reason is forbidden. Creating new Lua files for debugging purposes is authorized as long as these are new files imported from in game scripts. In this case, you should put the files in the Game\data\lua\ folder to be able to import them. Using macro programs (like AutoHotKey) or similar hardware tools is authorized as long as you don’t automate gameplay. We consider gameplay as automated (and, thus, forbidden) when the macro or script:
- Takes decisions based on game feedback
- Executes actions for more than a few seconds
- Executes without any user input or when not actively playing the game.
For example, using a macro to keep a button pushed instead of maintaining it is authorized. But using a macro to send a message every hour is forbidden, especially if you are not even in front of your screen.  
What happens to cheaters ?
Our policy is to not issue automatic bans. There is always a human review when the anti-cheat system detects any unauthorized behaviour. Nonetheless, you may temporarily be kicked out of the game if the anti-cheat cannot initialize correctly. Sanctions include (at the discretion of the Novaquark team):
- Removing access to the game, temporarily or permanently (aka ban),
- In case of recurring offenses, the player may get a hardware ban (in this case, the player won’t be able to play the game with any current or future account, even if those accounts were never used for cheating).
- Plus any action required to revert any change made to the game world (removing Quantas or items, restoring constructs state, etc.).
- This list is not exhaustive and may be updated by Novaquark as the team sees fit.  
Why is it forbidden to modify Lua files or import custom DLL ?
 
We know some players or organizations have used local libraries (aka. DLLs) with great success and with good intentions. 
However, this option gives unfair advantages compared to pure in-game scripts (extra CPU capabilities, the ability to execute Internet requests or load/store data on the computer disk for example).
 
Moreover, we don't want players to massively share and use these custom libraries because it has severe security and privacy implications that we cannot control and we want to protect our players (for example, a player in an organization would need to install the organization library to use its scripts and constructs, but this library may as well read all his/her files without his/her knowledge nor consent on the disk, and send them to the author or do almost anything on the computer). Keep in mind that libraries could contain malware too. You don’t want that.
 
Finally, adding or modifying a DLL allows users to modify the game behavior in an arbitrary way, which directly leads to heavy cheating. For example, it allows access to the game’s memory and to escape the anti-cheat verification. We can't secure this at all, so player-made libraries are clearly a no-go security wise.
 
Therefore, after careful examination, we decided to forbid any modification to the game files. This restriction also includes the local Lua files as they contain security measures to ensure the game integrity and players privacy (for example, you could load a library by editing the global.lua file; this file is also responsible to make sure in-game scripts cannot read personal documents on your computer). The exception to this rule are files found in: "Game/data/lua" folder (this is the only location where you can add or modify files
 
Developers may still create new Lua files for debugging purposes if they want to (these files will be under control because global.lua is loaded first and sets up safeguards for any file loaded after itself).
 
 
Could player-made libraries be integrated after NQ’s validation ?
 
Having a process to submit, review, and integrate libraries looks good on the paper. However, code review is a tedious process. It is a lot harder than checking an image. There would be technical challenges to integrate them into the game too. Also note that we don't want to transform Lua scripts into full-fledged operating systems. They are simply supposed to be lightweight scripts, not full-fledged operating systems. ?️
 
Thus, we don't want to engage this process, at least in the near future. We simply don’t have the time or resources for this at the moment.
 
 
EQU8 is not compatible with Linux / consoles
 
Unfortunately, EQU8 does not work under Linux, even with Wine. This is due to the Windows functions it uses to protect the game’s integrity, which are different from other operating systems. This is a trade-off we had to make between having a fair game (without cheats) and compatibility.
 
Most players and games are on Windows. Thus, very few anti-cheat solutions support Linux (even less with good support). Because of this, we did not find an anticheat solution which works on Linux and suits our needs. However, please note that this decision doesn't prevent us from adding an alternative anti-cheat solution in the future, in case we decide to officially support Linux systems or consoles later on. Nothing prevents us from having a different anti-cheat for each platform. ?
 
We hope you found this FAQ about anti-cheats useful and helped to understand better why we chose EQU8.
 
Best Regards,
The Novaquark team
 
Last updated: October 5, 2020

Dear Noveans,
 
When we set out to launch our beta this summer, we also envisioned a series of major changes and improvements outside of the game. A major one was the complete redesign of the game’s website, as well as the migration to a brand new tech stack for the site’s front and back ends. We were also planning to launch several programs, such as a Content Creator program and a Recruit-a-Friend program, which relied on a new, versatile code system. That code system is also being used to grant our backers the beta invitations which are part of their Kickstarter or Alpha packs.
 
Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned, as you’ve been witnessing over the past few days (2020 strikes again...). We had to revert part of our tech migration, and postpone the move to a new authentication platform, among other things in our backend. So for the past few weeks we have been struggling to try and reconcile the new site and the code system with our legacy backend. This task has honestly been way more difficult than we had imagined. 
 
We already missed the boat when it came down to allowing you to invite your friends a week earlier, and we’ve come to announce more delays, sadly. As we approach the launch of the beta, we have to be realistic about what we’ll be able to deliver, as we had to make tough choices:

We will launch the new Dual Universe website tomorrow; it will have the most essential content and features, with some visual and quality of life improvements missing. We’ll add more content after beta.
 
The Content Creator program will be ready, using the above code system (see potential limitation below). You should be able to get the invitations included in your beta packs on day 1, though the system may not be as easy to use as we wanted. Making sure you have these codes ready is one of our top priorities (see potential limitations below). You should be able to go to the website and upload images for publishing in Dual Universe, which will go through an internal review process to ensure that they follow the game’s Code of Conduct.  
The Recruit-a-Friend program didn’t make the cut… and that sucks. We worked hard on it and we were really excited about it. The in-game content is ready, but the entitlement system isn’t. Unfortunately, we couldn’t work on all the entitlements in the limited time that we had these past few weeks.

There is a potential limitation with the code system, for both content creators and beta keys: in the next few days the codes may not be redeemable with existing accounts - only with new ones (like for the load test). We are trying to lift that limitation as soon as possible, as we know it’s not ideal. 
 
So what’s next? All these new systems, the new website, and these new programs will be constantly improved in the days and weeks to come. Our priority will be to lift the code limitation and to launch the Recruit-a-Friend program as soon as possible. We don’t want to give you a date that we may not be able to hold, but know that we are doing everything we can to make it as early as possible. 
 
Finally let’s tackle the question of “Why did we announce the Recruit-a-Friend program if it wasn’t going to be ready?” Well, that’s the point; we really thought it was going to be ready, just as when we announced the ability to invite your friends a week prior to beta. It’s disappointing, for you and for us. But we believe these programs are worth it, so we want to make them right.
 
We hope you’ll bear with us, and that you’ll be able to enjoy the Dual Universe beta in the meantime.
 
Sincerely,
The Novaquark Team
 
*Note: we unfortunately won’t be able to retrofit any recruitment that you may do between now and the official launch of the program. Recruitment will only count from the day of the launch of the program, when we can track who’s recruiting who properly.

It would be useful if construct owners could permit specific players to build only in specified zones of a construct via RDMS. This would be especially useful in, say, an apartment complex, where you could allow a resident to edit and furnish their apartment and not any other part of the complex. Construct owners wouldn't have to find workarounds like splitting it up with multiple core units, for example.

Hi everyone!
 
The new character model is an artistic re-imagining of the original design, and is one of many steps we’re taking to update the look and feel of the game. The goal of this redesign was not only to create something functional and realistic for interstellar travel, but also come up with something memorable, appealing, and instantly recognizable.
 
 
The Novaquark team.

Hello Noveans,

It’s been quite a busy month for us over here at Novaquark, with lots of important announcements and information. Did you catch everything we released recently surrounding the Beta, NDA lift, business model, our latest PvP demo, and the month-long super test? We felt that it would be a good idea to host another Twitch Q&A to get everyone on the same page, as well as give our members a chance to ask their questions once more to JC and the team.

The livestream will air on July 23rd at 11am on our Twitch channel, or you can tune in live on YouTube or Facebook. This will be our third livestream, and will be hosted by me, NQ_Naerais (aka Space Mom). I will be joined once again by NQ-Entropy and JC as they answer questions in chat. The topics of discussion will include: the Beta pricing model, PvP discussion, Lua scripting, and more!

Also keep in mind that we’ve uploaded our two previous Q&A livestreams to our YouTube channel. Click here to check out our Live Developer Q&A playlist now! We’d like to also take this opportunity to thank the community once more for their support. Let’s DU it!
 
The Novaquark team

Something like that wouldn't work, then orgs would just have their miners not officially join so they get the solo buff.
 
More people can get more work done, that's just how it goes.

Hello Noveans! 
 
As NQ-Nyzaltar said, I just joined the team here in Montreal. I'm very happy to be here, and excited to continue this amazing journey with all of you. I am quite new to the company so I do ask for a little patience while I get sorted here, I may not have all the answers right away but do know I will do my best to help make your experience with us the best it can be. 
 
A bit about my background, I've worked on quite a few games of all varieties (MMO, Table Top, Card, Collectible, Board and more) for more years than I care to admit. I'm definitely an MMO fanatic and will be spending just as much of my free time along side you (in secret ) as you do. I'm convinced I'm a cat whisperer (though the same can be said for coffee), and a sci-fi fan. 
 
I can't wait to see, share and celebrate all that you build in this amazing universe together!
 
 

Since I have been around here from the end of 2016 I might as well write a juicy introduction of myself now.
Hello!
and welcome to my minecraft youtube chan... wait wrong website.
Well that was enough cringe don´t you think?
 
Anyway. Funny story, well actually a pretty sad one when I think about it.
Remember when Alpha 2 launched? Yeah me neither cause I totally missed it.
NOW I read an email from NQ which I kinda ignored at that time where they welcomed me to the glorious launch of alpha 2.
Obviously it´s my fault there.
At least I have another 2-3 months to test it... if I have time besides my occasional work at weekends and university ofc.
But thats another story!
 
Anyway. Where were we? Yeah right I was about to introduce myself so I´ll keep that short and simple.
 
Name: FireSoul (but you can call me Simon ^^)
Gender: DID YOU JUST ASSUME...! jk
               Male
Age: 20
What brought me here: The hell of a man @Will_i_craft
Org: VMS (Vortrex Mining and Science, I know long name. Just call it VMS)
Games: Tactical Shooter such as ARMA, CSGO 
              Strategy games like Stellaris, Age of Empire, Medieval 2 TTW,...
              and of course Sandbox games like Space Engineers or Minecraft.
What I want to do ingame: Surely not mining ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, but transportation trading and marketing.
 
Thats all I have to say ladies and gents!
 
Cya in the Game or in the Forum!
 
 

To have a somewhat imersive experience in Dual Universe we definitely need to see cities. But why exactly would people create cities in DU if just use a vast amount of resources without any real benefit except for showing off?
 
Normally city planning depends on  a lot of different factors, like the environment, available resources, especially food, the condition of the ground, expected industries etc. Those are mostly things that wont work in DU. On the other hand, building cities in DU has quite a lot of disadvantages, like being target for raiders, warmongers or just griefplayers. So without any real benefit or need to create cities we will at most have very few large organization building and maintaining a city as HQ and maybe one or two trading hubs. Mostly we'll see well hidden factories and bases which are statistically placed across the planets with nearly no clustering.
 
There are two possible ways to facilitate cities. One is giving artificial benefits like production bonus or similar things, i wont advocate that as it is unrealistic and just shows a lack of creativity in the game design. The second way is giving realistic incentives. The only incentives that work on larger scales in a mmorpg are economic or security benefits or needs. Social or educational facilities can be mostly ignored (there could be University-Type elements that increase the speed of accumulating xp for the first 20% or something of the skilltree, with which organizations can cater to new players, but that wont be a real incentive for creating a city).
 
In my mind there are three mechanics which would directly create the need for clustering buildings on a small area:
 
1. Powergrid
The first suggestion is, that all functional elements (Doors, electronics etc.) require electricity. Standard, small sized elements would need a marginal amount of power so, that a small generator that can easily be installed in every ship/building is sufficient to support them. More advanced facilities like factories, Elements with strong supporting effects (something like the University for example, or greenhouses), military elements (planetary turrets, shields, sensor units ...) however should have an exponential increase of the power required. Factory units for example should require enough power, that no stacking of small generators can support them.
To support those power hungry elements players can build power plant elements which are extremely large on scale, like 64³m³. They would support buildings within a certain radius with a set amount of power and to increase that radius you could create power-relay stations. What does this do for city building? If players want to run a factory or other facilities they need to create a power plant. If a single power plant generates enough electricity to support several factories, then the economic way of action would be creating enough factories within the vicinity of a power plant to  effectively use the generated power. A large cluster of factories in turn needs military protection as it is a nice target for raiders, thus we have some kind of city growth. At the same time owners of those power plants could rent space in the effective radius for players which can afford to create a factory, but not the required power plant.
 
This can be extended to every kind of large scale element which would be nice to have in a city, for example if we want a space port in the city. The simplest way would be to just create some flat areas for ships to land on. But what about quality of life services like refuelling or rearing constructs? Those actions can take ages. If we had large scale elements like a repair Dock, which repairs damaged ships in the vicinity if activated or refuelling stations, those can save a lot of time to players. Elements like that would also require a lot of power, thus the need for a power plant in the vicinity.
 
In short, if every advanced element has a big size and a large power requirement, coupled with the need of power plants, we would by default see clusters of buildings which can be called cities.
 
2. Resources
We can see in some videos how the ground is removed with a tool, its fast, efficient and effortless. if we can mine resources in this way, then DU players will be like a big locust swarm, run across the surface of a planet, scanning and within hours mining all interesting resources. But a big influence on city-building is the need to create a permanent structure in specific places, thus mining resources should definitely not be near-instant. Optimally mining out a big underground ore vein should take years if done by hand or several months when done with elements for mining. If we have long term mining then locations get a certain economic and strategic importance. If an organization finds a large vein of a rare metal it can't just mine it and go away, it has to defend this place against other players. Thus they need to create defensive structures, which again need power plants. If you have defensive structures and power plants on a mining base and some power surplus due to it then its economic to just continue and create the needed refinery elements etc. too, which in turn leads to clusters of buildings again.
 
3. Dependencies
Similar as all functional elements require electricity there can be other dependencies which make it necessary to create several constructs at the same place. In the new content update we learn about market Bots, where resources can be sold for quanta and elements can be bought (probably very limited after crafting is implemented, but maybe some of the most basic elements can still be bought). Those Quanta and elements aren't created from void and the sold resources can't spontaneously vanish. So if someone wants to place market bots in his base, it would make sense to require a trading hub element in the vicinity. There are quite some heavy industries which are dependent on water as coolant, so some refinery elements could actually need water purification plants in the area, the same plants could be used to support greenhouses or other buildings with water. If several buildings depend on each other there is a huge potential to incline people to gather together and create cities. Especially as everyone has a limited amount of cores available.
 
########
 
I really think that those three points are absolutely necessary for a good experience in DU and will lead to some pretty interesting results.

Dual Universe is not an open world PVP game, it is an open world civilization/community building game. PVP is part of that yes, but is not the main driver in my opinion. PVP as I see it will be a means to an end wit he purpose of settling disputes if all else fails. (source: the DU website front page)
 
Now, obviously (and queue the proponents of this commenting) there will be those that just want their pewpew and so consider PVP to be the holy grail and expect PVP to be the main focus and driver for the game. I believe this will not be the case to a large extent because from what we know so far (large scale) PVP will not be as simple as jumping into a ship and raising hell.
 
Players will have access to tools that will create personal safe zones and sanctuary but those tools will be (very) expensive.

I wish people knew how this stuff would work inside a game.
You'd have to save every voxel modification with a timestamp if you wanted time travel if we're really going to add the whole Einstein stuff I ignored in school.
Also, from a gameplay perspective, "moving faster makes you time move slower" basically opens a whole can of worms of pointless problems.
If I wanted to play a physics simulator, I'd go outside.
Verdict: Just because Star Kek has it doesn't mean Dual Galaxy should.

DIY. Such things are a powerful tool and will be made by players anyway

It very awesome if we can implement Kuritho idea. Adding map only waste of resource like he say =]]

Scope-creep.
It wastes resources that could be used on more important things, like adding cat people into the game.

I hope not. Kill boards advertise that the game is all about killing. If there are kill boards then there should also be "best build" boards, exploration boards, manufacturer boards, and mining boards.
 
DU is not EVE. It should being DUing it's own thing, not making an EVE 2.0.

Being penalised for killing someone is the same as penalising a miner for getting too much ore.
 
Penalising a gameplay lifestyle is bad for any sandbox game and so would be bad for DU.

Yeah. Glad you don't get to decide about gameplay. Wouldn't even bother to play a game with such bad mechanics which only work against the Playerbase instead of creating a fun and rewarding environment

"Obsolescence" is the wrong term in this case, that refers to items that are superseded by new and improved designs. Obsolete items still work perfectly, there's just something better that can be used instead.
 
The OP seems to be talking about "wear and tear", which occurs through repeated use of a specific item, leading to it eventually breaking if it's not repaired or maintained.

I want to highlight a few key point of the building system, that I think are actually bad design choices and that are going to make the game worse (relative to its original concept of a massive openworld sandbox with emergent gameplay). This is just my opinion, so don't take it personally. 
 
Devs mentioned a safe environment where you could design and create blueprints of ships. I'm not sure if it's still planned but I want to address this anyway:
(1)A "safe-designing" environment keeps players away from the open world, less social interactions, the world feels emptier, and this lack of activity (even if it's not a total absence of activity but a reduced rate) is going to damage the game in the long run, since the game would still feel, even if by a little, worse. It's never a good idea to split or "hide" the playerbase, expecially in a game like DU and when you don't know if there'll be enough players in the first place.
(2)We know there'll be elements capable of "printing" ships. This means that you just have to design, while the building part is left to those elements. But if you let people design in a safe environment, and then you let them build automatically with elements, you'll never see players build in the open world. So I can't see those 2 features coexist.
(3)We know that you'll be able to build with a jetpack, that will give you very good mobility. I don't like this at all, since it feels a little bit like "cheating" or "creative mode", it's not immersive. I want the jetpack to be an option, but why can't scaffolding be an alternative too? Why not a grappling hook? Why not a builder-construct? That jetpack is way too strong, it provides unmatched mobility/agility and doesn't have drawbacks. 
 
MY ADVICES:
 
(1)I know there are people out there that want to design constructs, and do that only, safely, without participating in other activities. And i'm fine with that, I think everyone should be taken into account. But if you give "a better way" to do things, stay sure that everyone will do it, you'll not see a single player build in the open world. Since there are multiple safezones already, spread over the universe, I don't really think there's need for anything else. In the worse case you could be a new player, that only wants to build, that joined after release and all the safezone land is gone:  join an org, rent a land or gain enough money to buy one. This game is not about getting what you want istantly anyway, so if you need a safe place to build, work hard and get one first.
Regarding the "I live in a war zone and I want to build safely" argument, do I even have to answer? If you're so worried about getting griefed while building in the open world, just send your builders to the closest safezone.
Regarding the "I don't have the blocks, I just want to create a blueprint": just create the possibility to enter a "design mode" where people can build with unlimited "hologram blocks", that look slightly different, so that they can still design in the open world and create anything they want.
 
(2)I don't think it's a bad idea by itself to have elements print ships (that you've already designed aka built), since it's usually boring to create copies manually. I just hope that doing that manually it's still going to be an viable option, so those elements should probably be less efficient and requires more energy/resources. 
 
(3)This is something i really care about. There are people that want unlimited freedom while designing (i seriously don't get why they don't just play with a 3d modeling software) and other that want immersion. Again, I think is important to keep different approaches viable, to let everyone choose their preferred way:
-Jetpack: consume fuel, it's the best but most expensive way to build
-Scaffolding: similar to the "scaffold" block in tekkit minecraft (not sure what was the mod), there's a scaffold element in DU. It's very cheap and reusable, easy to place and remove (and maybe you can climb it like a ladder). Doesn't offer the same mobility of the jetpack but it's cheaper
-Grappling hook: i'm not sure it's possible with the Du engine (I'd guess it is), but if it is, then you have to add it to the game. It's always a lot of fun and people love it.
-more
Then, in the "skill tree" where you can specialize yourself, you can actually improve pros and cons of those methods. A specialized builder may have a very low fuel consumption on the jetpack, and be very fast, while a newbie builder (or any guy with a different specialization), may find more convenient to use scaffolding or a grappling hook as a cheaper method.
 

Cool, I like cheese.