Kiklix

It's me. And no, you were not boring. It's really hard to talk about dual (why I dont post much here) until we understand how their vision plays out in the game. Once we are able to test it, see it working, then suggestions and commentary will be dialed in towards what is more achievable by their systems. When that happens the amount of things to talk about will be non stop and more fluid.

Thanks for the stream guys!

Introducing all kinds of barriers based on the pay model of the game introduces confusion to new players and it also introduces a lot of coding. Dual needs to keep this simple, just make it a subscription model at X amount per month. Everyone is on the same footing, there is no confusion and no additional coding because of tiered gameplay or anything else confusing. I really don't understand what is so hard about accepting a simple subscription model. Look, I do not say this to be abrasive, but this is simple. If you can not afford a modest monthly subscription, then you should probably be asking for more hours at work instead of playing video games, if you are a younger person...save your allowance, go mow an extra lawn a month or pick up a single evening of babysitting. There is no need to over complicate how Novaquark is compensated for their services.

Most game subscriptions are the price of a single lunch if you get something descent, 2 lunches if you get nasty food. $15.00 bucks a month for something you might possibly spend over 100 hours in is DIRT cheap for entertainment. If you can't afford the 15 bucks, cancel netflix and skip 1 lunch a month, just 1.

This! In every occasion I have seen with a company that relies on the cash shop for revenue, the future development is more about superficial fluff in the cash shop than actual development making the game better, or more content. Content and fun game play always take a back seat to the cash shop in games that use it heavily. Blizzard's WOW is the only cash shop that has ever made sense to me. It's extremely light in it's offerings and has little impact on future development.

I would love to see something like Voltron or some of the old Japanese combiners like Voltes, Combattler V, Dancouga, or even Devestator. It might be some time before stuff like this can be made, as Dual needs to get the foundational systems of the game in place, but it would be super cool! Especially if there were gnarly effects and sounds when the units come together with a solid clunk and che chee sound coupled with a powerup flash

Personally I think if we get too close to a star that the gravity should pull us in slowly in a giant spiral around the star for 5-10 minutes. All the while melting/disintegrating the ships hull and damaging the contents inside (including people) to an untimely death. My opinion on stars and black holes. RESPECT THEM!

That would be kind of cool. A way to segue from the PC client to a tablet/phone app companion. You could turn on shields, have the ship go into a stealth mode, all kinds of stuff.

I actually play these 12 hour sounds in the background when I am building spaceships in other games. It helps to create immersion which for me, feeds the creative juice.

I work freelance/contractual and I understand greately how when the times are good, they are good and when they are bad they are BAD. That being said, the price of a game sub is usually not much more than the price of 1 lunch. I understand when times are rough that 15 bucks is the difference between eating and starving but I have still found a way to pay for game subs, either through additional work, through a friend paying or through selling off CD's DVD's etc. The bottom line is that, at the end of hte day you like to get paid for your sevices, Novaquark will not be any different. MMO's have overhead, they have bills to pay as well. I say this not to be callous but just to be honest. It's not a luxury companies responsibility to offer a free product to people who do not have the means to pay for it. If Dual becomes a monthly subbed game, then I would suggest when the times are good, you pay for a year up front. People do it all day long in wow and it saves money in the long run.

One off the top of my head option would be the ships systems being RNG. For example. Lets say you have 50 elements on the hull of the ship, they could be attacked when the ship is fired at through RNG. The attack would not be a 1 shot 1 kill scenario, but lets say that element/voxel area took 25% damage, a crew could be dispatched to fix it. If that area is RNG attacked again while fixing it, the crew could take damage. The more damage that was initially done and not repaired, could mean more damage inflicted on the crew. Then there are the calculations of the hit miss ratio. Larger guns should have a higher miss ratio vs smaller vessels but do more damage. Smaller vessels should have a higher hit ratio against larger vessels, but do less damage. There are ways to balance it out, and make it fun while maintaining a doable data flow for the games calculations.

I can see the arguements from both sides and both sides have some strong points. As many pointed out though, the factor that carries the most weight is the factor that determines whether the game is playable or not. I would like to think there will still be some skill involved. For example, the turrets area of fire, or cone of fire. Lets say you have guns only at the top of your ship, and the enemy is below...you would not be able to target them. If this is how its carried out in game, then skill will still be a factor coupled with the ships design. It wont be a fire and forget type scenario. We also don't know if guns will have cool downs. Lots can be balanced to make it fun, even if its tab target/target locking gameplay.

I can't say I am the last word on ship designing, but I have made some ships in another voxel game that uses voxels slightly smaller than the ones in Dual (24.ish cm vs Duals 25cm). I will be making ships as fast as I can crank them out and place them on the market for trade or purchase. I generally try to keep designs competitive...well I like to beat the competition but not sure how that will play out yet so I can't say how expensive or how cheap they will be. If you want to get an idea of some of the stuff I have made, click on my signature to go to my twitter, browse through the pictures. I have a number of ships in there, some with interior shots. I will be doing my best to build stuff similar or superior in Dual. Note, this is not an attempt on my behalf to solicit my twitter page or anything, just trying to give you an idea of what could be possible in Dual and what we could all potentially look forward to.

Welcome. Like you, Dual seems to represent what a lot of people have been looking for in a game. I am looking for the next mmo I spend the next 10 years in. I spent my time building spaceships in Landmark (cant fly, just look really nice). I have space engineers, but I came in late and it's kind of overwhelming (the building) so I have not played it that much. Anyhow welcome aboard.

The issue is that there is some progression in the game by building a ship in game with the available tools, if you allow outside meshes to be used this system is bypassed. I work with 3D software (Cinema 4D mostly, some maya under my belt) and I can see the appeal. The issue is progression will be skipped, instead of people working from small to medium to large to capital ships, someone could just plunk down a death star...this would cause major imbalances in pvp and would essentially break the game. Secondly. The game will have an in game market where the best designs (aesthetically and functionally) will sell, allowing for a mesh import would leave those who do not know 3D programs at a disadvantage. This would not be good for fair or balanced game play.

Novaquark is making their own in house voxel engine. They are not using voxel farm, they looked into it but determined it would be better done in house. I believe somewhere on the dev blog you can read this paper on Dual Contouring ​Novaquark is made up of a very tech diverse group of people, it makes sense to me they would code their own in house voxel engine. Although complex, I don't think it's as complex as we might believe, forcing them to use a 3rd party for better results, rather it seems they will get better results doing it in house.

Based on my building in another voxel game building will be both simple and complex. Basically, it will most likely be simple to build and lay down shapes to get thigns working...but for more asthetically pleasing designs it will take more effort on your creativity. See my signature to a link to my twitter, browse through my photos and you will see some voxel spaceships. Hope this helps give you an idea.

My favrote part of that video is when JC talkes about his enthusiasm for Sci-Fi, and his background in robotics, AI, computer science etc. I think that information helps to quell some of the attacks on Novaquarks vision. Novaquark is not just some random new company, its a company made of passionate, educated people who are very good at what they do. We see it in their demanor, in their transparency, in their art, in their design and ideas. Everything is done professionally, but maintains an air of humanity. Everything they do is done with seemingly solid intent and passion.

That does look cool, although I would prefer an underwater base like Center Nepture from Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets/G-Force.

25 cm for the player voxels and 100 cm for the world voxels. The large size of the world voxels helps to reduce strain on the system and they do not need the fidelity a 25 cm voxel can provide. Dual uses "Dual Contouring" on the voxels that allows them to have curves and angled shapes. This allows for just about any kind of shape one can think of, within the limits of the 25 cm voxel size. If we are able to do in Dual, what I have done in another voxel game that uses smoothing, we will see some cool stuff in Dual. Click my signature which will take you to my twitter page, if you browse through my pictures you will see some of the spaceships I have made that potentially could also be made in Dual.

Hopefully we get a huge assortment of materials to choose from to build craft. I know we will get elements that help systems work, but I hope there are some superficial elements like beds that you can sleep in, chairs to sit in, elements to decorate and make the ship feel lived in. Space engineers ships are nice, but too sterile. I would like to see spaceships have air inside, gravity...I want to see the feeling of Firefly be possible. I want to dress down, some crummy space cowboy garb and fly my ship like that. I imagine initially we will see stuff to make ships work, but hopefully as time goes on elements are added that allow us to customize our ships to give them personality.

My signature has a bilological ship I made in a different game (dont get too excited, the ship cant fly or do anything, just sit there and look pretty). But the biological aspect is that the hull of the ship was made from an alien carapace of unfathomable strength, but there is nothing living about the ship outside of the AI that helps to run it. I think from this standpoint, we will easily be able to make biological ships in Dual, and create our own back story for them.

I have said this on other posts, but subsciption for me is the best option. It allows me to budget easily how much I am spending, it allows the developer to see a steady cash flow that they can also budget on and it helps to weed out some of the trolls. I have always (though experience) equated subscription based games as having a stronger/more serious player base and generally have more polished games. Free to play always seem like jokes to me and have never lasted for any real duration of time for me. B2P games are kind of in the middle. Seems like a serious player base, but generally slower development. I'd prefer a game that makes al ot of money (well and is clearly fun), so the developer has good reason to keep developing it so that I have something to keep coming home to for years to come. The nature of digital goods means I want to play wiht them and wear them out till I feel I got my moneys worth and don't care anymore...any less and I get that buyers remorse feeling.

Once we are in live or out of NDA (if we are asked to sign one), I might consider making tutorial videos on building if there are any difficult aspects to it, but this really is something to wait for live. We saw how many tuorials from that other game became essentially useless on live. It's not really worth the time to educate people when that information has the potential to change for a live launch. Secondly, dude to the PVP aspect of Dual. I don't know if I would want to invite everyone to know where I am if I am out of a safe zone. We'll see.

One thing to keep in mind is the foundational aspects of the game. Think of the game as a pyramid. In order for you to eventually place the capstone on the top, you need to make the rest of it first, starting with the base. There is a lot of stuff planned for Dual and Novaquark has been extremely transparent about their desires and goals, but making a game costs money. They currently employ about 25 people and are working on the foundation systems, systems that will make the game good enough for an alpha state, and good enough to entice players. This is when they will look into funding. I guess what I am trying to say is that although it does sound too good to be true, it's really not if they are able to hit their goals on their game plan. We will not see all the systems in place during alpha, some of this will come later, maybe even after an initial launch. The only reason I am saying all this is so you will be prepared on what to expect, and expect it in a realistic time line. I fully believe Novaquark will deliver on what they say they will, but it will not all come at launch. It does sound amazing and it will be fun that we are all a part of this