Michaelc

I had a friend in another voxel building game tell me about Dual Universe around July 2014. He quit the game we played a couple weeks later. He only mentioned that DU was a voxel building game with the ability to make vehicles roll, fly etc. That itself was enough to get me excited, but as time went on and I read/reread the Dev Blogs I got and get more and more excited. 

The ability to make our own world, structures, governments, spaceships itself seems very appealing although for myself I would be happy enough designing spaceships that not only look good, but function well. I dont just want a pretty ship, I want to design ships with purpose, utility...ships to be admired. I do not subscribe to the idea that a "good design" just means pretty...that is all to common with people. A good design is one where form follows function, but the form is aesthetically pleasing. I want to see if this is something I can accomplish. 

The game seems vast, deep, serious (this is something I really admire...a serious game, not goofy stuff). I know it will take time to get it all there and that the DU project will probably never be 'complete' but just being able to craft good looking ships that function well....man for me, that is what dreams are made of.

I would like to see a player 'store' where we can make construct blueprints that can be sold for real money. It would help push people to make cool, functional stuff and it would help create some revenue for NovaQuark. 
 

Character customization and creation is something I also would like to see in DU that can be done really well to make every character unique and made to how the player would like their character created Maybe not right at the start but perhaps after or during the beta I would like to see this happen. As for giving our characters a backstory, I also would like to see that for role-playing So, for example, a player can look up another players in-game character profile and it would have some info about the players character like group/faction that they belong to, what their in-game occupation(s) and/or skills are (like trader, builder, soldier, pilot, explorer, etc.), a short biography on the players character to make them unique, and so on Of course if a player doesn't want certain things visible to other players they could choose to not make it visible Something like that could come in handy if a player wants to look for a builder to build them a spaceship or to hire players that are good pilots to fill their spaceship with for example

Character customization and creation is something I also would like to see in DU that can be done really well to make every character unique and made to how the player would like their character created Maybe not right at the start but perhaps after or during the beta I would like to see this happen. As for giving our characters a backstory, I also would like to see that for role-playing So, for example, a player can look up another players in-game character profile and it would have some info about the players character like group/faction that they belong to, what their in-game occupation(s) and/or skills are (like trader, builder, soldier, pilot, explorer, etc.), a short biography on the players character to make them unique, and so on Of course if a player doesn't want certain things visible to other players they could choose to not make it visible Something like that could come in handy if a player wants to look for a builder to build them a spaceship or to hire players that are good pilots to fill their spaceship with for example

No worry Silvligh.
Misinterpretation happens, and it's not a big deal here
 
Well... my thoughts can't be seen as an objective point of view as I'm a member of the team.
The only thing I could say is: if I'm part of this adventure, it's pretty much because I have felt many similar things you have described (not just you but other members too) on the forum since its opening. The Dev Team have made some impressive progress in the last months, and it sometimes hard to resist sharing some news the community, even when it's clearly "not yet ready for communication"
 
And what do you mean about me being too formal ? It seemed to me I was already way less formal than many CMs on big IPs 
Is this because I always end my replies by "Best Regards" ?

As some of you know I am currently spending my time in other voxel games making spaceships. In one of the games (which is mostly 3rd person) you can customize your character with height, name, skin color, face (eyes, nose mouth etc) hair style just like many MMO's. However in the other game (mostly first person) where you can actually make constructs work there is no character customization outside of the color of the space suit you wear. 

My question is: Is there going to be reasonable character creation and customization for people who like to role play, or at the minimum like to play in a role play community as it greatly helps with immersion in game?

Also, if this IS the case and we can make unique males, females of all colors etc will there also be a UI element (that does not really need to extend past the interface) that allows for us to give a back story on our characters, their alignment like Neutral good, neutral neutral, neutral evil, Chaotic good, etc? 

If there is not going to be a character 'stat sheet' (I am thinking like pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons), will DU allow for addons like world of warcraft?

Thank you,
 
Kiklix/Alien Paragon

 

Intelligent? Where?!
 
Oh. Wait.
 
 
 
 
 
Welcome to our corner of the internet world!
 
- Lego

Welcome! Enjoy your time here among our sci-fi/gaming/anime/trashy pop culture/highly intelligent collection of lovely people! XD 

Man this is amazing. I don't know jack about scripting or lua or anything (I am a visual GUI kinda person) but I know some people who do. I hope I can get them into the game .

I have spent countless hours in another building game, sometimes months on a single project, but at the end of the day those builds do nothing but sit there and look cool (or not). The ability to make somthing that works in DU is stupidly cool. Outside of spaceships, mechs, land vehicles, we can make automated bases, defense towers, etc. I can't wait to play this game when it comes out!?

This was actually very good Even though my knowledge in Programming is very basic, I understood this pretty well The entire Scripting system that Dual Universe will have now sounds very interesting and awesome because, as a builder, I can make my creations really come to life I really liked how one person can make a DPU and trade/sell it to other players. This will open up alot of possibilities for players that are really good at scripting to create their own DPU business in the game Overall, this was very interesting and now has me really looking forward even more to the Scripting aspect of the game Keep up the great work!

(Posted Friday 18th of September 2015 on the DevBlog)     Big news! We just finished designing and implementing one of the most critical and distinguishing feature of Dual: the capability to script any construct that you make. A construct is anything that you build in the game, it can be a ship, a building, a space station, or whatever. It is a physical object, it can move, collide with stuff and potentially include hundreds of "Elements", which are operational units that you can craft or buy, and freely position inside your construct to add functionalities to it. Examples of Elements are: propulsion engines, control units (computers), doors, weapons, batteries, containers, accelerometers, radars, targeters, drone bay, elevator, and many more. The way the construct orchestrates all these Elements is through scripts, and what we call "Distributed Processing Units". Let's dive into it, and see what it can do.   Warning: The following Blog Post implies you already have some basic programming knowledge. If you don't, some parts may seem a bit obscure or difficult to understand.   This is going to be a slightly more technical and longer post than usual, but I hope people interested in the topic will find it entertaining. In any case, remember an important point: you don't need to understand anything about scripting or ship building to actually buy a ship and fly it. You actually don't even need to use a ship at all if you don't want, there are plenty of activities to do besides this in the game. It's a bit like in real life: you don't need to be a mechanics to drive a car, and some people just never drive anyway, they take a taxi. It all depends on your playing style, and what you expect from the game. But if you are interested in creating your constructs and scripting their behavior, I hope you won't be disappointed by the deepness of the gameplay experience we propose.   So, let's summarize again what a "construct" is: in Dual, you can assemble chunks of matter (stone, wood, iron, kevlar, etc...) in any way you like, a bit like in Minecraft, but instead of simple cubes, you can forge almost any shape you like. The technology behind this is called "Dual Contouring". This can be used to build the hull of a spaceship, the walls of a castle or a gigantic statue. Up to you. Attached to this inert structural skeleton, you can add some components called Elements, which are actual gameplay components that you can deploy in your construct to make it functional. In a spaceship, you need propulsion engines, fuel tanks, navigation instruments, one or several cockpits, etc. All of these are Elements. The collection of all Shapes and Elements are what constitutes a construct, which is a whole that can be moved once created and is subject to the laws of physics (for example, it falls if dropped in a gravitational field). A construct can be owned, traded, copied, etc, but this is another story we will discuss in another post. Right now we will concentrate on one particular aspect: how do you orchestrate all the Elements so that they can work together? We will take the particular viewpoint of a spaceship, which is a good way to illustrate the concepts involved, but this can apply to anything you like, including a giant spaghetti monster robot or whatnot.   In terms of game design, we could opt for an easy strategy here. If you have the required number of engines in the right direction (no matter where they are), and you check the list of instruments needed, it would "magically" fly. With this approach, all ships would fly the same. Trying to put more engines, or optimizing their position would be more or less useless. Hoping to have an AI helping with automatic navigation would be up to the engineers of Novaquark only. Fancy a new way to drive your ship? Impossible. How about the weapons system? How about drones? All this would be predefined and more or less rigidly identical for all players. That's not what we have in mind for Dual Universe. While we will provide basic templates to start with, you?ll be able to engineer your construct the way you want. Engines are real (they physically push your ship where they are, with the power they have), gravity is real, weapons have to turn and target (which also requires a targeter). If you are smarter than others, you can get the job done in a better way, get an edge in battle, or in trade by launching the new Falcon X-42 superfighter and change the balance of game combat with new tactics and possibilities. It?s not only about how you can use the predefined capabilities of ships within a predefined classical game setting, but it?s also about how you can redefine these capabilities. We call it: emergent gameplay.   Each Element is an active unit. It can do basically two things: emit "events" and execute "functions". Let's give some examples: a radar unit can emit events like "new enemy detected at (x,y,z)", a jet engine can execute a function like "set thrusting power to 45%", a weapon can execute the function "fire", etc. Technically events and functions are described a bit the same way: a name followed by parameters written between parentheses. The above examples would become something like:   enemyAt(x,y,z) setPower(45) fire()   Events are emitted spontaneously by the Element when something happens for which it has been designed to react to, and functions are services that the element can fulfill when it is asked to by some external agent. When considering a particular Element, you want to know the list of events it can emit and the list of functions it can fulfill. This is entirely defining what this Element is, from the point of view of the gameplay. We call it its "Type".
  Now, how do you orchestrate the interactions between several Elements, each emitting events and reacting to them, fulfilling functions in return, etc? The central notion we introduce here is what we call a "Distributed Processing Unit", or DPU in short. A DPU is a bit like a computer program, an orchestrator. It has several slots in which it is possible to plug Elements, and it contains a list of event handlers that can react to events emitted by the Elements plugged inside its slots. The schema below illustrate this:     Events handlers are conceptually quite simple: they are "condition => action" managers. On one side, there is a conditional filter, which is a generalization of an event from a given slot, with certain parameters set to given expected values, while other parameters can take a variable "free" value. A particular event emitted by an Element in a slot will be examined by all event handlers, and it will trigger the event handlers if the event signature matches the event handler filter.   To give an example: suppose that we have a filter like ?enemyAt(x, 42, y)?, associated to the ?radar? slot. Now the radar slot emits the event ?enemyAt(11,42,66)?. This event matched the filter and so will trigger the event handler. If the event ?enemyAt(12,13,66)? is emitted however, it will not match the filter (because 13 is not equal to 42). The schema below illustrate this point:     On the other side of an event handler is the action that the handler can trigger when the filter is matched. This is where LUA really enters the scene. The action is simply a piece of LUA code. LUA is a very simple and efficient scripting language, for which you can get many tutorials online. You can try this for a start.   Now what kind of code will you write on the LUA side? Basically anything you want, but, as you guessed, it will ultimately contain some calls to functions among those provided by the Elements plugged in the DPU slots. The syntax will be something like: "self.engine2.setPower(42)". The "self" prefix is a requirement of LUA, then comes the name of the slot, and then the name of a function available from the Element in that slot, together with its parameters between parenthesis.   That's it. That's the basics of what a DPU is and how scripting works. Let me summarize: a DPU is an orchestrator, it has several slots in which you can plug Elements. You can then define event handlers to catch events emitted by these plugged Elements, and react by executing LUA code, which includes calls to functions taken amongst the set of available functions of your plugged Elements.   To be more precise, I have to refine this picture a little bit: I talked about customizing a DPU, but exactly what DPU are we talking about? Where is it? In fact, the DPU you want to customize is stored inside a special Element called a "Control Unit". The DPU is started when you activate the Control Unit (go next to it and press the activation key). Notice that there is no problem with having several Control Units (hence, DPUs) inside the same construct, potentially all activated at the same time.   Now, the DPU inside a Control Unit is special because you'll have a GUI to freely customize it (plug stuff into the slots, define event handlers, etc). Actually, you can do even more than what I just described: you can define a set of events that your DPU is capable of emitting (event emission is done via a special LUA syntax inside your scripts). You can also define a set of functions associated to your DPU, and the corresponding LUA code that should be executed when this function is requested. If you remember, I presented the type of an Element as the set of events and functions exposed by this Element when plugged inside a DPU. Actually, the truth is that there is in fact a DPU inside each Element (albeit not a customizable one), and the events and functions of this Element are actually the events and functions of its DPU. Now to the important conclusion: it is not really Elements that you plug inside the slots of your Control Unit's customizable DPU. It is in fact DPUs. It can be the DPU of Elements, when you plug Elements, but it can be more generic or abstract DPUs. More about this now.   One particularly important "abstract" DPU is the System DPU. This DPU is capable of emitting events when keys are pressed. You almost always want to plug the System DPU, because you want to control your scripts with keystrokes bound to actions. So, typically, you will have several event handlers in your custom DPU to catch action events emitted by the System DPU. The System DPU is also capable of emitting "timeout" events when a timer is due, or at regular intervals, and many other useful functionalities.   You know enough now to script a simple spaceship controller. You need to put a least one Control Unit in the ship, and customize its DPU. Inside this DPU, you will plug the System DPU (typically in the "system" slot), plus at least 3 engines pointing upwards to lift the ship, and 2 more engines at the back of the ship to make it move forward. You need also to plug a gyro (more exactly: an inclinometer), which is an Element that provides the getPitch and getRoll functions, to know about the pitch/roll angles of your ship. And that's it. Now you set a timer with the system DPU (call the system.setTimer(0.1) function to set the update every 0.1 second) and catch the corresponding timeout event. When caught, you can then associate the LUA script that will query the gyro about the pitch/roll and use these values to correct the intensity of thrust power in your motors (using the setPower function) to stabilize the ship tilting. And of course, you will also catch the action events from the System DPU to inform your script about the direction in which the player wants to stir the ship. The exact details of how this is done in terms of control and dynamics are beyond the range of this post, but it involves simple Newtonian physics about torques and forces.   This above custom made Control Unit DPU could be seen as a black box, a ?Stabilizer?, with 7 slots (5 engines, 1 gyro and the System DPU). You can move this black box in what we call a Component DPU, so that you can sell/exchange it. Now players possessing your ?Stabilizer? can plug it in their own Control Unit DPU along with their own Elements, and then connect these Elements in the Component slots, with a simple drag and drop interface, or a smart ?autoconfigure? system, making the whole process of scripting a ship very simple for those who don?t want to put their hand on code:     The DPU system goes ways beyond this simple ship stabilization example. Weapon control, whether in FPS direct view on a jet fighter, or in tactical overall view in a battleship, will be handled with DPUs. Scripting a drone can be done with DPUs. Setting the automatic defense mechanism of your castle can be made with DPUs. Factories can be automated with DPUs, etc. It's all about orchestrating Elements and Component DPUs via scripts that react to events and execute LUA code. The user interface is also scriptable to decide what happens when the Control Unit is activated, how Elements can display their status and give access to parameters (we will probably talk about this in another blog post).   Novaquark will be providing several useful "starter" Component DPUs to start with, as well as smart autoconfigure options to handle the most basic cases. You can get a ship to fly without knowing a thing about DPUs. But, if you are interested in this aspect of the game, it will be up to you to build from there and create the most amazing control system and contraptions, win the markets or the wars with them and leave your mark in the Dual Universe history of innovation and engineering!   JC Baillie, Project Lead.

Haha, we hear you (not just me, but the team too! ).
Well... Here are one good and one bad news on the topic:
 
First the bad news.
Okay, probably not as bad as it could be, but not the best you can expect either:
While we make constant and regular progress there are still too many low-level features we can't discuss in detail for now.
And if it's just to say - for example - "Hey! we are working on the planetary engine, including spherical gravitational field and procedural generation of landscape right now!" for several months, this is not enough content to call it "Community Updates". At some point, yes, we definitely want to make community updates. But this won't be any time soon (don't expect next month).
 
Now the good news.
We don't want to keep the community completely in the dark, even this early in the project.
What we are currently working on is to publish a list of all suggestions/ideas posted on the forum since its opening, and give a clear answer from the team for each of them. The status for each suggestion/idea will be either:
Already done Already in progress Planned for Alpha phase Planned for Beta phase Planned for official release Planned for post-release Still unsure to plan it at some point Not planned at all for specific reasons (which will be explained if necessary) Expect this list to be published either in September or October
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

We will all have to team up in-game sometime when its out and collaborate on building something lol. That would be super fun I think

Welcome Lego!
 
I feel the same way. Games right now seem to be in stagnant state. The great MMO's we have played all seem to be watered down in favor of micro transaction and cute pets vs fun game play or making a game for fun.
 
I was playing a voxel building game in closed beta, but that company seems to have shifted focus for a while off that game onto another and its kinda dried up. Not really playing much of anything at the moment.  I hope Dual fits that hole where I have a desire to play games. It appears to me that the people heading up Dual and working on it are passionate, intelligent and quite artistic. I have good feelings about this game.

(Posted Friday 28th of August 2015 on the DevBlog)
 


 
 
One month later
 
Everywhere Alioth grows populated. Cities and villages are born on the whole inhabitable surface. The first guerillas were born, the first battles. The first madmen greedy for power and resources established their little empires, enslaved villages, attacked isolated communities with their ships to raid them for raw materials, energy and constructs. A resistance is organized, but it is weak. As for me, I already want to leave and explore other planets, other horizons. With the five loyal pioneers who have become my friends, we were finishing our ship when I went out alone to explore a swampy area outside the circle controlled by the Novark.
 
I knew I was taking a big risk, but we needed a very effective superfuel found nowhere but in this type of viscous yellow swamp that can be emptied with one shot from the morpher.
 
And there, I discovered something unimaginable... In setting out, I had left behind a small wooden sculpture, modest but beautiful, a form of land art at the edge of a swamp. When I came back two hours later, something had changed. Another work of land art stood facing mine, almost responded to it, in a style close to mine, but more beautiful perhaps, stranger also. I know full well I was the only human being in this area. My geolocator testified to it. So who could have made this?
 
I climbed a mound and, drawing from my stone kad, I shaped five monoliths five meters tall placed in an arc, facing the swamp. I don't know why I did it. Perhaps to say: "I'm listening." As if the arc was an ear, or an open hand ready to receive something. Then I left to siphon two swamps a bit further on. The organic liquid, close to a gold-colored opaque oil, already filled two kads; the area was not very safe, it was time to go home. Out of curiosity, I returned by way of the mound. And there came a shock. Facing my arc of monoliths, another arc matched mine, just as tall, just as smooth, of five amber monoliths, closing the whole like a circle. I was going to say, of menhirs.
 
Instinctively, I went to place myself at the center. And I realized that the mirror-monoliths that had sprouted, as it were, to match mine, were made of a substance close to the kyrium constituting the Novark. A kyrium of shifting gold - and not blue like the ship's walls - but with the same fluidity, with the same effects of transparency and of discreet and blurry reflections in which you could see yourself age or grow younger, waver in a restless temporality, uncertain whether it was showing a memory or a future.
 
One by one, I observed the five monoliths, and in them I saw the forest quivering fleetingly and a beach, a swamp and some boulders, at first without understanding. Pointing the canon of my morpher at it, a note rose from the monolith, inviting, harmonic. An intelligence was there, palpable, but I didn't know what to do. Take it? Suck it up? Make an offering? In the end, I pointed my canon and offered a jet of sand at the spot where I had seen a beach, wood where the forest had briefly undulated, and stones where the monolith vibrated like a boulder. A melody was released, the monoliths slowly vanished.
 
Before me, in their place, there was the schematics of a high-performance reactor. In kyrium!* A blessing for finishing a ship and setting out to explore new planets. Something I wouldn't have been able to find anywhere in this world, so unreal was its elegance, something that evidently bore witness to a superior civilization. I had tears in my eyes. I had just communicated, with the help of matter, of my morpher, with actions, without words, with an intelligence well beyond anything I could imagine. And that intelligence had just given me a gift...
 
 
To be continued... by playing the game!
 
Written by Alain Damasio
Translated by Alexander Dickow

This is one amazing lore story! Can't wait for part 5!

With the 4th part of the short story written by Alain Damasio, new names for the Nanopack (Kadpak) and the Nanoformer (Morpher) have been revealed.
We wanted to have your opinion on the matter.
Do you like the new names? The previous ones? Or different names?
Don't hesitate to participate to the poll mentioned above!

Hi Ellegos,
 
About scripting, there will two options for players:
- If a player don't want to be bothered by this advanced aspect of construct customization, he will be able to use pre-made scripts.
- If a player feels motivated to make awesome new scripts then yes, he will have a wide array of possibilities using advanced Units, called DPU (Distributed Processing Unit). All in all we try to find a way to make the whole process more user-friendly without removing possibilities in scripting. But as you can imagine, this is quite challenging.
 
It's still a bit early to talk about it, but you can expect the next Blog Post (in a few weeks) to be on LUA script and the DPUs
 
@Saffi:
While we plan to do our best to give creativity freedom, this won't work exactly like "Turtles" in ComputerCraft (the aforementioned Minecraft Mod).
You will have scripts attached to "Units" (like the Computers, Monitors and Turtles in this mod), but the similarities stop there.
I apologize if one of my previous answer was ambiguous and generated confusion on the matter.
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

(Posted Thursday 20th of August 2015 on the DevBlog)    
  In the ship, I slept one last night, lying in my hibernacle, that I can?t stand anymore. And when the first sun rose, I activated the Novark?s lower airlock to take my first step on the planet. I took my light flightsuit, with the kadpak on my back. A technological marvel that uses Calabi-Yau manifolds, notably K3 spaces, to compress matter at ultra-high degrees of density. Once sucked inside, that matter can be taken out with whatever geometrical form one wishes. All with a mere kyrium tube somehow wrapped around my forearm, a mere canon, which can even serve as a rudimentary weapon in case of attack: the morpher.   The kadpak and morpher are the two genius ideas of the Novark?s engineers. To optimize the number of transportable humans and their future autonomy, the arkship?s engineers decided that the ship would transport neither vehicles nor industrial infrastructure, but that all the pioneers would be equipped with an ultra-compact factory at the height of technology. A nano-assembling canon capable of absorbing, carrying, and reconfiguring the molecular structure of raw materials and of then forming, by freeing them in calibrated streams, most basic objects for which you have acquired the skills. I know I can manufacture weapons, simple shapes, objects whose schemes I remember, little things for the moment, but very useful. I just need to gather raw materials and energy sources, If I can find some. On this planet, merely by exploring this forest, I know I will be able to extract stone and wood, compress them in the kadpak on my back, or in the kads attached to my belt, and they will be available for later use. It makes me euphoric.   My portable AI, which I?ve named Lia, already contains the plans for certain constructs that Aphelia entrusted to me. In simulation, I acquired theoretical skills I?m eager to put into practice. So I begin to climb the edges of the impact crater, then abruptly turned around.   A flash, like a thought-wave, a presence. On an intuition, I went back down toward the ship and decide to circle it. The kyrium walls ripple with a splendid blue. The substance?s opalescence is surprising and fascinating. I approach to touch it, to look closer. First I see my reflection, wavering, uncertain, then my helmet in the mirror of the kyrium is as though dissolved, revealing my face, which grows younger, younger, younger still until it becomes the face of a baby. I caress that child?s face and suddenly, the reflection begins to grow older at high speed, I wrinkle, wrinkle violently, become an old man who grimaces and disappears. Alarmed, I back up, an icy shudder running through my spine. When I look at the wall again, I see nothing but the charred crater behind me.   Without knowing why, I climb, scale the sides as quickly as I can and come out of the crater. I set out straight away toward the forest before me and approach a felled trunk. I point the canon and activate the morpher. The trunk disappears, sucked inside before my eyes! Lia projects the result on the visor of my helmet: 4 m3 of wood are now available in a single kad the size of a matchbox!   I hurry toward a clearing and I make a first attempt at construction. I?m able to form cubes of wood, a triangle, a half-sphere. Enough to make a bench. Not enough to build a shelter for the night. I?ll need to keep going, to find some stone, more wood, for at night, according to the briefing Lia gave me, temperatures sink to -30? C.   I pass through the forest sucking up several trees, and I find a pile of rock that I siphon up also with my morpher. Its gravitational compression capacity is just astonishing. I?ve got the equivalent of four sequoias and six tons of rock in cartridges housed in my belt! The worst part is that I don?t even feel their weight thanks to anti-gravity technology!   I took up position on a mound from which I had 360 degree visibility. A little lake was shining down below. And I started to build, with great spurts from the morpher.   To be completely honest, that evening, as the light dwindled, I felt as though I was playing that fantastic old cube game from the 2010s that consisted of exploiting the environment. Except that it was true. And that I could do other things besides cubes on cubes! Beams, arcs, spheres, domes, chairs even. Still very rudimentary, because I didn?t have the necessary skills on this first days of discovery.   But after a week of exploration by foot, I had succeeded in fully coding the construct of a chalet for the night, with a stone space for the chimney and enough wood supply to feed it! I was an authentic trapper. All I needed to do was activate the construct plan with the necessary materials stored in my kads, and the chalet assembled itself all by itself before my eyes.   To eat, I had managed to extract fruit and vegetables, many of this sort of potato found in forests under roots and that can be cooked over a fire.   I met my first pioneer on the third day. Then many others as I changed location and took time to activate my market unit. I was thereby able to trade my chalet construct with built-in chimney for weapons and tools to dig and mine for metals.   With a group of twenty pioneers, we established a small village at the foot of the mountains. We set up our own political system, an enlightened anarchy in which something must be given each day to the community to be able to use one?s constructs. And in which our food and surplus raw materials are shared. Our goal is to gather enough materials and skills and to trade enough constructs with the outside world, while also coding some ourselves, in order to build our exploratory ship in which we could all live. For the moment, some of us use balloons or small hover vehicles to explore the planet. One of them left the area protected by the Novark and was shot down, nobody knows by who or by what! He reappeared near the Novark thanks to the Resurrection Node, a sort of quantum duplication of bodies. Since that incident, we are developing a territorial security system to avert attacks.   And we try to gather energy through solar farms and yellow trees native to Alioth which have a sap resembling a solar fuel, and which I can suck into our kadpaks and then pour back into our reservoirs.     ... to be continued   Written by Alain Damasio Translated by Alexander Dickow

(Posted Thursday 13th of August 2015 on the DevBlog)    
A week after my first awakening, a crane removed me from my nest and set my hibernacle on the bare floor of the immense hibernatory. I don?t know how I got out of it. How long did it take? Just imagine a 10,000-year-old man getting out of his ice back and you?ll have a fairly faithful image of what I did. I?ve never learned how many pioneers had gotten out before me. Like my own hibernacle, theirs was put away in its nest, empty. I was the only one teetering on two ridiculously weak legs ? alone with Aphelia?s rigid voice talking to me by bone conduction.   ?The threshold necessary for human colonization of the planet has been exceeded. The arkship?s vertical landing process is initiated. Sohan, I strongly recommend you strap yourself into one of the alcoves provided for this purpose.?   I saw shapes exiting airlocks and running toward the alcoves, just before the light wavers and the artificial gravity starts to go horribly haywire.   There?s a furious roar of propelled gas; the ship starts to vibrate to the depths of its cabin; hibernacles come unhooked and smash to the ground like marble tombs five meters from me. The gravity is suddenly colossal. My blood turns to lead, my vertebrae are compacted and crush my disks; I?m pinned to the ground and am clumsily trying to strap my hips when a second thrust, subtler, completely reverses the gravity and launches me out of the alcove, floating toward the top of the hangar, twenty meters up. Time stops for ten seconds or so; I hear voices calling to each other, ?hang on,? ?the handgrips,? ?watch that impact,? ?it?s going to punch right through.?   There?s still strictly no visibility, and we concentrate absolutely on the sensations of gravity ? and on sound. The impact is hardly more violent than a bus slamming on the breaks to avoid a stroller. I remember Aphelia?s words:   ?The Novark was designed in kyrium, a very high-resistance material, graviton-absorbent; that is, able to handle any type of brutal deceleration for the vessel and its passengers.?   No kidding. Three times, I bounce between the roof and the wall as an ultra-shrill metallic noise rips through space. The impression of a gigantic, kilometer-long nail being driven into a lintel of pure stone by an even more colossal hammer.   That?s more or less what it is, actually. The arkship was programmed to punch vertically through the planet?s surface and deeply embed itself, so as to become a giant tower that would overlook the landscape and act as a permanent landmark for us, the pioneers. By planting itself so deeply into the ground, the arkship can collect the geothermic energy that will power it. By reaching so high into the sky, it is destined to become the absolute beacon of our new civilization.   ?If you wish to explore your new environment, I recommend you ascend to the top of the vessel to admire the view? whispered Aphelia, a good bit less neutral than her voice ought to be.   There?s something schizophrenic, even bipolar about this AI. Depending on whether she?s addressing you or the phantom crew, whether she?s handling the ship or coaching you, she adopts a different tone and a different vocabulary. It?s not just that she?s adapting, that she manipulates you to push you to your optimum mental and physical health ? which I accept quite willingly ? she seems to be pursuing a greater, more secret goal, which is not just a matter of a successful colonization or our survival. Something else is at work in her that I can?t seem to understand or articulate.   Ascending the ship is in itself a journey of initiation. The natural logic of a horizontal architecture constantly needs to be tipped on its side, vertically. The ordinary hallways present themselves to me as vertical shafts. The airlocks are trapdoors. Passing over them without paying attention sets off a sensor that opens the ground under your feet. It?s like a platform game. Treacherous, incoherent at times. By scaling ladders, climbing carefully, exploring the spaces; with the help of anti-gravity elevators, I at last come right up close to the final promontory that tokens the ship?s summit. The last vertical stretch is barely thirty meters, except that it has to be crossed hand-over-hand, by hauling yourself up on a cable. Flightsuit zipped up, helmet oxygenated, I climb meter by meter, at the extreme limit of my so very fragile present capacities. With the bizarre, unpleasant intuition that I?m being watched. That this unspoken test is like the final assessment, provoked by Aphelia to measure my aptitude to leave the ship and become the pioneer I?m supposed to be. So I hang on and I don?t look down.   At the end of my struggle, I push open a heavy mechanical airlock and hoist myself onto the terrace. A gust of wind nearly sweeps me away; I reel and find my footing. The terrace is the size of a basketball court. Flat and without a guardrail, the vertigo, at this height, which I evaluate as several hundreds of meters, is prodigious. The air swirls as though carrying a transparent soot. Facing me, the peaks of a mountain chain, orange and cream-colored, cast two shadows. At their feet, fluid blue forests and these sorts of bright lakes sparkle under the light of double suns, one of which has very nearly set.   Trembling, I advance on a footbridge with railings that extends well beyond the edge of the terrace and, if you turn around, makes visible the sides of the ship and the enormous crater the impact of landing caused.   So this is kyrium? Its substance seems to flow, a form of moving glass, supple and solid, which with the walls? thickness, after the fashion of a body of water, takes on deep blue tones. I?d like to touch it. Maybe I?ll be able to when I?ll be on the ground?   Checking each of the footbridges extending star-like into the air all around the terrace, I can admire the ship?s staggering architecture, designed in flight to function horizontally and, when it lands on a planet, to change into a blend of control tower, defense tower, and scientific observatory, and semaphore, maybe? The upending of spaces, whose function changes according to whether they are lying flat or standing up, borders on genius. I am at the top of a technological totem pole.   That?s not what?s important, however, for me. What?s important is for the arkship, under the supervision of the AI, to have the technological means to protect our area of exploration within a radius of several kilometers around the ship, preventing raids and attacks, internal or external, so that we, the pioneers, can quickly establish a self-protected community. Beyond that, we shall enter the risky territory in which we?ll have to be able to build and set up our own defense system, collective or individual, secure our energy sources, and form bonds of alliance and diplomacy so as to be able to call for reinforcements if hell, too human or extraterrestrial, comes knocking at the door. Hard to predict the degree of paranoia that will develop among us. For my part, I want to take a gamble on the sunny face of mankind, bet on trust, acceptance, and consideration. During the simulation, Aphelia nonetheless explained to me how to duplicate the Novark?s force field defense shields on a small scale. Always good to know.   On the horizon, the first sun sets while lighting up lenticular clouds that could be funnel clouds. Summits covered in blue snow catch its last rays. It?s not exactly like on Earth; the geometry and the colors are inhuman; it?s nevertheless familiar and suitable enough. Certain planets, Aphelia told me, would be very unsettling for us. This one offers points of reference. I?m able to take off my helmet and breathe an over-oxygenated air that makes me a little drunk. The temperature is warm, the gravity a bit lighter than on Earth; that?ll make my movements easier ? when I will have really recovered my muscles, hidden beneath my now well-hydrated skin.       ... to be continued   Written by Alain Damasio Translated by Alexander Dickow

We will all have to team up in-game sometime when its out and collaborate on building something lol. That would be super fun I think

whats a game without opposition?  i will see how ur puny alliance will deal with my creations [insert evil laughter].

Errata:
The community poll will be for next week, as the new names will appear in the 4th part of the short story

Hi everyone!
 
We're glad you like Part2 as much as Part1!
 
Part3 is coming this week, most probably Thursday.
A community poll about new names for the nanopack and the nanoformer will come along with it.
And there will probably be also a new music track coming the day after!
 
@Comrademoco:
What Sohan Decker is experiencing in the short story is basically what members in the Alpha Team (players having access to the Alpha version of the game) will be supposed to experience. Lore-wise speaking, the Alpha version of the game will be considered as a simulation. Pioneers of the Alpha Team will go through while not fully awaken from their cryosleep (a way to explain why many features won't be included yet in the alpha version: a simulation is never the "real deal" ).
 
Best regards,
Nyzaltar.

I'm with Michaelc on this. We'll all go further working together than we will separately or in small groups.

(Posted Friday 7th of August 2015 on the DevBlog)
 


 
 
"Defrosting the ocular region?"
 
A sensation of warmth on my eyes, of melting eyelids? Opening one?s eyes is the easiest thing in the world to do, even tetraplegics do it. Still, I feel like I?m lifting a 280-kilo rusted mechanical shutter with each eyelash. I take in the shock of the light. It?s just the light from the K?l helmet stuck to my eyes. Still wedged in my hibernacle, by way of the curved screen, I wander through the passageways, pass through an airlock, cross the empty lobby and enter the control room, whose bay opens onto an enormous planet, orange and blue, riddled with craters scrolling by at top speed. I?d like someone to stop spinning the globe, it?s making me nauseous.
 
?Show me where I am??
 
A zoom through the walls. Vague SF church atmosphere. The gray rays of a metal hive. Hexagonal alveolae for maybe a hundred meters, by twenty meters high. With corpses inside. White corpses, more or less thawed out. The camera pans and switches without warning to a high-angle shot. A sarcophagus marked with the name ?Sohan Decker.? I suddenly see myself from above. My legs are bones covered with a rag of flesh. Knees jutting out. Hips and ribs sticking out, navel twisted up like a t-shirt left in the snow for too long, that creaks if you shake it, Adam?s apple. My face I can?t see because of the helmet. Nothing human anymore. I am a sack of stiff flesh, a freeze-dried packet, forgotten in a Russian freezer.
 
?Do you recognize yourself??
 
?Am I really alive? Or is it just my brain that?s alive??
 
?With accelerated rehydration, you will recover your ideal weight in one week. And a passable face, with hair growing back. Your muscle tone will return through electrostimulation. You will soon be able to walk somewhat. Have I reassured you? Your hormone levels show a fairly marked increase in anxiety.?
 
???
 
?If it will calm you down, your neuronal network is being very effectively redeployed. Your identity, your speech, your emotional and social skills are operational.?
 
Abruptly I start to bawl like I?ve never bawled in my life. A massive sadness, without a source, horrible. My lungs crumple up like tracing paper. Breathing rips me apart.
 
?According to the psychological tests from the simulator, you are an explorer, Sohan.?
 
?Stop saying Sohan the way She did! Stop talking like Her! You?re not Stella!!?
 
?Do you desire a change in vocal register? We can offer you the voice of your mother, your brother, seven of your Terran friends, or a star of your choice. Do you have a preference??
 
?Go fuck yourself! I want a metallic voice, cold, neutral, a robot voice. A voice that says what you are, ?Aphelia.? That doesn?t lie!?
 
?I have not been programmed to lie, if I may be so bold. At least, not to my knowledge??
 
The simulation has begun. I found myself at the top of a mound, facing hills of tall grasses, rustling with stellar wind, as far as the eye could see. The air was tangible and lashed my cheeks. Turning around, I found a desert of pink sand at my back, descending in a gentle slope toward an ocean. I was at the edge of two biotopes. I could suck up the sand and compact it. I instinctively approached the ocean. How long did the simulation last? An hour? A day? A week? Impossible to say. I lost consciousness several times, as if my body was powering down by itself under the overload of data to assimilate. And I was still incredibly cold. I felt my blood circulating more and more easily; it didn?t soothe anything, though. It even made it worse. With each diastole, I had the impression that the liquid nitrogen went on a little merry-go-round ride through my organs before coming back to be pumped. Drinking an ice cold can on a high-altitude terrace, in the middle of winter, when you?re hoping for a hot tea.
 
But the simulation was the only piece of good news since I left hibernation. It forced me to find my footing in my mind. It showed me a possible future, without Stella, exiled at the end of the galaxy, yet alive, still alive and with the hope of encountering human beings, of breaking my solitude. Of facing the insane challenge of rebuilding humanity far from Earth, far from the cradle where our miracle had been born.
 
The simulation didn?t show me what I would be capable of doing when I hauled myself out of the hibernacle. It had the intelligence to show me the world in which I would be able to live in a few months, if everything went well. A world in which I would be able to build my house, help construct a city, to exploit the planet?s resources, sell, buy, trade, communicate, share. A world in which I would be able to choose the political system in which I wanted to live, in which I would have my own ship for exploring planets, in which I would be able to protect, if needed, my territory, with weapons. A pioneer?s world in which utopia was at last possible and would be contingent on me, on my way of helping others, too, of welcoming Earth?s exiles, who would arrive in ever greater waves.
 
The exploration of unknown planets would offer a new challenge, unique in mankind?s history, living with maximal risk, ceaselessly bordered by the necessity of survival ? the other pioneers? attitude was still undecidable, impossible to predict, certainly ? nonetheless, I sensed that after what we had lived through, the responsibility of bearing humanity to a place where it could still stand upright, create and think, love and support one another, would produce a new renaissance. A richer, more welcoming and benevolent civilization than the one I had left, morally destroyed by the abject war to save one?s hide.
 
To build, to communicate and collaborate, to pool resources and help one another, such was the vision that I felt taking shape within me, even if it meant defending it against those aggressive and egotistical men who would want to reproduce, at the farthest reaches of the stars, the ignominies that they had committed on Earth.
 
Acquiring one skill after another, I felt my yearning and my energy return. And with the desire to leave, at last, this sarcophagus that stank of death. To set out to discover Alioth, which we continued to fly over from every angle, and upon which we spotted craters and seas, mountains and forests, a mind-boggling landscape, yet recalling Earth, leaving points of reference, reassuring footholds.
 
 
... to be continued
 
Written by Alain Damasio
Translated by Alexander Dickow