NQ-Nyzaltar

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.

Not mentioning "Group Finder" or "LFG" feature was intentional, as it will give an incorrect pre-established idea about how we see the feature if it's validated. Group finders nowadays (when the involved MMO has one) is almost always about gathering people based on technical parameters, not social parameters. Like in this basic example: "to enter this dungeon you need to be 5 peoples, 1 tank, 3 dps, 1 healer." This way of gathering people is completely ignoring how the players want to live this game experience: Some want just to rush the dungeons in record time to get max loot, max tokens, etc. They don't want to waste time in talking. Some want to go slow, because they are here to discover the dungeon for the first time and need advices from experienced players. Some want to go slow, just to take their time, appreciating to discuss casually on a voice chat with friends at the same time. Some are just here to complete some achievements. Some might event want to visit/explore the dungeon in a roleplay manner. Of course, not all group finders revolve around dungeons. There are other types of group finder. But the main point is, no one (from our current knowledge) take in account players expectations from this group experience. Because current group finders completely ignore the mindset in which each player gathered is in, the feature has been seen by many as toxic and socially disruptive (while it should be the other way around!). It's clear that putting together players who might have so different expectations about grouping doesn't end well a lot of time. We think that is also why so many players gave up to even try socializing in groups formed through group finder. That's why we're trying to approach the thing differently. It's a big challenge, as nobody has found the perfect solution yet. We can't say we have a viable one at the moment, but we are discussing about it. And we will try, if possible, to find a way to fix that aspect lacking in current MMOs. Having this kind of feature for the official release would be ideal, but we need to see first if it's feasible. If you think you have some ideas to shape the feature, while we have already some directions about how to design it, we're still open to any suggestion: The more brains on it, the best chance we will have to create the most solid feature on the subject! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

- State of science and existing technologies - Pre-Exodus Factions - Possible mindsets Duly noted! Thanks for the suggestions, Vylqun and Jared! @Jared: Your idea is far from being ridiculous. Believe it or not, we have started to discuss about social tools enabling players to search for similar mindsets & centers of interest in-game, to have easier ways for players to find organisations that meet their expectations. That's not exactly what you described in your suggestions, but there are a lot of similarities. And speaking of possible abuses, if such tool is implemented, this kind of information will possible to set on "private/non shared" to prevent this. However, keep in mind this social tool idea isn't validated yet, it's still in early discussion. More will be explained if the idea becomes a planned feature Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Astrophil Really interesting concepts you brought here! I will transmit those to the dev team. If they are enthousiastic about it and they think it will be feasible (technically and time-wise), I'll let you know. However, as this is something that will be implemented in later stages of developement, don't expect an answer really soon. Thanks a lot for your suggestions in any case Best regards, Nyzaltar.

As the short story has been completely released now, time to reopen this discussion: What do you think would be more helpful to start building your own player stories? - Several additional Non Player Characters as archetype references? - Developping factions existing before the Grand Exodus? - Other things? Let us know! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Thanks for your feedback Kiklix and Hylios! About being "too convenient", let me rephrase it: Does it not seem too convenient (lore-wise) that players get a blueprint directly readable/understandable by human eyes? I think there is also some misunderstanding about how players will be able to get blueprints in the game. The short story has focused on the strong points of Dual Universe, but doesn't describe this universe in an exhaustive way. There will be, of course, NPCs selling common stuff: basic blueprints, common resources and such. The rewards the player will get from exploring and communicating with the alien civilization will be rare and precious (you won't find this kind of stuff every 10 meters). About reward diversity, any other idea beside rare materials and blueprints? Best regards, Nyzaltar.

* The reward stated in the short story should be taken with a pinch of salt: - We are still in early conceptualization phase for the "rewards" players will get from this kind of interaction. - We still need to discuss internally what the possible rewards could be while pondering it with consistency and balance concerns. - For these reasons, rewards from the mysterious civilization can change drastically as game development progress. Here are some points we raise internally and we would like to know your opinion on this: - While there could be some hidden reasons, do you consider the fact to find blueprints by this manner ok? or do you find it a bit "too convenient" (lore-wise)? - For the time being, items made in kyrium are meant to be indestructible. Is it fine from your point of view? or do you think this could be an issue? - We want to make rewards earned this way very special and unique (not something that you can mine or buy to a NPC). Do you have some other ideas on the subject? Also, a few things that are not consistency issues in the Lore (consider it "works as intended" ): - Kyrium is a strange matter from which arkships are partly made of. - How to make Kyrium is a complete mystery: No colonist have any memory about the fabrication process of this material. - Kyrium is obviously found on Alioth and there's no way humans were here before the Arkship landing. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

(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

Hi everyone, Glad to know you continue to enjoy the story! Part 5 will be the last one. But there will be a surprise in it @Astrophil: 1. The portable AI is, for the time being, just for fluff. To create a portable, customizable AI isn't currently included in our roadmap. But this is an interesting idea, and if the dev team validate it, it might be a feature planned after the game official release. 2. About the morpher: As a tool used in daily tasks (building, gathering, etc), it is planned to have something a bit more interactive than a menu. There will some animations where, in first person view, you will see the the arm equiped with the morpher pointing toward the target (who might a resource prop, some ore deposit, or just a specific point in space where you want to build something. @Ellegos: Thanks a lot for the two blog posts you have written about Dual Universe! By the "juicy bits of starships", do you mean some storytelling about how is envisioned the building of starships? If it's the case, this won't be in this short story (as it mainly focus on the first steps to colonize the planet). However, we have several ideas to to give a glimpse of what we plan. It is not decided yet, but among them are the following ideas: maybe another short story, storytelling through short gameplay videos, etc. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

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!

(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

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.

No problem. We can wait until then

You're right. Throwing cars through walls wearing a super exo-skeleton suit should be declared as official sport on Alioth. Then Aphelia loses faith in humanity and shut down. What a diabolic plan to take over the arkship, you're truly evil!

Haha ... Well, we were thinking of something less massive than the "Elysium-esque" exo-skeleton: It would be practical for war, but not really for daily mundane life Indeed, what could possibly go wrong ?

Hi everyone! About the general backstory settings: It's a bit difficult to talk about it right now. It will be easier to talk about it at least when the short story will be completely published. Two parts remain (part 4 and 5) so we could start a discussion on this subject at the end of the month What we can already say: Currently we want to keep the Lore as light as possible, to avoid putting limits/restraints on fan-based short stories. When we say we aim for a player-driven experience, we mean it: we want to give as much freedom as possible on this aspect as well. However, we're totally open to your feedback. If you think more will be needed like political and or religious factions emerging right from the start in the backstory, just let us know. We have some unpolished ideas for the time being. So we don't know yet whether we will integrate them or not. On the NPC side, you can expect Mr. Decker and the AI to play a role. Maybe a few more alpha team colonists ? who knows... You can continue to give us your opinion, comments, critics for the time being and we will begin the "real" discussion in two weeks (taking into account your feedback on the matter)! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

(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

Hi Ellegos and welcome on the official forum for Dual Universe ! If you have any question, just let me know Best regards, Nyzaltar.

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.

(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

@Vylqun: Very few people knows knows the average speed for a Neutron Star, and even if they know, 100.000 to 150.000 km/s is quite impressive at first glance. So even less people would make the calculation between the nearest Neutron Star and the time it would take to reach Earth. Let's say one of them has slipped through the space surveillance system. Or maybe governments were perfectly aware that a Neutron Star was nearer than the official nearest one but didn't disclose the information immediately, fearing chaos before humanity reached a certain level of technology... who knows? @Hylios: "Once you will put a foot on Alioth, you will discover hordes of hostile aliens protected by the "Shield" spell so unfortunately your magic missiles will be useless." Private joke aside, nope, it is not planned to have magic in the game at this point. Unexplained phenomenons, yes (like the current situation with the EM Drive story: many scientists are now pretty sure it works, but they don't know yet how and why it really works ). But there won't be magic. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Astrophil and Comrademoco, For the time being, nothing more than the basic motor functions are planned for the player characters, meaning walking, running, or jumping. There might be other possibilities in the long run, but even though, a lot of features will have a higher priority. Even if the space ninjas from Warframe are cool, this is not really the kind of gameplay we envision for Dual Universe: we're currently focusing on the building and strategic aspects of the game. You will be able to do "iron man" gameplay to some extent as Jetpack is something planned for the character equipment at some point. However don't expect it to have the same manoeuvrability. For jaegers, yes, nothing should prevent you to build some giant battlemech in voxels. But it probably won't be easy Best regards, Nyzaltar.

As Windows 10 will be a classic OS when Dual Universe will be released, yes, it will be compatible Beside, as Hylios and Comrademoco have pointed out, it seems that incompatibilities are minimal regarding old softwares (nvidia drivers will be surely updated soon to be compatible with Windows 10). Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone! We are glad to see that you enjoyed the first part And thanks a lot for your feedbacks! Now, to answer the questions and comments: @Hylios: - Yes, the design of the Arkship has been changed for two reasons. One of them was it should look like something that the players could build (or something with a similar look). You can expect other artworks to be in this direction in the future - The ETA for the next part is... this week. The complete short story is already written. We plan to release one part per week and there is five parts. - There will be a bit (but not too much) of lore ingame, to give some base for further stories but keep in mind: most of the story will be made by players, as is should be in a sandbox. - Yes, we plan to let players create a written backstory for their character, like in Neverwinter or EvE Online. @Vylqun: - Indeed it's surprising that the Arkship hasn't been damaged after the impact, but the reason will be explained in a following part of the story - Indeed, from what we know nowadays, the timing of the Neutron Star doesn't fit realistically. It would take much more time than five centuries for the nearest neutron star to reach Earth. We shorten the time on purpose for two reasons: first to give more a feeling of urgency to build arkships, without seeming too much unrealistic. And second, it is particularly hard to to project ourselves far in the future to imagine our civilization. Look what we already did in one century: Humanity has made unbelievable progress in technologies. In the team, we made an imaginary timeline of technological discovery leading to the Arkship feasibility. But technical progress in reality might evolve faster than what has been imagined in Science Fiction. All in all, we thought the small inconsistency about how fast the neutron star reach Earth would be unnoticed. Apparently we were wrong @Comrademoco: Thanks for pointing the color issue on mobile version. We will fix that as soon as possible (it is planned to change colors for the mobile version to be more in line with those used for desktop version) @Astrophil: We won't put curse words in every sentence. However, it seemed logical to us to put some in appropriate circumstances: If you were waking up, feeling like you sleep in a fridge with all the uncomfortable sensations that come with it, won't you let some curse words slip? Another reason for seeing a few curse words: as you mentioned it, Dual Universe is not aimed for children or young teenagers. Therefore, it seems okay to us to have a few curse words where it seems appropriate Best regards, Nyzaltar.