NQ-Nyzaltar

(Posted Friday 31th of July 2015 on the DevBlog) "Sohan ?? ?? !, ;? Sohan Decker, /? ?? ? ; :? Sohan Decker. Your neuronal system is reporting initial stages of activation in the frontal lobe. Can you confirm your cerebral awakening?" ?Brrlllm?? "You have newly entered into a state of decryonization. Your body temperature is 32.4 degrees Celsius. Can you confirm the rebooting of your language center? If you understand the meaning of my words, respond ?Yes.?" ??Where?me?? ?You are in the hibernacle 6JKP-Sohan of the arkship Novark, built in 2536 by the United Nations. You are awakening from a cryogenic sleep that has lasted 9,854 years. Your semantic and factual memory is functioning at approximately 12% of its original capacity. The retrieval of your procedural memory is currently under way. Do you have questions?? ?I?m?cold? Who?s?talking?? ?I am the Artificial Intelligence system of this ship. I function by distributed processing. I am currently in conversation with 99 other awakening pioneers aboard the arkship. For you, my name is Aphelia.? ?Your voice?is familiar?? ?You chose it upon your departure from Earth. It is the resequenced voice of your fianc?e, Stella Maris.? ?Stella? Where is Stella?? ?She died in the Final Collision on August 8th, 2538. She was among the Last Terrans, those who chose to remain on Earth until the end. You chose to join the survivors. You left your solar system on a voyage through space, in hibernation until an inhabitable planet would be discovered. I was programmed to awaken you first, should such a discovery occur.? ?I can?t understand you. Talk slower?? ?You are a member of the Alpha pioneers ? those who are the most suitable to begin colonizing a planet. The moment has arrived. We have just entered the orbit of the planet Alioth, which meets the minimal parameters for human settlement. You must proceed to establish a new civilization here.? "Freezing. I?m fucking freezing. I?d like to open my eyes. They?re glued shut. Why? ...I?d like to see Stella.? ?Your physical state is acutely anemic. Your biochemical functions are currently being reestablished. Your body temperature will progressively return to 37 degrees Celsius. It will take approximately ten hours. I am going to take advantage of this to teach you the greater part of the knowledge you will need to maintain your survival on the planet. As a member of the alpha team, you must acquire the fundamental skills which will facilitate colonization. I will begin by stimulating your factual memory. Can you tell me which events you remember?? I feel like I?ve crossed Siberia on a scooter with a loose-knit pilled sweater ? and without a helmet. My skull is a block of ice. I try to move my fingers, I can?t control a thing. My neck is jammed. Everything smells like snow. I have a tube in my lungs chiming like a metal rod. I can?t believe I?m still alive. I?d just like to be a little warm, for someone to give me a blanket, to have a warm cat, yes, to feel Stella up against me. I want to cry but I?d need tears for that. Nothing but my lips move, like two pieces of wood scraping together with each syllable I manage to squeeze out of my icebox. What do I remember? Sonic weapons firing at the foot of the ship to keep the population at bay. A crowd stuck to the force fields, thousands of bodies sizzling as they strike the electric wall, and me standing on the gangway into the ship, looking for Stella and not finding her. Too many people, too many candidates, too much panic everywhere. I was going to enter the ship, everyone was pushing me. And then, I saw it, lifting my head one last time toward the horizon, thanks to the immense kite that she had borne into the sky, although among umpteen others. ?The earth is blue like an orange,? she had written on it. It?s the last I saw of the Earth. Stella?s minuscule silhouette, wrapped in her burnt-orange dress, with her blue-lagoon kite dancing against a cloudy background, amidst a hundred others that were just spam to me. I don?t know if she waved her arm. I want to believe she did. ?What do you remember?? ?Nothing.? ?Your cortical region appears to indicate otherwise.? ?I remember wars over the building of the arkships. Millions of people that weren?t able to get on. The UN having broadcast open source space travel technology to every country. All the arkships that crashed before they could take off! I remember they called it the Great Exodus. But for Stella, it was the Great Abandonment.? ?What else?? ?Thaw me out, have pity on me? I?m dying of cold?? ?I am going to connect you to a neural induction-based skill simulator. It will slowly reconfigure your past learning and activate new skills in you. You will be able to acquire only one skill at a time. I must warn you, Sohan: it is possible that the induction will provoke anamneses. Are you ready?? ?Show me the ship first. I want to see where I am.? ... to be continued Written by Alain Damasio Translated by Alexander Dicko

Hi Vylqun & Michael, No mini-games are planned yet. But I will transmit the idea to the team. We are all for social interaction so in the essence, this idea goes in the right direction. However we have to set priorities. As we have already an impressive amount of features to develop, if the idea is accepted, it will be most likely a stretch/optional goal for the crowdfunding campaign. And if the stretch goal is met, it will be most likely a feature implemented after the official release of the game. I will come back to you as soon as the team will have discussed the subject Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone. Well the discussion has become quite heated in one day. Let's cool down a bit. There's no reason to start a fight here. It's natural at this stage of the project that many interested people have a different vision of what the game could be and/or could become, mainly because there are so many things unclear right now. We will read each suggestion. However, we have also a clear vision for the game, and in the end, not everyone will love it (because that's just impossible to satisfy everybody). That being said, here are a few clarifications that could ease the discussion a bit: - When the game will be launched, there will be only one starting point, around one arkship on one planet. There might be - later - other starting points as other Arkships land on other planets. But this is just a possible idea, nothing written into stone at the moment, so it would be preferable to consider there will be only one starting point and only one ASA in game for now. - Unless we are mistaken, Shores of Azeron was giving the opportunity to each player to make his own empire, and be the only player in his own empire if he wanted (meaning he could have a lot of NPCs under his command). In Dual Universe, this won't work like that: Social interaction will be at the center of the game. It will be the players who will decide what is considered as an Empire and what is not. If your organization gathers hundreds or even thousands of players and achieve important things in the game, then the organization will likely be labelled as an Empire. If you will be less then ten players in your organization, then you will have a hard time to be considered as an Empire. Not impossible, but very very difficult. Also, even if you will be able to have NPCs (probably droids) helping in automatized tasks, don't expect to have thousands of NPCs under your command. Again, we want to incite social interaction and team play. In this regard, we are nearer to EvE Online than games like Civilization. - Planets in Dual Universe will be generated procedurally, but this is not intended to give access to thousand of planets right from the start. It's more a huge unknown content to explore, conquer and colonize. We don't want to scatter players right from the beginning, on separate planets, for many reasons: As there will be some significant time needed to build spaceships and colonize other planets, this will be a teamwork. And we don't expect a player alone to make all the technological discovery, exploration, production all by himself. You will be able to explore and discover planets alone. But big group of players will be faster because they will be able to dispatch many tasks among them in a short amount of time. if you want to play alone or in small numbers, it will more than likely that you will use market hubs built by other players to get some rare resources or components to build or get your spaceship. - FTL Travel will be the hard and slow way to explore other solar systems. It will be difficult because complex logistics will be needed to make the travel worth it. In fact, we expect FTL Travel to be most likely used to go to an adjacent unexplored solar system, and build a Stargate... Or to make a discreet recon mission in solar systems controlled by hostile players (as using a Stargate will clearly not be discreet). But players might surprise us by finding other uses to FTL Travel! - Building a Stargate won't be a one-man work. It supposed to be a common goal for a big group of players as there won't be a Stargate built every day. Same thing goes for Space Stations. You should consider both as among the biggest building projects you can aim in Dual Universe (bigger than that, well... it might only be the Death Star ). I hope this clarify some unclear points. If you have more questions, just let us know Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Well... The Arkship Secure Area (ASA) shouldn't be considered as an "Empire". It's not one, as it will be only monitored by the Arkship AI (more to come on this subject in the upcoming short story really soon ). See this area more like a "Newbie Zone". In any game with hardcore PvP, you still have safe zone. Even games like EvE Online have some (example: the NPC Starbase. Not controlled by players, indestructibles, and safe areas where players can store their assets). What you suggest will be indeed very realistic but we (the team) would expect critical downsides. Here is our opinion: - If the ASA is shut down at some point, it will be hell for the newcomers right from their first steps and you can't expect to stick to the game in these conditions (because as in every MMORPG where PvP is involved, you can expect some players to play real nasty guys ganking anyone that comes into sight). Plus, it would be unfair that old players had the time to make their first steps protected and not the new ones. - Dual Universe is not a survival game. It will have many mechanics found in this kind of game, but the goal isn't to appeal to just this category of players. To grow a flourishing in-game economy, we think at least one safe, indestructible market hub is needed. This is even more important in Dual Universe as we will have builders who design ships, buildings and many other voxel-based constructions. This activity takes time, a lot of time. And even builders who like PvP also like to be safe when they are designing a voxel construction prototype worth hundreds of hours. No one likes to see a guy invading suddenly and destroying that much time of work just because he plays an invader. If, at some point, they have nowhere safe to build new amazing things, we can expect two possibilities: either they will quit the game if it was the main activity they love in the game, or they will just stop this time-consuming activity and this will be everyone loss. Builders should be a big part of the ingame economy, producing new creations. Dual Universe is as much about conquest as about construction. From what we have observed from previous PvP-oriented MMORPGS with in-game economy, they remain healthy on the long term when you fill this condition: Make room both for fully oriented PvP players as much as players whose main activities are not necessarily PvP (Trading, Building, Crafting, etc): you need a solid economy and industrial network to sustain and replace mass destruction generated by players who wage war against each other Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Indeed, and as mentioned on Facebook, the release was planned for today. Speaking of which, it just has been published. You can read it here and you comment about it in this topic. Happy reading! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi TheSlaxx and welcome! Thanks for talking about Dual Universe to your friends! No problem with your questions: I will answer them as soon as possible Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Technology will evolve as the game evolves I can't say much about the Lore for now as there is a short story on it in the pipeline coming soon (before end of summer we hope!) Let's just say that there will be a - temporary - technological regression at the beginning (there will be an explanation for that). So no FTL drive available right from the start. But on the long term, yes, there will be but with heavy limitation, involving "stargates" (something that players will be able to build). However, to be able able to "warp" without stargates, if allowed, will be very very tricky, and limited in some other ways. Best regards, Nyzaltar

Hi Hylios, For the time being, it's not planned to make Terraformation possible. This would require some heavy development time, and that can't be in the priorities right now. But we will look into it so see if it's feasible at least for small areas, like biosph?res. Maybe for a distant goal ? I'll come to you on the subject when I will have more info on the subject Best regards Nyzaltar.

Hi Hylios and welcome to our official forum ! Sorry for the late reply. You just suscribe when the team holidays started but we will be back on next Wednesday (15th July) In the mean time, if you have any questions about the game, just let us know. I think you will find Sci-Fi & MMORPG Lovers on this forum but probably also anime fans. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Lady Astrum, Glad to see you posting! To find the right balance "easy to start/hard to master" is indeed a tough challenge. We are trying to make something different from traditional MMORPGs on this aspect. It probably won't be perfect from the beginning as we are going to try new directions, and that's why player feedback will be critical in improving it over time Best regards, Nyzaltar

Hi Vylqun, Your ideas for communication technology are very interesting. However, it will be hardly applicable other than in Lore background. When it comes to communication between players, as explained already in this other topic about communication, many good ideas on paper don't work really well when put in practice. The main reason is the fact we can't rely on good faith from all players to respect the rules put in place if they're not forced to. In a game where PvP is present and strategy and reactivity is a decisive factor to win a battle, players will rely on media in real time and where they won't be bothered by the risk of seeing their communication network hacked by any opponent. If we implement a communication system and we say "Hey, here's the official communication network of the game, but be careful, some players with appropriate skills can hack into it and spy your communications" then you're pretty sure that many players will use only media like Teamspeak, Mumble, Skype or even a mailing system outside the game to coordinate their actions. There is no way to prevent that and we prefer avoiding to force players to use something they don't want. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Vylqun and welcome to our forum. We hope we will meet your expectations ! Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi vylqun, The idea is interesting but giving control to players over skill training might end with huge abuses: - Groups of players will agree between them to research one different skill for each character. - Then each of these players will create a Skill Book with increased learning speed from the skill he has just learnt and give him to each member of the group. - In the end, the bigger the group will be, the faster all the members will have access to nearly all skills with improved speed, and that, right from the beginning. In the end it will just increased speed training for everyone and not just new players, destroying the original purpose.

Hi vylqun Thanks a lot for the detailed suggestion on crafting! There is a lot of interesting ideas here. We don't plan to make crafting as predefined like in other MMOs, but it's a bit too soon to talk about it. And we are also paying attention to build a final user interface that remains intuitive and simple for crafting (even if game mechanics behind it will be complex). Of course, feedback from the community will be welcome when we will have a first proper draft to show. All your suggestions have been transmitted to the game design department Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Hylios and welcome! About joints it's already planned, as you can see with this concept art posted a few months ago on Facebook and Twitter. This won't be specifically designed for AT-AT walkers or Gundam-like mobile suits, but nothing should prevent to use them for such design Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Astrophil, It's a bit too soon to tell to which extent human characters will be realistic in the game. Obviously, not to the extent of Hatsune Miku in the animation you have linked. The reasons? The amount of work focused on one specific character (a whole dedicated team is behind it) and the polygon count: The more you increase the number of polygons on a 3D character, the more you can make something realistic. While going crazy for a 3D character for animation purpose is okay, it's necessary to be more reasonnable when it comes to gaming purpose: All games so far use what is called "low poly" versions for 3D characters, in order keep a decent frame rate per second. Anyway, we will still aim for something fairly realistic for the character and creature models. But I can't tell you more than that for the time being. Best regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Kiklix, Sorry for the late reply. Yes, this is something the team has already considered. Right now, for development time constraint reasons, you place voxels by using a first person cross hair, pretty much because, by default, the game will be in First Person view. We understand having Third Person view and being able to use the mouse pointer to build voxel constructions are far more user-friendly on a building aspect. We want to implement that in game, but it's very unlikely we will have that in the Alpha version of the game. I will keep the community informed on the subject as things evolve on this matter. Best regards, Nyzaltar

Hi Klatu Satori, It's true we only talked about the Arkship Secure Area being indestructible last year, in the DevBlog. But in the mean time, we have also considered that a fixed size for this area can be an issue as the player population grow and new players become unable to find any available land in the secure area on the long term. We cannot consider to enlarge the size of the secure area after the launch, because some players might have built things at the frontier of the secure area. What would happen then if we enlarge the ASA? That's why we might onsider empowering each player to have a unique (one time use) device enabling him/her to create a small area much like the ASA. We are aware this direction could cause balance issues, so it's possible we put some additional restrictions compared to the ASA. Anyway, it's a bit soon to discuss about this subject as it will be part of the subject in the next DevBlog (subject: Territory Management!) And once it will have been presented in details, you will have time to give your opinion and/or concerns. All the design on this part is not set into stone yet, and we will seek community feedback before finalizing it Best Regards, Nyzalatar.

Hi everyone, Here are a few answers related to Land ownership What do you plan to do in the case of a massive "landgrab" at the game launch? The possibility of a massive landgrab right from the start is a concern we are working on. This is indeed a recurrent problem for any Open World MMO giving the opportunity for a player to own some land. We are currently thinking about limitating (at least at the beginning) the area size owned by each player (or each account). That combined to the total surface of the starting planet (see below for the planet size) should be enough to start with. Do you plan to limit surface for housing on planets? We don't see why there should be a limit to housing. Look at Coruscant in Star Wars: it's an example of a planet entirely covered with buildings. Beside that, it's important to keep in mind that outside the Arkship Secure Area, there will be possibilities of building destruction, even if you will be able to set a small "indestructible" area to have a safe haven somewhere. How big the universe will be? It's a procedurally generated universe, so expanding the universe will be faster than creating planets one by one: - During the Alpha, it will probably a few planets (to be able to test space travel) - At the release: probably a few hundreds of planets to a few thousands (difficult to say exactly right now) How big planets will be? It may still be subject to change but we plan the following: - Around 100km diameter for the starting planet (which is equal to a bit more than 30000 km2. Even with oceans and seas, the remaining surface for land will still be incredibly huge!) - Probably around 50km diameter for others (even if we are aiming for an average 100km for a planet on the long term) Will we be able to go to every planet, or only specific ones the devs specify? If you're weren't able to go explore each planet or asteroid belt we put in this universe, this wouldn't be a true sandbox in our opinion. So yes, you will be able to explore every single planet existing in the game. No limitation for exploration. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone ! We have already though of several direction for a reputation system. But nothing has been clearly defined yet. Two directions already mentioned in this topic are currently explored: - Automatized system: You do an action considered "bad" by the game, your reputation score goes down. You do an action considered "good" by the game, your reputation score goes up. - Socialized system: You reputation score fluctuates depending of how other players "rate" your behavior or the quality of your work. (very similar to what you can find as ratings in social medias) But this is still too early stage to discuss about this feature. There will be later a DevBlog post to talk about it in the future. One thing is pretty certain though: There shouldn't be bonus/malus other than social consequences for reputation score: being able to access (or not) to goods or services, or just stay in a specific area, depending of your reputation with the involved group/person/faction. Bonus/malus affecting combat or loot (if any) should be gained through skill training and maybe real time training (by repeating a specific kind of activity regularly), not gained because of moral choices. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi Comrademoco & Saffi, Sorry for the late reply on this topic. Implementing a Dev Tracker is a nice idea, but as you can see, generally the game studios using this kind of communication are big studios, backed by a publisher. It's very rare to see an indie studio using this kind of communication (it happens generally when it reaches a significant size and have a budget way above average). Developers in an indie studio are very few, and therefore they have to focus on the code to progress at a reasonable speed. While this is important to communicate with the community, you need to understand that it is also a bit disruptive for the developer focus: it takes time to immerse again in the code after having participated in a discussion with community members, especially if it happens to be several times per day. If you already coded some software, you probably already know what we are talking about: you progress much faster when you stay focused on your code, without being distracted by other activities. Does that mean the devs will never communicate with the community? No. They will probably communicate at some point, but mostly on important topics. It's not planned to do it through regular chats (at least for now). We hope this won't disappoint you. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Thinking about carrier gameplay is indeed a very interesting idea . (please bear in mind that, for now, nowhere we have confirmed there will be remote piloted ships in Dual Universe. While nothing might prevent make some, there was confirmation that it will be feasible either, for the time being). And it will probably be quite efficient. However it might not be the ultimate strategy despite how it looks like at first glance: - Flying a swarm of drone-ish ships means your ships are fast and easy to manoeuvre. But it also means these ships will have light resistance, which can be easily countered by large "area of effect" attack, resulting quickly in the drone-ish ship destruction. - Gathering a big group of players in one single ship with strong shields and armor doesn't guarantee to be safe. In fact, in some cases, it's even the contrary: Combat won't probably be only a matter of firepower and defense. Electronic Warfare and Propulsion Jamming. Once the ship can't fire or move, even with strong defenses, it just a matter of time before the opponents succeed in destroying it. In many scenarios, it's better to have a fleet of medium-sized ships than one big ship, especially for this reason: it's much more difficult to immobilize/neutralize everyone About AI drones: the use of this will be severely limited to make it far less efficient than a real player pilot. We want to see it as a "last resort" if you don't have enough people to complete a multi-player spaceship crew for example: we want it to do a decent job. Not an amazing job. So if AI drones or related stuff gives the feeling to the dev team of being overpowered (meaning having the same efficiency as a player or better) at some point, you can expect them to be nerfed. But in any case, it's really exciting to see some unusual strategies discussed here!

Hi Klatu & Saffi ! Really important and delicate topics here Here are a few answers: - About "Friendly Fire" and "Manual Targeting": We would like to implement that. We really would like. But there a very high chance we won't, at least for now (maybe with computer technology evolving, it will change in the future). The fact that massively multiplayer single-shard sandbox games like EvE Online are able to reach several thousands of players at the same place and the same moment is possible due to some compromises (and while we are aiming to higher flexibility in this regard, we're still subject to compromises too): combat system using Targeting/Locking/Firing mechanics in this kind of game is not completely unrelated to the ability to create massive battles, as it's an efficient way to lighten a lot of real time combat calculations. - About "Bigger means more complex": Well bigger ships will certainly be harder to destroy/invade if they're built in a smart way by players. However we do have some ideas to balance their toughness: They will be slower, less agile than smaller ships, due to their mass. Big Weapon Turrets will also at disadvantage against very fast ships. But nothing will prevent builders to create specialized ships: like a huge battlecruiser full of small weapon turrets to hunt down hostile small and fast ships. But there will be a choice to make: Energy consumption. Every module in a ship will require energy. So it won't be possible to have everything in infinite number, even on a big ship. - About "Terrain": We have already planned to have asteroid belts (even if it won't be for the Alpha). But having specific cosmic phenomenon producing side effects in some areas in space (like strong gravitational fields or ionized clouds) is a great idea. I will transmit it to the dev team! - About "Arms Diversity and Rock/Paper/Scissors": This is already planned: We are thinking about weapon families, with each type of weapon very efficient in some cases and not very efficient in others. Right now we plan to have at least 4 different types of damage, but it might still change in the future. Best Regards, Nyzaltar.

Hi everyone, Yes, interior styles are on the todo list. But as these are advanced aesthetics, it won't be available before official release (so there is still a long way to go before seeing them appear in-game). @Saffi: The link is fine. This concept art research has already been published on Twitter and Facebook before (May, 1st, 2015)

Hi Jared, Skill trees are something already planned. It will enable player characters to unlock possible activities and new gameplay. The skills will be learned over time, whether your character is online or offline (think of it as a way of learning like in "Matrix", when Neo learns KungFu... but at a much slower pace). We are looking to let the player character unlock main activities mastered at a basic level in a matter of minutes. Some will take a few hours and other, more advanced gameplay features might require to have already some skills at an expert level to be unlocked. One of our concerns here is also to avoid giving the feeling to new players that "old players are impossible to catch up with": old players will have the advantage to be specialized in various activities, but if a new player starts by specializing himself in one activity, he should be able to reach the same level (or nearly the same level) of expertise than a old player quickly. Skill trees are a vast topic and it will probably be the subject of a DevBlog in the future.