NQ-Nyzaltar
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Hi everyone!
The NovaWriMo Contest is back!
What is NovaWriMo?For those who don't know what this is about, here's a quick explanation: NovaWriMo is a writing contest inspired by "National Novel Writing Month" (NaNoWriMo), which usually starts in November and lasts for roughly one month. NovaWriMo is a very similar contest, but with a twist; the writing contest is related to Dual Universe, and it's not strictly tied to the month of November.
2019 Theme:
Pre-Alpha, Alpha, and Beta phases of Dual Universe are also part of the game lore!
How’s that possible? Simple; it represents virtual simulations run by Aphelia while all the colonists are still deep in their cryogenic sleep during their interstellar travel. Quite similar to the virtual simulation in the film ‘The Matrix’, except that the colonists are aware of it, understand that it’s a temporary situation, and that they will walk out of it at some point (the official release). They don’t have steel pikes plugged into their brains either!
Special Rules for this theme:-
The contender can write anything about what his character (or his organization) is doing during the Alpha phase, or what he will do once upcoming features are officially announced on the roadmap will be implemented in game. In that second case, we would advise to wait until the updated roadmap is released (which should happen very soon). That's the reason why we made the Contest duration slightly longer this time, so you don't have to worry about rushing your story.
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The contender can write about conflicts, however, it should only involve fictional opponents/organizations, not real players or organizations run by real players (to avoid any disagreement between the players mentioned about how the narrative direction is going)
- It should be clear with the rules mentioned above but in order to confirm it clearly: No alien creatures should be involved in the story.
Lore sources for reference:
The Official Dual Universe Lore Bible
The short story written by Alain Damasio
The mods of the novel by Alain Damasio mentioned in the beginning of this post, some info here and here too
The Backstory Page of the official website
Some more recent information.
(If you spot an inconsistency between the different sources, the Official Lore Bible should be considered authoritative).Writing Rules:
- The text should have a word count between 3,000 and 5,000 words.
- The contest starts today, Friday November 29th, 23:00 UTC.
- It will end on Monday January 13th, 23:00 UTC.
- The story should be on the chosen theme (see above).
- You must submit your text in the form of a PDF file and you must attach it to a dedicated topic (with the tag [NovaWrimo2019] in the title) you created in the "Novaquark Archives" forum section. The PDF file must not exceed 500 kb in size.
- You must also send your file in Word or .txt format to both NQ-Nomad and NQ-Nyzaltar to be eligible. You can do so by private message on the forum.
- By submitting a fanfiction with the tag [NovaWrimo2019] in the topic title, the poster will explicitly cede author rights to Novaquark. While these texts won't be sold in any form, they may be used (fully or partially) as promotional materials or in marketing campaigns for Dual Universe. For more information, please read our "Terms of Use" and our EULA. You also must accept and respect the legal conditions bound to your Dual Universe account (the aforementioned game's EULA, but also the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, and NDA if relevant).
- Your submission must be written in English.
- Physical violence should be limited (No gore or similar things).
- Verbal violence and cursing is tolerated but should be limited and not gratuitous.
- Explicit sexual content isn't allowed.
- Hate speech toward specific people, ethnic groups, or religions isn't allowed.
- A non-native English writer can seek help from a native English speaker to polish the text in English.
- The native English speaker must be aware that it can help only on a volunteer basis: he won't be eligible for any reward.
- If a non-native English writer seeks help from a native English speaker, he/she must submit the complete text before proofreading. Once his/her text is proofread, he/she will have to keep both pre-proofread and post-proofread versions of the text available on the forum.
- If several people collaborate on a story, please be aware that only the individual submitting the entry on the forum will be eligible to win any prizes or awards. We will not have group prizes available.
- Because the juries are completely different, a participant may win a Novaquark prize and the Community prize.
- You may submit multiple entries, however, you may only win one Novaquark prize.
- If an entry does not meet all of the requirements for eligibility (text size not observing the word count, missing the deadline by a few days, etc.), the author won't be considered as eligible for the Novaquark and the Community prizes. However, it may still be considered as a participant to the contest. It will be up to the Novaquark team to decide on a case by case basis.
- Late entries will not be eligible for either the Novaquark or Community prizes, but will still be considered as participants.
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A gentle reminder, rather than a rule; please consider the reading comfort of your future readers by formatting your text in a way that makes it easily readable (make sure to put some space between your paragraphs, etc.)
Winners:
- There will be three winners selected by the Novaquark team.
- There will be one winner selected by the Community (Community members will vote for their favorite story).
Prizes:
- Novaquark 1st Prize: 3 Beta Keys + In-game title "NovaWriMo 2019 Winner: Gold"
- Novaquark 2nd Prize: 2 Beta Keys + In-game title "NovaWriMo 2019 Winner: Silver"
- Novaquark 3rd Prize: 1 Beta Key + In-game title "NovaWriMo 2019 Winner: Bronze"
- Community Prize: In-game title "Famous Writer".
Good luck everyone!
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team. -
The contender can write anything about what his character (or his organization) is doing during the Alpha phase, or what he will do once upcoming features are officially announced on the roadmap will be implemented in game. In that second case, we would advise to wait until the updated roadmap is released (which should happen very soon). That's the reason why we made the Contest duration slightly longer this time, so you don't have to worry about rushing your story.
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Hi everyone,
As Yamamushi said, there won't be a MeetUp during the MIGS event.
Unfortunately, there wasn't enough people potentially interested.Sorry for the last minute notice.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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As we're considering to make a meetup at Montreal during MIGS (Montreal International Gaming Summit), we need to know who would like to attend this MeetUp in advance. Please complete the poll above if you're available and want to go to such meeting.
Thank you in advance for your anwers!
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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(Update: November 12th, 2019: detailing the content that will be released before the end of the year)
Dear Community,We heard your feedback regarding our communication that wasn't as regular during the past months than it was before, in addition of a few miscommunication incidents. That's why we decided to plan several events to catch up and address that topic before the end of the year:
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For those who have questions (or concerns) about Dual Universe or Novaquark, we've just opened a dedicated thread here (as many questions may be related to subjects under NDA, and we can't check beforehand, we had to put the forum thread in a section under NDA. If you're not a backer and you have questions on topics that aren't under NDA, feel free to contact NQ-Nomad and/or NQ-Nyzaltar by private message on the forum, and they wil transmit them to the team). No question is taboo. Although we can't promise to give a clear and detailed answer for each question, we will try our best to reply as much as we can.
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Here is the content related to communication we plan to release before the end of the year:
- a video presenting the updated roadmap.
- a Dev Diary video showing the recent progress on the game development
- a PodCast where we will try to answer the most pressing matters (based on the questions posted in the dedicated thread).
- an AMA event where we will try to answer to the remaining questions.
- a Kickstarter update.
We can't give specific dates for all of this content yet, but all will be released before the end of the year.
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
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For those who have questions (or concerns) about Dual Universe or Novaquark, we've just opened a dedicated thread here (as many questions may be related to subjects under NDA, and we can't check beforehand, we had to put the forum thread in a section under NDA. If you're not a backer and you have questions on topics that aren't under NDA, feel free to contact NQ-Nomad and/or NQ-Nyzaltar by private message on the forum, and they wil transmit them to the team). No question is taboo. Although we can't promise to give a clear and detailed answer for each question, we will try our best to reply as much as we can.
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Hi everyone!
We are going to deploy a brand new Authentication Bot - developed entirely by Novaquark - on Discord in the coming weeks to simplify the life to new backers in the Community, as well as facilitating the work of the Discord volunteer Discord Moderators. The news is important for both new comers and veteran community members, as authentication to NDA Discord sections will change drastically!
You can find the complete news here.
Don't hesitate to give your feedback in this forum thread, below this forum post!All feedback is welcome!
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
- Lethys, Shadow_pryo, Metric and 2 others
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Dear Tacotuesday,
We interrupted the test sessions for two weeks because a big part of the team was "out of office" and it was communicated in a newsletter beforehand.
So as the service was temporarily interrupted and communicated to the backers, it was unlikely that there would be people in urgent need of support.
Now you asked on the forum during a Saturday why you hadn't have a reply yet by the Customer Support. You get an answer the following day, on a Sunday.
As an indie studio, with our budget and infrastructure, we believe we are trying our best to keep our community informed and follow up any issue that could arise.
We agree that we could always improve and as the game will develop, the team will too.
Now you will have a reply from our customer support, even if it feels too long by your standards despite these circumstances.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Hi @TACOTUESDAY
Many members of the team were on holidays during the past two weeks.
So the response time on support tickets may have been affected.
You will get a reply as soon as possible. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Hi everyone!
You may have already seen it but we launch the Community Survey 2019 two days ago on the official website.
If you haven't filled the Community Survey yet, please take it when you will have time.
It takes only 5 minutes to complete it, and it will help the Novaquark team a lot to know you better and see what are your expectations for each kind of in-game activity.
You can take the survey here.
Thank you so much for your help!
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.
- Cynn, Ariah, CptCabalsky and 1 other
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Hi everyone!
More news about the Gamescom 2019 MeetUp:
- The meeting hour will be at 20:30 (local time), on Wednesday, August 21st.- We have only 4 more seats available for the MeetUp! So if you're interested to join us for the MeetUp at Cologne, don't wait to register until the deadline...
- We are considering (not 100% sure yet) doing a MeetUp in October in Paris during the Paris Gamesweek 2019 for those who can't join us at the Gamescom. If it happens, it would be most likely either on Wednesday, October 30th or Thursday, October 31st.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
- Nebenfigur, WildChild85, Serula and 1 other
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Hi everyone!
Here is more information about the Gamescom MeetUp 2019 (and we need some from your side too
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If you plan to join us at the Gamescom MeetUp 2019 in Cologne (Germany) on Wednesday, August 21st in the evening, please complete the form below.
We need to make sure to book enough seats for the members of the Community in advance.
You have until Sunday, August 17th to register in the form.
Please register as soon as possible as we can't guarantee to have a booked seat for everyone who will register after this day.In order to make your booked seat valid, you will need to have a Dual Universe account beforehand.
>>> Gamescom MeetUp 2019 Inscription Form
Like last year, the MeetUp will take place at the "Ludwig im Museum Restaurant" (near the Cathedral in Cologne).To find the exact address of the restaurant, here is the google map link.
At this MeetUp, you'll be able to meet the following members of the Novaquark team:
- NQ-Sophon (JC Baillie), CEO
- NQ-LowDegree, Senior Server Engineer
- NQ-Helvetica, UI/UX Designer
- NQ-Nomad, Live Ops & Community Manager
- NQ-Nyzaltar, Social Media & Community Manager
- NQ-Oli, PR & Marketing Manager
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar
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Hi Oninous and welcome in the Dual Universe community!
We know it's a bit frustrating to wait for validation to post on the forum, but this is the safest way to keep the forum clean from all spammers and advertisers that have nothing to do with the game. Beside, once your first post is approved, you don't need any validation anymore.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Talking about Real Life Politics is not allowed in Dual Universe.
No matter how it is presented, making a parody of Real Life Politics IS a way of talking about Real Life Politics.
Therefore, the organization has been deleted.
Please avoid to create such type of organization in the future.
Best Regards,Nyzaltar.
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Yes, and that's why this topic is going to be closed, now that an updated reply has been given
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Ce sujet a évolué depuis 2016.
Il est prévu une version française pour la sortie officielle du jeu.Une section de forum entièrement en français est à l'étude (comme ça le sera aussi pour toutes les autres langues dans lesquelles le jeu sera traduit).
Nous ne pouvons pas encore donner de date sur le déploiement d'une telle section, mais patience, la chose finira par arriver
Cordialement,
Nyzaltar.
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This topic has evolved since 2016.
A french version is planned for the official release of the game.
A forum section entirely in French is considered (as it will be considered as well for all other languages in which the game will be localized).
We can't give any ETA yet regarding the French forum section opening, but be patient: it will happen eventually
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
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Hi everyone,
This discussion is going nowhere.
Everything has been already said on the topic and continuing would only lead to stir up conflict between those who think the situation is unfair and those who think it's normal to adapt.
To sum up one last time:
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PC Gaming industry has a long history of replacing/upgrading components in very short cycles (4-5 years) due to technological breakthrough, to stay up-to-date. However it's true that during the recent years, there have been less technological breakthroughs on the CPU side, reducing the need of replacing CPU. While it's a comfortable situation on many levels, keep in mind that it's not the "normality" but the exception in the PC Gaming history. The technological stagnation (at least CPU-side) for so many years is a first. At some point, technological breakthroughs will force you to upgrade your PC if you want to play games that will use the most advanced technologies available (unlocking opportunities that weren't possible before). It has always been like that, and it will continue to be like that (even if it will be at a slower pace).
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It's true that AVX instructions requirement weren't specified during the Kickstarter campaign. It has been a miscommunication on our side as it was decided from the beginning to use them (these instructions help A LOT regarding performances in a full voxel-based environment) and we recognize that. That's why it's a legitimate reason to contact the Customer Support for a refund. However, we think it's a mistake to see the situation just as "I won't change my PC rig just for Dual Universe", because sooner or later, other games will ask you to have a more recent hardware. It's just a matter of time. If it's not AVX instructions, it could be something else.
There was no intention of deceiving or trapping backers here. The dev team genuinely thought that, by the time Dual Universe will be released, CPUs from 2012 or older will be replaced by gamers with more recent ones, especially as the team never marketed Dual Universe with low end specs (even during the Kickstarter). That being said, if you plan to keep an old CPU from before 2012 at least two more years, and don't plan to play DU because of that, that's totally your right and you should contact our Customer Support.
Now the topic is going to be closed as the original question has been answered in detail, and repeating arguments again and again will add nothing constructive on the topic.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
- Lethys and Knight-Sevy
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PC Gaming industry has a long history of replacing/upgrading components in very short cycles (4-5 years) due to technological breakthrough, to stay up-to-date. However it's true that during the recent years, there have been less technological breakthroughs on the CPU side, reducing the need of replacing CPU. While it's a comfortable situation on many levels, keep in mind that it's not the "normality" but the exception in the PC Gaming history. The technological stagnation (at least CPU-side) for so many years is a first. At some point, technological breakthroughs will force you to upgrade your PC if you want to play games that will use the most advanced technologies available (unlocking opportunities that weren't possible before). It has always been like that, and it will continue to be like that (even if it will be at a slower pace).
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Like last year, we are organizing a MeetUp in Cologne (Germany) during the event of the Gamescom.
It will be an opportunity to meet JC and several members of the Novaquark team to discuss about Dual Universe!
Please indicate which evening you will be available
The poll will close next Tuesday, June 11th, as we have to book the restaurant quickly.
(More info about the event coming soon)
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar. -
Hi everyone!
With the test session starting today (Thursday, May 30th) at 14:00 UTC, you will be able to enter the Puzzle Game Building Contest!
We presented quickly what is the concept of the contest in this announcement two weeks ago.
You can also find the complete rules over there. (to be able to read them, you need to be logged and have Alpha access).However, we felt it was necessary to give some more insight about the possibilities with Interactive Elements.
That's why JC, with the help of NQ-Wzrd, made a Puzzle Building Tutorial. It explains the basics with an up to date video.
Moreover, as the Contest duration will be quite short, we've decided to give to everyone (even those not actively participating to the Contest) a few Interactive Elements of each kind. The Elements you received are just a starting point. You could use more by crafting more or trading more with other players.
Happy building!
The Novaquark team.
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Dear Alpha Testers,
We are glad to announce a new Contest coming next week, starting Thursday, May 30th!
This time the theme will be about “puzzle games”, made with Interactive Elements. LUA scripting will be authorized, but it won’t give an edge on the winner selection: the main criteria to win the Contest will be creativity, originality, and aesthetics. Full Contest Rules will be posted next week, just before the Test Session.
We can’t wait to see all the puzzles, contraptions and escape rooms you’ll design!
Also, we said last week there will be a time extension for the test session this week.
With the Contest coming, we thought it would be more relevant to do it next week, as this will give you more time for the Puzzle Game Contest!If you’re not familiar yet with Interactive Elements, here is the video presenting the main ones:
(Disclaimer: The video is a bit old so graphics are not representative of the current graphics in the game anymore, but the gameplay related to Interactive Elements presented in this video still globally applies in-game).
The Novaquark Team.
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(this DevBlog has been posted on the website on May 2nd, 2019)
Hey guys!It’s NQ-Entropy here today and we’re going to talk about Player Progression!
We’re finally introducing a big chunk of our player progression and it's what we're calling the Talent System. The Talent System is one of the major ways that you’ll be able to build and specialize your character in the world of Dual Universe. Character progression and specialization is a major pillar for us in order to allow you guys to embody various professions, but also to promote teamwork amongst groups and on the job market.
The Talent System is a time-based progression model during which you will get more and more training points. Featured as part of the talent tree is a talent queue. Based upon what talents you wish to acquire, you may queue various talents in your training queue. This will allow you to set-up, plan, and prepare your talent acquisition for an extended period of time. Should you decide not to train anything in the queue, a portion of your talent points will be saved in your talent point bank, ready to be used at any time.
Keep in mind that not utilizing the talent queue means acquiring points at a slower rate. Avoid taking too much time deciding, as you’ll pay in total points what you gain in flexibility.
Now that you can acquire them, let's talk about what a Talent actually is. A talent is a beneficial effect split into five different levels. Each level grants a bonus or a potential element unlock. A bonus will usually be a boost to a part of your character, like character sprint speed, or something more specific like mining efficiency.
Talents are planned to touch nearly every single feature and become a main pillar of the game. They will serve as element unlocks, allow you to engineer better quality constructs, and grant you the ability to fly faster ships. They will open access to various tools and even significantly buff your current ones.
The first available talents that you will have access to are:
- Basic character stats
- Digging and terraforming
- Mining
- Tool and element unlocks
As we continue to add more talents, you can expect expansion upon these categories as well as the introduction of new ones.However, there are a couple of things worth addressing before you begin testing:
- You might feel like you’re being hamstrung at the beginning. Some talents will allow you to do things you couldn't do before, yet others will serve to limit access to things you could do in the past. Our goal is not to be overbearing in our limitations, but give appropriate growth to specific aspects of the Talent System and provide a power balance over time. We will iterate on it in the future.
- As of right now, some levels of talents do not unlock anything. This is something that we are aware of and will continue to fill in the gaps as we go. For now, just be certain to double check what a level unlocks and train for nothing by mistake.
- The current balancing is not final. We are testing technical limitations and gameplay limitations. Expect talent bonuses to alter or be removed as we address future balance changes.
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It is likely the system will go through resets during the testing phase. Our goal is to see that players do not lose talent points after we initiate the system; we will aim to “re-spec” your character in-between resets. While we cannot 100% guarantee this, rest assured we will try our best to approach this as fairly as possible.
That’s all the news we have to share for the moment, but I invite everyone to explore the new Talent window and give us feedback on specific talents or the system as a whole. We hope you really enjoy this feature!
As always, don't hesitate to give some feedback in this dedicated forum thread!
See you guys later!
NQ-Entropy -
Dear Community Members,
Last week we've already detailed some of the main changes and additional features in the r0.15 Update.
Today, we want to give you a visual preview of those changes and features and we just released a short video for the occasion!
We will also release a DevBlog on the Talent System later this week, so stay tuned!
The Novaquark Team.
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(this DevBlog has been posted on the website on May 2nd, 2019)
Hey guys!
This is NQ-Entropy coming at you today with a new DevBlog about what we’re calling Barter, or to be more precise—direct-player trading.Now Markets aren't going anywhere, and we expect the majority of transactions to be done there. But often in the depths of the wilderness, you may not have direct access to a Market and might need the helping hand of a stranger to obtain an extra part or element.
That being said, let's talk about our new Barter system. The Barter system is going to allow players to directly trade items and Quanta between one another in the game world. You’ll be able to do this by approaching another player, opening the drop-down menu by right-clicking on the player, and selecting “Barter”.
The player receiving an attempt to barter will be notified with a prompt asking him to confirm or deny it, which he can do by using the “y” or “n” keys. Should that player be AFK or totally ignore you, the request will automatically timeout after 30 seconds. If a player is in a position or location where a Barter isn’t possible, the issuer will be notified.
If a player initiates a Barter and another accepts, a brand new interface will pop up; welcome to your Barter screen.
The Barter interface is split into four key areas. Starting from the top left, you will see your Bartering partner’s name and basket, with all items or Quanta they may put up for trade. In the top right is your domain, where you can see your personal basket and what items or Quanta you’ve decided to offer. Keep in mind that these screens are updated in real-time, and both parties will see baskets revise as you add or remove items or modify Quanta.
In the bottom right, you’ll find your inventory which will work exactly as you would expect. You’ll be able to use all of your standard inventory filters and search functionality to find the items you want to Barter.
In order to move items from your inventory to your basket and vice versa, there are several methods:
- Drag and Drop: You can click, hold, and drag items.
- Double Click: Double-clicking on any item will move it to the other location.
- Contextual Menu: You can right-click on any item and select to move it manually from the drop-down menu.
The Shift key will still work the same way it always has when moving items that are stacked, allowing you to split stacks of items appropriately.
You will notice two buttons next to your respective baskets. This is how you and your partner will confirm that you are satisfied with the current Barter and are ready to proceed with the exchange—however, there are a couple of important things to note.
At a basic level, both partners have individual confirmation buttons to designate that they are ready to proceed with the trade. Once both parties agree and have confirmed, the exchange will go through instantly.
At any point during this confirmation, should either player change anything in their basket (remove an item, add an item, change quanta, etc.) all activated confirmations will be deselected. For example, if I am Bartering an engine for 100 Quanta and I confirm this exchange, my partner may decide to change 100 Quanta to 50, which will automatically deselect my initial offer.
The exchange will proceed only when both parties have confirmed the exchange. Speaking in game terms, if I am Bartering an engine for 100 Quanta and confirm this exchange, and neither basket is modified, once my partner activates their confirmation, the trade will instantly complete.
Lastly in the bottom left, you will see your chat. You can use it normally to access your other chat channels, but initiating a Barter will automatically prompt an additional chat window between both players to discuss trading terms. Once the Barter is complete or if the Barter is canceled, this window will automatically close.
In the event that you are unable to receive items due to volume considerations, your confirmation button will turn red to indicate this. If your button turns red on a confirmation attempt, that means that you do not have adequate inventory space to accept new items.
Barter will work with the linked container in a limited fashion. When entering a Barter, you will only be able to trade using one inventory source at a time; either your main character inventory or your linked container. This will be defined by your linked container option in the inventory. Should the inventory you are Bartering from becoming too full, you will have the option to transfer items from your current inventory to a secondary one.
At this time, you will not be able to trade dynamic objects such as Territory Scanner results and Blueprints, but this is something we’re striving to accomplish in the future.
Thanks for your support, guys!
As always, feel free to drop any feedback you have to share with us in this forum threadNQ-Entropy
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(this DevBlog has been posted on the website on April 30th, 2019)
Hey guys!
NQ-Entropy here today with NQ-Wave.We’ve been working on a significant overhaul of the game’s balancing and we’re going to do our best to explain the big changes we’ve been working on. The main subjects today are the major rebalance of inventory and container capacity, material transportation, crafting recipes, and almost every single step between mining and crafting. Saddle up.
Our starting point was the dialogue we had with the community about the issues with containers. We heard everything you guys said, from smaller containers not being useful and crafting times on larger containers being too long. This wasn’t lost on us; we also agreed that it was a little ridiculous at how weak certain containers were as opposed to the Nanoformer inventory, which held a staggering 64m3, the equivalent of a large container, or 64 extra-small containers. There was an issue.
What happened in the following weeks was us going down a massive rabbit-hole where we started pulling different strings and unearthing a lot of inconsistencies in our global balancing on almost every level. We decided that we wanted to start over on solid and healthy ground, and make sure that we knew what we were doing, how, and why. We are now at the finish line of the first major pass, and we’re ready to talk to you about it.
One of the initial issues excavated from the wreckage of our investigation was the difficulty of transporting materials while in atmosphere. As it turns out, in a realistic physically based system, it's really hard to transport hundreds of cubic meters or potentially tens of thousands of tons in materials. Who saw that one coming? It was a learning experience to see some of you try and transport raw material, only to end up with about 20 large hover engines to lift a couple of containers, which amounted to no material at all.
So this is where we began. No matter what happened next, we needed to drastically reduce the amount of weight that a player would have to reasonably move around; even in the context of large transports. As previously mentioned, the main culprit was our overly common use of cubic meters, which artificially drew upwards the volume and weight of everything we did. We globally changed our main volumic unit from m3 to liters. We now had finer control over volumes and had a more human-level metric to base our foundations on. Your inventories will now have a capacity of 4,000 liters; goodbye cubic meter, it was nice knowing you.
Having said that, we mostly liked the ratios we had in place for how fast players filled their inventories when mining and made sure to adjust everything so that it remained similar to how mining was done previously.
Continuing up the chain, we reached crafting recipes. We were also generally happy with the feedback we received for the crafting mechanic, but our first recipes were more for functional testing than any sort of real balance. Now was the perfect opportunity to take a look at it in more detail.
We want you guys to discover this without too much of a heads up, but there's a couple of cliff-notes we can mention here:
- Global rebalance of item volume and weight across the board.
- Conservation of mass during crafting across materials, parts, and elements during crafting (some exceptions apply).
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Rebalancing of all ancillary materials recipes (honeycomb, fuel, products and scraps).
The end result of this is fairly significant, and we’re not quite sure we fully grasp all of the implications at this point. What we are confident in is that we have all of the tools in hand to effectively make adjustments and deal with any issues that arise; something that we couldn't quite say to the same degree before.
In terms of clearer changes:
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Parts are generally more coherent in weight and volume with less outliers. Smaller parts will generally take up more space in your base inventory while larger ones will take less. You can still expect large parts to take up significant space, but not multiple base inventories worth.
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Elements operate in the same ballpark of weight and volume as before, but we have less outliers. Smaller elements are not so small and larger elements are not so huge.
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Generally speaking, honeycomb materials will require more ore to make. The amount of honeycomb material you could acquire previously was a little too high and we wanted to rein that in a little. We don't want you to feel constantly limited by honeycomb material, but we also don't want to make acquiring large quantities of honeycombed materials trivial. It's worth noting that we fixed a bug which changed honeycomb mass; honeycombed material will likely be overall heavier than before.
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Fuel cost and weight have been drastically augmented, but as counterbalance, we reduced both fuel consumption for engines and fuel tank capacity. Hopefully, this ensures that fuel is more difficult to acquire and weighs more, but you will need a lot less of it for similar performance. The end result is that you’ll be able to fly for longer while retaining a similar overall cost per distance traveled as before.
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In regards to scraps, the first thing we did was add scraps for all ore. You can now craft equivalent level scrap from level one to four using any ore that you’d like. Secondly, we had previously done a quick fix adjustment on scrap repair, making it less painful to repair your elements. The new scrap recipes will allow you to make more scrap for less raw ore than previously, hopefully addressing said pain points of having to mine for ages just to repair a single element. It should now be more efficient to repair an element with scrap than to craft that element from scratch.
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Finally, containers. Containers haven't changed at all. Not one bit. An extra large container is still 128m3 of volume. But in a world of liters, 128 cubic meters comes out to just about 128,000 liters of capacity. That’s roughly 32 times the size of your basic inventory, and frankly, that's a hell of a lot of storage.
Additionally, there’s been a significant revamp of the information displayed in the inventories information panel. We won't go into too much detail here as we hope the new information should be easily understood and explain itself well enough.
This was a huge undertaking and we’re confident that we’re going in the right direction, but we expect there to be issues. We’re looking forward to you guys testing everything out, hearing your feedback, and hopefully providing answers.
NQ-Entropy and NQ-Wave
- Atmosph3rik, Aaron Cain, Joostan and 9 others
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12
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Hi everyone,
AVX instructions have been implemented in intel processors in 2011 and AMD processors in 2012 (for processors oriented to gaming activity, which generally does not include Xeon processors made before 2013 and Celeron processors). These instructions give a substantial improvement performance-wise. While a lot of games rely mostly on GPU Power, this is not the case for some games, using voxel technology. Voxel calculation is, for the moment, mostly handled on CPU side (at least for the moment, as no current GPU is optimized to calculate Voxels). That's why having AVX instructions is required.
For some games, it could make sense to make a "No AVX required" version. For others, like Dual Universe, it's not worth it: the performances would be so bad without AVX, that it's not worth it to spend a fair amount of time (re)developping a "No AVX required" version. So no, there is no short term plan to remove AVX requirements.
"Minimal" requirements are the minimal specs to be able to launch the game, not to have a decent game experience.
That's what "Recommanded" specs are for: to have a decent game experience.
That being said, if you want to ask for a refund for this reason, please contact the Customer Support at support@novaquark.com
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
- Aaron Cain, SGCamera_Beta, Lethys and 4 others
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7
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Hi everyone!
Thank you for reporting that!
The website will be updated tomorrow to fix the missing text on the Sponsor Pack Disclaimer text.
Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
NovaWriMo Contest 2019!
in Announcements
Posted
Dear Noveans,
NovaWriMo is back this year, with a new theme!
You can find the complete rules here, and ask your questions (if you have any) in the same topic !
Best Regards,
The Novaquark Team.