NQ-Nyzaltar

Gathering all the discussion in one place is indeed vital to avoid missing interesting ideas.
As you may have already realized, since the opening of the forum, each DevBlog post contains a button at the end redirecting to the forum.
The comments have been disabled on the DevBlog for the same reason: we want to centralize all comments, suggestions and critics on the forum

Hi ReadyForTheGame,
 
Well, as Beta won't be before end of 2016... it's a bit too soon to give details on it.
 
What is clear for now:
- Alpha will be indeed mostly for backers/supporters/founders, helping us in a crowdfunding campaign.
But it might be also possible to get access for very active community helpers. We haven't decided yet the prerequisites, nor even confirm it will indeed be possible. But we will keep you informed as the situation evolve.
- There will a closed Beta and an open Beta, that's also quite sure. About the modalities to get access, this is also still in discussion. And it won't be defined before we define all the modalities for Alpha access.
 
However, we want to be clear on one thing:
Alpha & Closed Beta Access are meant to help us building the game by giving feedback and reporting bugs. While a lot of game companies see Beta phase as some advertisement stunt and marketing strategy, we think differently, or more precisely we think the old way: As Alpha, Closed Beta has mainly a role to improve the game experience. It's not meant to just play the game sooner. While we completely understand that members of the community are eager to play the game as much as we are, if some are not interested in testing or bug reporting (which can be - and we agree - a very tedious task but a necessary one), then the Open Beta will be the most appropriate first experience to discover the game.

Hi Julian,
 
Indeed one or even two years is a long time to wait.
But making a game takes a long time. Making a good game takes even more time
About making a pre-game app might be a good idea on paper, inciting players to prepare for the game. But it would mean taking some developers to work on the app instead of working on Dual Universe... which will slow the development and may, in the end, not the best choice.
 
However, what we might do in the future, once the game is released, is to allow third-party developers for apps related to the game.
 
Anyway, I will submit the idea to the dev team

Hi there! 
 
Pets are currently being discussed. 
It's not 100% sure yet, but there will probably be some pets as rewards for backers during the crowdfunding campaign.
If it's the case, these pets won't be giving any ingame advantage. This will be purely cosmetical.
 
For more evolved pets, having specific ingame uses and available to everyone, it's too soon to develop on this aspect. 
But this might be a crowdfunding campaign stretch goal. Who knows ?

Hi Astrophil90,
 
Hacking as a game mechanic is definitely planned. But it won't be before the official release of the game (don't expect it in Alpha or Beta versions of the game).
The Hacking will be a game mechanic where skills learnt by the character will play a big role. This won't be a "real hack" by using a script language. LUA will be used to script a lot of elements ingame, and provide basic AI in some ways. But it won't be related to the "Hacking" gameplay.
 
I hope this answer you question
 
Regards,
Nyzaltar

Hi ReadyForTheGame,
 
Well, as Beta won't be before end of 2016... it's a bit too soon to give details on it.
 
What is clear for now:
- Alpha will be indeed mostly for backers/supporters/founders, helping us in a crowdfunding campaign.
But it might be also possible to get access for very active community helpers. We haven't decided yet the prerequisites, nor even confirm it will indeed be possible. But we will keep you informed as the situation evolve.
- There will a closed Beta and an open Beta, that's also quite sure. About the modalities to get access, this is also still in discussion. And it won't be defined before we define all the modalities for Alpha access.
 
However, we want to be clear on one thing:
Alpha & Closed Beta Access are meant to help us building the game by giving feedback and reporting bugs. While a lot of game companies see Beta phase as some advertisement stunt and marketing strategy, we think differently, or more precisely we think the old way: As Alpha, Closed Beta has mainly a role to improve the game experience. It's not meant to just play the game sooner. While we completely understand that members of the community are eager to play the game as much as we are, if some are not interested in testing or bug reporting (which can be - and we agree - a very tedious task but a necessary one), then the Open Beta will be the most appropriate first experience to discover the game.

All these features will be part of the Nanoformer, the multifunctional tool available to each player character, right from the start. The Nanoformer will be upgradable to increase its performance with the different tools. It is directly embedded into the right arm of the player character.

Warning: We are still in very early development, meaning that everything written below must be taken with a pinch of salt. These features can be heavily modified before the Alpha release and even completely redesigned: We want to end up with the best player experience in the end. And that's why your feedback is essential!
 

Collect Tool: This Nanoformer tool enables the player to collect material in the environment, digging holes of various shapes (depending on the choice of the player, via a specific interface). Digging with regular shapes like cubes or spheres will cost a bit more time than the standard irregular shape.
 
Softening Mode: The Nanoformer can generate an area of molecular instability centered around the player and limited to the player Construct, where resources can be added or removed instantly, going back into the inventory. There will be a small delay before being able to enter in Softening Mode. While not in this state, collecting resources from one's own Construct will take exactly the same time as if using the Collect Tool to gather Raw Materials. People who have no rights on the Construct won't be able to remove/collect anything at all: the only way to create a "hole" in this area will be to "damage" (by hostile action) the voxel-based Shapes in the area.
 
Create Tool: This Nanoformer tool enables the player to create a voxel-based Shape (a regular geometric figure made out of a given Material).
The geometric primitives currently planned are the following:
- Cube
- Sphere
- Cone
- Torus
- Cylinder
- Pyramid
 
Polish Tool: This Nanoformer tool enables the player to smooth angles on a voxel-based shape, enabling the possibility to sculpt various contours.
 
Select Tool: This Nanoformer tool enables the player to select a specific volume of voxels, called a "Selected Area".
This volume will be adjusted by the following action:
- Click and drag to create a box, from one corner to the opposite corner.
- Resize the box by dragging the faces or corners.
- Turn (or reverse/mirror) a voxel-based shape selection in one direction or another with shortcuts keys
(arrow keys or +/- keys?).
 
Creating Patterns, using the Select Tool: Once the player has defined a "Selected Area", it is possible to copy this area into memory, storing all the Shape information (this excludes active Elements). This is called a Pattern. Patterns allow basic operations like Copy/Cut/Paste with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+P shortcut keys. A Pattern is limited in size (typically 32mx32mx32m) and cannot be traded/exchanged in-game. You can think of it as a player-bound template, stored in the Cloud.
 
Creating Snapshots, using the Select Tool: While Patterns can be stored and copied in multiple instances anywhere in the Building Zone, Snapshots are a static photography of a particular "Selected Area", not limited in size and containing also active Elements. Using this function, the player can create a "ghost" of the area, and, provided the player has enough Material resources, he/she will be able to restore the area in the saved state later if it were damaged. You might think of Snapshots as insurances on the information content of an aera. The process of restoration takes a long time, depending on the size of the Snapshot.
 
Inject Tool: Replace a cube of a specific Material in the world with your current selected Material.
Everything under the surface is also being replaced. This operation is equivalent to a Collect+Create operation.
Advice to player: save resources by using smaller cubes.
 


 
Possible other tools: These will be developped only if it seems necessary to complete the tools mentioned above.  
We are aware that a few other games enabling players to manipulate voxels have other tools. However, assuming the tools described above offer a wide array of possibilities and the fact that voxel manipulation might work a bit differently in Dual Universe, we want to be sure there will be a real need for the 2 following features:
 
Line Tool: Used to form a "line" with similar or different square bases size. Minimum size: 1 voxel (see below)
Select and size a start point then drag and size to an end point.
Click to fill the volume. Can be re-sized between start and finish points.
 
Restoration Tool: This Nanoformer tool enables the player to correct weird voxel shapes obtained by voxel manipulation in other modes. Restore shapes as they were meant to be.
 

 
Tool not planned: its role will be handled by some specific Elements (Area Units), and it won't be available for Alpha.
 
Area Tool: Use to create invisible areas players can interact with.
Link one of the areas to a prop and activate the prop with a script when a player enters the invisible area.

Gathering all the discussion in one place is indeed vital to avoid missing interesting ideas.
As you may have already realized, since the opening of the forum, each DevBlog post contains a button at the end redirecting to the forum.
The comments have been disabled on the DevBlog for the same reason: we want to centralize all comments, suggestions and critics on the forum

Kiklix plans to play an Alien under a human skin? This might be troublesome...  
(just joking)

Gathering all the discussion in one place is indeed vital to avoid missing interesting ideas.
As you may have already realized, since the opening of the forum, each DevBlog post contains a button at the end redirecting to the forum.
The comments have been disabled on the DevBlog for the same reason: we want to centralize all comments, suggestions and critics on the forum

Hi Comrademoco,
 
Yes, the spambots seem to have increased significantly their activity on Sunday.  
Fortunately, we have take some primary measures today that should keep them at bay.
A fix is also already in progress to include many of the things you have mentioned above.
(it was already planned on Friday but, it takes time to implement it properly)
 
The spambots were not suppressed immediately precisely to gather data about their behavior.
Now that we have enough data, all their accounts will be deleted soon.
 
Thanks for your patience on this matter!

Hi Kiklix and PetdCat,
Thanks for your feedback! 
 

Indeed communication is a tricky thing and should be constant, but should also be graduated according to the situation: it's important to listen to all feedback, but it's also important to bring extra attention and communication to those who back a game project. That's just common sense. Furthermore, social medias are good to attract people that might be interested by a project, but not the best way to discuss extensively about it. This is more a "one way communication": even if it is possible to discuss with the community on it, forums are more suited for long, detailed discussions. Social medias and forums are complementary. 
 
About putting the game on Steam: even if it's planned in the long run, that won't be before the Alpha version being polished (and therefore having a solid Beta version).
 

(Posted Friday 23rd of April 2014 on the DevBlog)
 

 

 
 

Many people have been asking questions about how we plan to finance the development of Dual Universe, which is an ambitious project and would seem to require some heavy funding. Even though we are in many ways fairly different from them, as I will explain below, we have sometimes been compared to some of the current very big budget productions, and asked to explain how we could compete. I thought it would be nice today to share more about our plans and strategy, while stressing the peculiarities of our game, so that we can start giving you a clearer picture of the financing side.
 
How much does a game like Dual Universe cost to produce? The first thing to notice is that, unlike non-MMO games, there almost never is a definite final version of the game. It is constantly evolving and so if you look at the total budget to produce such a game over several years, the number can be quite high. What we are really interested in is rather, for a MMO, how much does it cost to get to the point where the game is playable with enough value and fun in order for it to move from an ?alpha/beta? to a ?release? stage.
 
The other thing to notice is that what factors in most of the cost of producing a traditional video game revolves around creating content: 3D models of the environment, story content (quests, backstory, etc), and testing the balancing of all this to make sure that the content is neither too easy, nor too hard to play. This is actually a huge part of the cost of any ambitious video game today.
 
Our core gameplay approach is emergent gameplay: we believe that it can be incredibly fun and rewarding to let the players build their own stories, their own buildings, their own ships. We will of course bootstrap the process with a few of our own productions, but the whole point of the game is to empower people with the freedom to create their own world in a way they see fit. We also use procedural generation to create the landscape and environment. And it turns out that, as a side effect, this has a profound impact on the cost of the game. Instead of spending money to create content, we spend money to create the tools, the ?laws of physics?, the community support.
 
So, where most other games, including those we are sometimes compared to, will need many millions of dollars to deliver, we believe we can make the game we dream of with less money, while still providing a great and convincing emergent experience. That being said, it is clear that we still need money to get this ball rolling: we still have to create 3D content (every active element in the game is a 3D mesh, like weapons, reactors, control units, etc), we obviously need to develop the innovative technology behind the planetary engine, the continuous single-shard cluster, the inner workings of the game design (how to create an organization, trade, fight, secure territory, etc). This is by no means cheap. But we believe it?s within the scope of an indie studio.
 
Currently, our funding is based on the money of private investors who support the concept of the game, including myself. We have enough cash to get the 20 people team to function properly until we reach the alpha stage, somewhere in 2016. The traditional way to move on from there is to go to a publisher with our alpha, who might be convinced to add a few more millions and ? get more or less full control of the game. The problem is that we have a very innovative and disruptive concept in hand, and publishers rather tend to push their licenses towards more conventional grounds. My fear is that this option, if we have to get to this, might affect the evolution of Dual Universe in directions that neither me, nor you, the community, would really like.
 
The other option that is now available for small companies like us is to go for crowdfunding. The same process goes: you show up with your alpha and ask for support. But here, instead of a publisher, you might get the chance to finance the next stage of development entirely with the support of your community. More than money, what you also get is feedback, which is all the more relevant since we focus our design on emergent gameplay. There is no magic however, we know that the alpha has to be incredibly convincing, and that we have to deliver something to the community that shows that we know what we are doing. All the team is working hard with this in mind, and we are going to do the impossible to try and not disappoint.
 
Even if the crowdfunding might not bring as much money as what a publisher might be able to provide, we are much more in favor of this option. If the amount of money raised is modest and we cannot reach all our stretch goals, we might face a possibly slow ramp up of the amount of game features, centered on a small but active community, that will gradually (maybe over several years) get closer and closer to the ideal final game we dream of. We are ok with that.
 
The really amazing possibility with crowdfunding however, is that we may get the community so excited, as we are, that suddenly everything becomes possible, right here and right now. We could accelerate the development of the game, add more interactive elements and create the most beautiful emergent video game world ever made! We love games, we love the concept of Dual Universe. Ultimately, it is you, our community, that will decide whether we can press the ?turbo? button, and remain free from publishing constraints at the same time. The sky?s the limit (or rather, interstellar space!).
 
JC Baillie,
Project Lead

True, there is a part of the gameplay that look similar, but also many differences between the two projects.
- Shores of Hazeron has a simcity-like aspect that Dual Universe hasn't: When you build a city in Dual Universe, it will be the help of your friends, and your friends alone will inhabit it. There won't be any NPCs citizens spawning automatically (though you will be able to craft mechanical helpers for automatized and/or industrial tasks). Seeing each player becoming a mayor, governor or emperor is not in the Dual Universe game vision. There will certainly be emperors, but there will be very few: only players who manage to gather around them a huge amount of friends will be considered as "emperors". This won't be a status you will be able to have from the start, or even in the first months of play.
- As Dual Universe is voxel-based, it will enable the player to build a spaceship (or a base) from scratch in a more intuitive manner while offering a lot more possibilities to shape the construction. This will be the "Minecrafty" part and it won't count as a small part of the gameplay - There will be a territory system that will impact a lot on where you can build/install your base. A bit like Sov System from EvE Online but on a planetary scale (where EvE is on a solar system scale).
- There is a lot more gameplay features we can't communicate on right now, because it's too early.
 
But the truth is: Minecraft and EvE Online have been the two main inspirational models. 
We try to get the best of the two in Dual Universe.

Yes, this will up to players to do what they see fit with the planets they colonize. Of course, nefarious ways of treating a planet might have consequences (just like it would in the real world). We are thinking about implementing possible natural penalties for players or organizations degradating or slowly destroying a planet. But nothing is written in stone yet.
 
And concerning potential Aliens in the game... Well, I can't tell you much right now.
Because if I do, there's a high chance that some men in black with sunglasses would come and take me away to have a "nice little chat" with me 
So in short, I would only say: Maybe, maybe not  . Let's just say that before any Arkship landing, alien life (flora & fauna) has been spotted on some habitable planets but no intelligent/sentient alien race has been spotted so far.

You're welcome!
It seems the problem might not be completely solved before next Monday.
I will be around during this week-end to clean the forum if necessary.
And about having volunteer moderators, there will be a few open positions as soon as the community grows to a certain size.

A lot of things are under construction. The Lore is no exception.
Join us in this section to talk about the storyline, to give your feedback and/or make some suggestions about what has already been uncovered of the storyline.
 
Stay tuned as we are currently working on the game world bible

Not necessarily with Dual Contouring.
But I think it will become clearer when we will show you some screenshots

Hi everyone!

I'm Nyzaltar, the Community Manager for this Sci-Fi epic adventure known as "Dual Universe"!
If you have any question or suggestion on the game or anything related (forum, website, the team, etc), don't hesitate to contact me.
I will be more than happy to answer!

Also, as many of you, I'm a huge fan of Sci-Fi Themes and a passionate MMO gamer.
Eve Online, Landmark, to name a few... but far from being limited to these.

I hope you will enjoy this forum as much as we, the Novaquark Team, hope!
Also I will be around on the forum during this week-end, to answer topics that have already been posted

Best Regards,
Nyzaltar.
 

Hi Kiklix!
 
You're totally right. The smaller the voxels are, the more performance issues you have.
We had to make some tough choices, and we think we have come to a good compromise:
- Voxels on any planet will have a size around 100 centimeters.
- Constructs made by players will be composed with 25 centimeters Voxels permitting better precision.
Granted, this is still bigger than Landmark, but in exchange you have mobile constructs 
And for the planets, well, you will have some up to 100 km radius (which means a bit more than 125 000 km2 !)

What we have in mind is indeed to have one game feature to create permanent groups (for organizations) and one game feature to create temporary groups (for creating fleets or building teams). But temporary groups will be under a permanent group rules in some situations. We will give more information on this subject in the future (probably in a Blog Post )

Really glad to see sci-fi landmark players gathering here.
Welcome !

A lot of good ideas there. Thanks Astrov! 
While none of these will happen for the Alpha (mainly due to time constraints), there are many ideas that have their place in the Idea Box for later development

Currently, there is no plan to enable players to create their own currency, for several reasons:
- Risk of imbalance: If there is something that needs to be stable for a sandbox game, this is the in-game economy. 
- Development priority: Many features are quite long to develop (even the basic ones). And as this type of game mechanics implies a complex game design behind it in order to work well, it would cost a lot of development time. And for now, it's far from being in priorities
- Fun to play: We are not entirely convinced that enabling players to create their own money would be fun on the long run, nor really very easy to understand and master for most of the players (look how the economy in real life is complexified just by that). While we don't want to go "mainstream" in the game design of Dual Universe, we don't want either to go for a game that will only appeal to a very small population of players. We also need numbers to create a MMORPG full of player-driven stories!

Hi there! 
 
In Dual Universe you will have two choices regarding the situation when the "usual weapon specialist" is not in game:
 
- Having other crew members who are at least proficient in using the involved weapon. The Skill system won't block your character in one or two specialization. Basically, there will be nothing to prevent your character to be a "Jack of All Trades". Most skills will be easy to learn, but hard to master. It will all depend how much time you want to allocate to train in a specific skill. If you know the EvE Online skill system, then you should have a pretty good idea about what we are planning
 
- If you lack manpower at a given time, you will have the option to use (craftable) droids, with limited AI, to replace a crew member. However, don't expect them to be better than a living player