Dreamstar

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

Well spoken Saffi!
 
And your idea for your own organization is quite intriguing. I hope to read more about that later on.
 
Since I began reading in to DU, my mind was brainstorming ideas before I even realized it. I feel that there will be somewhat of a trick to DU's canon and universe. I myself have been a story writer and RPer for several years, but for the most part, it was all handheld int he way it was still driven by the actual owners of whatever IP I chose to build from. I have a feeling Novaquark have a different vision, which is pretty evident just from what we know so far. They certainly pull some inspiration from Eve Online, and its way of the players creating the history for their universe. I very much see that same intention here, and with more potential sprinkled in.
 
I would however like to see some PvE element, if not only to add in some core canon for the universe. As I'm typing, I can already envision some of the pioneers have less than honorable intentions when they wake up, or find their new found freedom as an escape for their inner demons. Or, perhaps the idea of starting from scratch isn't so enticing anymore now that they made it, and go mad, perhaps trying to drive the humans back to Earth even though it's already been destroyed. People can do crazy things when their reality doesn't seem to match up with whats real.
 
Oh boy, the ideas I have right now I great! Haha, I'll do some outlining for my own ideas, and just wait until NQ come out with some more pieces. As you said, it is a bit early to be trying to plan out stories and ideas ahead given how little we know.
 
- Lego

I figure they're thinking about that. I have been pondering and extrapolating the possibilities from the bits of lore, probably some kind of reconstituted U.N. and maybe a Rogue AI hellbent on 'saving' the human race even if it means war, exploiting peoples minds and bodies by using techno-trickery to get super high efficiency out of its members.
 
Beyond the Arkship though, I'm thinking that there wont be much of any NPC factions, mostly players, and their machinations. unless they intend for PVE to become big, in which case.. maybe well see the rise of a NPC Warlord, that commands legions of pirates.
It's relatable though, at least in terms of character stories, If lore comes out that breaks or reinforces the kind of character you want to role-play it can be quite crushing or lifting.
 
Above is just my speculation, and below is my wishy-washy dreams for a player organisation but hey feel free to read into me.
 
I have high hopes of establishing an Imperial Bloc of guilds that might operate something like a imperial confederacy or even similarly the Holy Roman Empire of old.
I imagine a large player run empire trying to focus on being good guys, which often just means you're the bad guys. But defending Alioth and leaving it relatively open for newbies, while operating a empire from another planet. and each member kingdom / guild contributing to the military efforts of the empire at large, having honorable fights between each other for sparring and handling of disputes. Possibly, depending on what kind of scripting is allowed, the creation of a in game currency, or the collecting of a rare good to act as a reserve currency, and doing the other dastardly thing's empires do like designing cool ships and telling people whats right and wrong.
I started working on a draft constitution and series of bills to reinforce how it could work, but I lost focus half way through. I just feel the game is so far out that much will change by time it comes to 'empire' building.
 
Lastly, give it a shot, I think if you have a good mind and could write a reasonable concept for a faction, based on what we know. and are able to explain why or how it should work, they are fairly open to listening and there is already evidence of the team listening to the community.
there have been many instances, but a recent one in the lore part 2 it was brought up about the type of metal the arkship was made out of, and in lore part 3 they more or less explained it. 
If you have something show it off, the worst that happens is NovaQuark ignores it, and the opinion of us plebian beggars doesn't matter much right?
 
You never know, maybe one of those families that live to prepare for the apocalypse made it onto the Arkship that landed on Alioth, and they dont trust the U.N. and immediately grab some resources and run off to start crafting and pumping out guns, jeeps and riding lawnmowers to go ride to the gas station.
Or some Fascist Radicals, or whatever.. some Communist workers. a Rich Oil and energy Tycoon bought his way onboard and wants to establish 'democracy'. Or Susan the pastry chef won a lotto ticket giving her a seat on the arkship...

I was more curious about how we would go about making the scripts really. User friendly would automatically lead one to assume they would try to stream line the interface/scripting process to a certain degree. 
 
It'd be neat to create automated scripts for lights, the color of them, just about everything really. It'd be just one of those cool factors to script the lights on your ships cockpit/bridge to change color depending on the situation. Engage in combat? Red alert.
 
- Lego

they will add a simplified coding language into the game for players to automate some parts of ships etc. maybe it'll be complex enough to allow the coding of simple routes and automated transports. Thats speculation tho. As for defense against enemmies, maybe automated defense drones?^^

Greetings!
 
Happened upon Dual as I was browsing the interwebs for several hours yesterday, depressed over the seemingly stagnant progression or lack of excellent games out there right now. 
 
I might of pee'd just a bit when I started reading in to Dual Universe. On paper, it sounds like everything I've wanted in a sci-fi game, and I sure do hope it delivers.
 
Anyways, I hope to be a valued contributor to this upstart community! Can't wait to meet all of you, and have some fun!
 
- Lego

I've looked around but can't quite seem to find any discernible details in regards to the scripting side of DU. It's been mentioned numerous times before that building things are just the first step, but scripting them seems to be one of the final stages as far as automating actions, or having objects work in conjunction with each other to fulfill a specific role.
 
I guess I have more of a question really, rather than a suggestion at this stage due to lack of information. 
 
What can we expect from the scripting side of the game, and how complex will it be? 
 
- Lego

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.

How realistic will living and moving things in the game, particularly humans, appear? The other day I happened upon Square Enix's new animation of Hatsune Miku, and the realistic-ness of it was absolutely incredible. I would have thought it to be an actual human had I not known better.
 
Here's the animation:
 
http://otakumode.com/news/545c796972b4c28015ab4eac/Hatsune-Miku-is-Practically-REAL-with-Square-Enix%E2%80%99s-Graphics-Technology!?lang=en

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.

Wasn't basically every sizeable ship in Star Wars a carrier of some sort? Considering the vast options of player customization and creativity, multipurpose ships such as a cross between battleship and carrier could make for some interesting gameplay.

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!

Hello everyone! Names Michael and I love to build and create things. Hopefully one day I can become a game designer and do what I love to do best and that is to create places, worlds, and other things. I have been following the progression of Dual Universe for quite a long time as it really captures my interest. One of the main factors that really got me interested was having the ability to make something, out of voxels, and make it actually work! There are alot of other things that has had me interested in the game as well like multiple planets, outer space, faction/organization creation, and pretty much all the things listed on the 'About the Game' page. This will truly be an outstanding game and will have my full support.
 
Anyways, thanks for reading and I'll be around on the forums! See you all around!

I think there should be a lot of strategic ways to play the game. Like I saw one post about hacking and rendering shields useless. I would love and encourage such game play because new players could even out do the senior players do to just better strategic placement, communication with their team, and the decisions made in the game.

There will likely be many styles of gameplay, strategic being one of them, to avoid having the classic "power in numbers" being the sole decider in combat/normal gameplay. Communications will be a central part of succeeding, especially in combat and in large organizations, because it will be more difficult to coordinate all of the efforts of a larger group or when the adrelanine is pumping during combat.

How do you think we might be able to manage spies, so that they still have a place in the game but don't become ridiculously overpowered. 
 
Say if a person has infiltrated a guild and worked their way up. now they have access to terminals and stuff. they start messing with settings on ships in critical battles. or altering tag settings in combat.
.. should they just be allowed to reign total chaos if they are dedicated to spending years of time infiltrating organisations. and are clever enough of bastards to pull it off??
 
Would it be better to make spy more of a quick infiltration type, that sneaks onto ships and hacks things. gets info on their Resonating Frequencies, Shields / photon weps. and does sneaky stuff like locking all the doors on the ship or turning off the Atmosphere.
 
Im not saying people wouldn't still spend years infiltrating organisations and making friends, only to backstab them. but If there were a more 'fun' path offered . maybe we will see less of the negative and hate filled kind of spy? - the kind that could really turn people away from the game

I think this is a very important game design issue that needs to be addressed and re-addressed.  How to avoid the single strategy that more numbers = win.  Now, there is nothing wrong with the zergling strategy - it should be as viable as the next and I don't think the game should prevent organisations from adopting it.  The problem occurs when it becomes the onlycounter to itself.  A game that has only one viable strategy is either broken or boring.  The key is in providing variability and making combat complex enough that the difficulty in leading players into a battle becomes exponentially higher with larger and larger groups.  Here are some specific features that I think would ensure that wars and battles remain dynamic.  Each topic could probably have an entire thread to itself so I'll try to be brief.   Friendly Fire If you accidentally shoot your guildmate, he is shot and takes no less damage than an enemy would have.  Ideally, this would be implemented by making projectiles, missiles, lasers, etc actually have to travel to their target, and if they hit something else on the way, then so be it.   Manual Targetting If weapons have some kind of auto-targetting feature, it should be sub-optimal and unreliable.  If there is some way for weapon designers to increase auto-targetting effectiveness it should come at a large cost of compromising with damage, range, mass, etc.   Bigger Means More Complex There should be nothing from stopping players building a massive mothership with thousands of players and dozens of capabilities, but piloting and maintaining such a ship should be extremely difficult, and the ship itself should have weaknesses and be very far from invulnerable.   Terrain This is less of an issue on planets as there will always be hills, forests, mountains, rivers, etc, etc that make natural choke points and affect what kind of tactics will be most effective.  In space it is less obvious, but equally doable.  Have vast regions of space encompassing multiple star systems that are saturated by nebulae.  Include dense asteroid clusters, regions of space that are more rocky, planets with immense rings.  There could also be regions affected by strong gravitational fields caused by black holes or neutron stars, and many other possibilities, and they could all be intertwined and overlapping.  Each of these features would have some effect on travel and/or weaponry and defences just like "normal" geographical features do.   Terrain on the battlefield and on the meta-scale creates opportunities for inventive leaders to shine and take a larger force by surprise.   Resource Distribution My thought on this is to avoid static, infinite, and clustered sets of resources, particularly high-end resources.  If there is a portion of the map that contains a lot of one particular type of resource then this will encourage "turtling" and make the acquisition of more players unto a single organisation easier.  At the same time, a perfectly even distribution means trade between regions is less profitable, perhaps even not required, so this is a tough topic.  One option is to have resources be finite at their given sources, but to have sources re-spawn elsewhere in the universe keeping the meta-game dynamic and ever changing.   Arms Diversity and Rock/Paper/Scissors/Lizard/Spock Something that DU already has going for it is that all ships will be designed by individual players/organisations so we should expect a lot of diversity.  However, there are bound to be certain a types of weapon and defences that can be mounted.  I like GalCiv's system of having weapon types lasers/missiles/projectiles and their corresponding defences shields/point defence/armour.  In addition to that, adding in mines, mine sweepers, cloaking devices, stealth detection, more and less effective propulsion systems, hangars for carrier capability, and Death Star type weaponry are all elements which can be included, each with their own advantages and drawbacks not just on the battlefield but in including them in a given ship design.  And that's before mentioning ground weaponry (although I'm sure there will be a lot of overlapping) and the possibility of space-ground/ground-space interaction in battles.  This kind of diversity provides more opportunities for inventive leaders to do something special against a superior force.   Now, with these elements I believe it becomes much more difficult to adopt a zerg strategy.  A massive army/fleet necessarily requires a practical chain of command, training drills, and disciplined soldiers who have been briefed by competent commanders who have a plan and can think on their feet.  The more players in the fleet, the more difficult management of it becomes and large numbers of inexperienced and undisciplined soldiers will be a liability.  Knowing and understanding the terrain gives a kind of "home advantage" for smart generals, and appropriate use of a variety of different kinds of ships/weapons, or having intelligence on the enemy's new ship designs could be put to devastating use.   A quick note: we tend to think of a blob as lots of little ships, but in DU a blob could be a single super-massive ship with hundreds or thousands of players on board.  In this thread when I say "zerglings" I mean massive numbers of players, but not necessarily massive numbers of ships.

I mulled the idea over a bit, I think my stance on the subject is neutral.
 
It isnt something that will affect the way i play the game.Marriage is probably best left an unofficial mechanic, just something people roleplay in their characters biography and with friends.

While it would be natural they cross analyze what works in other sci-fi mmo's. Eve has a bounty hunting system that is fairly popular and therefor I have no doubt we will, eventually, see rewards for killing people hard coded in.
 
Even if its not, we players could still establish systems.
 
Im not completely sure the true depth of the Tag system yet. but it might be possible to apply a 'Tag' to any character with conditions like 'Kill this Character' and the person that placed the tag will Pay out x ammount, or give you reputation, or heck maybe pay you with a new Tag that offers you to Kill another target, or Gives you access to their space station.
 
It was implied the automatic distributions of tags could be possible. And so a HYPOTHETICAL system like this should be possible
 
Guild-Banan-o-Rama applies a 'Bounty Hunting Tag' with optional conditions 'Kill this Target' or 'Destroy Target Resource Collector'
the game will be waiting for the conditions to be met, the Tag might have a time limit before it expires, it also may have a Time limit to complete once you do accept it.
Once the conditions are met, the automatic tag system will issue whatever commands were placed on the tag to begin with - Guild Banan-o-Rama will pay the first Tag holder to complete the conditions 1,000,000 credits and Destroy all other Tags held by players.

Going back to review the plausibility of a resurrection node. I was actually woken up today, may 25th, by this thought.
 
It's possible the universe doesnt care too much about you being alive or being dead. and that the RN is able to present an argument to the fabric of time space saying "Hey that person isnt dead they've been standing right here." Taking only the energy to produce a wave strong enough to counter argue the universe.
 
The universe attempting to keep its substance unified, just goes "Oh, my mistake" and will begin to recreate you from the most recent point it thought you were alive. Resulting in you being "Respawned" on the RN pad.
 
Think of it like a puddle of water, and something causes a ripple, this event was your death. This machine the RN says these ripples arent true producing a counter ripple that negates the death ripple from its location. And thus causes you to ressurect on the pad.
 
If a principle that all matter exists everywhere, but is awaiting input from a stronger force, probably time, location, and quantity. I suggest that when the machine makes the argument you never died and the universe goes "Ok, lets see." It performs its checks to see if you already exist in order to prevent a single line paradox, because if you did exist, it would probably make a fork in the road producing a parralell universe instead of breaking an already existing timeline.
 
If you were dead, it would make a bridge gap between whatever point it thought you were alive at, and the time that the machine is saying you are alive now. Bringing someone back from a long time ago may not be possible due to some kind of degradation of signal or the initial Death Wave is too far away for the Negation Wave to ever catch up, or even that the death wave already moved through the entire puddle and there isnt anything to Negate anymore. Or bringing someone from very far away for a similar purpose of wave degredation.
 
The difference between say, the machine being told to recreate a broken ship, and recreate you, is that the universe knows that the iron exists somewhere else already, but when it checks for your consciousness and doesnt find it, it thinks  it has messed up and then attempts to correct itself to prevent a rip in the timeline.
  I would ask a theoretical physicist for an opinion. or someone with a good understanding of math. If someone is really interested in making the RN work as realistically as possible.

Hey Jared, very fascinating, you've got my gears winding up now  :3
 
I believe the charge element refers more to a constant supply of electricity, like you say though, maybe the device could store several ready-to-go respawn charges before needing more electricity.
Think if a spy sneaked in and cut the power cord somewhere. Instead of simply destroying the R-Node because the spy, or the spy's guild can capture it later for its wealth.
 
The way it works is simple: you first need to set up the node, except the one of the Arkship, which is always ready to use. A Resurrection Node is a power hungry machine (remember, the beast is twisting the fabric of the quantum multiverse space-time topology
 
What is -possibly- happening is this machine somehow monitors for your death, and it is able to save your fundamental 'spark' your consciousness whatever it is that makes you,you, it doesnt care about your memories or knowledge per say, just saving the core essence.
In the regeneration of the body, it eats a massive ammount of power to distort the fabric of time-space to make a copy of the past, or even a seperate dimension. and puts "the you from 5 seconds ago" into the world, as it is reconstructing all the particles, it dumps your 'core spark' into this new body.
 
That body may or may not have built a Super Duper Proton Gun last week, or it could be a body from 5 days ago that never learned Herbology level 3. It might be a body from a different, nearby, dimension that didnt build any body armor.
just speculating though.

I do find this fascinating, it will be good to hear what anyone else has to think about a built in system like this. It could be that in this environment it is best left as something you write into your biography, and just the way you act becoming more known in the community as a badass pirate, or a protector of innocents. a trusted politician, that builder that never returns extra materials to the guild.
 
The development team is really the only ones that know if this add's depth to gameplay or not.
 
I think the worst thing for this system would be if its just an extra layer, forced ontop of trying to play. but if it is a tangible, working thing then it could be great

I agree keeping a character that is flagged as "in combat" spawned in game and limp even when the player has logged out is essential in this kind of game.  The body and vehicle the the body is in remain in game until their timer runs down and during that time they can be killed by the enemy.
 
Jails and the ability to keep another player captive is an interesting concept.  Captors could try to extort money, or they could have deeper motives: information, vehicles/building designs, tags/functions, or even getting a legate to vote a certain way.  Most of the time the captive player will commit suicide, but if the captors plan carefully at a time when death would be more costly than complying, it could work.  I think I like it.
 
On dead player bodies, some players might like to keep them as trophies (not me, honest...), but yes, if a body is left alone it should definitely despawn after a few minutes.  Massive graveyards commemorating huge battles might be cool... until the next empire comes along and builds a metropolis on it.
 
Sorry if this isn't entirely on topic but you brought up some cool talking points.

Personally I'd like to see a carrier that uses some combination of stealth, speed, and range to defeat a battleship. Battleships are all about firepower and armour, carriers should use that against them. Carriers should try to fight a one-sided battle, where lots of small, difficult to hit bombers bombard the battleships while they cannot hit the carriers because the flight range of the bombers is too high and the carrier is either too fast (not amazingly fast, just faster than a slow hulking behemoth of a battleship) to catch, or hidden away somewhere behind a moon or something. Add in some fighters to protect the bombers from smaller ships and to do some screening, maybe throw in some supporting cruisers and you've got a force to be reckoned with.
 
Of course, there'll always be a counter. Battleships should be accompanied by battlecruisers and cruisers, either of which should be faster and more powerful than a lone carrier caught with its trousers down.