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Dual universe - Visit at Novaquark headquarters


HaidenFR

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DUAL UNIVERSE
Invitation at Novarquark

Dual universe has actually a false reputation of being a mix between Space engineers and No man’s sky. It doesn’t helps.
I’ve talk about that with the team...
...They’re not only doing a building game, at all. It’s a complete game, with everything you may expect from it, made by players who play games alike and who want to create their ultimate version with their own concepts. They’re playing the same games as you and they’re not willing to make the same mistakes.
For now they’ve just shown their technology and they want to make a game as the same dimension as EVE online on which you’ve put some Minecraft mecanics in a ++ version

I need to tell you that I was sceptical before going to Novaquark. I've a huge videogames experience so I hade a lot of questions.

So, here's the interview. (It's my redaction, not exactly how they said it)

TECHNICALLY
- For Dual universe, you're seeking for a real big thing. Technically will it really be possible ? With how many maximum players visible ?
For now it's a technical demo. When we've started the project it was on a multiplayer basis and not a solo one on which you add things.

We're starting from a fresh new game, multiplayer in mind, we put the maximum and we adjust the things together.

- At what distance you make elements of the game pop ? And when it's too far away, it doesn't pop ? It's showed but in low poly ?

It will be in low poly. We're tweaking it as the project goes by.
 
- Will there be differences between orbital flying and space flying ?

For first the speed, maybe the vibrations, different motors will probably be necessary to control the player's progression. It will be luxury to have a ship who can do space AND planet flying. Our goal is more to have a ship carrying a shuttle to go on the planets. We'll also avoid big structures to go on the planets to don't see them crash on your little house without warning.
 
- Will there be wheel vehicles and their physics ?

It would make a lot of calculations so the size of the planets would be shrinked so no.
But we'll have hovercrafts who follow the terrain.

 
- What about aquatic vehicles ?

It's hard to do in voxels but we want to make innovations with the voxels.

CONSTRAINTS
- Dual universe'll have limitations with the things we can build ? What happen if I build a giant penis ?

Any building has a tag with the name of the person and you can report it. If it doesn't respect the rules of the game, the materials and buildings will be delete and the player may be banned.
Next to that, what you can build, can be sold on the game market. I think the players
will be more interessted to buy things with style, rather than the ones who don't match with the universe.

 
- The pre made parts of the ships are a very good idea for me and when I see a ship it gives less the feeling of : "There are only cubes in this".

We're putting these elements to inspire the players too. Some of them don't know how to build a ship, so we give some keys to them.
 
- What if I wanna destroy a whole planet ?

It won't be possible. The center can't be destroyed.
Mining deeply will be a real career to avoid lava zones who'll be more and more numerous as long as you go deeper.

 
- I'm a bad player so with 60 people I decide to build a giant cube around a planet, so no one can't go inside. How will you avoid that ?

A good player will come destroy it.
 
- How to control big groups of people that you can meet on games like survivals who are raiding or griefing anythings they find ?

We don't want to break the game balance in any way.
The start of the game will be safe to be able to develop yourself.

 
COMPETITION
- You know of course that there're others games who looks like yours in which I don't have to pay every month. Their first problem is their world is so big that we don't find any other player. How do you solve that ?

We want to create a game to play for years, so the subscription is here to have everything to build new content. We wanna give more and more possibilities to the players.
Dual universe isn't going to be another clone. We wanna do the ultimate sandbox game. We've played to the other games you're talking about and we allways thought that there is missing something, that's why we've decided to do our own project.
For what you can do in the game, we believe that the community will do a big part for that in Dual universe.

 
GAMEPLAY
- What planets will have to give me the want to explore them ? Today the sandbox games are mostly with empty planets and sometimes a cave. This is not very interresting. What is exploration for you ?

Exploration has to be not too easy and rewards you. It's hard to take off a planet to go to another one but there will be different ways to do it. You'll need players, materials, skills, fuel, make tests etc...
Next to that we're putting a lot of work in the creation of the biomes so they all have a purpose and goals for the player. They're not just skins of the terrain, they all have their materials, aquatic lifeforms, animals, etc...
You'll also can find wreaked ships, ruins and things that the players had built.
In space you'll find minerals in asteroids or a secret base hidden by a player in one of them.


- A universe with 30 planets and people rather than a universe with 250 planets with no one and allways the same things to do sounds more interesting for me. What do you think about that ?

Our universe will expanse as players come in the game. The more player are in Dual Universe, the more we will add elements to, then we'll give access to stargates who'll bring you far away in the universe.
We also want to implement safe zones to encourage people to regroup.

 
- Will there be aliens ? NPCs ?

The game is about the humans who're searching a new planet. The game has a story. So we're just thinking about humans and animals. But you'll have elements to make alien looking ships.
For the NPC if by that you mean : The magician standing in front of his house, you won't have that.


- But a city without NPCs walking by will make it look dead, no ?

What will be constructed will be at the scale of the player population of it. So like in real life in the street, you're not allways seeing people, you'll not see players if they're not using their colony. But it will take time and investment to build these colonies so there will be players in.
 

- The players' ships and buildings will be saved ? Tradable ? What happen if my ship is destroyed ? Can I make it again with a saved blueprint or will I have to do it again from scratch ?

Yes, you'll have all of this and the ability to build back your ship if you've saved the blueprint.
 
- What about the character creation. What will be the options ? Will we all have the same look ?

There will be a character creation : man, woman, face details, haircut, nickname, logo, etc...
 
- Will you put ranged combat on foot ? Melee combat ?

The combat will be a lock and fire system. (Nok : Not a Tab + skill, I asked) The goal is to have a tactical combat more than a reflex combat and also because of the technical issues a too fast fighting system may create latency, etc... (Nok : So it would look like a Star wars galaxies system on its end)
 
- How will be the space combat system ? Simulation ? Arcade ? Shields / Armor / Pilot (dead) like in most of others space games ?

We're looking for somewhat of a realistic lock and fire space combat. A tactical combat. You'll have to hit the shields, scan to find where are the important parts of the ship to destroy them, etc...
 
- In a multi crew ship, what are doing the other players ?

A ship will need a lot of things to work. You'll have to close doors to take off, people in the turrets, others who'll make the power go to the speed or the shields, etc...
 
- Someone is boarding my ship. Is it more interesting for him to destroy or hack a door or make a hole in my ship ?

It depends of your ship construction. The ship will define its weaknesses. If you've put a strong door, they'll hit the shields. If you've strong shields, they'll hit the door, etc... Following that idea. It's up to you to enhance your ship structural after that.
 
- Will there be any fuel ? Will I have to eat, drink or sleep ?

Let's take an example. A player wanna explore a cold and far away zone. He'll have to equip himself with clothes to go there and have the supplies for that kind of expedition.
In that way the more you're prepared, the more you'll be rewarded.

 
- What happen when I die ?

For now it's a respawn, after there'll be penalties, but it's still in the works
 
- How will be the economy ?

We're looking for something close to EVE online for that with markets that players can make. There can be different markets next to anothers and who compete.
In these markets you'll be able to sell materials, objects, constructions, DAC (Subscription tokens).
At the beginning we'll put bots, as it was on EVE online, to have a working market since the start. When it'll be working, we'll delete bots as more as players will come in.
We have knowledge about the economic systems, so we'll make sure it's never blocked.

 
- What are the careers planned ?

You can see that on the Kickstarter
 
- Will there be a criminal system ?

We want the community to control that. For example if this group is know to be agressive, the communty will see if it has to be stopped or not. It may create police players group to stop them.

 
Other things to notice :
- They'll put free extensions to add specify content like : Stargates or Weather system (I mean tempests, etc...) and so on.
- When you're in the cockpit, you can see your body in full 3D. It will be improved.
- You'll be able to tweak your ship. With the LUA system. So it will really be your ship and with that you can expand his value on the market

 
Now it's up to you to decide.
 
Thank you to Alexandre Moufarek, Ludovic Serny, Jean Christophe Baillie, Berjamin Berteau and all the persons who've answered my questions. They were passionate players and very easy to speak with.
In case you forgot, link to the Kickstarter : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1949863330/dual-universe-civilization-building-sci-fi-mmorpg

Thank to all. It was Kendan for whyshouldiplay
 

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Okay when I was reading your Q&A something came in mind to me. What do you think of this: killing people should be rewarded like you can steal a dead body before it re-spawns or a dead player releases some of its objects where he or she has been killed. In this way the killer is rewarded and the killed has penalty.

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Okay when I was reading your Q&A something came in mind to me. What do you think of this: killing people should be rewarded like you can steal a dead body before it re-spawns or a dead player releases some of its objects where he or she has been killed. In this way the killer is rewarded and the killed has penalty.

Looting systems have been discussed countless of times already. People will drop most of their inventory on death (I think that is what we agreed on), excluding master blueprints and DACs (and currency if I'm not mistaken)

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Okay when I was reading your Q&A something came in mind to me. What do you think of this: killing people should be rewarded like you can steal a dead body before it re-spawns or a dead player releases some of its objects where he or she has been killed. In this way the killer is rewarded and the killed has penalty.

Lol you want to reward killers and punish victims? Good thing you have no say over real life systems!

 

There should be a possibility of reward, but also risk. Like if you kill someone and it's not exactly secret, you'll get flagged as someone who has committed a murder, and get tracked down. There are similar systems in most MMOs that track player killing players with skulls on the map.

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Best post in these forums, I'd give you all of my today's thumbs-ups if I could. Lots of good questions.

 

Something I'm wondering about are the mentioned underground "lava zones". They wouldn't tiptoe around the issue of how water is going to work in their game if they could handle (volumetric) liquids, so what is that lava going to look like? Maybe a similar kind of "fake fluid" as in Minecraft? Or just hovering glowy balls? Or zones that are really hot and cause damage to players passing through?

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Lol you want to reward killers and punish victims? Good thing you have no say over real life systems!

 

There should be a possibility of reward, but also risk. Like if you kill someone and it's not exactly secret, you'll get flagged as someone who has committed a murder, and get tracked down. There are similar systems in most MMOs that track player killing players with skulls on the map.

There will be a bounty system. You know most of the time who kills you and report it and see who are the real serial killers (edit: this is an idea of mine). You could also make cops into your society, or intergalactic cops (edit: this was put forth by the team).

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There will be a bounty system. You know most of the time who kills you and report it and see who are the real serial killers (edit: this is an idea of mine). You could also make cops into your society, or intergalactic cops (edit: this was put forth by the team).

 

I agree a bounty system is pretty much a requirement for a game like this; players will have to mostly police themselves no matter what, and the game should provide ways for people to do that effectively so we can build virtual civilizations and not immediately descend into anarchical chaos. The game shouldn't only inform you who killed you, but also who damaged your constructs imo, for cases when people gank your stuff while you're offline.

 

Lootable bodies are on the books, btw. It's not set in stone yet, but iirc the idea is that you drop a more or less random selection of the items you carried, and keep the rest while you respawn. Some minor skill loss might be pondered aswell if people find ways to abuse "naked runs" and the like.

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@Phroshy

 

For the construction I disagree. All the game system is to work in teams and/or to protect itself: you can land your ship somewhere hidden underground and create a heavy door upon it if you play alone. Other big park structures for orgs would be with shields... All that makes the game. Investigator should be a class too, they would seek who damaged something or killed someone (as cops for example) but with all the factions and territories there won't be just one kind of cop.

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Okay when I was reading your Q&A something came in mind to me. What do you think of this: killing people should be rewarded like you can steal a dead body before it re-spawns or a dead player releases some of its objects where he or she has been killed. In this way the killer is rewarded and the killed has penalty.

if this kind of system will happen, then i will withdraw from the game at all...as trader/industrialist i will not do the whole work, searching for ressources, creating a blueprint of a turret, then a killer is appearing and looting the whole work, then can't do revenge because he is using my turret to protect himself.

This kind of game will reward the lazy and penalize the creatives.

Better i will not work at all and wait unthil someone doing something, kill him and using his stuff.

Strong kill the weak instead to protect them. Weak will be perished - I don't need this dishonorable game.

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if this kind of system will happen, then i will withdraw from the game at all...as trader/industrialist i will not do the whole work, searching for ressources, creating a blueprint of a turret, then a killer is appearing and looting the whole work, then can't do revenge because he is using my turret to protect himself.

This kind of game will reward the lazy and penalize the creatives.

Better i will not work at all and wait unthil someone doing something, kill him and using his stuff.

Strong kill the weak instead to protect them. Weak will be perished - I don't need this dishonorable game.

Actually it is the way it is. The CM said that, part of your items are destroyed, the other part lootable. ;) but you need to find places to protect your things..

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Actually it is the way it is. The CM said that, part of your items are destroyed, the other part lootable. ;) but you need to find places to protect your things..

 

I think they were referring specifically to blueprints. The master blueprint that builders get from their creation is indeed planned to be unlootable.

 

If you're selling (or giving away) copies people can still loot those, though.

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