As promised here is the new DevDiary along with some other exciting news!! 

April Dev Diary

 

Here's a quick summary of what you will find in this video:

• 0:00 - 9.000 backers reached.Thank you again for your support! 
• 0:47 - Physics system refinement. Atmosphere flight / Space flight 
• 1:14 - Icy Biome (work in progress) 
• 1:41 - New 3D Model Elements 
• 2:00 - Crafting System first step implementation (work in progress) 
• 2:14 - Building Helper window for dynamic constructs
  
  
  
  

9000 Backers milestone reached!

More and more of you have shown your faith and belief in our project and we can’t thank you enough for all the support you have provided so far! ! Only one stretch goal remains, the “Bounty System”, before going into a feature freeze state until the Official Release. We have many other features in the pipeline but, as we said before, we don’t want to fall into the “feature creep” trap. So all the additional stretch goals we planned for the Kickstarter campaign will be added into the game through expansions after the official release.  

Novaquark has moved into a new office

To better accommodate our growing team we’ve moved into a new office! Now we have enough space for everyone to have a comfortable work environment and room for us to continue to grow.Here are a few photos of the new office!

Novaquark is still recruiting!  

Speaking of growing... In order to develop the game at full speed, we have to increase the size of the team! You can find our open positions here!  If you - or somebody you know - is qualified for one of these positions, please send us a mail! :)

Gamescom 2017: we will be there!  

For the first time, we should have a presence at both the Business and Public sides of the convention. We’re still waiting for confirmation on the public side, but as soon as we’re confirmed we’ll let you know. We are also planning a meet up for Gamescom! Come and grab a beer and discuss the game with members of the team. We’ll have details for you in the next update.   

Dear Backers,  

As promised, we are back with a new DevDiary video! We are still tweaking the settings on our new capture tools, but as you can see in today’s video the frame rate is much better and it more closely represents the in-game frame rate. We’ll keep working on improving our videos to give you the best possible quality in the future. We also have very exciting news to celebrate today: we reached the 650,000 € stretch goal!  

March DevDiary 

 

Here's a quick summary of what you will find in this video: 

• 0:32 - Cockpit Widget now displays basic flight information 
• 0:48 - Physics improvements: atmospheric and spatial engines now take air friction into account. 
• 1:00 - Physics improvements: reaching escape velocity & orbiting around a planet
• 1:14 - Interpolation improvements: movement of observed entities are now fluid
• 1:31 - New combinable Elements to create simple contraptions or useful construct interfaces 
• 2:19 - New design for existing Elements (Artwork & 3D Models) 
• 2:36 - Landing on a Flying Construct 

650.000€ Stretch Goal Reached!!! 

We can’t thank you all enough for your continuous support! Many of you have continued to support us, and new backers have joined the community recently. Reaching this Stretch Goal, even though it comes after the Kickstarter campaign, means “Construct versus Construct” will be included in the game for the Official Release! Now only the “Bounty System” Stretch Goal remains. 

Of course we mentioned during the Kickstarter campaign that we had many unrevealed stretch goals, but as we’ve stated in previous updates, we won’t try to reach additional stretch goals after the Bounty System. This will help us avoid “feature creep”, which can lead to delays.That doesn't mean we are going to cancel those features: it's just that they won't be implemented for the Official Release. They will just be part of the many free expansions that we will work on after the Official Release. 

We hope you enjoyed this DevDiary and we’ll see you soon for the next one! As always, we can’t look forward to your feedback and suggestions! 

The Novaquark team

Dear backers,

We planned to release a new DevDiary today. However, we have to postpone for a few days (probably until the middle of next week) for several reasons:

- We are putting in place a new process to record videos: we took your feedback around the lag/stuttering issues in previous Dev Diary videos seriously. Some of you were worried that it was coming from the game. It wasn't. We acquired a dedicated video capture device and the good news is: the first tests are really positive. You will see a clear difference between the next video and the previous ones!

- We have really exciting things to show you in the March Dev Diary! However, as the new version of the client is not completely stabilized yet, we’re going to take a bit more time before showing you the new features. If you liked the short preview of the physics implemented for mobile constructs, you will definitely like what's coming in a few days. There will be also a preview of many new visual assets we’ve recently implemented in game (or that will be implemented soon).

Meanwhile, we won't leave you without anything to think about during the week-end: we just released a new DevBlog about Organization Management and how the RDMS (Rights & Duties Management System) affects it. You can read everything here. As always, we are looking forward to your feedback!

The Novaquark team

Dear backers,  

We’re back from the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. JC was there to meet various professionals and some of our backers during our Meet Up! We’re very happy since Dual Universe was chosen as one of eight 'Best in Play Winners' for GDC Play 2017! Best in Play is a showcase of GDC Play's finest games. All GDC Play exhibitors like us are judged on their in-development or complete games by a panel of veteran GDC organizers and Gamasutra editors.  

We were also on stage on Tuesday, March 2nd to compete for the best pitch in the dedicated contest and we’re thrilled to tell you that we won!

That’s not all, as we also got an interview from IGN! We hope you’ll enjoy it and as promised, here’s our February DevDiary.  

February DevDiary  

 

While a little bit late, as we previously announced, this video is almost twice as big so we hope you’ll like it!

0:05 - Debriefing GDC 2017  
0:40 - New Design for ship Elements  
0:55 - Example of single-player vehicles  
1:09 - Example of a large spaceship, work in progress  
1:17 - Copy/Paste Tool presentation  
1:53 - Customizable Widgets, Fuel Indicator & Autonomy  
2:34 - New Baking rendering technique for planets  
2:53 - First version of the game Installer, loading screens & tooltips  
3:09 - More info about the Alpha release    

IGN Interview  

JC had the opportunity to talk to IGN during GDC. Here’s the video!  

 

NovaWrimo Winners  

The previous Kickstarter Update was focused on our preparations for GDC. As a result we didn’t get a chance to talk about the end of the NovaWrimo Event. So, without further delay, here are the winners selected by the Novaquark Jury! It was really difficult to choose the three best texts as there were a staggering number of high quality entries. If you want to read the winning texts, click the links below!  

• 1st Place: “That Bright Dawn” (by Aetherios) 
• 2nd Place: “Rebirth” (by Temerian) 
• 3nd Place: “Left Behind” (by Devious_T)

A game we love: Torment - Tides of Numenera

As you may know, crowdfunded games have got a rough ride in the recent years, but nothing is more exhilarating than seeing a beloved project comes to fruition. Crowdfunded on Kickstarter in 2013, “Torment - Tides of Numenera” was finally released on Tuesday, February, 28th! For those who haven’t heard about the game, it’s a Baldur’s Gate style romp made by some of the most eminent developers of “Planescape: Torment”. If you like heavy storytelling in CRPGs, it’s almost certain you’ll love this one! ;)  

That’s all for now, see you in a few weeks for the March DevDiary!  

The Novaquark team 

GDC 2017 & slight delay for February DevDiary

Dear backers,

Dual Universe will be presented at the GDC 2017 in San Francisco from February 28th to March 3rd. We are happy to announce we have been selected as one of the eight winners for the "Best in Play" Awards! Due to all the preparation related to the GDC (new pre-alpha build), the February DevDiary video will be released at the beginning of March (between March 6 & March 10).

Community MeetUp at GDC

The event is in San Francisco, CA on Tuesday, February 28th, 2017 at 7pm Pacific time. JC Baillie will be giving a live demo of Dual Universe and talking about the progress of the game and answering your questions. For all the details on the event and how to RSVP, please read this forum thread.  Space is very limited, so please respond quickly if you can make it. Also, since we know not everyone will be able to attend we’ll be streaming the demo and a Q&A session with JC via a Facebook Live broadcast! Make sure to follow us on Facebook and stay tuned!

Double Packs: linking secondary accounts to KS pledges

We have already made several updates of our user database to link Kickstarter pledges to Dual Universe accounts made on the Community Portal. However, this was only for main accounts. At the beginning of the week, we updated our user database with the secondary accounts (involving Double Silver, Boosted Emerald, Diamond and Kyrium packs) for which we had the relevant info to link with the Kickstarter pledges. Why this late? We are updating the user database in batches and we waited to have enough accounts with accurate info to update it. However, we are far from having the info for all the accounts: we had accurate info to link secondary accounts for only one third of them as of last Tuesday (Feb, 16). So if you have a secondary account that hasn't been linked to your Kickstarter pledge, please double check that you have completed the following:

1) You have replied to the Kickstarter Survey form we sent in November last year.
2) You have given the appropriate info for your secondary account (the e-mail address used for your secondary account) in the Kickstarter Survey form.
3) You have created the secondary account on our Community Portal here.