Dual Universe

Production

Jean-Christophe Baillie, Novaquark's director and project lead of Dual Universe, claims to have had the idea for this game in 2011. Novaquark formed in 2014 with Ubisoft, Sony, Apple and Aldebaran Robotics former employees. It now counts with a staff of approximately 25. While starting the game's development, the engine was changed. The game was revealed on May 2016 in its pre-alpha state, with the subsequent release of a brief teaser trailer following E3. The game will enter a closed alpha during 2017, with a full release expected in 2018. The funding of the game partly comes from a Kickstarter campaign, in addition to several early-stage investors. As of August 2016, the game counts with a voxel planetary engine with procedural generation, as well as server-synchronized building and mining. Server stress tests are being performed. The developers were as of that time focusing on the realisation of building and piloting mechanics.

Background

The backstory of the game starts in the year 2027 with the discovery of a neutron star on a collision course with the solar system. Civilization has nearly 500 years to create a plan to leave Earth and find new planets to inhabit. After centuries of research and development, several Arkships were built which can carry millions of passengers in cryosleep. In 2510 the first Arkships begin to leave Earth, all heading towards different areas of the galaxy. As the Arkships are on their way to their final destinations, the neutron star destroys the solar system. In the year 12477, one of the Arkships, the Novark, arrives on the earth-like planet Alioth, planting itself firmly into the ground.

Gameplay and characteristics

The game takes place in a "single continuous, undivided universe" and is played in first person. It is built on the so-called "CSSC" (Continuous Single-Shard Cluster) technology, through which all players interact in a single world. This entails no separate servers or instances such as with other MMOs. The game utilises the Unigine 2 64-bit rendering engine. Dual Universe offers the potential of virtually unlimited procedurally generated planets, provided by Novaquark's in-house engine.

Players are able to alter the game world in physical, political and economical aspects. They are able to build ships, houses, space stations as well as cities which possess ground-harvestable minerals. At the same time, they can opt to cooperate in the development of political systems and economies, as well as wage war (e.g. to steal resources by force) and thus alter the balance of power. According to Jean-Christophe Baillie: "We don't create the content; players do." The game world is meant to be a "wide-open, fully-moddable experience" to be shared by all its players in a simultaneous manner.

The game is structured on the basis of 25 centimetres (0.82 ft) voxels, giving it its sandbox nature and allowing gamers to craft and manipulate anything in its world, from small objects such as weapons to cities and comparably big structures. Central to the game are the removal and addition of matter to the landscape, as well as the building of space stations, which can extend as large as the expanse of an entire planet. The game also counts with space exploration, mining, and combat. The game's autonomous systems (such as engines or resource gathering) in turn play with concepts like energy consumption or the interconnection among machinery.

The game is played in multiplayer fashion. Players can take on and specialise in different tasks, being builders, miners, pirates, industrialists, etc.; roles such as these are expected to emerge mostly out of the players' mutual interactions. The game universe contains millions of planets, wherein changes performed by one player are continuous and seen by others. The developers have stated "ideologies, powers, ideas and gameplays" will all play a part in the final release. Notably, players can develop their own ship and manage its own functions, such as navigation or weapon systems. At the same time, players knowledgeable in the Lua scripting language will be able to change the interactions between the ship systems. The AI is also moddable.

The game economy is reported to be influenced by human interactions. The exchange of harvested goods is governed by a market economy. A player can build a company and do marketing and logistics, among other activities.

In its 10-minute gameplay video released at E3, Dual Universe is shown to commence on a planet's surface, wherein the intricacies of voxel manipulation are shown to the user. They are then launched to space where they land a ship and continue manipulating objects. Users can, as of mid-2016, form gaming guilds on the game's community website; there are over 300 such guilds formed as of September 2016.