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Announcement of first Alpha Race Challenge
TheHamon posted a topic in General DiscussionsHello and welcome! Im happy to announce that the Free Racing Community will organise the first race for all organisations present at Alpha stage. You can compete with each other in a peaceful but also challenging way. The provisional rules are: -Size: Fighter/Jet -Propulsion used: Athmospheric, Boosters, wings -Checkpointsystem: Checkpoint-rings, check size maximum! -Ceasefire during the competition -no Speed maximum! -track will probably be outside of safezone, beware Due to lack of information yet, further updates will have the rest, so stay tuned! !Date and Location will be announced after Alpha-Launch! Send your intereset to participate directly to TheHamon (COMMUNITY-PN) with the subject 'I wanna race'. Hosts: The honor of hosting the event is not yet decided, we will take your applications! The host of the event will be mentioned in the articel, will be advertised and will have the honor to provide the start-location (additional structures will be build by the FRC if necessary) A secondary host will have the same privileges as the first host, except he will provide the finishline. Send applications directly to TheHamon (COMMUNITY-PN) with the subject 'I wanna host'. Embrace your speed-fever, touch the stars. -A service by the Free Racing Community
Gamescom 2018 MeetUp!
NQ-Nyzaltar posted a topic in Rules & AnnouncementsHi everyone! This is now confirmed that we will be at the Gamescom 2018 happening in August at Cologne, Germany! However, for logistics reasons we will be only in the business area this time (and not in the entertainment area like last year). So for all of you who are attending the Gamescom and won't have the opportunity to go in the business area, we are organizing a MeetUp on one evening during the event. It will be an opportunity to meet JC, NQ-Oli and I to discuss about Dual Universe! Please indicate which evening you will be available Best Regards, Nyzaltar.
[Pre-Alpha Event] Build the first City!
NQ-Nyzaltar posted a topic in Rules & AnnouncementsDear Pre-Alpha Testers, The goal of this new in-game event is to build the largest possible city in a combined effort from the community. You can build houses, buildings or even skyscrapers representing your home or your Organization headquarters in a civilian, urban environment! When will start the event and will it end? It will start with the test tomorrow (Saturday, April 7th, 2018). It will end with the release of the upcoming new Client Build (ETA: May 2018) To get more info about the new build coming soon, you can read this blog post on our website. Where will it happen? On Alioth, at the following coordinates: pos{0,2,-37.2769,175.8497,0.0000} A teleporter will be set in front of the Hub, at the end of the bridge, near the Arkship. This will teleport you on the involved territory tile for the event. There, you'll find a small square and the goal is to build a city around it. Why a City Building event? While this event might seem similar to the "Building Outpost" contest, there are some important differences: this is not really a contest and more a global community effort to test how the server will behave with a real, fully detailed city built by players. Why not a Spaceship Building event? We wanted to make a Spaceship Building event first. However, this would not have made a lot of sense, as we are planning very soon a revamp of the piloting game mechanics, as well as new interactive Elements to diversify the means to propulse dynamic constructs. We will plan to make a new contest for spaceships once we will have released the new build. Will there be a reward? Not this time, as it isn't a contest but more a global common goal for the following playtests. However, we might publish screenshots and/or a video of the best constructs on our social media and on our website Best Regards, The Novaquark team.
Building Contest & AMA Event
NQ-Nyzaltar posted a topic in Rules & AnnouncementsDear Pre-Alpha testers, Two things are coming for the playtest, Saturday February 3rd! Outpost Building Contest Now that we have implemented a (basic) version of the Blueprint feature, we are planning to organize a few contests in the coming months. To celebrate the implementation of new Elements (decorative for the time being), the first contest will start on Saturday, February 3rd. Show your builder skills by creating an outpost! It can be underground or in the sky, but the construct shouldn't be a vehicle. The goal: Building the most kickass outpost during the next playtests. The time frame: The event starts at 2.00 pm UTC on Saturday, February 3rd. It ends at 11.00 pm UTC on Saturday, March 10th. (You will have 2 Saturdays and 4 Fridays of playtests to make it) The prizes: 1st place: - The outpost will be showcased in an upcoming Blog post - 3 Beta Keys (to share with your friends) - 3 DACs 2nd place: - The outpost will be showcased in an upcoming Blog post - 2 Beta Keys (to share with your friends) - 2 DACs 3rd place: - The outpost will be showcased in an upcoming Blog post - 1 Beta Key (to share with a friend) - 1 DAC Criteria selection list: The winners will be selected by a jury formed with the Novaquark staff. We will take into account the following criteria: The outpost must be a static construct. The outpost must be made with only one construct. The outpost must have a (serious) Sci-Fi vibe. The outpost should be good looking and creative. The outpost shouldn't represent a copyrighted asset from another Sci-Fi universe. AMA (Ask Me Anything) In-game Event On Saturday, February 3rd, JC Baillie will be connected in-game and will answer your questions! We will give your further information on the topic in the coming days. Best Regards, The Novaquark team.
event Public EventThis public event idea can offer a lot of gameplay or strategic choice. For example: The arrival of IA ships in areas (random or not) Neutral IA contructions, with events of sieges, to defend. Or moving asteroids with valuable resources (example without AI). This is intended to diversify: -The harvest of resources (or others). -Add PvE and PvP content -An opportunist rating or specialty in this area. If this happens: At PvP level, I think that will regulate or limit the number of access to certain events, to limit large clans to crush small clans. At the PvE level, this can open new long-term goals at the level of an invasion story or other battles to be fought other than PvP. Many event ideas can be proposed or other point of view.
Open Doors Event - Registration
Shadow posted a topic in General DiscussionsHello, From this topic: ... I followed the link to the event to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/novaquark-open-doors-event-dec-2017-evenement-novaquark-portes-ouvertes-tickets-40138804244 but cannot find where to register for it (I have created an account). The website says that "Sales Ended", but it was only announced for one hour... Are all the places already sold !? Regards, Shadow
Hi everyone ! We promised to organize an open doors event last month and here were are! As we didn't attend to the Paris Games Week this year, we organize an Open Doors event in Paris on Friday 15th December, from 6.00 pm to 9 pm, in Paris! As the event has a limited number of visitors, we have decided to share it first with the community, before announcing it on the social media (it will be announced there on Monday if there are remaining places). If you're not too far and are available to meet us, this is your chance, especially if you haven't access to the pre-Alpha phase: you will be able to test - for a short time - a recent build of the game! You can register online to the event here ! Best Regards, The Novaquark team. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bonjour à tous ! Nous avions promis de faire un événement "Portes Ouvertes" le mois dernier et nous y voici ! Comme nous n'avons pas participé en tant qu'exposant à la Paris Games Week cette année, nous organisons l'événement "Portes Ouvertes" Vendredi 15 Décembre, de 18h00 à 21h00 à Paris ! Dans la mesure où l'événement propose un nombre limité de places, nous avons décidé de le partager avec la communauté en premier, avant de l'annoncer sur nos réseaux sociaux (où il sera annoncé Lundi, si il reste des places). Si vous n'êtes pas trop loin et que vous êtes disponible pour nous rencontrer, ceci est une opportunité à ne pas manquer, surtout si vous n'avez pas accès à la phase Pré-Alpha : vous aurez la possibilité de tester - pour une courte durée - une version récente du jeu ! Pour vous enregistrer en ligne, c'est ici ! Cordialement, L'équipe Novaquark.
HUNTINGverse posted a topic in Off Topic DiscussionsATMOSPHERE 2.0 SWAY >>
Kickstarter AMA Event - Third & Last Part
NQ-Nyzaltar posted a topic in Rules & AnnouncementsHi everyone, And here is the final part of the Kickstarter "Ask Me Anything" event! (That doesn't mean we will stop answering questions after that: it's just they will be answered after the Kickstarter, at a slower pace). We will try to have them open at least several days per week, pondered by maintenances (scheduled or announced shortly before the shut down in case of patch deployment) We still have to work on sensors to give precise answers. We plan to have sensors to detect constructs in a given radius, probes to scan for planets minerals, also sensors to assess a given construct firepower (you can't assume predefined ship classes like in other games), potentially sensors to detect how many people are in the ship, what kind of cargo it contains, together with electronic countermeasures to weaken these sensors. Sensors will be either equipment items that avatars can use, or, Elements than can deployed inside a construct. In that case, they will be accessible via a Control Unit that can select to display their UI when in action. They can also be scripted to be interfaced with other part of the construct. Yes, the way it will work is that the DPU inside a sensor will be able to emit events when new sensor data is available. On the LUA side, you can write event "catchers" that will trigger when the event occur and do whatever you want with the arguments given together with the event. We will link all pledges to accounts based on the e-mail address you provided. So it is very important for you to provide the same e-mail address in the Kickstarter form we will send you soon than the one you have used to register on the forum or the community portal. Kickstarter is going to provide us an email address (probably the one attached to your Facebook account), this is how we will identify you. You should create an account on our community website (community.dualthegame.com) or our forum (board.dualthegame.com), they are all interconnected. If for some reason the email you used on the Kickstarter is not valid on our website, let us know and we will resolve issues on a case by case basis. If the email on our account differs from the one used on Kickstarter, just let us know so we can reconnect the dots. Unfortunately, Kickstarter does not allow paypal as a valid way to pledge, and there is nothing we can do about it at the moment. We are working on a solution and will let you know. Yes, it would be possible. Within a few days after the Kickstarter, we will setup the process for you to reserve your name. It's an interesting idea and we will discuss it with the game design team! We have for the moment no plan to have food introduced at release, but rather in a "survival" expansion that would come later. These are all excellent ideas and we will consider them, but not for the initial release, but more in the "survival" expansion that would come later. Having several currencies in game is not something we will favor. The reason is that it would make the development of the in-game economy more complicated, where in fact we need a system that is as fluid as possible to favor exchanges between players, and player specialization. Nothing prevents you from creating your own currency and role-playing it, but the price of items on the markets will still be displayed in the universal in-game currency. You won't have to worry if your construct is inside the Safe Zone. Outside the Safe Zone, you will be able to power some protection bubbles to create a first layer of protection (you can be notified offline if it gets attacked, and it will be hard to break so you have time to react). We are considering the possibility to have some basic defense scripts running on the server when you are offline (basic action/reaction scripts), but if we do that, this will not be implemented at release, probably in a future expansion. This is a very interesting feature we will look into, if we can find the proper third-party partnership to implement it with us. Depending on the complexity of integration it may or may not make it to the initial release! It's an interesting feature that was already mentioned on the forum a long time ago. However, it's not a priority at the moment. We will see what can be done, and when we can think about adding it. Nothing of the sort is in the roadmap, but it fits in a more general "environmental" set of features that we will look into at some point, most likely in a future expansion, but not at the initial release. We will have a few animal NPCs for the initial release, and some will probably have a predator behavior. In a future "survival" expansion, we will see to add more dangerous animals that you will have to deal with, in particular in wild environments that have not yet been "civilized". This feature is hard to implement in a non-predefined environment, and in Dual Universe everything will be made by players, so we cannot know in advance the shape of volumes inside a ship. The computational requirements to calculate what is a sealed area is therefore potentially unbounded. So it is very unlikely that we can implement physically-based pressure systems. We have not worked on that yet, but it's an interesting idea to explore! Until we implement a voice chat system (which is currently not in the roadmap), most interactions will take place via a traditional chat. Hearing impairments should not be an issue in this context. Also, there are no cinematics or story-line in Dual Universe, so no need for subtitles. If your script is using a set of elements, those elements must be loaded to work. After a certain distance, elements get unloaded for performance reasons (no need to show details of things when you are far away). We don't have the exact numbers yet, this will depend on our optimization phase, but you can count on a few hundreds of meters. We may also add the possibility to mark certain elements as being more important, therefore persisting at larger distance, but this will be limited to a few of them for performance reasons. The fees will be charged by Kickstarter no matter what. It will be difficult for us to refund them, but we can look into it. There might be also the fact that the goodies manufacturer will be in another country (possibly the US) and we might not have the goodies stored in France. When the time will come, you can contact us and we will see what can be done on a case by case basis. Yes! See our latest video update to see an example. They will be static, like all other celestial bodies. We will consider however the possibility that a player could move them with the proper engines attached via a construct, but this is not something we can promise yet. Yes, but much smaller. We have currently several ideas to tackle this problem (construct wear affecting territory units, upkeep cost to maintain the territory claim, etc), but we haven't made our final decision yet on this topic. We are still in the phase where we ponder the Pros and Cons of each idea. If you have other ideas on the matter, we are open to suggestions! As for the previous question, this game mechanics is still in development. We can't give a precise and final answer for the moment. The player avatar will disappear after a few minutes. The constructs however remain, so the ship is still there. It can however be protected be either being in the Safe Zone, or simply with a protection bubble, and possibly also an invisibility cloak that you can power to make it disappear when offline. The in-game markets will host some bots that will create buy/sell orders in order to act as money sinks and money faucets. This is one of the mechanisms, but we will also add some taxes on various activities, which will act as a way to take money out of the equation. We are still thinking about other ways to regulate the mass of money, but the general principle is that the amount of money should be proportionate to the economic activity in the game. This is a quite well know issue, and we will draw inspiration from other games that already dealt with it. None for the moment! But we came very close! You have the account name, which is of course unique. Then each of your character in this account must have a distinct name to be able to identify him (for example in transactions, or when you meet him, or in the chat). This is why each character must have a unique name that differs from all the others. There is no "level" in Dual Universe, but rather a skill tree that you can use to specialize your character (similar mechanism like in Eve Online). So, your character can improve either by training more in the skill tree, or simply by acquiring more efficient player skills at playing! It is very possible that a very experienced players in a beginner's avatar can be much more effective than a beginner's players in a highly skilled avatar. When you die, you respawn at the nearest resurrection node, which is by default the Arkship. See our devblog about resurrection nodes to learn more. Now, when that happens, you loose all the content of your inventory, because things don't teleport themselves in Dual Universe. Your inventory becomes a virtual container at the place where you died, so you can try to get back there and recollect it, if nobody else has taken it! This is too soon to tell, we need to move towards the alpha to get a precise measure. But any modern Internet connection should be enough to play. For the moment, the largest planet we have in mind as about 100km radius. That is about 125.000 km2 of surface, which is already very very large! We have not set the legal aspects on this matter, but the game is not designed for children. Many game mechanics will be designed to responsibilize the players in their choices and we can't ask this from a child. So this may end with age restrictions for Dual Universe, as we target a mature audience. Best regards, The Novaquark Team.
Kickstarter AMA Event - Second Part
NQ-Nyzaltar posted a topic in Rules & AnnouncementsThe in-game price of a DAC will be the result of the pressure on supply and demand and will not remain constant. It may also vary depending on the particular market you are looking at, even if they will tend to uniformize over time. So, it is hard to say whether it will be difficult to farm DACs, but what it is likely that if many people want to buy DACs, and not so many people sell them, the price will go up. Until it is too high, and people stop wanting to buy it. Then it will stabilize, but still evolve over time. End of 2018, when the game is shipping. Yes, you will need to know that you are crossing a boundary. We will not make this visual feedback permanent however, unless you want it, as it would ruin the landscape! But as you get closer to a boundary, a visual feedback will help you to understand what is going on. You will also be warned if you are not allowed to enter, with a timer to react before possible retaliation measures enter into action. As a general rule, we want Dual Universe to be a genuine alternative reality that should allow you to escape the real world and enter into a fantasy universe. Opening the doors to the real world Internet might be an issue considering this policy, but we have not yet decided how far it should go. For example, having a web-based organization page inside a game internal browser could be a legitimate example. Yes, it's possible we have different behaviors for different classes of Elements. In the example of the engines, we will limit how much force the engines can deliver, so that a very large ship will not move instantly simply because the Newton law F=M.A will prevent (M being large and F limited, the acceleration will be small). Of course you could try to put a large engine on a small ship, but then the mass will increase anyway to sustain the engine itself, plus le very large containers needed for the fuel. We will definitely look into trap mechanics that can be scripted, yes. The open question is whether we will allow some simple server-based action/reaction triggers to be implemented, that would run even when you are offline (which could have a cost on server performance), or if you need to be online for the LUA scripts to run. We will look into this in the coming months. First, we love Linux! Actually, several of our programmers are running Linux on a daily basis as their main programming environment. The game currently runs on Linux every day, on these programmers machine. Now, it does not necessarily mean that we can ship the game on Linux, there are many issues that we need to solve: compatibility of all the third-party libraries we use, selecting a distro, deal with the maintenance efforts that goes with having a code base that runs on clang and visual studio, etc. It is not impossible, we would love to do it, but ultimately it will depend on the market size relative to the costs of maintenance. So, if we can see a strong movement of the community in favor of Linux, it will significantly increase the chance of the game being released on Linux. Yes you will have the 5 Kickstarter in-game pets at an Emerald level. Pets are going to be mainly cosmetic and cannot give you an in-game advantage. They will follow you and we will try to make them funny and lively, but that's it. Weapons will not be customizable, they will come in various types and levels, and you will be able to improve them by learning skills. The spaceships however are entirely customizable, since you can build them entirely from scratch. The scripting inside the ship (based on LUA) is optional but will allow to customize certains aspects of piloting and possibly fighting (we are very careful not the break the game equilibrium by allowing this). There are a devblog about scripting that we recommend reading: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/09/18/lua-script-and-distributed-processing-units/ Territory tiles of about 1km side will be claimable via Territory Units. When an organization or a player has claimed a territory, it is possible to set rights on edition, mining, etc on this territory. In any case, player-made constructs are built within a "building zone" that cannot overlap with another building zone, at least not for static constructs (a moving construct can overlap another construct building zone, for example to get inside a space station) Pets are going to follow you wherever you are, unless you dismiss them. That's about all they can do, as they are purely cosmetic entities. We are going towards a First Name + Last Name, with no string attached to the underlying account. For performance reasons, gravity is going to be simply modeled by having a force pointing towards the center of the planet, regardless of the distribution of mass. While it could be possible for certain planets that do not have a lava core (like a small moon) to be split in half, we believe that the amount of work to do this will make it quite hard to achieve! If so, however, both sides of the planet would remain "glued" invisibly together. We are looking into this, even if it will most likely not be in the initial release. We are also considering the possibility to give the proper risk assessment tools in-game for player to be able to create their own insurance companies. We will look into it, but can't promise anything at this stage! FTL will be handled in a very basic way at release, but we might add the fact that FTL flight happens in a "parallel" hyper universe in a later stage after the initial release. The idea would be then that FTL travel happens in a hyper space, where you could possibly add bubbles that, when intersected, would take you out of FTL space, back into normal space. This will restart after the Kickstarter campaign is over. We have opened an AMA already during the Kickstarter, with so many questions (including... this one!) that we are already very busy answering as much as we can now! For now, the only pets you can have will be the Kickstarter rewards. It's important to make the difference between pets (which are only cosmetic) and "companions", which are generally NPCs (in Dual Universe that would be droids) that will have a gameplay purpose. We have not confirmed the availability of companions at the moment, and if they are made possible, they will most likely not be in the initial release, but rather in a (free) expansion later. We are balancing the game so that building a spaceship from scratch, without using any of the in-game markets to shortcut-buy anything, would take several days of work. You would have to collect the resources, setup the industrial chain (3D printers, assemblers) to make the Elements, etc. Now, if you just arrive in the game and go on the in-game market to buy all you need, the physical integration of the basic building blocks should not take more than a few minutes for a basic ship (like the one we have demonstrated in the ship building gameplay video, for example) Territory owners will be able to set rights like: editing rights (who can mine), construct creation right (who can create a static construct), enter right (who is allowed to enter without being flagged as "intruder"), taxes (amount to pay to use the above rights), and more and more possibilities as we expand with the community what is needed. The way this will be done is by following the principles of the "RDMS" or Rights & Duties Management System, as described in the corresponding devblog. Because planets should turn around their axis in the future (if no particular technical problem prevents us from doing it), we will limit the altitude of what you can build to avoid having to handle collisions on the server for potentially millions of nearby constructs. In practice, anything below the max building altitude will "turn" together with the planet. This should be a few kilometers high. So, no space elevator, or else no turning planets! This all boils down to the max range indeed. We are running some tests as we speak to answer this question, so it is not clear what we can promise at this stage. In any case, players on planets will have several ways to protect themselves: the Safe Zones (one is around the Arkship), the protection bubbles, and... building underground. We have published a video to explain our "Dynamic Space Splitting" algorithm and why we think that can help having both large battle and decent frame rate. We have made some tests, we have some mathematical models, and so far everything seems to be working as planned. The truth is, only the live tests will tell us how good it is, so that's what the alpha/beta will be about. We plan on giving the possibility to players to plant trees at some point (maybe not at release). This would allow you to regrow entire forests. But basically no, trees don't magically grow back. We are considering the possibility to "anchor" a dynamic construct, when you want to state that it should not move anymore. Otherwise, an active dynamic construct (active = someone is running a flight control unit) will be subject to gravity, and as such should be orbiting the planet if given the proper velocity. No, membership is not inherited. Rather, one legate will represent the lower organization in the larger organization. Legates can decide who is going to represent them. The automation of defense systems is still in discussion, as we want to avoid to get to an all-automated warfare type of gameplay. Besides, there will be no territory in space at the beginning, but we are working on ways to expand the territory system to space in a future expansion of the game. Resources can be exhausted, because they don't regenerate. We may indeed have to make an exception for the starting area, but otherwise, the idea is that the exhaustion of resources is a way to push players to explore new worlds (even if it will not be simple to exhaust a planet, there is so much space in it!), and also help prevent organizations to be sitting on an infinite source of wealth. So, yes, explorers, mineral prospectors, will be crucial professions in the game, and very meaningful. It will be based on sea level, to simplify our calculation. We are thinking about it. It is true that CvC is a crucial feature, but also, we need to be careful about the promises we make. We would rather add it in a further expansion after game launch (and do it well) rather that promise everything and deliver nothing. Absolutely. Any construct made from a blueprint will not be "blueprint-able" again, unless you allow it. This is a fundamental game mechanics to avoid the industry to collapse. Casual/Hardcore is a subject of definition. What we have in mind is "easy to learn, hard to master". We want players to be able to dig into any part of the gameplay and get better at it as they understand more about the subtleties of it. But more "casual" gamers can also enjoy the game at a more basic level, there is not need to become an expert. We have said several times in our official statements that the Kickstarter is a way to help make us stronger in possible future negotiations with our current or future investors. We need to send a message: gamers like this kind of innovative ideas. It is not at all easy to sell otherwise, because innovation is almost always something investors avoid at all cost. We are fully using multithreading technology whenever it is possible, like for example on the voxel algorithms. We will continue to use the maximum amount of resources, with the constraints we have (engine, third parties, etc) Lifetime subscription are only for our crowdfunding backers and we don't plan to sell them once the game is released. As for the way DACs are working and the trial access, we have given more details in our first update. Territory control will be limited to planets at the game launch, but we will add more possibilities later in a territory focused expansion. It is likely that planetary space (a volume around a planet) will be managed as a whole entity for control, as well as system-level control and cluster-level control, all with hierarchical levels of political influence. Not an easy system to setup, and we plan to discuss it with the community to make it right. No, there won't be a maximum number of members in an organization. We might indeed try to add a skill to stage how large it can be, up to "infinity" at the higher level skill, and doing so by taking into account the skills of all the legates, but the particular mechanism to do so is not defined yet. Absolutely, yes. The mechanism to handle that is what we have called the "Rights & Duties Management System", which is described in this devblog: https://devblog.dualthegame.com/2015/05/21/rights-duties-management-system/ For the first release of the game, yes, the defense scripts will only be active if you are online. The fundamental reason for this is that we don't want to run any arbitrarily complex script on the server side. Now, in future expansions of the game (expansions are free, by the way), we may introduce some very simple action/reaction offline scripting possibilities, but the precise working of this feature is not yet defined. About the second part of the question: as long as somebody as the right to run the script (that is, to activate the Control Unit that hosts it), he or she can run it. Within an organization, it will be possible to give various rights to various members (with the Rights & Duties Management System), so it means that it should be possible for many players to activate a given script. This is the contract system, that will allow to hire someone (and make publicity about it, so that you can get candidates) to do a task in exchange of money or goods. The enforcement of the contract will be handled by the game, to avoid the problem of building trust. It will also be possible to setup collaterals to protect your goods against stealing or destruction. The contract system is still in discussion at the moment, and may not make it to the first release of the game (but will be in a future expansion in any case). It is not clear yet whether we would be able to have one single server capable to welcome people from all around the world. This was not possible with Eve Online, for example, and they started a dedicated server in China. It is too soon for us to make announcement of that kind, as heavy testing will tell us how far we can go. If you don't have the right to mine (or edit) terrain or a construct, it means that you cannot use the mining tools to modify it, and possibly recover some material in the process. But it will always be possible (outside of a Safe Zone) to destroy it, using weapons (otherwise, there would simply be no PvP!). Digging an underground tunnel would be an option, but you would not mine the tunnel, you would have to blow it up bits by bits! About the doors: this is something we are thinking about with the idea of pivot and slider Elements that could be used to connect voxel structures together. This is not going to be possible at release time, but may come later in an expansion. About the script interconnection: this will be made via "Communication Units" that are able to send and receive signals. Your door would then subscribe to "open" requests, check the identity of the caller and react accordingly. Thanks! About cosmetic items: we may introduce them, but it will be possible to sell them on the in-game markets for in-game money: so, you will always have the option to either buy them with real money, or with in-game money. No aspect of the game will ever be locked to the fact that you have to pay real money to have it. Note that the conversion rate between real/in-game money will be dictated mostly by the fluctuating price of DACs. This is something we are clearly thinking about, yes. More details will come soon! We plan to make the territory tiles inside the Safe Zone claimable, yes! We would like the control to happen within the game, using the game mechanics (territory, delegation, RDMS, etc). Now, about having a set of players elected to represent the community in discussions about the evolution of the game: this is a very good idea (like Eve Online's CSM) and we are going to look into it. hanks a lot! As we said in a previous question related to Linux: we love Linux, and several of our programmers actually work with Linux stations, running the game on Linux every day already. Now, to move this to an industry-grade support, it will involve more costs (testing, maintenance, rendering tweaks, etc). We need to measure a clear market drive to help convince us that the benefits will exceed the costs. We are going to try to make the game as beautiful as possible! We like realistic looking graphics and everything that can help immersion. Now, keep in mind that beautiful assets are expensive to create, and also that we have a very particular setting for Dual Universe: unlike almost all other games, we cannot pre-calculate a lot of things because the world is completely modifiable. Also, the landscape is procedurally generated. The engine cannot expect anything to be in a given state, and the size and depth of what you can see (from space, for example) makes this even more challenging. So, we are entering into fairly unknown territory, with lots of innovation and new ideas. There will be tradeoffs to make, compared to a carefully handcrafted level design, but we hope that the result will be beautiful and a world that you can call your own! There will be no "endgame" in Dual Universe, just like there is no endgame in real life. There will always be yet another planet to explore, to conquer, yet another innovation in ship design to overthrow the markets, yet another alliance to make or break, etc. We suspect however that the control of Alioth, the starting planet, will become a political drive in itself. Could it be one day under the control of one mega organization? We don't know that We would love to release a demo today, but we are not ready yet. The game is in pre-alpha stage. But still, hundreds of people have already had the opportunity to try it at our booth in PAX West, as well as during our open door day that we organized in Paris recently. FTL drives will be dedicated high power Elements that you can add to your construct. When activated (through a Control Unit), they will set your ship in motion towards the registered arrival coordinate. The specific of this gameplay aspect are not set yet, as the feature may be postponed to an expansion post release. There are many important other aspects of the game that we plan to add as stretch goals. We simply cannot put everything in the commitment we make for the release, so we have to draw a line. But if the CvsC feature does not make it as a stretch goal, remember that we have a MMO model, based on expansions that will come (for free) after release. So, in the worst case scenario, it would be delayed to an expansion, but not cancelled forever. It is traditional for international businesses to display prices in €/$ that are similar. We will see if the currencies relative value would justify an alignment when the game ships, but currently at about 10% difference, if you factor in the costs of bank fees to switch currencies, the difference is very slight. The name of the game is refering the well known concept of duality in mathematics: two entities are "dual" when they have a different form, but share the same functional structure. You can "map" one to the other. We like to think that DU could be the "dual" of the real world one day: another form, but the same core dynamics! Check this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duality_(mathematics) You cannot take control of other ships, houses or constructs unless you are allowed to, or unless you have somehow stolen this construct. We will look into whatever is possible with the time we have, but if popular demand is there, we will definitely consider adding support for various hardware in future game expansions. We would also try to give access to those devices to scripting, to make them usable in ship piloting for example. Best regards, The Novaquark Team
Kickstarter AMA Event - First Part
NQ-Nyzaltar posted a topic in Rules & Announcements(This is the part following the Kickstarter "Ask Me Anything" Event Video available here) Assets that belong to an organization (like a ship, a weapon or a container) will be shareable via the "Rights and Duties Management System" that we have started to describe in one of our devblogs. You can attach tags to certain actions associated to your asset, and grant access to these actions to members of your organization by giving them the same tag (which is done via member functions). You can also have a look at the Organization devblog to know more about how orgs are going to be customizable and structured. The idea of a penalty if loosing the asset while using it is interesting, we will think about it and possible abuses that could arise. There will be a map, yes, this is a necessity. But we are still working on exactly how it will look, knowing that you have to display information at vastly different scales, between cities, planet surfaces, solar systems and the galaxy. You have also information located in 3D, as opposed to the usual 2D worlds. This is not planned for the moment, but it's an interesting idea. We will likely release a very basic FTL functionnality first and then refine it over game expansions to add more interesting features, by better understanding what makes sense for the existing gameplay. Thanks for the suggestion! First of all, if we don't reach a given Stretch Goal, is does not mean that the feature will never be implemented, but that it might be postponed to a (free) game expansion. Remember that this is a MMO, and unlike a singleplayer game, there is no "final" build. Now, Construct vs Construct combat means more precisely that we implement certain elements like weapons, shields, etc, that you will be able to use to make localized dammage to other constructs. If this damage hits a players inside the construct (or at the surface of a planet), this player will die and respawn. So, in effect, CvsC combat implies CvsPlayer too! Now, without CvsC combat you could still board enemy ships and take control of them by neutralizing the crew. Who knows, maybe this will become the prefered way of doing combat business in Dual! We are using machines that range from core i5 with GTX770 to core i7 with GTX980. These are not the official specs, it's too soon to say that, but that's what we use now. The FPS depends on the place where you are, and today, without any optimization, ranges around 20-40 FPS. This is very good at this stage. Optimization comes in the final part of the development cycle, so no worries. Remember also that "optimization" does not necessarily mean we will reduce the graphics quality in a visible way, so don't be afraid that the game will look ugly At release we won't have an interior to the Arkship, nothing more than what you will see in the game start sequence, we you step out of the cryosleep vats. In the future (through game expansions), we would love to make the Arkship a kind of "dungeon" that you can enter and explore. The goal would be for any player to try to reach the top, which we would make very difficult to achieve. It would be like a pilgrimage that almost any serious player would have to do at some point, and that would grant a small bonus. These are just ideas at the moment, so don't expect it in the game any time soon. But we would love to have your feedback! Even if you don't have the right to edit a construct, you could always break it if you are not in a safe zone (break means that the voxel edition does not get you any material, it's vaporized). It might take you a lot of time if the material is very strong, but it could be done. Now, inside a safe zone, you could in principle be trapped like this. The options are: suicide evac, calling for help, negotiating. We might implement a "back to the Arkship" feature in the most extreme cases (like, your resurection node trapped inside a prison). Dual Universe is a game about freedom, we don't want to arbitrarily draw a line between what is a scam and what is a failed business proposal. Players will have to use their judgment, report scammers publicly to help other to identify them (and possibly retaliate). The way we will handle griefers is that we will introduce game mechanics that will make their life more difficult, in particular the bounty system (to be described in a future post). People can also unite against them and build their own justice system. There will however be limits to how far harrasment can go and we reserve the right to interviene in the most extreme cases. This is still just a game, remember. This is perhaps one of the first question we had about the game We won't prevent this to happen, and it will most likely exist in the game, but we believe that it will be somehow limited. We don't think that the whole community aspires to use the potential of the game just for this, but that rather most people will want to fly nice looking ships, inhabit palaces, and role play in a SciFi context. The market will also select what most people really like and help to spread this in the world because successful things will be mass produced. That being said, there will be a mechanism to report abuses and we may act/ban if some law-breaking limits are crossed. Interestingly also, we will implement the fact that every modification of the voxel world will be stamped with the name of the player who did the modification. So, no anonymous boobs, you'll have to account for your creativity. If a majority of players don't like what you do, beware of the consequences and the bounty hunters! At the moment no. But if we reach 6000 backers, every backer with at least an Iron Founder Pack will have one. The "quest market" or "job market" is something we are still working on. The idea is that it will be closely linked to the contract system that will allow any player/org to specify a two sides agreement where "you get this if you do that". We would like that the expressivity of these system could be rich enough to express much more complex jobs that just "get me some X". So, it will be more sophisticated than the passive market way of declaring that you need a particular asset by setting a buy order. Our long term vision is that this job market could be the first thing you look at as a new player, with jobs ranked in difficulty so that you can decide what level of risk you are willing to take. There are a lot of sides effects we are looking into right now, so this is not simple. Any feedback from the community is welcome! Note that this feature may not be available at the first release, but may come in an expansion. This has already been done as we reached the 5.000 backers threshold. Check our Kickstarter page for more information. We are looking into this yes. But people must focus on supporting our campaigm right now, and the more we reach on Kickstarter, the stronger we will be. Players of the world, unite for change! This is an important question. We have been supported by visionnary investors so far, who helped build the techmology that we demonstrate today. Some of them are eager to keep investing, so we are optimistic. However, investors are negotiators and the more money we need from them, the more power we loose. The stronger the community support, the stronger we are in asserting that our vision is the right one, that we don't need to change anything. For you, backers, supporting us is helping to fund the project, make us stronger, and gets you access to the game at a highly discounted price. By backing us you are shouting: we want this, we like this, make it happen! This is the power of the crowdfunding model, pushing innovation forward. We plan on supporting other languages in the long run, not at launch. This is one of the tradeoff we have to make to control our costs at the moment. Ideally, we would love to have automated translation in the chats, but this does not work well at the moment, so keep in mind that to interact with strangers in the game, English will most likely be the default language anyway. We won't have our own datacenter at start, that would be too costly and really not necessary in 2016 when there are so many high quality cloud offers dedicated to high performance gaming. So we will work with third parties to host the datacenter, and we are currently reviewing several offers. Now, due to our single-shard approach, we cannot of have regional servers, there will be one central cluster to connect to. We are considering the possibility to switch from a US based cluster or Europe based cluster depending on the time of day (doing sync in the background or during down times), but this might not be necessary. In our view, alpha access should remain a personal commitment of a highly engaged fan, ready to test the game, talk about it and in fact motivated to even pay for that access. So, there are no plans for the moment to grant extra alpha access beyond the one included in the current packs. The comparison with Eve Online is a good one at many levels, but doesn't stand close scrutiny when we start to look at the details. First, it will be much more difficult for any group of player, however large, to gain full control of an area because, unlike in Eve, access points to game locations are not bottlenecked through fixed stargate points. Imagine how many troops it would require to secure a 100km radius area on a planet: that is about 600 km of border, and so many possible underground infiltration surface. Dominance will be hard to achieve in Dual Universe. The universe also is going to be large and constantly extendable via player-made stargates (that will come in an expansion, not at release), so you will always have a choice to use your resources for a fight or to explore further. Also, resources do not respawn, which means that nobody can secure an inifinite source of wealth by holding a rich mineral deposit. It will end at some point. Etc, there are many differences that we believe are going to make Dual Universe quite unique compared to Eve. We are extremely interested in anything that helps player to build their story. So far, there is no clearly defined plan to do what you suggest, but we are open to suggestions. To what extend could we "record" things, favor journalist professions, help keep track of major events. We need your feedback on possible route for this, and we will see if we can squeeze some of these mechanisms for release or if it should be made into a future (free) expansion. Yes, up to three. But they can not be learning skills at the same time, so you have to choose who gets most of the attention. As DACs are a complex and sensible topic, we made a dedicated thread on it. It will be very limited at start, because this requires quite a lot of specific developments and we want to focus on the ground gameplay first. But in the long run, yes, we have ideas on how to make it possible to explore underwater or even build underwater bases, vehicles, etc. But this would come in a future (free) expansion. We think that the scripting part should probably be accessible to a large audience in-game, because we will introduce some high-level functions that you can build your behaviors from. But a basic understanding of what is a programming language is still required. The good news is that there are tons of very well done and quite fun tutorials to learn LUA, which is a fairly easy language, so if you are interested it should not be too difficult to get up to speed. Now, keep also in mind that scripting is in no way an obligation in Dual Universe. We will make it so that default basic scripts are put in place for you to allow you to fly your spaceship for example. It will be based on a "first arrived first served" principle, based on the date of the first pledge made by the person. No difference on the amount pledged, because it would not be fair for people who do not have as much money as others. The way scripting is working is actually quite simple in its principle: every Element will offer some "public" functions that can be used to interact with it via scripting. For example, an engine will have a 'setPower' function to control the thrust. A light will have a 'setState' function to switch it on or off, etc. Some Elements will also provide info through "events" containing parameters that you can catch. One paticular set of events are keystrokes or mouse movements. From there, it's basically about catching events and reacting by calling some Elements public functions to do things. Note that there will be a limit to how many functions you can call during a cycle, to control the server load. Scripting will not be something you have to do. For example, when you build a spaceship, there will be an intelligent auto-configuration system that will look at your ship and build a flight control script for you. So, as long as your ship is properly equipped for flying (engines, fuel tanks, gyro, etc), it will fly with the default standard controls. You can also of course buy ready-to-use constructs on the in-game markets, that will come with their own ready-to-use scripts. You cannot mine automatically, and we will also probably severely limit how much combat you can do with a script. The reason for this is that scripting should not become the prefered way to do certain things, or this would effectively kill that gameplay, in particular for new comers. This is very important for the equilibrium of the game. So, smart flight mechanics, auto pilots, door control, light panels, AI conversational agents, etc are all OK, but not auto-mining, auto-fighting, auto-building, auto-exploring, etc. Adding functionnality to external devices via LUA scripting is just about us making a bridge with the drivers. If there are ready-to-use C++ interfaces, this could be easily made and, depending on community request, could be added. Scripting will not affect weapons stats, so upgrading Elements via scripting will not be possible. Scripting will simply allow you to automate certain types of actions that are offered to you via our gamedesign, so there is no way people will be able to do unexpected actions. As for weapons, we are still considering whether the 'fire' action should be scriptable or not. If it is, it would be limited to certain situations and probably be made ways less effective than what a real human player could do by controlling the weapon directly. We are working on this, so feedback is welcome! The most difficult thing in an emergent game like this is to make sure that every gameplay mechanics we introduce has a crucial and not replaceable role in the game, that will not be overridden by some other gameplay mechanics. A good example is spaceship combat. We want that it makes sense to have large ships with a crew, as well as small fighter ships. Both should have their utility or else we will end up with either only large ships, or only small ships. So, these questions are the most challenging because they are hard to forecast. The alpha/beta testing will help us to fine tune this, even in future expansions that we will open in advance on some testing servers. There is much to say about the various incentives we will introduce to push people to cooperate. Players may want to gather to mutualize defence systems, create a team of specialists (you will not be able to be an expert maximally skilled in every domain), or simply share the same role playing goal (how about building the death star?). We have also imagined a fairly advanced way for players to define their organizations structure (see the devblog about organizations). So, there will be many reasons why people will want to unite, and we will provide the tools to do so. The game is not only about scripting, or even building for that matter. This is just one part of the game, and, thanks to the in-game markets, it will be possible for any player to buy ships that are ready-to-us, with no disavantage in using them, compared to the builders/scripters. Even for builders, we have designed an auto-configuration system that will generate a basic but functional script to pilot his/her ship, so scripting is in no way an obligation. About questing, we have answered already in some other question how we imagine the in-game "job/quest market" will actually be able to replace the usual quests you find in other games. We will add simple fauna at start, and we will gradually add more and more content along the line of PvE, but the more substantial activities will come from players themselves: building stuffs, participating to building stuffs by helping secure areas, explore to find minerals or artefacts/ruins (more about that later, it will be linked to the uncovering of new Safe Zones). In some future expansion, we have ideas to also add farming, and some survival aspects. Yes, physical ships will be sellable. You can sell them as one of a kind, so, a bit out of the normal supply/demand market, but we will introduce a validation system that will stamp a ship as being identical to a given blueprint reference, so that you can trust what it is before you buy (and they can be sold on the in-game markets, being undistinguishable and therefore tradable in bulks). Yes, there will be a quite powerful right management system (we call it the RDMS, check our devblog about it). Only authorized people will be able to edit your constructs, and in the Safe Zone, that means absolute protection. Outside the safe zone, people will still not be allowed to edit your construct (using the builders tools), but they will of course be allowed to break it (using weapons) or else there would be no PvP. You will have all sorts of other tools to protect yourself from that, like protection bubbles or shields. We would love to have much more women in the team, but unfortunately so far, we had close to zero application from women, or they were simply not matching our requirements for the job opened (we don't want to penalize women, nor to favor them in any way, men and women are equal). One of the reasons behind this situation is that there is a very strong bias in France for women not to go to Science or Tech, this is very unfortunate. As a consequence, the dev team is only made of men at the moment, so please apply because we are recruiting!! We have one woman in the team however, and she is in charge of admin & finance management. There are no technical limit to how deep you could dig, but we will put some limits for gameplay reasons. The exact depth is not set yet, but below something like a few kilometers, you will encounter lava, which will help making the job of deep mining prospection more dangerous (like in Minecraft, actually). We may have a few small moons that do not have this restriction. And, yes, hiding your stuff underground will be a possibility. But we are looking at ways to make this a bit more difficult, so there is a tradeoff, for example adding the need for special gears to breathe in the depth, requiring costly cartridges to operate, etc. Will DU support multiple controller inputs such as joysticks, track ir, and vr? Depending on the community pushing for certains interfaces, we may introduce them at some point in the development. For the moment, there is no such support envisioned for the initial release however. There is only one way to be in Dual Universe: to connect to the one and only reality we operate. One universe, shared by everybody at the same time, this is our commitment to the MMO genre. There is no side server, local gameplay or creative mode. We will have a few testing clusters also to try new ideas, but they will be limited. There will be several levels of scale in your capacity to move around: on the planets first, you can move by walking. You can then craft hovercrafts to move over a few kilometers. You may build then atmospheric ships for heavy duty planetary atmospheric travel. Then, you can start to look at building space faring ships. They will travel at normal speed first, allowing you to reach nearby moons in a few minutes, or other planets in the system in a few days (you can very well enjoy sharing a huge ship with friends, as it travels through space, and you go to whatever in-ship activity you like, for example building or trading). Then, either at release or perhaps in an expansion, we will introduce FTL drives. You will then be able to move between planets in a few minutes, and possibly reach new systems over several days. The final step will be stargates, that will come in an expansion, and that will allow near instant connections between systems. The size of the known/explored universe will then start to grow as players build more and more stargates. Stargates are going to be very expansive and complex to do, so don't expect a large network immediately. We will use this slow growth to introduce more variety in the discovered planets, as we have time/budget to further develop new biomes. There will be several reasons why players may want to create a city: first, so mutualize defence or resource access. Buidings can contain markets, factories or crafting facilities that you would like to be not too far away, to minimize transport costs. Also, we believe most players or organization will want to create impressive buildings to show off their status, and as they are competing to recruit talents, they might cluster these buildings in areas where they can be all visible. In the long run, we are thinking about ways to have mutualized energy transport system, that would make it logical for people to aggregate in close by areas. In any case, this is a very rich topic to discuss and we invite the community to keep talking about it on our forums. This is an interesting idea. We would have to think about the gameplay consequences (like the fact that mutualized RN would be a single-point of failure for all who rely on them), but we are open to discussion about it, yes. We will work in this aspect a bit later, in a further game expansion, but yes, there will be territory management beyond planet ground. The way we see it for now is that territory in space should not be about defining volumes in space, but rather about establishing planet ownership, then system ownership. This ownership could be triggered once a given percentage of the claimed planet territories are under one organization control, with a hysteresis mechanism to avoid constant flips. This planetary scale ownership should grant certain rights to the owner, but not deprive other planet grounded territories of their prerogatives. This is a complex gameplay that we will further talk about in the future, but it will not be implemented at release time for now. Self destruct capability might seem like a good idea but it could actually make the job of pirates close to impossible. Quickly, people will understand that a self destruct system is a must to avoid pirates trying to loot them for profit, and that would kill the pirating gameplay. One possibility would be to provide pirates with a self-destruct scrambler that they should use prior to any attack. We would like to have your feedback on this! In any case, this would be a post-release feature that we could introduce in an expansion. The Right and Duty Management System (RDMS, as described in our devblog) is a very flexible system and would allow you in principle to charge people differently depending on the tag you give them. You could also simply ban certain people based on the belonging to certain orgs. We will in any case offer high level of customization for market owners to set their fees, in order to favor competition on different business strategies. You will not be able to mine, but you will still be able to enter the territory (and be flagged for that), and possibly destroy materials by using weapons (if not in a safe zone) instead of mining equipment. At the moment, we don't see any reason to auto logoff, so it would be possible to afk for scripting only. This might change as alpha and beta gets us better feedback on side effects about this decision. Technically, the advantages associated to a pledge are linked to the kickstarter email address, which will itself be linked to your account, so there is no simple way to transfer name reservation to other accounts. We will look into it however on a case by case basis. ----------- That's all for now! We hope this first part has already answered many questions you had. The remaining part is coming next week! Best regards, Nyzaltar.


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Mostafa earned his B.Ss from Ain Shams University (1994) and a Ph.D. from the School of Architecture and Building Engineering, University of Liverpool, UK (2003).Mostafa earned his B.Ss from Ain Shams University (1994) and a Ph.D. from the School of Architecture and Building Engineering, University of Liverpool, UK (2003). He lectured at the University of Liverpool till 2006. Back to Egypt, he served as the General Manager, at the Technical Affairs Department, NEW URBAN COMMUNITIES AUTHORITY NUCA, Ministry if Housing and Urban Development, EGYPT, for 2 years, and currently as a Professor at the Architecture Engineering Dept. - Ain Shams University. He is a member of the higher scientific committee for developing the code of practice, Ministry of Culture, EGYPT. THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR URBAN HARMONY, Ministry of Culture, EGYPT, Institute Of Acoustics [IOA]-United Kingdom, England, Egyptian Architectural Engineering Society, Egyptian Engineering Syndicate, Egyptian Society of Engineers, Acoustical Society of Egypt ASE, and the Acoustical Society of America ASA.He holds grants from EPSRC funded research projects, with the University of Liverpool-UK, partner in TEMPUS projects with ILPO- Stuttgart University- Germany, PI-Newton Musharafa (British Council-STDF funds) with the University of CARDIFF, and PI-DAAD funded projects with TUM in Munich. He organized many conferences for Ain Shams University, and the British University in Egypt BUE, where he served as a Professor and Programme Director for 6 years. He published many papers in international Journals and conferences, as well as contributions in book chapters. He acts as well as a reviewer for several International and national journals in his area of research.
Research area Building Science, Environmental Control, Outdoor Noise Propagation
Thesis Title 'The Role of Specular and Diffuse Reflections in Urban Noise Propagation'
Selected publications
Ismail, M.R and Oldham, D.J. (2005). A Scale Model Investigation of Sound reflection from Building Facades. Applied Acoustics Volume 66, pp [123-147].
Ismail, M.R and Oldham, D.J. (2005). The effect on sound propagation in streets of the distribution of acoustic scatterers on facades. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Volume 117, Issue 4, pp. 2417-2417.
Ismail, M.R and Oldham, D.J. (2010). A Markovian approach to modelling the propagation of sound in long rooms. ICSV17. Cairo 18-22 July -EGYPT.
Ismail, M.R. (2013). A parametric investigation of the acoustical performance of contemporary mosques. Journal of Frontiers of Architectural Research. Elsevier 2, 30–41.
Ismail, M.R. (2013). Quiet Environment: Acoustics of Vertical Green Wall Systems of the Islamic Urban Form, Journal of Frontiers of Architectural Research, Elsevier 2, 162–177.
Ismail, M.R. (2014). Sound Preferences of the Dense Urban Environment: The Soundscape of Cairo. Journal of Frontiers of Architectural Research, Elsevier 3, 55–68.
Ismail, M.R. (2014). Soniferous Architecture from Archaeo-acoustics towards the Soundsculpture Aural era. International Journal of Art, Culture and Design Technologies, 4(1), 44-64.


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Does the Bible teach that you don't have to congregate to go to heaven?
A good friend and fellow sister in Christ called last night to tell me about a conversation she'd had with a few co-workers. One guy said that, although he didn't know where, he knew the Bible said you 'don't have to congregate to go to heaven.' A woman said someone had once told her the same thing. My friend knew that was exactly the opposite of what the Bible says about forsaking the assembly, but we're both wondering if there is a passage that they are misinterpreting? I don't recall 'congregate' being in the Bible anywhere, and they were both sure about the wording of the passage, she said. We both decided that it was more likely they were repeating what they'd been told just because they liked the way it sounded and it reinforced their lack of interest in going to church. Do you know of this passage?
The word "congregate" doesn't appear in the Bible; though you can find the word "congregation." I checked web sites for those who make such claims and none reference the Bible, just their personal feelings.
You are quite correct that the Bible teaches the opposite of this statement in Hebrews 10:24-25, "And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching."


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Submit a Proposal for an Exhibition / Event at OVADA
OVADA runs a regular programme of curated exhibitions and events from both our warehouse in central Oxford and other off-site locations. In addition to open-call opportunities throughout the year, we also welcome proposals from artists, collaborative groups and curators for exhibitions/events that would complement our existing Artistic Programme. These will be selected by OVADA's Programming Team which is comprised of our Programme Coordinator, Participation Coordinator and representatives from our Board of Trustees. Proposals are carefully chosen in line with OVADA's Artistic Policy and take into account our existing commitments to achieve a diverse programme.
We programme up to 24 months* in advance. Occasionally we have free slots within our existing programme however we ask that proposals are submitted with as much notice as possible, preferably 12 months in advance. Normally our exhibitions are between 4 – 6 weeks long and our standard opening hours are: Thursdays – Sundays, 12-6pm. When proposing the length of an exhibition, please consider that due to our full schedule, there may be more flexibility for programming shorter exhibitions of up to 2 weeks or one-off events. We are not currently accepting proposals for solo exhibitions.
*PLEASE NOTE: We are currently only accepting exhibition proposals for Autumn 2021 onwards.
Application Process
We recommend a site-visit before submitting a proposal. You are invited to visit informally during our exhibition opening hours or alternatively please contact us by email to arrange an alternative time: firstname.lastname@example.com. We may not be able to discuss your proposal without an appointment. You may wish to refer to our online resources, which includes a floor-plan, photos and a virtual tour of the space: www.ovada.org.uk/warehouse.
First step
To submit a proposal please make an initial enquiry using this Form.
Second Stage
If the proposed dates are viable and the project fits within our Artistic Policy we will then invite you to download and complete our Application Form. This should be returned, preferably by email, to: firstname.lastname@example.com. Alternatively proposals can be sent by post to:
Katie Taylor – Programme Coordinator
OVADA Warehouse
14A Osney Lane
Oxford OX1 1NJ
You will be asked to include a CV and up to six supporting photos (max 1MB each) of current or relevant previous work. Please label all your images with title, size, medium and date. Alternatively you may prefer to send us a website link, particularly for video and sound work.
Applications can be submitted at any time however the Programming Team meets quarterly to review proposals. Meeting dates can change at short notice so please check this page regularly if you are planning to submit an application. It will not be possible to provide updates on the progress of applications until after our Programming Team has met on the nearest date after a proposal has been received. We will aim to inform all applicants by email within 2 weeks of this meeting and regret that due to the number of proposals we receive, we are not always able to offer feedback to applicants. If the proposal is viable and fits within OVADA's Artistic Policy we will invite selected applicants to a meeting to discuss their ideas in more detail.
If your proposal does not fit into our programme we may be able to consider your event on a commercial basis. Please see our website for further details: www.ovada.org.uk/space.
Please contact us if you are having difficulties completing your application or require a different format/method of application.
Visit OxOnArts for a useful directory of other Visual Arts organisations and Galleries in Oxfordshire.
We look forward to hearing from you and thank you for your interest in working with OVADA.


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by: Robin Ay, Lake Worth, Florida
Society tells us to be ourselves and then chastises us for doing just that.
quote by: Lucie B., 8th Grade, Sarasota Middle School, Sarasota, Florida
teacher: Doug Abel
I celebrate and embrace our differences through my art by using alternative subjects to convey a message of freedom and individuality. I build the scene from the ground up, paying attention to form, balance, and composition. Light and color are conscious choices I make to push the narrative further; blues signify confidence and stability, while greens signify growth and harmony. Blacks, whites, light, and shadow play off each other to show a connection. Individuality is something we all should embrace. Be proud of who you are.


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Hummingbird Photography Tips for Beginners
Hummingbird in Flight
How to Take Pictures of Hummingbirds
I love to watch hummingbirds! They are amazing little creatures. They are the only bird that can fly backwards and they can hover like a little mini helicopter! They have beautiful iridescent colors and their wings can flap between 15 and 200 times per second! Did you know that some hummingbirds can fly up to 71 miles per hour! Photographing these little speeders can be quite a challenge! Here are a few tips and tricks for taking pictures of hummingbirds.
Hummingbird on the Ground
Know Your Subject
First you are going to have to know where the hummingbirds are! If you have flower beds in your yard, you probably have hummingbirds. Watch to see which flowers they tend to go to. Put up a hummingbird feeder near a window of your home. You should get lots of hummingbirds to your feeder. Watch to see what time of day they usually show up. Normally they will visit your flowers early in the morning or late in the afternoon as the temperature begins to cool off. If you have a hummingbird feeder, they will probably visit it all day long.
I personally use a zoom lens for my hummingbird photography, which gives me more flexibility and lets me zoom in to get much closer pictures of the little birds. Using a zoom lens or not, I would recommend also using a tripod. You don't necessarily want to "lock in" your ball head. Keep it some what loose so you may be able to follow the hummingbirds flight, at least somewhat. If you are not using a tripod and have an image stabilizer on your lens be sure it is turned on. Have your camera already focused on the area you think the hummingbirds will visit, such as a particular flower. If you are trying to photograph one as it hovers near your the feeder, it will be hard to pre-focus on anything buy the feeder. Have your camera on auto focus and it will focus for you quickly. I will go into focus a little more in detail in just a minute.
Hummingbird Tongue
Now you will have to be a little patient. If you have a hummingbird feeder you may not have to be patient for long. I usually have between 5 to 10 hummingbirds at my feeder at one time. When you first go out, realize that you will scare them away, but just for a bit. I have found that once I get very still for just a few minutes, the hummingbirds will come right back. The same is true if you have found the place the hummingbirds like for sipping on your flowers. Set up your tripod, be very still and wait. They usually won't stay away for long.
Hummingbirds have such beautiful iridescent colors. Your best pictures are going to be those taken in full sun so you can capture these beautiful colors. Depending on the time of day, you may have some shadow issues. You want to have the flower or feeder in full sun if possible. Shoot from which ever side you need to in order to get the sun on their beautiful feathers. Using a flash will help to freeze their wings, if you are lucky enough to catch one in flight. Your flash will put some light on them, but I still prefer to photograph them in full sun. Full sun is really going to help you get such better detail.
You will want to use the auto-focus setting on your camera. This allows the camera to re-focus, as your subject is moving. Using the auto-focus feature will allow you to keep the hummingbird in sharp focus as it speeds through the air. It will also be important to use the center AF point on your camera and keep that point on the hummingbird as much as possible. As fast as they are, you are going to have to have a little luck. Personally, I usually don't try to zoom in too close as the hummingbirds are too hard to follow with the camera. Zoom out a little so you can keep them in sight and crop the pictures after you get them home.
Female Hummingbird
Shutter Speed
You will have to use a high shutter speed, somewhere around 1/800 and a high ISO, at least 400 or higher. If you go too high, above 800, you are going to get too much "noise" and your picture will be grainy. If you want to freeze the motion of their wings you are going to need to use an external flash. A hot shoe flash is a good idea. They are not very expensive and as a beginner, you don't want to make this any more complicated that necessary. I really prefer a little blur of their wings myself, to show some motion.
Take Lots of Pictures
Now you are going to need a little patience and a lot of luck, yes luck! These little birds move so fast, you are going to need to take a lot of pictures to get a few good shots. I have taken over 100 pictures to get 2 or three good shots. Set your camera to take pictures in a burst. You can set it to take 4-5 pictures per burst. The more pictures you take, the better the chances are that you will get a few good shots.
Hummingbirds are beautiful, amazing little birds. The challenge of photographing hummingbirds is well worth it once you get that one shot that just says "Wow"! Remember to take lots of pictures and keep you camera as steady as possible. You may not get a lot of success your first time. Just keep on trying, the more pictures you take, the better your chances of getting that "Wow" shot!
Have you ever tried taking pictures of hummingbirds?
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Help Feed Your Hummingbirds
Congratulations on capturing the hummingbird tongue. It must of taken a lot of time and patience.
Thank you. The photos are beautiful, and the tips are great. I have a feeling that patience will be the key for me - and patience in the Florida heat!
Well with a 300-600mm, I doubt my hands would be any steadier... that's a huge lens! You might try using a mono-pod instead of a tripod. They're real common among sports photographers using bigger lenses (like 400mm, 600mm). They're a bit easier to swivel and maneuver than a tripod, although I personally find them clunky and uncomfortable.
Nice photos.
Do you find the image stabilization / tripod actually make a difference...? I never bother with image stabilization when I'm shooting action, because I figure the high shutter speed (like the 1/800 you recommended) will eliminate any possibility of camera shake.
I guess if you had a super telephoto (400mm) lens it might make a difference, but you should be able to handhold a 70-200mm fairly easily...
You have some great tips here Sheila, and your photos are awesome! I know how hard it is to catch them in the lens, they're so quick. I have a patch of tall zinnias in the front yard and they love to hang out there, so sometimes I have an opportunity to snap a few shots, only if I happen to have my camera close by :)
Up and beautiful!
A good one here, Sheila (sgbrown) -
The techniques you suggest for making photos of hummingbirds will work well for the making of photos of other sorts of wildlife in motion.
Gus :-)))
Thank you for sharing these very useful tips with great photographs.
You may like to join a Facebook page for photographers at:
Hi Sheila,
We do have hummingbirds who visit the flowers and flowering bushes in our backyard but I have never had a camera at the same time. You have some amazing photos! I had never seen a hummingbird's tongue. I knew that zoom off at amazing speeds but did not know that they can travel at 71 miles per hour! Up, useful and beautiful votes and will share.
Wonderfully written and great tips I will try.
I love your very informative and well written hub! Thank you for all the tips you have shared with us. I would add only that there is a good idea to hide well (to make yourself invisible) because hummingbirds are very shy, cautious, and swift.
Very fascinating topic. I love Hummingbirds and it is very hard to take a picture of them. I tried and failed. You have some great advise to catch them in a camera. Thanks for sharing it. Voted up!
This is a fabulous hub, sg. I really enjoyed it. You're right that those tiny birds 'hover' in one place for what seems like 'forever'. Beautiful photos and very useful and inspirational information. I remember one afternoon in CA I was sitting outdoors and a hummingbird hovered over my head for almost thirty minutes before it flew off...of course it had a pot full of flowers that interested it standing right next to me.
My daughter had an encounter with a hummingbird moth last summer. Be sure to catch that hub (under hubber: cardelean. Be sure to catch her video about that h.b. moth.
Voted up and across/sans funny
Hi Sgbrown! I sure did found this Hummingbird Photography hub. :) And I enjoyed reading it. Reminds me of that first time I tried to take a hummers photo and I stand there like a statue, lol. ^.^' Voted up and enjoyed the photos!
Some great tips here, I can see why you would need a few shots to capture them! You sound very much like my friend, he shoots around 500-1000 shots a morning, and keeps 10-20 lol.
Thanks for SHARING.
Well I don't have a good camera, but one of my son's does. I'd love to attempt to photograph hummingbirds, they are such amazing little birds. I have a trumpet vine near the house and last year saw one perched there - had never seen a hummingbird perched. Voted up!
We do not have these lovely little birds in the UK but I have been lucky enough to see them twice while on holiday. Three things amazed me when I saw a hummingbird for the first time, the brightness and iridescent color, the speed at which their wings move and seeing them hover. I was also surprised how small they were and how they seemed to be able to stay near the flower to feed.
I hope to see a humming bird again one day. You photos are amazing as they portray the bird in action.
This has always fascinated me. The hummingbird is a beautiful bird and I've always loved the photography but have imagined that its always something so hard to photograph.
I wish we had hummingbirds in the UK to photograph, they are so beautiful. Thank you for sharing these tips, a really interesting hub and voted up.
What an awesome hub. Very interesting and informative.
Great work!
Good article. We have a hummingbird feeder outside our kitchen sliding glass door and we love to watch them. We have even taken a few pictures, but we don't have a good camera. We even had one come into the house once when the sliding glass door got left open a little. My parents came over to let our dogs out (we were gone) and the poor little thing was so tired from trying to get out of the house that they were able to pick it up and take it outside and let it go.
What a great hub. Hummingbirds are fascinating and I would imagine they'd be tough to photograph.


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The host of a dinner party in Richmond spins a seemingly unbelievable tale of traveling in a time machine of his own invention far into the future where only two races remain living on earth, the Eloi and the Morlocks. Laced with social commentary on many topics including class structure and capitalism this science fiction classic is perfectly performed by a master story teller. Roger May has narrated many audiobooks including Death on the Nile, The Elephant Keeper, and The Day of the Triffids. He plays James Bellamy in The Archers and his stage credits include The Winslow Boy. In this dramatic tour-de-force, both the guests in the story and the listeners are sucked into the vortex, taking off for this great adventure many years hence, to discover the outcomes of early 20th century political and social decisions.
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Flexible automation involves customizing applications for manufacturing single products and specific tasks without the threat of future limitations. So instead of overhauling assembly lines every product life cycle, flexible automation allows manufacturers to re-task systems so they can be used for other jobs down the line.
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