South america wants to use linux for everything.
Cheaper.
You know what Bill Gates does?
He flies down there and has a talk with the big man.
Saying... Don't use linux, it is teh suck.
Use our XP, we give you good price since you n00bs.

Yea... they're scared :)

I recently heard that Spain is going to require all their educational instituions (colleges, students thereof, etc) to run Linux, as a government cost-saving measure. I can't speak to the accuracy of that data, but it came from a Linux company based in Spain.

On other notes, the responses about our difficulty in finding outside investment are correct, as are the responses about the difficulty in training new programmers. At this point, Michael works primarily on the Deliverator platform that he and Andy basically created last year. Even after the better part of a year with us, I imagine that dipping into something like.. core client or server code, would probably be kind of a scary prospect for him.

On the marketing side, I'm not unaware of the advantages of advertising to mac users. When it comes to actually putting *dollars* into marketing (most of my initial marketing plans are "free" kind of stuff that we can get from the gaming press and other resources), I will probably focus on the mac market to begin with. Reviews on IGN or MMORPG.com will hit the Windows market too, but actually advertising to that market is generally much more expensive, and is.. as people say, pretty saturated.

We made a multiplatform game because.. that's kind of up our alley (being a bunch of Unix geeks and such). But a big added motivation was the potential marketing benefits that are being discussed. A) the Mac is a game-starved platform, and B) Linux games/products get more attention on major sites like Slashdot. Even without those benefits, we would have ported, but we were definitely aware of them.

Thanks for the reply Incarnate, would be nice to obtain some new Investors though. Can't wait to see another interview with MMORPG.com or IGN.com. I wanna see Vendetta start to eat away at EvE-onlines numbers.

"I guess its a bit like saying *if everyone used Linux, there would be as many viruses as on windows!* which is true, to an extent, but facts are most people DONT use Linux, and probably never will."
--yodaofborg

There are more Linux users than Mac users. There just aren't as many people willing to write games for Linux, since there isn't an established gaming market there and Linux users really are not willing to pay (as had been mentioned). Excusions into this market have also lead to revelations concerning compatability and user types. Linux simply wasn't designed to be a gaming platform and does many things geared for gaming badly. Linux users are typically more interested in tweaking their OS and writing their own apps instead of gaming.

Linux users, who would probably rather write thier own games, typically don't because of the required efforts. Thus Linux's suitability for gaming has grown at a slow pace. This overall, makes Linux gaming a chicken or egg scenario: Why gear Linux towards gamers if there are no games for it, and why make games for a system that noone uses for gaming?

It's also a relatively huge effort to make something compatable on every OS, when 95% of the market doesn't use anything but Windows. Is it really worth the effort to release a port that will only appeal to fraction of a percent of a disinterested fraction of a percent marketshare?

I have asked the devs how hard it would be to make VO run on OpenBSD. They say it's possible. However, I would be the only one to use this, period. The OpenBSD marketshare for games is nil. The OpenBSD marketshare for non-ICS/BSD/GPL license software is nil. The odds of anyone playing on OpenBSD besides me are infinitesimal. it's just not worth thier time.

Oh, and to the issue of Windows vs Linux software piracy: What exactly would you pirate for Linux? There aren't that many non-freely distributable apps for Linux, and those that are, are not widely used or desired.

However, because VO is one of the few games on Mac and Linux platforms, it draws in those players, who lack other alternatives, alot more than it does for Windows. The niche appeal is a very limiting factor to broader use even on those platforms. While VO Windows players are here because of that niche.

The pre-alpha client used to run on BSDs. Hell, isn't the webserver or the db server or something a FreeBSD machine?

They should bring back BeOS ports, though. That's just an all-around cool OS. :-)

PS: w00t for the devs! amd64 client for teh win!

The client has been built, at one time or another, on Irix/MIPS, Solaris/Sparc and BeOS/x86. We used to have an official BeOS port, but killed it when they started focusing on things like internet-enabled refrigerators (and then later went out of business). Future ports would be considered based on how many users we might garner from a given platform. The actual porting time is pretty minor, but the maintenance (release night now has four different clients that have to be compiled and individually tested) is a bit annoying.

And yes, for the record, our webserver runs on FreeBSD. Everything used to (including the game), but we migrated to Linux because we needed the benefits of the "oprofile" integrated kernel profiler.. and FreeBSD didn't have a mature alternative at the time. It's also noteworthy that the Linux version of the game client does reportedly run on FreeBSD, using their Linux emulation.

EVE looks sweet, but has some issues (i.e. why I play this instead). I do not particularly like the idea of character skill-based combat instead of twitch - I do not have nearly the time to make and upkeep a good multi-talented character for EVE. Also, my people-skills generally suck and, given how little NPCs matter in most of EVE, this is detrimental to my character's attempted progression/integration into the universe (i.e. I hate politics too). In general, I just found there to be too many people in the way and too few willing to help me *_insert_newbish_ignorance_here_*. I just wound up with stacks of questions about facets of the universe and character progression and ... neither the home website nor readily available players had answers.

I also appreciate the competitive pricing v.s. EVE though. ;)

I'll be the first to admit that EVE's crafting system was what drove me to try it. However, I can be patient for Guild to come up with something good as well. I also REALLY like the NPC=PC thing since A.I. is what I want to do.

I like fantasy stuff, and got drawn into MMORPGs with Ultima Online. However, my heart really lies with Sci-Fi and UO fell on its face as I simply WAITED for Star Wars Galaxies... But it took SO LONG (i.e. I heard about it far too early to be good for it or me), they didn't have my beloved spacecraft right off the bat, I ran onto Vendetta, and this is great for me (plus the above reasons).

"There really isnt much point pirating a copy of Linux, now is there?" - yodaofborg - That is the best thing I have read in days, excellent! :)

I agree with LeberMac on the advertising bit. I cannot even comprehend the kind of trouble Guild would have if 9,000 users tried to join the game next week. EVE hit a week with 30,000 new accounts (admittedly many in Europe). It would be best for everyone if Vendetta grows slowly at first.

CrippledPidgeon, I also have to agree with you that my friends (all windows users) switch games with (frightening?) frequency. I do not understand this as 9+ games a year is EXPENSIVE (I like that VO for a year is like 2 games), I like simply playing a good game instead of endlessly searching for the non-existent perfect game, and I have ADD too so I would think my attention span ought to be shorter than theirs (though I guess needing to learn to focus enough to get into graduate school for Comp.Sci./A.I. may have upset that balance a bit). I would also note that many poor people manage to drink a lot, and booze is expensive too - never underestimate people's ability to "find" money for things they "really want", ESPECIALLY if it is the dreaded "last one". ;)

If you want Windows players overnight in droves, I suggest only one thing to you:

google.cn

How much would it really take to translate the VO website into Chinese? They have got to be tired of playing Counterstrike by now, I would think.

They play WoW now. Hell, they have WoW-oriented Coca-Cola commercials. Which I find.. kind of scary. Not that there are commercials for WoW, but that a game can be such as well-established aspect of popular culture that other major brands want to use it for marketing. That sort of co-marketing and branding is common with movies and things, but still kinda new and weird (to me) in videogames. Vendetta Online happymeal anyone?

And doing localized versions of the game is something we want to do, but it's pretty involved and would take too many of our resources right now. You have to keep localizing with all the updates, you have to maintain another set of servers for the local market (people in China would probably not appreciate their ping times to our servers here in Wisconsin), plus local support and community and so on. We'll approach that sometime when the game's a little more "settled".

incarnate, that is the power of marketing and the lack of better ideas.

if you have a playerbase of a couple mill people, and they are part of your primary targetaudience (especially seeing the latest brandcraze in china). Then doing so is a wise idea and decently cheap in comparison with other advrtisement opportunities.

Same thing with for instance soccer, car racing etc... all advertisments, special events that lure a big crowd. In europe for instance you had the figure of soccerplayers on coca cola canisters during some of the World cup. Just an additional marketingstunt, nothing special. At least not for me.

"The actual porting time is pretty minor, but the maintenance (release night now has four different clients that have to be compiled and individually tested) is a bit annoying."
--incarnate

Does the ease of porting have anything to do with the fact that all OSes other than Windows are UNIX?

Think about it, Free/Net/OpenBSD... UNIX. GNU, both Hurd and Linux flavors, are reimplemnetation of UNIX. Solaris is UNIX. Mac OS X/Darwin is forked from FreeBSD, which is UNIX. Even when you go into more obscure waters, like IRIX, HPUX, Tru64, AIX, and MINIX, are all UNIX. Even Plan 9 is still fundementally UNIX. Even the non-UNIX OSes I can think of, such as MenuetOS, may not be POSIX complaint, but they still use UNIX conventions, a reinvention of the wheel.

So, the title of this thread could easily drop the "Mac and" part.

The real funny thing is, Microsoft, makers of the most successful UNIX variant ever, XENIX, now attempt to wipe UNIX out. But with each incarnation of Windows, thier OS has become more and more UNIX like.

[/rant]

I want a V-O happy meal! Or maybe ship-shaped breakfast cereals.

I'd buy that for my kids, they go to McD's just for the toys. Yes, I see it now, I'll have the IBG happy meal for the girl and for the boy a 'tard box.

Seriously, I hope that whatever percentage of your operating budget you have allocated to advertising, you guys spend wisely. This game has great programming resources that you guys could take advantage of.

ahh buy a server in Hong Kong, then the Chinese people (<--Me But living in UK) can plug in happyliy on 2 servers. :) A USA/Europe one and a Asia one!

AKA Ecka Estenk

A thought provoking thread. May I make a couple of Observations?

Firstly, the rate of increase of the power of personal computers may well make the OS debate redundant within a few years. Quite simply emulation speeds will be such that software just runs whatever resources it needs, launched from whichever GUI one prefers to use. I suggest that it therefore makes sense for developers of software such as VO to continue their cross platform expertise, towards the time when the program is essentially a set of modules from which the host machine is capable of optimising performance of its own accord.

Secondly , I appreciate that much of the work which has taken place on the new client is aimed towards making a much wider range of missions available to satisfy a greater range of game players. In the three months of playing VO I have observed a number of potential players leaving the game since the number and type of missions presently available is limited . I appreciate that there is a solid core of players who effectively use the game as a framework to set thier own mission objectives ( reflecting the fact that VO generally attracts a more mature type of gameplayer ) but I would suggest that we are an unusual bunch and that the missions promised for the new client would be an essential part of increasing the userbase.

Thirdly , The level of debate between the devs and the players is in my experience unparalled . This may well turn out to be a unique selling point for VO ; a universe in which the course of the game ( in effect the missions which the devs create at the suggestion of the players ) is determined by the players , guilds and economic factions which inhabit that universe , rather than being preordained in the linear manner of most other games.

I apologise if I have meandered a little in the above : it was essentally a set of thoughts linking the debate about OS development choice to the wider issue of marketing the game to a wider playerbase.

It does not matter how powerful a computer is, you can only emulate something you understand. And Microsoft has a lot of undocumented parts of Windows.

And for gaming, translating DirectX to OpenGL presents another challenge. The DirectX Alpha-Blending System allows a programmer to set blend modes for source and destination for both the RGB channels and the alpha channels (if the appropriate state is enabled). To set a mode, you call the srcBlend, dstBlend, srcBlendAlpha or dstBlendAlpha state and pass on the blend mode you want individually.

In OpenGL, you call a blend function either using the seperate blend func extension or the built-in one. The blend function expects the blend modes for every channel to be passed along at once. In DirectX, you set them seperatly so it's impossible to know what the program wants until it's set at least srcBlend and dstBlend. But the GL function expects them both at the time it is called. And this is not an isolated case.

Another problem with emulation is you have to emulate the bugs. Windows has plenty of bugs in it's APIs. For example, there could be a function that is documented as returning a uint but in practice returns a regular int. Programs written using this function are written around how it works. If you implement the function as documented in Wine, even though it's working as documented, programs are going to be expecting what it does on Windows regardless of how it is documented. And the resulting irregularities that can occur as a result are very hard to debug because on paper, the function looks fine.

That is but one of the challenges in emulation or reimplementing a proprietery closed API.

damicatz, you dont emulate software, you emulate hardware ;) WINE stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator. ;)

You emulate hardware, and home computers really are getting fast enough to even play games under emulation... --> http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/12444 the point of this thread is *it runs!!!* ok, why would you want to? right now, you wouldnt, but give it a few more years... (maybe quite a few more, but the point still stands). Hell, they are even selling proccesors with it built in, wont be long till they make a Mac appearance. http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/vptech/

I go by the dictionary definition of emulation. To emulate is to surpass or imitate something else. Wine is an imitation of the Win32 APIs so therefor it is emulation. It may not be an emulation of hardware but it is of software.

Actually, Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix, its not really *emulated* its *reproduced*, it really is different,, sorry for the long quote, but...

[quote from winehq.com, debunking myths]

Myth 1: "Wine is slow because it is an emulator"
Some people mean by that that Wine must emulate each processor instruction of the Windows application. This is plain wrong. As Wine's name says: "Wine Is Not an Emulator": Wine does not emulate the Intel x86 processor. It will thus not be as slow as Wabi which, since it is not running on a x86 Intel processor, also has to emulate the processor. Windows applications that do not make system calls will run just as fast as on Windows (no more no less).

Some people argue that since Wine introduces an extra layer above the system a Windows application will run slowly. It is true that, in theory, Windows applications that run in Wine or are recompiled with Winelib will not be able to achieve the same performance as native Unix applications. But that's theory. In practice you will find that a well written Windows application can beat a badly written Unix application at any time. The efficiency of the algorithms used by the application will have a greater impact on its performance than Wine.

Also, and that's what people are usually interested in, the combination Wine+Unix may be more efficient that Windows. Just as before it's just how good/bad their respective algorithms are. Now to be frank, performance is not yet a Wine priority. Getting more applications to actually work in Wine is much more important right now. For instance most benchmarks do not work yet in Wine and getting them to work at all should obviously have a higher priority than getting them to perform well.

But for those applications that do work and from a purely subjective point of view, performance is good. There is no obvious performance loss, except for some slow graphics due to unoptimized Wine code and X11 driver translation performance loss (which can be a problem sometimes, though).
[/quote]

[edit]

Infact, a lot of the wine dll's have been used to create an OS, which is not unix based, it has a kernel all of its own, its still slow, and has a lot of bugs, im not sure you can DL it right now, cos m$$$$ are investigating them again, but http://www.reactos.org/

I would so go to McDonalds to buy the VO happy meal. I'd love to have my own collection of ships.

I have faith in VO's plans, Ray is very happy at work. If I didn't think that this was going to turn out well I would have asked Ray to find a better paying job as a condition before we got married.