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Player Contribution Corps is now Officially Live

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Oct 16, 2008 incarnate link
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Space MMO lets players create new content.

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN, October 16th 2008. As of today the space-combat
MMORPG "Vendetta Online"(tm) is allowing subscribers to directly
participate in the development of new content for the game's universe.
Developer Guild Software, Inc, has launched their new "Player
Contribution Corps", a community of game subscribers with access to
building and testing new missions, creating new user-interface features
with direct access to source code, as well as other avenues of content
creation. The powerful yet intuitive mission editor permits players to
autonomously build and test new scenarios on the official Vendetta
Online test-server. Once completed, the missions may be submitted to the
greater "PCC" community for review and feedback, the completion of which
sends them on to the development staff for final approval and placement
in the production game universe.

"We're very excited about this new community of involved players,"
commented John Bergman, CEO of Guild Software. "For some gamers, the
attraction of creating new content, telling stories of their own and
watching others respond to them, can outweigh even the fun of playing
the games themselves. We hope to give this group an outlet with our new
PCC community." Unlike some of the few other MMOs offering degrees of
player-created content, all development approved for the Vendetta Online
universe must stay within the context of the established backstory. "We
see it as a bit like Lucas's 'Expanded Universe'," Bergman continued.
"We have provided a backdrop of history, politics and war that has given
rise to the current galaxy; our players are welcome to tell their own
stories within that framework." Since development began on the "PCC" and
editor in 2006, close to a thousand missions have been built by users
beta-testing the system. "People have constructed trees of elaborate
espionage missions, large space battles, all sorts of different
scenarios, many of which have been propagated into the production game,"
said Bergman. For more information about Vendetta Online and the Player
Contribution Corps, see the main website: http://www.vendetta-online.com/

About Guild Software, Inc
Located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Guild Software was founded in 1998 by a
group of longtime friends with a shared interest in game development.
Since inception, the company has exclusively pursued large-scale
multiplayer environments, developing a completely proprietary MMO engine
from scratch and culminating in the successful retail launch of Vendetta
Online(tm) in 2004. A small but focused company with a multiplatform
background and an independent outlook, Guild Software continues to
actively expand their main title and work towards their Vendetta Online
2.0 goals: the next generation in unbounded, evolving worlds.
Oct 16, 2008 incarnate link
(Note, if you shift-reload, you should see it on the sidebar under "Message Board").
Oct 16, 2008 blacknet link
Congrats!
Oct 16, 2008 CrazySpence link
I was just going to ask about that....I assumed it had been there for months and I just hadn't noticed until today. heh
Oct 16, 2008 IRS link
For a moment, I thought I had been drafted into the PCC. Good to know I haven't been volunteered yet, though it certainly looks interesting. Whatever and whenever my decision on joining the PCC may be, the simple fact that this option is even available to players is incredible. Bravo!

(And no, thinking I had been drafted is not paranoia- you should see the pile of guild invitations I find stuck under my ship's windshield wipers. Worse than door-to-door salesmen, they are!)
Oct 16, 2008 Snax_28 link
While I'm sure you've taken every precaution to safeguard the backend features of the game from dishonest use, opening this up to anyone who has subscribed makes me a bit nervous. I've seen enough hacks in-game (nothing malicious, only proof of concept type stuff, both from the PCC community and outside) to make me a bit worried at this announcement.

Don't get me wrong, I think the concept is fantastic, but perhaps a few soothing words for those of us who worry too much? There's nothing in your news release about safeguards.
Oct 16, 2008 break19 link
" The powerful yet intuitive mission editor permits players to
autonomously build and test new scenarios on the official Vendetta
Online test-server. Once completed, the missions may be submitted to the
greater "PCC" community for review and feedback, the completion of which
sends them on to the development staff for final approval and placement
in the production game universe."

Sounds like it does to me.
Oct 16, 2008 Lord~spidey link
awesome. :)
Oct 16, 2008 slime73 link
Gavan, the PCC has always been available to anyone who wants to join, it's just more... accessible now.

Being a PCC member does not grant any special power, ability, or anything else on the production server.
Oct 16, 2008 incarnate link
Technically speaking the PCC was considered "Beta" before, which is why it wasn't posted to the interface or directly linked (outside of the old messageboard post that discussed it).

Snax: there is no direct influence on anything that happens in production. All Lua code that gets added is audited by Ray, for security as well as stability and other concerns. All missions are reviewed first by the community, and then by me. Propagation of some exploitative scenario is always possible, and an inherent risk. But, I think we manage the risk reasonably well, enough to outweigh the concerns.

Everything is public within the community, they can all look at the structure and content of a submitted mission as much as we can. So, sticking exploitative stuff in a mission isn't that easy to hide.
Oct 16, 2008 Snax_28 link
break19: ...testing of new missions for the game, new Lua code for the game's user interface...

From the PCC intro copy. What you're referring to is only in the context of mission submissions.

I guess basically what worries me is that people have access to see how the underlying code works if they're helping to implement Lua stuff. Whether or not they can actually implement hax into the game is easy enough to stop. If they know what's going on under the hood, it's easier to hijack the car (so to speak). For instance, warping across a sector in a split second, unreal delay rates on weapons, etc, etc...

Anyway, I certainly think this is a great idea regardless. There's some great imaginations in this community...
Oct 16, 2008 yodaofborg link
I think Tram helped em out in that sense Gavan, the whole interface has been in Lua even back then, chill out :)

Oh yeah, and join THC, Syn sucks, and should be given back to Genka.
Oct 16, 2008 genka link
Good news is, as best as I can tell, all the people who have access to the game's already-there lua are utterly inept, and as such are not a danger to society!

And Syn does suck.
Oct 16, 2008 LeberMac link
"...The powerful yet intuitive mission editor..."

There's a new editor? The one I struggled with a year ago was neither powerful nor intuitive.

I'll go check it out! (Edit: No, I still have the same old editor when I click the PCC link. Is there some downloadable thing that I'm missing?)

P.S. I see you got someone to write a proper news release for you. GOOD!
Oct 16, 2008 MSKanaka link
I admit, I thought the same thing as Leber when I read that...

Cool beans, though!
Oct 16, 2008 slime73 link
Snax: all of the interface code is in the same sandbox that the rest of the user-accessible Lua is in, which doesn't contain a way to do any of that, to my knowledge.
The UI code uses already-known functions.
Oct 16, 2008 Snax_28 link
I think Tram helped em out in that sense Gavan, the whole interface has been in Lua even back then, chill out :)

Heh, that was certainly one of the more... impressive ones :P

But no, I'm actually referring to much more contemporary displays of hax.

And I am chilled out! I'm not TYPING IN CAPS AND BLOODY SWEARING ALL OVER THE PLACE NOW AM I?!

Hoser!

So like I said. Good on yah devs. I'll be joining up soon as I can get back in game.
Oct 16, 2008 blacknet link
genka posted "Good news is, as best as I can tell, all the people who have access to the game's already-there lua are utterly inept, and as such are not a danger to society!"

Ok master crack baby please show us peon's how it's done then. One could say put up or shut up, lead by example or GTFO.
Oct 16, 2008 Suicidal Lemming link
Genka, stop being an ass hat.
Oct 17, 2008 incarnate link
Settle down, everyone.

I said the PCC Lua submissions are audited before they go into production. If don't know what that is, see here. Let me rephrase: We appreciate PCC-Lua contributions, but we are not dumb and do not risk the stability or security of the game on untested, uncertain code. We make certain first.

And yes, I think the mission editor is actually pretty intuitive for what it can accomplish. No, it isn't perfect, and it isn't "Apple iMission" or some such, but it does limit the amount you *have* to learn.. allowing a person to expand the complexity as they go along. Which was the whole point (see the pcc page for my recent attempt at illustration. Not logged in if you're a PCC member). Otherwise, we could just tell you all "write it in Lua!". From the "Powerful" standpoint, yes, you can do a hell of a lot with it. Or, at least I can, I have conditional-jump missions in production with forking outcomes based on optional behaviour, and I did that with the same editor.

Additionally, missions like the recent low-level "Courier" series, for which I've gotten a lot of unsolicited, independent compliments (and have about a thousand successful completions), are very simple uses of mission mechanics combined with some degree of imaginative plot. For some reason, people seem to think that the only "Neat" mission is one involving a vast organic space battle with specially named persistent NPCs and a gagillion other things we don't have yet (although, frankly, CrazySpence wrote some neat space battles, which unfortunately he never finished). This always makes me wonder if other people have never played EverQuest, WoW, Anarchy Online, or the host of other MMOs that featured "Quests". These missions all had trivial mechanics, usually some plot, and a little characterization. It is entirely possible to create a ton of cool missions using the editor, but the focus should be on telling stories, not on "doing some neat thing I haven't seen before in-game." Stories make missions, NOT mechanics.