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Exciting news. I also think it is interesting that you are looking into the video goggles thing too.
I have been wondering for a while now (ever since I first saw some for sale nearly 10 years ago) why goggle-style monitors have not taken the portable world by storm, because to me the main thing holding back handhelds has been their tiny display and itty bitty input devices (maybe a roll-up keyboard too.)
So if this platform takes-off like I have expected it will some day, VO would be in a nice position to take advantage of it.
Even without the video goggles, just the netbook style PC possibility is fascinating. In theory, it could explode (would be interesting to see you guys have to deal with going from our current player base to something WoW size in a few months) with the combination of an Ubuntu repository style distribution channel and Android based ~$99 netbooks.
Good luck guys!
I have been wondering for a while now (ever since I first saw some for sale nearly 10 years ago) why goggle-style monitors have not taken the portable world by storm, because to me the main thing holding back handhelds has been their tiny display and itty bitty input devices (maybe a roll-up keyboard too.)
So if this platform takes-off like I have expected it will some day, VO would be in a nice position to take advantage of it.
Even without the video goggles, just the netbook style PC possibility is fascinating. In theory, it could explode (would be interesting to see you guys have to deal with going from our current player base to something WoW size in a few months) with the combination of an Ubuntu repository style distribution channel and Android based ~$99 netbooks.
Good luck guys!
Great work guys, this is another one of those announcements which have taken me COMPLETELY off guard in the best way possible! ;-)
This opportunity came up as a result of a potential bundling deal with an OEM, I didn't make the choice to port until after that started to look really interesting.
That sounds awesome! Is this still a possibility?
Please don't let the the discouraging and downright mean-spirited posts get to you. I'm not sure why this has become more acceptable and popular as of late, but I'm ashamed that youguys have to put up with it after everything you do.
This opportunity came up as a result of a potential bundling deal with an OEM, I didn't make the choice to port until after that started to look really interesting.
That sounds awesome! Is this still a possibility?
Please don't let the the discouraging and downright mean-spirited posts get to you. I'm not sure why this has become more acceptable and popular as of late, but I'm ashamed that youguys have to put up with it after everything you do.
How can this not be win for us *users* if it takes off? How can this not be a win for VO if it takes off? Those who have negative comments are trolling. Simple as.
Was an E-mail sent out to VO Mailing List Subscribers? I didn't get an E-mail about this! This is amazing news, even though its not being developed for 800x480 resolution phones.
I can't believe I even stumbled on this (I practically only visit VO's site once every 3 months)!
GL on your venture into mobile gaming space. It sounds like its totally gonna kick ass, and hopefully phones will come with the screen resolution and controls you need to make your game work.
Hopefully you'll drive phone makers to use better and faster hardware too :)
I can't believe I even stumbled on this (I practically only visit VO's site once every 3 months)!
GL on your venture into mobile gaming space. It sounds like its totally gonna kick ass, and hopefully phones will come with the screen resolution and controls you need to make your game work.
Hopefully you'll drive phone makers to use better and faster hardware too :)
An e-mail was sent out. Maybe you need to check your spam mail folder?
No, I definitely didn't get one either, and I checked my spam folder as well...
I have not sent out a newsletter item on this yet. I don't know what email toshiro received. I did push it out on Twitter, and news/RSS, although Facebook is taking forever to update our RSS-to-Wall feed.
I will probably do a newsletter when I get back from LA.
I will probably do a newsletter when I get back from LA.
This idea has great potential but imo, and I know this has been said in other threads, the website really could use some modernization to help with PR. I have a Motorola Droid, which I know you are not targeting, but as an Android user who visits several forums regularly to look for game news, I can tell you that right now, the market is almost empty and there are a lot of Android users thirsty for games with depth. Decent chance a good portion of Adroid early adopters are geeky sci fi fans. And decent chance that if they clicked on a link to this website about an "amazing game being ported to Android," they might close the tab pretty quickly if they connected potential game quality with an outdated website layout.
You could probably pay some out of college web designers looking for work peanuts to design a modern look for your website. You'll be doing them a favor by giving them some work that they can show on their resume. Hell, you could probably get a decent amount of designers to provide you free or cheap examples and then choose from the lot if you are worried about paying up front.
You could probably pay some out of college web designers looking for work peanuts to design a modern look for your website. You'll be doing them a favor by giving them some work that they can show on their resume. Hell, you could probably get a decent amount of designers to provide you free or cheap examples and then choose from the lot if you are worried about paying up front.
Hmm... I should probably get more sleep. I was sure I'd received an email about this. My apologies for the confusion, it wasn't my intention.
>3) If I were sitting on a big pile of money, or even a relatively small pile of money, I would work on content and not care about any of this other stuff. I vastly prefer to be a game designer than a CEO. But as it is, I have to prioritize based on "keeping the company in business so we can add the content". So, while I am sorry for delaying content again, I don't apologize for the decision that caused that to happen. Ultimately, this is all about "content", like having the money to add more of it.
can't you outsource some tasks? like if someone adds a ship, an item or a weapon to the game he'll get a discount for the next payment? I'm almost sure some ppl would be willing to do that.
can't you outsource some tasks? like if someone adds a ship, an item or a weapon to the game he'll get a discount for the next payment? I'm almost sure some ppl would be willing to do that.
'just adding a ship' is by far not simple, even if you can actually do it well (and most can't, we've seen all the 'design a ship' contests), you still need to learn how to work with VO specifically, which means devs spending time to teach you apparently.
Yeah, as has been explained hundreds of time before, the difference between a model someone puts together and the community likes and something that meets all the oddball requirements of a game engine are enormous. I think Inc has said that the most efficient place for people to help out is the PCC, and even that requires significant developer testing at the end for quality control. Plugins are also nice, (read one of my favorite parts of VO) but by most definitions of content they're just icing on the cake. Guild is also kind of limited by what they can open-source now because they're licensing their game engine too now.
Yeah, I don't play much anymore, but the amount of times people have suggested user created ship models is kind of insane, you can't just cook a good looking model in blender or wings3d and expect it to show up in a game.
People try to make a good looking 3D model, which is cool and all, until you consider how the engine has to handle the model. LOD maps, Specular maps, texture maps and stuff are just a start - you have to understand how this engine would implement all that before you started design - you can't just say "Hey I can learn", nobody is here to teach you. And this is all before we consider collision meshes and coding all this into the game, creating textures and other assets (what does your ship sound like? For instance). Blah, If I was John, I would say no to user models too although I would also not discourage users to make ship models too!
You never know, you may just (if nothing else) inspire the next new VO ship!
People try to make a good looking 3D model, which is cool and all, until you consider how the engine has to handle the model. LOD maps, Specular maps, texture maps and stuff are just a start - you have to understand how this engine would implement all that before you started design - you can't just say "Hey I can learn", nobody is here to teach you. And this is all before we consider collision meshes and coding all this into the game, creating textures and other assets (what does your ship sound like? For instance). Blah, If I was John, I would say no to user models too although I would also not discourage users to make ship models too!
You never know, you may just (if nothing else) inspire the next new VO ship!
aye, best bet to get something like that ingame is to chop that stupid tail off the craptor and submit that to them.
I'd love to see this game on the iPad down the road. I'd probably start playing again...
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/203564/htc_planning_black_friday_launch_of_chrome_tablet.html?tk=hp_pop
Although, I think Chrome applications are supposed be web-based, so maybe you'd have to make a web version of VO. Heh.
Although, I think Chrome applications are supposed be web-based, so maybe you'd have to make a web version of VO. Heh.
Yeah, as far as I'm aware, Chrome has no native applications. So umm, don't ever leave cell/wifi signal range, or something. I think the web-OS thing is an interesting idea, but I'm not really sold on it yet. I think one could accomplish the same goal with Android, also have the option of native apps, and make the device more flexible. And not further fragment a confused marketplace. But, whatever.
Sure, an Android port may be a cool thing.
I would like more to see 1.9 sooner though. I hope the devs won't postpone it because of android version.
I would like more to see 1.9 sooner though. I hope the devs won't postpone it because of android version.
I still think a Pandora port would be a better idea, that device is just begging for a game like VO :). But yeah, I don't think too much time will be wasted with an Andriod port, with the right hardware. Guild have already proven how portable their code is. Main thing that needs doing is optimising assets and stuff.
It's as much about the opportunities of being one of the first "large-scale" games on Android. If we can get bundling on some major OEMs, that's huge marketing for us. Motorola sold 250,000 "Droid" phones the first week they came out. Consider that kind of thing, but with newer ipad-like Android tablets, or whatever.
Anyway, we are continuing work on 1.9, and a lot of the time we have put into the Android version has back-propagated into good things for the PC versions as well.
Yoda: I'm not convinced that PowerVR performance is up to what we need, but we haven't really used it much yet. PowerVR also does not support game-industry standard DirectX Texture Compression, and would require us to re-tool our art assets for their specific compression standard (doable, but annoying to maintain). Tegra is pretty damned fast on the GPU, along with dual-core CPUs at 1+ ghz. I'm not sure that Pandora is really up to it, even if the market argument could be made.
Anyway, we are continuing work on 1.9, and a lot of the time we have put into the Android version has back-propagated into good things for the PC versions as well.
Yoda: I'm not convinced that PowerVR performance is up to what we need, but we haven't really used it much yet. PowerVR also does not support game-industry standard DirectX Texture Compression, and would require us to re-tool our art assets for their specific compression standard (doable, but annoying to maintain). Tegra is pretty damned fast on the GPU, along with dual-core CPUs at 1+ ghz. I'm not sure that Pandora is really up to it, even if the market argument could be made.