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From my newspost -
VO 1.8.142, tonight, was mostly server-side:
- Modified Hives: the Siepos hive now spreads through Serco territory, while the Prosus hive appears in the Itani region of space. Milanar presence continues in grayspace.
- Each hive now drops unique Milanar, Prosus and Siepos Neural Nodule items, which will factor into "manufacturing" driven gameplay down the road. These nodules are easily destroyed in combat, and as a result are only a 1-in-10 chance of dropping from most hive members. Only the Leviathan, with its larger neural array, is guaranteed to drop some nodules.. but not very many.
- Fixed hive problem relating to NPC mining ships attacking instead of mining.
- Fixed hive issue with bots not respawning in the Milanar hives.
- Frame limiter is now enabled by default, set to 120 frames per second.
The frame limiter being turned on by default should yield cooler-running machines for some of our newer players. A lot more changes to the Hive can be expected over the coming months. Now that they're broken out into three separate definitions on the developer side, it's relatively easy for us to add a lot more gameplay specific tweaks. I intend for each Hive to be somewhat unique, eventually in looks as well as behaviour. Different AI, different weapons, different assortments of ships, and different drops. Some of these drops will then factor into various Manufacturing (crafting) roles that I'm planning to further introduce on the Conquerable Stations. Stay tuned!
VO 1.8.142, tonight, was mostly server-side:
- Modified Hives: the Siepos hive now spreads through Serco territory, while the Prosus hive appears in the Itani region of space. Milanar presence continues in grayspace.
- Each hive now drops unique Milanar, Prosus and Siepos Neural Nodule items, which will factor into "manufacturing" driven gameplay down the road. These nodules are easily destroyed in combat, and as a result are only a 1-in-10 chance of dropping from most hive members. Only the Leviathan, with its larger neural array, is guaranteed to drop some nodules.. but not very many.
- Fixed hive problem relating to NPC mining ships attacking instead of mining.
- Fixed hive issue with bots not respawning in the Milanar hives.
- Frame limiter is now enabled by default, set to 120 frames per second.
The frame limiter being turned on by default should yield cooler-running machines for some of our newer players. A lot more changes to the Hive can be expected over the coming months. Now that they're broken out into three separate definitions on the developer side, it's relatively easy for us to add a lot more gameplay specific tweaks. I intend for each Hive to be somewhat unique, eventually in looks as well as behaviour. Different AI, different weapons, different assortments of ships, and different drops. Some of these drops will then factor into various Manufacturing (crafting) roles that I'm planning to further introduce on the Conquerable Stations. Stay tuned!
Also, FYI, we've rolled a new full-install version. That means the torrents are all dead and being replaced with new ones. If you'd like to help seed, please pick up the new torrents.
OK that's all cool, but what does "manufacturing driven gameplay" mean ?
it's also known as "crafting", they made some patches a few weeks ago which added missions to secret stations...if you take 'em you can get a special metal...as far as I know.
If I'm right you'll be able to improve your ship and it's weapons with that. For example if you mine some special ore, you can fly to a secret station (or even a normal station?) and can use that ore to...uhm...improve your hull or you can put some hive components into your ship...and that could improve a weapon, your engines...
that's what I got from all this "manufacturing" things...not sure if it is true, but I hope that someday it'll be true...
If I'm right you'll be able to improve your ship and it's weapons with that. For example if you mine some special ore, you can fly to a secret station (or even a normal station?) and can use that ore to...uhm...improve your hull or you can put some hive components into your ship...and that could improve a weapon, your engines...
that's what I got from all this "manufacturing" things...not sure if it is true, but I hope that someday it'll be true...
hey inc where can we get the torrent from?
yarr, testing new updates!
Manufacturing and crafting are potentially two different things. I haven't seen any indication which (or if both) road will be taken.
One gives a large collection of individual items, all different.
One gives a collection of large individual items, all different.
(etc. ... anyone remember Adventure?)
The other gives a large supply of identical items.
Think "Hand-made, by a non-exact process" (example: Glasswork) versus "mass manufactured by machining tools and a detailed blueprint" (assembly line, etc)
One possibility is that the best ships, or equipment, will have to be player-made. Another possibility is that equipment will be "tweakable", with some pluses and minuses.
Another possibility is that you will have player-owned ore processing units that process ore by the tons, with ships consuming tons of ore.
From what I understand, the idea is to ask the question: Why are you (or your guild) out there, fighting the fight every day? And maybe the answer is: Because, if we control and mine the good stuff, we can make ships a little better than they can, and we can wipe them from the sky once and for all! The gameplay will become focused around what does it take to make something a little more maneuverable, or a little faster, or ...
... or maybe it's just to make the ships in the first place.
One gives a large collection of individual items, all different.
One gives a collection of large individual items, all different.
(etc. ... anyone remember Adventure?)
The other gives a large supply of identical items.
Think "Hand-made, by a non-exact process" (example: Glasswork) versus "mass manufactured by machining tools and a detailed blueprint" (assembly line, etc)
One possibility is that the best ships, or equipment, will have to be player-made. Another possibility is that equipment will be "tweakable", with some pluses and minuses.
Another possibility is that you will have player-owned ore processing units that process ore by the tons, with ships consuming tons of ore.
From what I understand, the idea is to ask the question: Why are you (or your guild) out there, fighting the fight every day? And maybe the answer is: Because, if we control and mine the good stuff, we can make ships a little better than they can, and we can wipe them from the sky once and for all! The gameplay will become focused around what does it take to make something a little more maneuverable, or a little faster, or ...
... or maybe it's just to make the ships in the first place.
I hope we can craft/manufacture a ball-gag for Keybounce.
@Dr. Lecter wouldn't it be more helpful to take away his keyboard? just sayin...
Now now, let's be nice to the newbies. Especially the enthusiastic ones.
"Manufacturing" is basically our terminology for "crafting". Since crafting is a bit too 'middle-ages' for thousands of years in the future.
As for how it all plays out with the bot drops (which are now fixed, woops), you'll have to wait and see.
"Manufacturing" is basically our terminology for "crafting". Since crafting is a bit too 'middle-ages' for thousands of years in the future.
As for how it all plays out with the bot drops (which are now fixed, woops), you'll have to wait and see.
"Manufacturing" is basically our terminology for "crafting". Since crafting is a bit too 'middle-ages' for thousands of years in the future.
Crafting as in "custom made, one-of-a-kind creations"? No assembly lines, no retooling of automated factories?
Alright, so now we know which way it will go.
Crafting as in "custom made, one-of-a-kind creations"? No assembly lines, no retooling of automated factories?
Alright, so now we know which way it will go.
I made this here neutron blaster with me bare hands.
Woo, new installers, seeding all 4. Who is the initial seeder btw, because when I started the downloads, there was only 1 seed and 2 leechers, but my download rate was way over 1Mbps!
I think I have our secondary seed rate-limited to 10mbit.
So... about this OEM...
What exactly does that mean? Doesn't OEM stand for "original equipment manufacturer"... if so, why do they need large textures in Vendetta Online? Galactic Trade Advertising?
What exactly does that mean? Doesn't OEM stand for "original equipment manufacturer"... if so, why do they need large textures in Vendetta Online? Galactic Trade Advertising?
It's a bit convoluted to explain..
See, we're trying to get VO "bundled", or pre-installed on a wide variety of devices. Be they PCs you buy from Wal-Mart, or (hopefully) cool tablety Android devices you buy from your cellular provider or.. Wal-Mart (Best Buy? Frys? whatever).
We've been working with a lot of OEMs lately, all of whom have "Q/A lock" dates, after which nothing may be changed on the bundle. Unfortunately, some Q/A lock dates are hilariously early, compared to the launch (some can be like 6 months prior to actual retail launch).
Whenever these devices, or products, or whatever are launched, it is in our best interest that they not require significant patch updates. Patches use up our bandwidth, and it sucks if a zillion people go buy the new iBlah and run pre-installed VO, and all try to patch up 25MB of stuff at the same time. That's really "exciting" for us in a way that is Not Good (tm). Especially since we don't currently use a P2P patching system.
Thus, we made an effort over this past month to try and do any texture changes we thought we might want for the next short period of time, and get them done before a specific OEM lock date. This included station textures, since I needed to compress them for the Tegra products, and if I'm going to go to the trouble to do that, I might as well replace them with higher-resolution versions. Of course, those high-res versions are then a larger download, so that would be bad if all the OEM bundled installer people needed the big patch. Blah blah.
So, as you can.. see, or read, there are a lot of convoluted priorities, on different (shifting!) schedules, which we try to adapt to and provide the best overall game for everyone. Which usually means we're not doing the best thing for anyone, but trying to thread the gap through the middle and balance it out.
See, we're trying to get VO "bundled", or pre-installed on a wide variety of devices. Be they PCs you buy from Wal-Mart, or (hopefully) cool tablety Android devices you buy from your cellular provider or.. Wal-Mart (Best Buy? Frys? whatever).
We've been working with a lot of OEMs lately, all of whom have "Q/A lock" dates, after which nothing may be changed on the bundle. Unfortunately, some Q/A lock dates are hilariously early, compared to the launch (some can be like 6 months prior to actual retail launch).
Whenever these devices, or products, or whatever are launched, it is in our best interest that they not require significant patch updates. Patches use up our bandwidth, and it sucks if a zillion people go buy the new iBlah and run pre-installed VO, and all try to patch up 25MB of stuff at the same time. That's really "exciting" for us in a way that is Not Good (tm). Especially since we don't currently use a P2P patching system.
Thus, we made an effort over this past month to try and do any texture changes we thought we might want for the next short period of time, and get them done before a specific OEM lock date. This included station textures, since I needed to compress them for the Tegra products, and if I'm going to go to the trouble to do that, I might as well replace them with higher-resolution versions. Of course, those high-res versions are then a larger download, so that would be bad if all the OEM bundled installer people needed the big patch. Blah blah.
So, as you can.. see, or read, there are a lot of convoluted priorities, on different (shifting!) schedules, which we try to adapt to and provide the best overall game for everyone. Which usually means we're not doing the best thing for anyone, but trying to thread the gap through the middle and balance it out.
That sounds interesting - VO definitely needs a larger continuous player base. If these OEM deals do actually help in bringing a stronger player presence (TBH, I haven't been able to subscribe, let alone play, but I'm pretty sure there still aren't 100 people on at any given time... right?) then won't you guys have to update the patching system sooner rather than later anyways?
Were you planning on working on a more scallable patching system now?
*Edit: Definitely too tired.
Were you planning on working on a more scallable patching system now?
*Edit: Definitely too tired.
Our patching system, as-is, can be as scalable as we want it to be. We just have to drop in more patch server locations, along with using load balancing to distribute between the servers (round-robin DNS being one of the simplest, although there are tradeoffs to using that).
I don't anticipate that we'll move to a P2P patching system anytime soon. It has the benefit of reducing bandwidth load, and the downside that everyone and their uncle is rate-limiting P2P applications. World of Warcraft is probably big enough to be handled as a special case by a lot of ISPs.
Of course, we could always fall back to direct downloads (which Blizzard probably does as well), but that's all a lot of engineering time I'd rather spend on the game, right now.
Anyway, now you know why we wanted to push out the textures. Regardless of how many patch servers we have in service, it's still a good thing.
I don't anticipate that we'll move to a P2P patching system anytime soon. It has the benefit of reducing bandwidth load, and the downside that everyone and their uncle is rate-limiting P2P applications. World of Warcraft is probably big enough to be handled as a special case by a lot of ISPs.
Of course, we could always fall back to direct downloads (which Blizzard probably does as well), but that's all a lot of engineering time I'd rather spend on the game, right now.
Anyway, now you know why we wanted to push out the textures. Regardless of how many patch servers we have in service, it's still a good thing.
"@Dr. Lecter wouldn't it be more helpful to take away his keyboard? just sayin..."
he could just get another keyboard, taking away his fingers would do even better.
Inc can we please have a link to the torrent, I'd not mind seeding for a while
he could just get another keyboard, taking away his fingers would do even better.
Inc can we please have a link to the torrent, I'd not mind seeding for a while
You can click on "Download" to the left and find all the respective torrent links under each platform type (one for Mac and Windows, two of them under Linux).