@slime73

[[[Besides the usual 'things take much longer than people are used to with this many developers', they've had several setbacks, delays, and necessary priority changes. Most of which you can read about from past posts.]]]

OK, but i wanted to hear it from @inc himself.
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@genka

[[[The idea that POL is a programmer frightens me.
Somebody hold me. Maybe stroke my hair?]]]

Me being programmer is the exact reason for behaving this way. I just can't stop to wonder what could take so long, if not partial engine rewrite because of its unflexible design.

Usually when relatively simple things are taking too much time, the problem is in serious engine limitations.

It really wouldn't hurt if @incarnate explained in detail what tasks take so much time. If the development process would be more open, that would probably shut my mouth.

Well, as long as you're a programmer...

PoL: If you want someone to voluntarily help you out with information, it's not the best strategy to imply that they avoid the truth and make excuses. I've spoken very frankly and specifically about this issue many times, as slime says.

- There were issues relating to the server-side utilization of capships, relating to collisions and physics as well as the AI traversal of complex, continually-changing lists of targets. Big capship battles were draining the server resources, and the issue would only be made worse by the proliferation of user-owned capships. This was a pretty long-standing issue we resolved in mid/late 2009, with some optimizations of collision hulls and codepaths for turrets (enemy selection for the AI), as well as "worst-case-scenario" fallbacks to handle the possibility of runaway loads.

- The intended control mechanics for capships involved a "homeworld-style" 3D interface, which has simply not been developed yet. There are challenges and concerns relating to people flying capships around like fighters, and it only really works up to the scale of a Trident. The "homeworld" type interface also placed more weight on the capship navigation AI than it could realistically handle, and improving that AI (along with NPC navigation in general) has been an ongoing effort.

- From a gameplay standpoint, the content intended to actually utilize capships, and make them highly beneficial, has not been added into the game. As such, there has never been a great deal of point to users having them.

However, the argument was made (by the userbase) that users would invent their own play mechanics if we simply made capships available, and that piloting tridents like fighters would be an acceptable tradeoff in the near-term, so that is what I am pursuing. Basically a highly dumbed-down version of capships that I can make available on a short schedule, despite a massive amount of other ongoing high-priority development, allowing us to further test these mechanics while giving some new high-level content to the userbase. It's a series of compromises, but one that is hopefully beneficial to everyone, and helps accelerate the "complete" capship implementation.

@inc

[[[PoL: If you want someone to voluntarily help you out with information, it's not the best strategy to imply that they avoid the truth and make excuses.]]]

Sorry, that is just me being me. I have a "difficult character" it seems.

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The rest:

Thanks for a more detailed explanation. It seems you are little understaffed for the big plans of yours. Perfectionism may be a pain in the ass sometimes.

Perhaps you should just release very basic versions of the planned functionalities instead, so people can see that there is something done, and polish them later, while they are already in-game. I think that this is much better than waiting for years for every new feature.

None of this will ever happen PoL. We've been just around the corner from player controlled cap ships for years.

Why don't you knock it off with them negative waves? Why don't you dig how beautiful it is out here? Why don't you say something righteous and hopeful for a change Imp? ;)

Because that would make him a total fucking chump, Oddball.

@Impavid

[[[None of this will ever happen PoL. We've been just around the corner from player controlled cap ships for years.]]]

No, its's OK. I understand that Guild has had some problems (personal ? / family ? / health ?. Whatever - I don't know and I don't care) and the game not only did not evolve, but almost died in the process.

But i hope that now, since they got influx of money, publicity and stuff from Android, they can start actually making new important features appear in game.
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@inc

1. You know, it would really help if you removed the "have a suggestion ? come to the forums now and share it with us!" crap from the game. People come and will come here, realize that nothing is being implemented and get pissed off.

This may actually be the main reason why everybody (including me) is acting so strangely on this forum. We see the screens in-game, we get pissed off. It is that simple.

2. I wonder ...when you get the increase of funds, could you hire back the people/programmers who left the company earlier ? That would certainly be much faster & effective than teaching newbie programmers how Vendetta's engine works...

could you hire back the people/programmers who left the company earlier ?

Rats aren't known for reboarding sinking ships.

@Lecter

[[[Rats aren't known for reboarding sinking ships.]]]

As far as i understand, the ship is no loger sinking. Or is it ?

Just wanted to make sure... PoL is a character that Lecter created so he could have an excuse to flame himself, right?

I'd be happy to say something happy and hopeful vsyke, but it would be on a different subject and so be off topic for this board.

I'm not saying anything that isn't true, I'm not making things up, you are. All of you who continue to believe that soon(tm) is ever coming despite no evidence to support it and every evidence to the contrary, including Inc's admission that huge parts of the player cap ships and economic expansion haven't even been started yet.

Perhaps Inc should shut down the game and use whatever he's got left to start a cult in the desert so you all can keep drinking his coolaid.

1. You know, it would really help if you removed the "have a suggestion ? come to the forums now and share it with us!" crap from the game. People come and will come here, realize that nothing is being implemented and get pissed off.

This is absolutely untrue. Many of the things you take for granted ingame right now started off as suggestions. A few of my own suggestions have made it into the game already. Many suggestions, including most of yours PoL, are either unrealistic or would cause the game to deviate from what it's supposed to be. That doesn't mean the developers don't implement suggestions, it means your suggestion wasn't very good. Many other suggestions are good but require some other factor to be there before they're able to be implemented (significant development time or a rewrite of some other part of the game, for example).

Keep in mind that the developers have specific goals for the game and won't implement suggestions that go against those goals unless the suggestion will actually result in an improvement over the current goal. A trend I've noticed over the years in the suggestions forum is that people often don't understand key components to game design and development, and think their suggestion is absolutely brilliant when it's really not.

Weren't we supposed to get forum mods or something?

Impavid: Please stop posting on my forums. You have nothing useful to add, not even the slightest hint of a constructive purpose to your criticism. You just want to dump on me, and anything we do. Please go away, play EVE or something.

PoL: Yes, the express purpose of pursuing the Android opportunities has been to generate enough income to stabilize the company, improve the game, hire more people, better justify outside investment, and so on. So far this has been quite successful, but we are still spending most of our development time pursuing things like.. pre-loading the game on upcoming OEM devices (giving us instant access to potentially millions of new customers who purchase said devices). So we have not yet been able to come back to pure game development as of yet, nor have we hired anyone yet (although we have a new art intern).

I don't find that people are acting "strange" on the forums. They're acting the way they always do when we haven't released any significant content in a long period of time (nearly a year), and there has been a large disparity between my planned release dates and reality (capships in January.. yeah). This has happened a dozen times before, and it is understandable. But, we're doing what's best for the company, and the game, in a fluidly shifting situation, while trying to explain it to you guys the best we can. If people can't believe or understand this, even in the face of a gigantic TV commercial and a massive influx of users.. well.. too bad. I'm not sure what could be more stunningly obvious than tens of millions of dollars in TV time.

Also, if people think that some form of playable capship isn't imminent, despite our just adding gigantic stations for that exact purpose, and still say there's no "evidence" of development, then I give up. We're going to do our thing, it'll be out as soon as we can make it. Believe it or don't, up to you. If you are filled with bitterness and anger and can never trust us again, perhaps our game is not for you?

Yeah to the new art Intern.

Heh - we need a troll category for the forum so the trolls are the only ones that can see their own posts...

If anything Incarnate and company work too hard...

Feel free to ban me if you don't want me to post. I've enjoyed VO immensely over the years, but you're continually farther from success, and aging. Nationally published magazines with huge circulation can't sustain a subscription model for mobile devices, neither will you. I'm sad to see you fail, I really am.

@Impavid

[[[Nationally published magazines with huge circulation can't sustain a subscription model for mobile devices, neither will you. I'm sad to see you fail, I really am.]]]

Well, you've got a point - I didn't think of it this way.
There are many addictive games that are free as in beer (or even free as in freedom - Open Source).

But what are you suggesting ? Item mall - based gameplay ? Adverts in-game ? Some other form of payment ?

Did I miss something? PaladinOfLancelot it seems like you resubbed (or at least tried to) and then two days later started complaining that things weren't going exactly the way you had envisioned them. Your broad amalgams only further the impression that despite the fact you try to paint the devs as having a hidden agenda you are the one with the personally unfulfilled scheme.

I'd like to offer some perspective if I can. This game began as an engine test, an engine test. There were 18 sectors in the universe when I joined, and wormholes were the only way to travel between them. There were no license levels, no experience points, and three types of bots. The Vendetta Test was not intended to become a full fledged MMORPG and yet that is exactly what it became, which makes its existence all the more improbable. In an industry where games launch and fold in a matter of months VO has been around for over eight years. That alone should tell you something.

The next time you find yourself outside a station stop for a minute, and take a look at one of the buzzing neon signs. Those are written in an actual language that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world, and some players can read it. They took the time to decipher it, character by character, based on one or two clues. You'll find it widely used today on guild insignias.

The point I'm getting at is that this game has been free to develop and evolve in a way that does not exist elsewhere. There are no 40 man teams working on content drops motivated by profit shares and all those other dragons of large scale corporate America, just the sole leadership and involvement of a very few people. In short, after 8 years it is and continues to be a labor of love. If you are blind to this fact then it's because you aren't looking.

Notice how the racetrack top times are measured down to the millisecond? That's because certain pilots have every curve of every track memorized. The times have to be that accurate or else there wouldn't be enough resolution to differentiate between the skill of the best racers. People are not born into winning a top time, like anything else it takes practice. That tells me that players care enough about this game to warrant measuring an activity completely tangential to anything else currently implemented down to the 1/1000th second.

Is this picture becoming clear? It should be at this point. Every detail about this game is important, and has a purpose, and it is constantly evolving. The day Vendetta Online stops evolving is the day it dies. Some of us, I'd like to think a silent majority, are along for the ride.

Now I'm a little slow, but that didn't stop me from learning the mission editor. I've written sixty-four missions to date, and I've probably got at least that many more in me. If you want to change things, nobody is stopping you from doing so. There are literally an infinite number of possible combinations of things you could come up with in the editor, we (I at least) have only begun to scratch the surface. Your allegations that nothing suggested gets implemented simply isn't true. The good ones do get implemented, you only have to look at the sticky thread at the top of the suggestions forum to convince yourself of this.

Instead of distracting Inc, try directing some of that energy into being creative or at the very least appreciative. I did by learning the editor, and I guess that makes me a programmer.