1) In all of the other space games I have played it was possible to fly either near or around the heavenly bodies (planets, suns, and moons). Why I try this in Vendetta, it doesn't seem to work. First with my ship and then with the camera, no matter how far I go it seems the objects don't get any closer and more or less stay as just backgrounds. Is this how the game is generally setup or will that change?

2) One of the things I thought was the coolest graphically in Earth and Beyond was planetary effects. These would include atmospheres moving independant of planets surfaces and lights appearing on the surface when a planets to give the effect of night and day. Are there any plans on doing these things in Vendetta?

3) I've been known to spend a good amount of time flying around and spending large amounts of time taking screenshots. It's almost like photography to me. I get an idea for something and head out and try to produce the picture using light, shadows, camera angles, and ship movement. One example of this would be to move the camera in such a way that a sun shines through a planets atmosphere. The result would like like so

http://icandies.org/enb/slaytonsunrise-detail.jpg

I am finding that this isn't really possible in Vendetta. No matter where I move my ship or the camera planets, suns, and moons are stationary. I guess this is another way of asking #1. Is this setup this way for a reason?

4) Are there any plans on introducing effects like nebula storms (really foggy with lightning), gas clouds, comets and other of those types of effects?

5) One of the things I remeber from Star Wars was how on several occasions the Millenium Falcon attached itself to things to hide. In some cases it was a huge star destroyer others it was asteroids. Are there any plans to allow this type of behavior in Vendetta?

6) I know this has been asked but I'm not sure I ever got a clear answer. Stealth/cloaking, while I know it's not in game now are there plans to put it in the game?

7) Are there plans to allow the disabling of ships rather than the flat out destruction of them? Either disabling them to make them surrender their ship and good, or disabling them long enough to escape. Also are there plans for weapons and equipment that will disable parts of other players ships (knocking out their weapons or engines for example)?

The background is a background. A sphere (I think it might be a cube) with a radius of about 20km. It moves along with your camera. It only changes when you move between sectors.

Yes but are the suns, planets, and moons 3d objects or just part of the background art? And if they are 3d objects why can't I fly near them?

Here's a neat trick. Turn toward a sun/moon/whatever. Fly at it for 20km. If you don't hit it at that point, or at least note a major change in how much screen it takes up it's part of the background.

Edit: I think the background might be generated from a set of 3d objects in order to get the randomness of backgrounds between sectors, but these play no part in your gameing

Let me give it a shot...

1: In Vendetta, something called a "skybox" is used to keep the background uniformly "distant" from you at all times. This means that yes, it is true you cannot get to the planets or moons. This will probably not change in the near future or at all, given this is how it has been since the "dawn of Vendetta". IIRC, this is because the planets would be so far away that it would produce an unecessarily large load on the server potentially crashing sectors. (People have tried to go out really far before.. I forget what the record is...)

2: If you set your background detail to one of the two highest settings, the planets slowly rotate in the background. Other than that, there are no other effects.

3: If you want to do photography, I would suggest getting a very high-end video card that supports pixel shading, and turn on rglow with /set rglow 1. This enables all sorts of lighting and shadowing effects. Most of the screenshots the devs show on the site use it, especially the one of the vulture eclipsing the sun.

4: Players have been asking for that ever since the Ion Storm was introduced. One of the devs said they wanted to put lightning from roid to roid, which is doable with the lightning mines we have. Clouds are also a possiblity, but not necessarily before release.

5: Dunno about this one... I don't recall anyone making a big deal about it, so I think you'd have to ask Incarnate.

6: Again, players have asked. Players have designed outfits. We have gotten little to no response on this subject, so I'll guess the answer to be no.

7: Pretty sure this has been discussed at least once. What the decision was, I don't remember, but it probably was along the lines of "possibly". I think we discussed regional damage rather than disabling.

"6: Again, players have asked. Players have designed outfits. We have gotten little to no response on this subject, so I'll guess the answer to be no."

You made me laugh. I didn't mean as in wearable cloaks, I meant as in hide your ship cloaking. :)

I know what you meant. I think it was you who didn't know what *I* meant. Outfit in this case means upgrade.

Ahh, your right I didn't pick up on that. My apoligies. :)

How in the world do you use the word 'outfit' as 'upgrade'?!
That makes even less sense than cloaks you can wear.

One upgrades their ship much as they would buy a new pair of shoes... or as in this case, a cloak. :P Think Escape Velocity.

If you are looking for different angles on the planets and moons, try warping to different sectors. If you hit it right, you get some cool eclipse effects where most of the planet is black or at least dark, and just the rim is lit by the sun.

'Outfit' is interchangeable with 'upgrade' when both words are used as verbs. When you use one as being the other in their noun form, it just makes no sense.

Not to take this hopelessly back *on topic*, but I have one thing to add in terms of backgrounds. There are many of us who have lovely, if not generally old computers, with no hope of upgrading any time soon. While I realize that the devs have no responsbility to keep the game simple so my lame graphics card can run it, they have so for been so kind as to do exactly that. At this point the way the graphics have been designed, not only look nice, but they allow users who have less than "today's ultimate gaming machine" to continue to play. And for that I applaud them.

Carmen

Hear hear.

I think the 'problem' with not being able to 'see' the parallax of planets and stars has to do with the more real scale of thing in Vendetta. If you think about how fast we can move, and how big a solar system is, you will get the idea.

Other games scale the background environment down to unrealistic levels in order to emphasise your movement.

-s-

You can't get closer to the planets because we don't want you to be able to bumb into them. They are actually much smaller than they should be.

Heh, yeah, there are lots of ways of looking at it. Virtually speaking, the closest you ever come to a planet is about 15,000km. At the average ship's speed, it would take two days of flying to reach even the nearest planet. While I don't doubt that our players would do that, it doesn't factor in to normal gameplay, so planets are part of the background and you can never reach them. (You can, however, get a different perspective on them by hopping between adjacent sectors.)

Learning that large celestial bodies are only going to be a part of backgrounds, this leads me to a new question. When the game goes live and exploration becomes a real activity, what is going to be in the sectors to explore for?

new, hidden, wormholes leading to new areas of space. Secret stations hidden in gigantic asteroids, Wormholes connecting two allready known systems but providing a shorter route.

We've had these sort of things in past versions of the universe.

Also judging by the interviews The exploration of new areas will most likely be added as an update along with asteroid mining.

I did post a suggestion for making exploration a small part of our existing universe by limiting the information a new user gets. I've linked the thread here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/5539#71299

However the devs sill need to decide what is doable in the timeframe they have remaining to them before release.

Please keep the questions coming, however you might consider posting them under the suggestions forum as many of them create discussion about how the game is progressing and in what direction.