I get that it is important to get things on the business side done... all the hush hush, top secret, confidentiality clause stuff... it's "big picture" and "long term" and such, and I get that that can eat time.

Here's the suggestion, how about a thread that just keeps us in the loop? Strictly things like if you're working on a suggestion, dropping in a mission, working on content... etc... etc...

I believe there used to be a development wiki
http://design.vendetta-online.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
... but it's dead Jim.

I believe they were saying something a while back about setting up a public Tracker, dunno what happened with that.

It exists, but if I posted it, people would then make fun of me for how little I've updated it recently.

It is still a good idea, and something I should devote some time to.

Yeah, do it John, you know how much us older players liked listening to your idea of the future vo, even if the future is now. That's what got me hooked on VO in the firstplace to be honest. The dev feedback was awesome. I still remember the feedback I got from a1k0n for telling him I should have free speech and stuff... lol

Inc, who cares if a few of us break your balls from time to time? Whats better? Honest opinions of dissent and dissatisfaction or the bleating of sheep who consider a facade of complacency to be the same as civility?

most of us understand that you are markrting/doing other platforms/OS ect so we dont bitch, it helps you hire more peeps for the game and pays for it to be maketed more therefore bring in more players hopefully and thus bring more money to your table to use for game

More than this; in the past 2 days, Vendetta Online has been getting mentioned on the Dofus, City of Heroes, and Eve message boards. People are taking notice. According to Eve, we have an "excellent community".

How do I know this?

...I am Jedi

...Googlejitsu no Roku-Kyu desu

Cool to hear that more people are taking notice.

I'll work on the concept of releasing the Trac. I need to document a bunch of upcoming changes for development reasons anyway, and I might as well try and update that system while I'm at it.

The trac is a double-edged sword for us. It inherently releases a lot more information to the public than we intentionally would otherwise, which could create problems in some cases (exploits or something). But generally, I would rather release too much information rather than too little.

It's also tough to keep people using the thing. Developers are busy and/or lazy sometimes, and documenting something on a system, instead of just implementing it, is not always the most popular option (although there's no question that it's better for us in the long run, having more information on what we did to a piece of code a year before). So, someone has to play "Trac Nazi" and keep other people using it. That used to be me, and then I became overwhelmed with just my own stuff.

Still, even if the system ends up being nothing more than a scratchpad for me to document my design and upcoming plans, and share them with the userbase, that's still a really worthwhile goal. So, yeah, point taken, I'll see what I can do.

*resurrect*
Keep this post near the top till we have something X^D

Question for the devs... ever thought of doing some kind of limited "open source"? One where you'd still maintain intellectual property rights, etc.

I just look at projects like the Freespace 2 Open Source project and see all the high quality product the communities have created in their own time, for free. It may be a way of getting more things accomplished on the game. You would still set objectives, guidelines and have power over which direction things went... you would just have a group of dedicated 'worker bee's' generating content and come up with solutions you may have never entertained.
Food for thought.

Another option would be instead of going "open source" (its not a dirty word you know!), selecting people who've shown an ability to make missions/content and 'paying them' in months of subscription (essentially $120 equivalent for a years subscription... its less than peanuts).

Also, when speaking about totally taking advantage of your user base.... give a small group (PCC?) access to TRAC and they can generate / maintain a wiki on whats coming out... essentially filter it so
it doesn't "releases a lot more information to the public than (you) intentionally would otherwise"

Take advantage of us.. a lot of us are eager to make this game rock.

-My 2c

Now what will it take for a ship editor and a single offline test sector to try them in?
I promise you some fun, balanced ships that look killer.