This would be useful for plugin makers to test events, missions, and other things that they make.
It would be in no way linked to online characters, and can spawn players to test lua Events.
Would work by creating an offline profile, then using offline: before your acct name.

All NPC's and players spawned would be local to your computer.

Sounds like the test server. Use that.

Only if making it really limited:
1 sector only, few NPC/bot types, only tutorial/training missions. And banchmarks!

then it could be given away as a Tech Demo, evidenced by the benchmarks provided.

Remember you'd have to include all server-side logic, the one that controls the universe and behaviour of all NPCs and objects in universe.

..this already exists in demo mode on mobile.

Good one tarenty you completely defeated the point and made yourself look stupid.
OFFLINE. that was the main point.
I don't care if the npcs or players fly anywhere, I just need them to be there to set the proper events off.

There should be a LAN client for VO period. It would be an absolute hit at Lan parties if you could just setup everybody with a ship and have a furball at a Lan and then tell players "hey, this is an MMO you can do this online in a persistent universe"

It's just an awesome marketing tool if nothing else.

Kierky: Offline: Not the POINT, POINTLESS. Why do you need an offline VO to test things?

lol TRS.

+1000 I would love a test client that I could test events on and such. A sort of lua/iup emulator where you could say move bots around, change target distances, etc. etc. It should NOT be a real client, but a testing environment for plugin developers. That said, it would be a massive amount of work for the devs, and testing today can already be done in game/on test server, it's just really cumbersome. So I am going to stick with my +1000 but know that it's not likely to happen the way I want.

coteyr, the PCC can already do a lot of that on the test server.

@abortretryfail like I said not going to get implemented and I know that. But having to run the full game client even to connect to the testing server is a HUGE resource drain that doesn't need to be there when making plugins. It would be much better if it were a simple window with some "spreadsheets" that allowed you to bork with varible values.

Target Distatane | 200
Target name | some bot
Target faction | UIT
Target "something" | a value

Could even be the little tree widgets to help organize everything. I know it's not going to happen, but I wish it would. I would LOVE to properly test the few plugins I have written. But even with the test server that's not possible. Ah well.

I suppose you could write a .lua file that implements all of the VO plugin API with test data and use that...

Really, i can't think of any system you'd be doing plugin dev work on (not phones and tablets) where it's valid to call the full VO game client a "HUGE resource drain" anymore. :)

If you're away from a stable internet connection.

Some lua events such as PLAYER_ENTERED_GAME only trigger when you log on, which requires an active connection. This is why the test server is not a solution to what I'm suggesting.

Perhaps allow local connections, LAN networks, like TRS suggests. local:username.
(of course nothing in this mode is synced to the production server)

Sometimes it's easier to do things offline, instead of gamebreaking the production :P

@abortretryfail - MBP with 8 Gigs of ram. HUGE RESOURCE DRAIN. Not that it actually makes the fans even speed up much, but there is quite a bit of stress generated by trying to write a plugin, test it locally, then to have to log out and back in to get to some events, or to have to go die / kill a certain way to actually fire those events.

Like I said real TDD would be awesome but it's not likely.

Side note: running an lua engine is MUCH LESS work (computer wise) then even rendering 1 shape in space. I would love to see some kind of dofile() or require() that would just include the fake API for testing against. But again... Not likely.

you can give iup(http://sourceforge.net/projects/luabinaries/files/) a try for ui stuff, and I do sometimes, but there's not much for events. I have devkit it works-ish but still have to load the games, not to mention make the called methods non-local.

@Kierky

I am against anything game like offline. VO doesn't need less people and I have seen, many time, people playing in "dev mode" because it's "more fun". I don't understand it, but I have seen it.

+1 for some kind of code testing environment.
-1 for some kind of game version you load to test code.

Isn't there an "Offline Training Simulator" on the options menu? Have you tried that?

yeah i tried that but it's amazingly limited.

ProcessEvent("PLAYER_ENTERED_GAME")

oh heck, all the old players are tired/annoyed with eachother by now anyway. Just do away with this silly "Online" business and make Vendetta a single player game. I'm sure they've collected enough control data on all the best PvP-ers to turn them into ace AI opponents. Probably have 10 grades of spidey dependent on how many bong hits he'd had that hour...

+1 CD, if we could decide what ship they fly, their loadout and cargo.
Imagine RED flying towards me in ECs with free powercells, cargos full of purified xihcrite... mmmm....

I prefer SCP's. It's much more fulfilling when they splode.