Vendetta Online: Developer Journal

Stradden

There is a new Dev Journal over at the Vendetta Online Offical Website. This journal gives us some insight into the deveopment of new ships. Below you will find only a sample of the journal. A link to the complete article can be found below:

 

Happy Holidays! The new ship development has been ongoing, over the last few months, with several new types appearing and currently in development. I thought I would share a couple of things about the updated ship-making process. Historically, most normal mapped ships were modeled to their "production" poly level, and then had their normal mapped detail added in Photoshop, using an Nvidia plugin to create 3D detail from 2D heightmaps. This works fairly well for a lot of cases, but not for everything. The three original "special" ships (Prometheus, Valkyrie and Marauder) were all made with this method, as are the older ships that I'm currently bringing more "up to date" with added normal and specularity maps. Luis's new ships, on the other hand, are being made using a different method. He is creating two models for each ship, the first at the "production" polygon count (say, around 1500 for a smaller ship, or upwards of 5000 for a bigger ship). The second is a detailed high-poly version (upwards of 200,000 polygons) which has its greater detail then "cooked out" via render-to-texture onto the lower poly version in the form of a normal map. The more complex lighting surface normals of the high detail version are then preserved on the low detail version, with the lower poly count. This method has been widely used in a number of modern FPS games, Doom III and HalfLife 2 amongst others, and is generally a great way to add complex model detail onto a game-usable version of the model. It does have some caveats, some things don't always cook out quite right, and some aspects require tweaking, but overall it's a good way to get a lot of base detail on the normal map. This is then further tweaked at a 2D level in Photoshop, and the other materials are built to accentuate the features of the normal map, creating a more realistic looking spaceship. Here you can see a couple of examples of ships that Luis been building, using this process: http://images.vendetta-online.com/extras/luis1.jpg http://images.vendetta-online.com/extras/luis2.jpg

Read it all... here.

Miexon

Yeah they update VO alot. Its pretty fun game imo

momerath42

Greetings... I am one of the developers of Vendetta Online.

Indeed our game *is* updated frequently. When it was released back in November, it wasn't, as mmorpg.com's profile of it (understandably) states, "final", and it still isn't. Our business model is different. We don't have investors or publishers looking for a quick ROI. We're just four guys building the game of our dreams as fast as we can. If you give it a try (8 hours free), you'll find that some of the common complaints made in release-time reviews are obsolete already.

Tonight I'm working on the last few bugs in our new group mission system. With its release (hopefully next week), players will be able to take missions along with a combination of NPCs and other players. The missions we'll be releasing right away are:

Escort: Convoys of various sizes and ship-types already move a variety of goods between stations in our universe. There are currently 500 static routes, but we intend to tie them in with an improved dynamic economy soon. The new escort mission assembles a group whose firepower offsets the 'learned' danger of the route. When no players take a mission, it starts anyway, staffed only by NPCs. The cargo must get to its destination!

Pirate: Corvus spies track convoys that will pass through nearby space. When one leaves, a group of player and NPC pirates move to intercept them at a wormhole. The pirates are tasked with bringing back some of the cargo the convoy carries.

Hive-Hunt: The mindless menace, known as the Hive, has been impeding human activity in the Sedina system. Whenever the Hive encroaches on or reinforces a sector, missions are posted by local corporations sponsoring their extermination. For the especially entrenched positions containing Hive Queens and sometimes a Leviathan, Capitol-class vessels accompany the player/NPC force.

The new system, on which these missions were built, allowed them each to be defined in 20 to 60 lines.

And that's just what *I* have been working on!

Ray has rewritten most of the client to make use of his new, full-featured, robust, player-extensible, user-interface toolkit. This makes possible long-wanted gameplay such as control of multiplayer vessels (capitol ships) and a greatly improved mission-interface.

Andy has been improving the low-level AI; doing some of the hardest work on my project; making the game more scalable (in anticipation of more players); and, recently, creating a web-based mission-editor for player-contributed missions.

John has been dealing with the business issues, as ever; rebalancing ship-stats; working with a brazilian artist, Luis, who has so far contributed seven new ships; preparing the new art for in-engine use; and helping Ray design the new interface.

We've opened up our test server to paying players, where they help us reproduce bugs and try out new features. This is also where authorized players will be able to deploy and test missions they write with Andy's editor. Once complete and reviewed for content, the missions will be placed in the primary universe.

We're fast approaching the level of gameplay and polish you expect from the multi-million-dollar budget, 30 person teams. It only took 7 years. But from here on *we* have the advantage, because we have an owner-owned and operated business; a stable and maintainable code-base; loyal employees who wrote that code-base; tons of ideas for the future; creative control; an enthusiastic and helpful community; no final deadlines.

Heh... I didn't start out to write a press release, really

~Michael Warnock
Guild Software