Vendetta Online Developer Interview
Here we have an exclusive interview with one of the creators of Vendetta Online MMORPG for Linux John Bergman. John I would like to thank you for granting us this interview on your exciting game Vendetta online.
Rob: From what I have heard you are a group of four close friends that got together to create and maintain the game. how did the four of you originally meet?
John: Andy and I have known each other for many years, since about 1992. We
collaborated in highschool, making little graphical demos and things,
which later lead to the formation of a demo group called “Guild”. Ray
joined our group a few years later, and we traveled to demo parties like
the North American International Demo-competition in Montreal (‘95 and
‘96). However, like a lot of demo groups, we had a lot of talent but
suffered from a lack of organization and discipline, and never
officially released any demos. In 1998 we decided to buckle down and
become a true game development company, creating an office in the
basement of one of our houses, and laying the foundation for the engine
of our MMO. We moved into our first real office in 2000, with several of
us working full-time on the project. We had difficulties finding outside
funding, or a publisher (in the early days, the business model of
pay-to-play MMOs were still unproven), but eventually released our game
with a publisher in 2004. We lost our original graphic artist, Waylon, in spring of 2005, and
hired Michael immediately after. Since then, we’ve continued to build on
the game and try to expand our userbase.
Rob: How you came up with the concept of vendetta
John: I loved playing the early DOS-based Wing Commander games (I and II),
and the LucasArts “Tie Fighter” and other titles. Around the time that I
was enjoying these space-combat games, Doom was released and proved that
high-intensity multi-player combat was possible in a 3D environment. I
had never played a MUD, or heard of an MMO, but the concept struck me at
that point.. the idea of a space-combat and RPG game that ran
persistently and allowed people to join and play with one another in an
online galaxy, much as the single-player titles simulated these
interactions with AI.
Not too long afterwards, we started working on our first networked game
engine, which was a very simplistic redux of the classic “SpaceWar”,
built to run over a Netware ethernet network, in DOS. Most of us were
Unix and Linux geeks from the very early appearance of the open-source
projects, so the emergence of consumer SLIP and PPP connections to the
‘net made the case for doing things over TCP/IP and using the Internet.
We were playing with the basics of our engine when Ultima Online was
released, and formally brought the concept of an “MMO” into my awareness
(I never played or was aware of Meridian 59 or other early titles). We
had been pursuing that direction anyway, and Origin helped prove that
the concept was not only possible, but financially viable. From then on,
we were MMO developers.
Rob: Wow I’m sure you had to overcome a lot of hurdles from being in the industry so early on
John: We were multi-platform from the start, which gave us some interesting
initial hurdles. Back in 1998, hardware acceleration was not an
absolute, and parts of our engine dated from even earlier, so there were
some transitional hurdles in the deprecation of our software engine and
the move towards hardware APIs. Of course, 3Dfx was the early consumer
king, so we supported Glide for some time, while trying to do what we
could with OpenGL and the fledgling DirectX APIs. If anything, a lot of
our hurdles and struggles from that era stemmed more from the transition
of the industry to hardware acceleration and universal APIs than from
anything else. The same was true of our early Mac ports, prior to the
release of OS X and the major platform evolution that happened there.
The biggest issues we had to overcome, really, were never
developmental. Business problems, like where to find funding, or who
would distribute our game, those held us back more than anything else. A
great sense of uncertainty hung over our development.. we had never
shipped a title, and many publishers wouldn’t talk to us for this
reason. Our tech demos always looked very strong, but the business model
of the pay-to-play MMO was still scary to publishers, and the concept of
“downloadable” games that didn’t necessarily require a box-on-a-shelf
purchase was also ill-suited to the existing game-publishing infrastructure.
We also had to grow up as a company, learn how to get along over
contentious issues and work together towards a common goal. We had known
each other for years, and worked together on projects.. but a really
long-term project, with a great deal of financial uncertainty, made for
a challenging environment.
Rob: Any current involvement with the open source community.
John: Lately we’re pretty busy with developing the game. We send patches and
info to open-source projects whenever we can, and we contribute new code
when possible, but most of our time of late has been spent within our
own codebase. It’d be cool to open-source our engine itself, someday,
but since we’re still a small shop and trying to derive income
where-ever we can (including engine licensees) that’s not likely to
happen in the near future. We may open up smaller portions of it in the
shorter term, but we’ve been too busy of late to spend much time
thinking about it.
Rob: Future Plans for Vendetta Online?
John: Lots of stuff.. massive warfare that can take place over large areas
and long timescales, with player military structures, impacts on trade
in the regions, and permitting privateering and many secondary impacts
as area is won or lost. Large player-owned and flown capital ships,
player-owned stations with expandable Manufacturing modules that permit
assembly of unique items. We have a lot on our plate, and we’re aiming
to make this year our most productive, in terms of New Released Gameplay.
Rob: John, I would Like to thank you for giving Linux Game Zoo this interview from Vendetta Online and we hope to see more exciting game play in the future from you.
John: Your Very Welcome and best of luck with Linux Game Zoo
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