What is Vendetta Online?

Vendetta Online™ is a long-running scifi MMORPG, where players fly spaceships in a vast, persistent galaxy. Users may build their characters in any direction they desire, becoming rich captains of industry, military heroes, or outlaws. A fast-paced, realtime "twitch" style combat model gives intense action, coupled with the backdrop of RPG gameplay in a massive online galaxy. Three major player factions form a delicate balance of power, with several NPC sub-factions creating situations of economic struggle, political intrigue and conflict. The completely persistent universe and detailed storyline add to the depth of immersion, resulting in a unique online experience.

The game went online with a public alpha in 2002; followed by a successful north american retail launch in 2004, with versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. Since then, the game has been continually expanded and improved with weekly patches. You can view a recent HD game trailer below:

This 3D MMORPG is really available for Android™?

The game is currently available in the Android Market for owners of compatible devices. The game was initially launched in March of 2011, exclusively for Tegra tablets, but has since been upgraded to support phones as well as other chip types.

What Android™ hardware will run the game?

We currently support phones and tablets with: Froyo (2.2) or better, 1GHz ARMv7 (FPU), and a supported GPU (Tegra, Snapdragon+Adreno, PowerVR SGX). At least an 800x480 display. 512MB of ram, or more, is strongly recommended, as well as 500MB of free space on internal flash memory. We do not officially support any other chips than those listed above, although others may still be able to run the game with uncompressed textures. Unfortunately, we are not yet able to officially support the ARM Mali™ GPU present in the Samsung Galaxy SII and other devices.

We do also support the specialized input controls available on the SonyEricsson Xperia PLAY, as well as the Sony Tablet P. Keyboards, such as those found on the Asus Transformer series, also work well. We are actively developing support for generic USB gamepads and joysticks.

Will it run on my phone?

Yes, the game is now available for phones, via the Android Market. As always, the interface will continue to evolve and improve with player feedback, so please feel free to submit ideas to our Suggestions Forum.

Will Android™ users play in the same universe as computer users?

Yes. We are a single-universe game, and all platforms access that universe. The intent is for our computer players to be able to enjoy some time in the game while using a low-power device sitting on a subway or in some other mobile situation. When they get home they might choose to switch to their computer and continue playing. Alternately, some players may choose to only play on their Android™ devices, and this will be viable as well. Flexibility is key.

What kind of performance can we expect?

After substantial optimization over the past year, we're now seeing between 20 and 40 FPS on most scenes, averaging around 25 (1024x600 on a 1Ghz Tegra 250 based tablet). We currently frame-limit the game to 40FPS, prioritizing battery life over high framerates (this is a user-configurable option, however). We support the "Native" APIs available on Gingerbread or better, which yield a bit better framerates and interactivity on devices with newer operating systems.

Will the game work over 3G and WiFi networks?

Yes, that is the intent. The game should work well over broadband 3G or WiFi, and may even work acceptably over some lower-bandwidth "EDGE" connections. The game was originally designed to be playable over a modem, so bandwidth is generally not a major concern, except in extremely intensive gameplay situations (such as very large space battles).

That being said, due to the realtime "twitch" nature of combat and flight, there are benefits to having a low "ping" time to our North American servers, as well as a reliable connection. Any wireless connection can experience dropouts due to interference or other issues.

For those wishing to play over 3G, we highly recommend having an fairly beefy data plan before playing any network game, ours included. We will be looking at adding a bandwidth calculator into the client, to help people avoid overusing their data subscriptions.

Is your game all Java?

No, the game client is a mixture of C++ and Lua (compiled for ARMv7-A). We have written minimal java wrappers to allow us to work within the current Android™ NDK. We also support the fully native APIs released with Gingerbread, with fallbacks to Java to maintain Froyo compatibility. We will eventually include the Android™ build target as part of our proprietary NAOS Engine middleware product.

Why not the iPad?! I just bought one..

Answering that question is pretty involved. We're not ruling out future support for other mobile platforms, including devices like the iPhone or iPad. Porting a resource-intensive PC game to a mobile platform has a lot of challenges that are different from developing a brand-new app specifically for mobile use. To some extent, porting our title to any mobile device was going to be an "experiment". We felt more comfortable experimenting with Android™ and Nvidia® for a variety of reasons that I'll leave out for the sake of brevity.

Long story short, if the Android™ build proves to be a good idea, we may eventually do an iPad version as well. Much of the work we've done for Android™ (OpenGL ES support, for instance) will make it much easier to port to the iPad.

Update, January 2011: One core issue facing us on iOS is the fact that Apple does not currently permit self-updating applications. MMORPGs must be self-updating by their very evolving nature, as the ability to very quickly patch exploitative bugs in ongoing development is a necessary reality to maintaining a happy game community. This is the same reason why you do not see major MMOs on console devices, the console "validation" process is too lengthy and unpredictable. It remains to be seen if Apple will keep their "no-self-updating" requirement, or loosen things up. We are platform-agnostic and open to the prospect of an iOS version, but this and other issues are still strong concerns for us, despite iOS's great viability and business success for independent developers.

How can I learn more?

You can follow our ongoing development news-posts through the buttons below. You can also try the Mac, Windows or Linux PC version of the game. You may also read our Android Forum, and post if you create a game account. Or, you can peruse our company website and directly contact us if you like.