Hi, I play games constantly, I'm disabled with mountains of time on my hands, so I like to play new games and review them as I see it. Please dont be upset, I do this everywhere, and own almost all the games out there at any time.
I saw your comments on a game site and it said.."this game is what space exploration should have been in games like Starlancer, and EVE." Something like that.I agree the idea you have is good. We all need a place to live, to feel conected to, the robot maid has to go..noone has had a "robot" since Mr.Data, and even before,(android.please). The beep after she speaks is just halarious, but becomes a bother quickly. That said, the game story is ok, but you need massive details added. The days of foggy looking buildings and splattered bushed are gone since the 70's.
The download for any good, not even really good game is close to 1 gig, it contains all the details, the ships have good detail, and the sounds are, what can I say reaslistic. Here none of that is true, but I understand the enormous difference between what size you have and what it would be with all those details added.
The idea of takeoffs and landings on a planet are supurb, there are many enormous games out there that say they cant add it to their game yet, obviously they arent trying hard enough. Keep your ideas coming, balance your game and add,add,add...details, if your not sure what I rave about open an old copy of Starfury, the ships there have more detail than yours ..sorry, just the way I see it, not always true, but definately have the experience to say, play maybe 10hrs a day for years now, and did, and am doing betas for a few, so not just being picky. Thought the true details of improveing the game would be important to you, no sucking up, just fact. Keep up the good work, I'd play your game if the details were better. PS..Nasa is giving away those nice background pictures that the hubble and others are taking, I know of a game or two that got some and used them, just a hint.

Hey! Thanks for your feedback. Actually I agree with everything you've said =) There are two main reasons for not having more detailed models, story, etc.

The first reason is that I'm only one guy =) It's a big job for one person, and Venture the Void took about 6 years full time for me to complete. In some ways, I admit I'm disappointed with it, but on the whole I'm extremely satisfied.

The second reason has to do with the way things are automatically generated. To generate a building, for instance, umake has first to generate a style for the building which itself is based on architectural style parameters for that alien race, itself generated. The architectural style includes information suggesting what sort of angles, curves, and textures can be applied. Then, the building style is created which is another level above the architectural style, which is like a building "type". This is more like, rules for putting together architectural style elements in order to produce a building. This "type" information is what goes into the world file, along with the basic outline of the building's walls inside the city (and this outline, it turns out, is also generated... and on it goes... =) So the game takes this information which is fairly detailed, and produces the model which is actually what you see. Textures are also combined together and operations are performed on them by the game engine, so that there are a high number of textures possible. So the process of generating a building is actually quite sophisticated!

But.

Not nearly as sophisticated as what a talented art team would go through in generating the same thing. For instance, they could put billboards, skyways, plain-old-more-detail, more subtle/higher detail curves, and that sort of thing, without really having to tap into anything other than a few sketches and their imagination. A totally different process, which yeilds a better result, but much more expensive (the computer time to do the autogeneration is free =)

Now take this, and apply it to: alien languages, NPCs, story, ships, planets, etc. etc.; this sort of approach has to be taken almost everywhere in the entire game!

Anyhow, I thought you might appreciate some of the design that has gone into it. It's a wonderful experiment. Ultimately, you are quite right, the artwork it pales in comparison to hand-generated art. But it was interesting for me to see what it *could* be! And of course, if I go ahead and produce another automatically generated game, I will take what I've learned, and expand on it: so a possible sequel (or another game; certainly no sequel to VtV is int he works) could be a lot more detailed. =) So what I hope is that VtV can be foundational for me if I produce another automatically generated game (which I almost definitely will).

My current project though is mostly hand-crafted.

Thanks for the toughtful input, it's actually quite appreciated! Happy gaming,

Calvin