Vendetta Online Changelog

What's new in Vendetta Online 1.8.504

Jan 8, 2020
  • The keychain list now directly shows what content each key may access.
  • Added Audio options to disable engine and/or turbo sounds.
  • When a new livery is purchased along with the ship, it now notes this in the response message.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.501 (Dec 8, 2019)

  • Fixed problem with NPC capship turrets, causing them to not take damage.
  • Fixed issue with not being able to change the command for the Start button on gamepads on PC platforms.
  • iOS version now requires iOS 12 or newer. iPhone 5S is now the minimum spec.
  • iOS version now fully supports Xbox One and Sony DualShock 4 controllers with App Store update (some differences in support between iOS 12 and 13).
  • iOS now offers recurring Subscriptions via In-App Purchase, after the App Store Update, including the requested 12-month option.
  • iOS version now defaults to rendering shadows for new installs.
  • iOS version now supports OpenGL ES 3.0, with instanced rendering.
  • iOS now has multi-threaded rendering enabled by default.
  • iOS version now defaults to 4x anisotropic filtering, with two dynamic lights.
  • iOS textures and effects have been improved in quality, particularly normal maps.
  • Fixed issue with iOS version not saving changed gamepad commands.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.500 (Nov 23, 2019)

  • Escort mission NPCs now jump properly from non-running sectors (server-side, fixed last week).
  • Android version should properly support camera cutouts on the non-HD version.
  • Certain economic trade routes have been tweaked.
  • Fixed upside-down Trident material on iOS.
  • More developer analytics added for monitoring of game economy, other aspects of gameplay.
  • Fixed a bug, on first runtime, where the Character Selection menu occasionally appeared, instead of the Character Creation menu.
  • Enhanced the first-runtime startup experience on Android for new users.
  • APK and library updates for all Android versions.
  • Further improvements to server-side CPU utilization, management.
  • A whole lot of small changes this week, of which this list is only about half of what we actually accomplished. Most of the iOS updates had to be pushed out to a future release.
  • Most of this maintenance is a stepping-stone to accomplishing specific gameplay and game expansion related goals. Stuff like "We need better economic analytics before we start actively improving the game economy". Or "We need to update our iOS engine to more efficiently render large numbers of objects, like we do on Android".

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.499 (Nov 10, 2019)

  • Fixed issue with the client incorrectly displaying the cost of repairing ships that are in the cargo hold of capships when docked to a station.
  • This issue has been reported by a few players, and while it was entirely "cosmetic" (it did not actually impact credits or purchases in any way), it certainly looked scary, with ammo purchases supposedly taking tens of millions of credits. It was an obscure bug, in an odd case, and after a bit of digging to track it down, should now be resolved.
  • Additionally, quite a bit of background bugfixing and enhancements continued this week, on making the server more efficient, with better usage of available CPU time. This is going to become quite important, we're looking to increase the number of bots per sector, as well as create more interesting NPC groupings and behaviours, all of which mandates the maximum server efficiency.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.498 (Nov 3, 2019)

  • NPC capships and Queens should no longer drift out into space when battling other vessels.
  • Fixed issue with Updater crashing due to invalid code signature on MacOS 10.15.
  • Another week with a lot of background and server improvements, to help the game as a whole. For instance, this update also includes a feature helping sectors share available-CPU on a given server more effectively, dynamically updating their own relative CPU priority, making the game run a bit better for everyone.
  • We've also added many more analytics, which is helping us shed light on existing debugging problems, while also better keeping an eye towards any future issues.
  • Mac users should be happy with this latest update, which we hope will finally bring better stability to OS X 10.15+.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.497 (Oct 23, 2019)

  • Attacking and defense distance of Unaligned Pirate defenders now varies more randomly.
  • Unaligned pirate trident now comes back between 4 and 12 hours after being defeated.
  • Access Key names can only contain letters, numbers, and spaces. Leading and trailing spaces are removed.
  • List of items desired by a station are now determined by maximum profit.
  • Framerate limiter is not used when VSync is enabled on Windows.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.494 (Aug 31, 2019)

  • Added blinking arrows to the offline strafe tutorials on mobile versions.
  • Reduced the lengths of some of the offline training tutorials on mobile.
  • Improved precision of camera calculations on Android version when far away from the center of the sector.
  • Fixed issue with very low resolution screens truncating menus on Android.
  • Added full-screen support for Android devices with camera cutouts.
  • Fixed lua errors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.491 (Jul 29, 2019)

  • Hive Queen escorts ("Retinue") will now aggro properly when you attack the Queen, or when you attack any respective escort. We may further bump their aggression, but for now we're just trying to fix the problem.
  • - General issues with NPCs "running away" after being attacked should now be resolved. You can aggro many NPCs onto yourself by attacking them.
  • Again, we're looking to add more interesting behaviour, but right now this is just intended to "make sure we've fixed the known issues" before changing things further.
  • Added 64bit support for Android, requires App Store update.
  • Fixed crash on exit for Android when Voice Chat is enabled and disabled.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.490 (Jun 29, 2019)

  • Aim and Throttle touch regions now have variable sensitivity, with a separate bar that may be adjusted for each field to raise or lower the control sensivity levels.
  • Default sensitivity settings for Aim and Throttle touch regions have been improved. To restore classic functionality, set the sensitivity levels to 2x in Controls -> Touch.
  • Aim and Throttle touch regions are now optionally set inwards a little to reduce the chance that the Android Menu bar is activated. Enabled by default for phone form factor devices.
  • Sensor Notification is now enabled by default for new users, and set to "Player Only".
  • Changed "entered the sector" sensor notification text "entered your radar range".
  • The "Touch" tab is now selected by default on Touch platforms, when entering the Controls menu.
  • Renamed and moved various Interface HUD touch settings to Controls -> Touch.
  • Fixed issue with Field of View not being fully restored when entering sectors using First-person Cinematic Camera Mode.
  • Fixed issue with Text To Speech volume control not functioning properly on Oculus Go.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.487 (Jun 10, 2019)

  • Target Ping latency indicator for currently selected target is displayed by color of the word "Ping" to the right of the Distance field. The color Green for < 150 ms, yellow for 150 to 300 ms, red for 300 to 500 ms, and blue for over 500 ms.
  • Your own Ping latency is indicated underneath your ship's Health percentage on the right-hand side of the HUD (PC/mobile), the same colors are used.
  • Fixed issue with Android version choosing the wrong screen size and clipping off half the view.
  • Save Password setting defaults to checked for mobile versions.
  • Windows version has a new experimental feature that displays selection boxes and names on other ships.
  • Type "/set rAllTargetBoxes 0" (without the double quotes) to turn it off.
  • There are 4 modes, and the default setting is 3:
  • 1 - Only boxes around every ship
  • 2 - Boxes and name around every ship
  • 3 - Boxes around every ship and names for players only
  • 4 - Boxes around every ship and name for only the selected ship
  • The box and name fade out between 500 and 1000 meters away.
  • Configurable settings are rAllTargetBoxFontSize defaulting to 6, rAllTargetBoxFontAlpha defaulting to 0.25, rAllTargetBoxFontFadeMinDistance defaulting to 500, and rAllTargetBoxFontFadeMaxDistance defaulting to 1000.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.486 (Jun 10, 2019)

  • Fixed issue with hybrid monoscopic not showing leadoff targets or other positional radar elements in Daydream.
  • Fixed black boxes in background on Windows.
  • Anisotropic setting in DirectX 11 are now applied immediately and default to 8x.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.485 (May 22, 2019)

  • No-Fire-Zone TempKoS is now applied to players who self-destruct and damage others.
  • Added options to enable dynamic lights and shadows for OpenGL ES 3, currently disabled by default.
  • Improved performance in Daydream VR using a hybrid monoscopic rendering technique.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.484 (May 22, 2019)

  • The Windows version uses a new multi-threaded rendering back-end that scales better with more CPU cores. This is a really major and significant release, from our perspective, although our hope is that you "won't notice anything is different", as that's the best possible outcome. This is a big step towards next-generation content, however.
  • Improved anisotropic filtering in the DX11 driver, which now defaults to 8x (note, there is apparently a bug where this isn't properly defaulting to "on" with existing installs, we're still investigating).
  • Updated Windows Vulkan driver.
  • Removed DirectX 8.1 support.
  • Background detail settings have changed to include a quality setting and a resolution setting, "resolution" is not used if quality is "high".
  • Audio limiter on the Windows version no longer affects music, only sound effects.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.483 (May 14, 2019)

  • The regular non-HD Android "free" version now includes OpenGL ES 3 driver and performance enhancements for densely populated sectors, such as debris fields, on devices that support OpenGL ES 3. It is used by default on new installs, but existing installs will have to switch to it in Options -> Advanced -> Video -> Change Drivers.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.482 (Apr 23, 2019)

  • Enabled multi-threaded rendering on all Android versions.
  • New collision sound effects.
  • New jettison sound effect.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.481 (Apr 23, 2019)

  • New mission tree "Salvage Your Goliath", allows players to break their Goliath capital ship back into constituent parts. There is a cost involved in utilizing this mission, and the salvage process does incur some degree of loss, so not 100% of the contents are returned. However, this is still an effective way to recover most of the capital ship components.
  • Missions that transfer cargo content to players will now allow the player to temporarily exceed their station cargo limit, for the sake of preserving everything that comes from the mission, such as manufactured components. No additional cargo may be manually added to the station, until it is reduced below the limit. Other costs and limitations may eventually be added for those who exceed the station storage limit.
  • Sectors will now require full game-client load of all newer-style debris and dynamic objects before spawning the player. This may cause the perception of longer load-times for a few sectors (Pirate Stronghold, etc), but gameplay performance will not be marred by "loading" while in-sector.
  • The multi-threaded renderer is now enabled by default on both Android regular and "HD" versions. This enhances the performance of CPU-intensive sectors, like the Pirate Stronghold, across all device types.
  • Android players should be advised, however, that the best performance is from the ES3 renderer that's currently only offered with the "HD" version, because this version specifically requires newer and more capable hardware for installation. The more modern hardware has special features that improve CPU efficiency, which can make the ES3 version twice as fast as the ES2 version, on the same hardware. This is particularly true in CPU-intensive sectors, like the Pirate Stronghold. We will eventually make the ES3 renderer available in the Free version, but we will have to develop more logic to detect whether the device has entirely stable capabilities for using the newer renderer; it may be some time.
  • Improved sector load times across all platforms.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.480 (Mar 31, 2019)

  • Improved Trident texture: Across all systems and platforms, the Trident texture resolution has increased 4x. On PCs with reasonably recent GPUs, using at least the DX11 or GL4 renderers, the resolution has increased 16x.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.479 (Dec 17, 2018)

  • Launching from a personal capital ship will no longer cause homing missiles targeted on that capital ship to "lose" their lock, and the missiles will continue targeting your capital ship.
  • The firing field-of-view of the Capital Rail Cannon has been reduced from 180 to 160 degrees. This may help mitigate its value as a forward-facing "assault" weapon. The FoV of all other capital ship turret weapons have not been changed.
  • The Centurion Superlight may now be purchased (if it is in-stock) in Latos N2, by pilots who have completed the Hive Research mission with Corvus. Prices for the Superlight may fluctuate considerably.
  • Deneb battles are now off-limits to players who have not joined either the Itani or Serco Militaries, and who are not taking the Mission related to the specific battle sector. Un-aligned "neutral" vessels will be attacked, including un-piloted capital ships.
  • New Weapon: the Corvus Ultra Positron Blaster, a small-port, 18-grid, de-tuned variant of the MegaPosi. It is available in Corvus stations to tri-KoS pilots at 8/8, who have passed the "Hive Research" mission.
  • The performance of server-side Physics interactions, in large capital ship battles, has been improved significantly.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.477 (Oct 31, 2018)

  • Rescaled VR cockpit to a more realistic size, for the Oculus Rift.
  • Fixed crash when using Vulkan driver.
  • Added a reporting system for framerate issues. If you are experiencing unusually low framerates, open a support ticket and we can tell you how to use it.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.476 (Oct 10, 2018)

  • Fixed lua error when attempting to change dead zones of controllers.
  • Fixed lua error when attempting to save HUD settings in VR mode on Android.
  • Fixed crash when switching to new Vulkan driver.
  • Fixed flickering issue when using Vulkan driver in full-screen mode.
  • Fixed bug with not properly reusing font cache under certain conditions.
  • Reverted some recent changes to track down performance loss.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.475 (Oct 4, 2018)

  • Fixed issue with mining beam effect not staying connected to ships.
  • Fixed memory leak.
  • Goliath powercell grid changed from 125 to 55
  • Hive Queen top speed increased from 140 to 180
  • Hive Queen turbo thrust increased from 1640 to 16400
  • Hive Queen braking thrust increased from 1290 to 12900
  • Stronghold-specific Hive Queen blaster powercell drain increased from 80 to 160
  • TPG Goliath description changed to remove the term "freighter", as all VO ships are multi-role.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.474 (Sep 28, 2018)

  • Windows version is now using new experimental multi-threaded job system.
  • Windows version now includes a Vulkan graphics driver. To try it out, go to Options -> Video -> Change Driver.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.471 (Sep 13, 2018)

  • Added a slight 200 millisecond delay to auto-fire, to equate it to average human reaction time, and mitigate usage with the Railgun.
  • Fixed issue with turret fire delay exploit.
  • Buddy invites now persist across logins and invites/accepts/declines work when the other player is not online.
  • Fixed issue where your buddy list doesn't update when you accept your first buddy invite.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.468 (Aug 11, 2018)

  • Fixed issue with flight stick buttons being unmapped when the game is restarted on Android (includes Oculus Go, etc).
  • Fixed issue with certain forbidden console flight commands working on Windows.
  • Persistent capship timeout now gets reset when the capship is damaged.
  • NPCs now continue to target persistent ships when the player logs off.
  • Fixed information-leak about whether a player is currently on or offline.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.467 (Aug 11, 2018)

  • Added mission text to speech for Oculus Go.
  • Added option to lock HUD/Cockpit to ship instead of head when engaging turbo for Oculus Go for a more immersive experience.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.466 (Jul 30, 2018)

  • Added option to show player guild tags in chat. It is disabled by default and can be changed in Options -> Interface -> Show Guild Tag in Chat Log.
  • Added option to colorize sectors that have notes applied to them in the navigation menu. It is enabled by default and can be changed in Options -> Interface -> Colorize Sectors with Notes in Navigation Menu. The options are in Options -> Advanced -> Interface for mobile devices.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.464 (Jul 5, 2018)

  • Keychains are now sorted with active keys first.
  • Inactive key descriptions are now a darker color.
  • When given an access key, the description of the key is now displayed in the text notification.
  • Removed In-App Recurring Subscription choices from Gear VR and Oculus Go version.
  • Players who spend a great deal of time docked in a station may find their sector visibility decreases while docked. This can then be reversed through regular gameplay.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.457 (Apr 30, 2018)

  • Fixed issues causing the game to freeze on the Oculus Rift and in Simulated VR Mode.
  • Fixed bug causing classic DirectInput flight-sticks to be improperly recognized and configured as gamepads on Windows.
  • DirectInput flight-stick buttons are now named by button number, instead of by gamepad-style concepts.
  • Chord button combinations will no longer be bound by default for DirectInput joysticks. This should not impact most gamepads, which use Xinput instead of DirectInput.
  • Added a new default control layout for the Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.456 (Apr 24, 2018)

  • Pirate Clan Tridents will now drop items on destruction. Some common items will appear frequently, but occasionally you may see capital ship parts drop as well (FCP, FFSA, and even more valuable items).
  • Fixed broken skybox issue with Low and Medium background settings.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.455 (Apr 20, 2018)

  • Increased the default dead-zone of the analog triggers on gamepads, to reduce "spinning" issues with flawed hardware.
  • Fixed an issue with the 7-day guild disband timer not being cancelled under certain conditions.
  • Fixed a recent bug with stats tracking of currently active players.
  • Other server improvements and bugfixes to non-player-visible issues.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.454 (Apr 13, 2018)

  • Pirate Clans now respawn 8-16 hours after their destruction.
  • Added debris and hulks to the Pirate Clan capship sector.
  • Added ability to double-tap a sector in the navmenu to add notes, for gamepads and mobile devices.
  • Fixed Trident hulk material on PC.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.451 (Mar 12, 2018)

  • Fixed issue with dynamic shadows not rendering properly on Windows.
  • Guild commanders can now appoint lieutenants if they are not logged in.
  • Guild members are now notified at login of any guild actions taken on their character while they were not logged in.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.450 (Mar 7, 2018)

  • Integrated ClickCommander plugin and named it MultiClick. It allows commands to be bound to single, double, triple tapping, and holding buttons/keys. A UI to set up various actions is in the Settings -> Controls -> Keyboard tab as a button labeled "MultiClick Settings".
  • Integrated WeaponSafe plugin as a command called /weaponsafe that effectively deselects weapon groups so fire controls don't do anything. To reemable your weapons, select an existing weapon group.
  • Integrated the Multi-Aim plugin that adds the option for multiple lead-off reticles, one for each port, up to 5. It can be enabled in Options -> Interface -> HUD Settings.
  • Added a 'Gunners' tab to the Ship tab that contains UI controls for the /gunner command.
  • Increased maximum number of Guild Lieutenants to 5.
  • Fixed spurious "Unable to jettison that type of cargo" message when logging in.
  • Locust Swarm trails are now red.
  • Capship Swarm turret trails are now green.
  • Integrated the Trigger Colors plugin. It is disabled by default. The setting to enable it is in Options -> Interface -> HUD Settings named "Use Weapon Group Trigger Colors". When enabled, the HUD weapon group display highlight is blue if the weapon is connected to Primary Fire, Magenta if it is connected to Secondary Fire, and Yellow if it is connected to Tertiary Fire. If the weapon is connected to more than one trigger, the highlight will be multiple colors to indicate which trigger it is connected to.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.446 (Jan 30, 2018)

  • Enhanced gamepad support across all Android platform devices. The "sensitivity curve" of the analog sticks are now defaulting to a different, improved curve, but can be switched back to "linear" (previous default) or "cube-root" alternative curves. This should enhance flight control when using gamepads on Android devices. There is also now a slightly larger default "dead-zone" for game controllers, which should help situations where game controllers have manufacturing flaws. If necessary, the dead-zone of the analog sticks can now be adjusted in Options -> Advanced -> Controllers -> Calibration.
  • Auto-jettison will no longer print spurious errors when using multiple mining beams.
  • Proximity Notification will now properly show the Nation and other information about inbound players, under all circumstances.
  • Guild Tags have been added to Proximity Notification messages.
  • Neutron MkIII availability has been adjusted, should now function correctly for those with +600 Valent.
  • The enterturret command should now work for all gunners, regardless of whether they're they local ship owner, or were invited, or simply docked.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.445 (Jan 21, 2018)

  • New "Sensor Notification" option in the Nearby Ships tab. If enabled it displays a notification when selectable types of ships enter your radar range. It prints the name of the character, their health level and their ship-type to your chat/console display (sometimes only the name). The notifications are bindable and can be toggled with "/sensornotify on" and "off". Custom character names may also be manually entered, using Lua-style pattern matching, to only notify on the presence of specific characters.
  • Capital ship turrets have been re-configured to allow easy switching between turrets by the pilot. The currently selected target will be maintained, and turbo status is not altered by switching turrets. The command "/enterturret" can be used, with a turret number as an argument, to enter a specific turret.
  • "Auto Route" option added to the Navigation menu. If enabled, it will automatically plot a navigational course to follow the currently selected target, if the target is close enough for their destination to be detected.
  • Auto Jettison option has been added to the Cargo tab ("j"), allowing the automatic jettisoning of various types of cargo, which may be configured by cargo type.
  • Ship tab has been added to the PDA, with only Groups enabled for editing while in-flight, at the present time. The Addons button is present, but disabled when in-flight.
  • Currently selected target is now maintained when launching from a capital ship.
  • Neutron MkIII blasters have been moved to Valent stations, requiring +600 standing.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.444 (Jan 13, 2018)

  • Moved the updated Behemoth's turret to the correct position on the rear of the ship.
  • Fixed problem with the flight control of NPC Behemoths.
  • Improved the handling and navigation of the Capella-based NPCs.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.443 (Jan 9, 2018)

  • Fixed crashes when viewing a Trident.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.442 (Dec 30, 2017)

  • Gatling Cannon HV shot timeout increased from 3 to 5 seconds, increasing maximum range from about 600 meters to around 1000 meters.
  • Avalon Torpedo sound effect has been corrected, the wrong sound had been used since November, due to a bug in a prior release.
  • Added enhanced Windows crash reporting, intended to gather more detailed debugging information on the Trident-crash that has been plaguing some players.
  • Station Defense turrets will now stay closer to their assigned defensive positions (will go into effect after a server restart, later tonight).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.440 (Dec 27, 2017)

  • Fixed rendering issues with the Trident on DirectX 9.
  • The on-phone volume buttons no longer render 2d controls in Daydream VR.
  • When changing between left and right hands for Daydream VR controllers, the setting is immediately changed in-game.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.437 (Nov 28, 2017)

  • Improved fidelity of the specularity maps used by many recent ships, for systems with GPUs capable of full DirectX 11 support, across Windows (DX11), Mac (GL4) and Linux (GL4). Older GPUs will fall back to alternative techniques.
  • While this update may not be thoroughly exciting to everyone, it was important to get this in place so we could create new PC "installers" for people to download. The existing ones are quite old and require new users to pull down some big patches, so this will hopefully alleviate that situation.
  • Additionally, it does also illustrate our moving into higher-fidelity graphics and textures, which should continue to be more evident as we release graphics updates.
  • There is still a goal for some bigger gameplay changes this month. We have been delayed a little by Mac development (mentioned in the last newsletter), which is also laying the groundwork for the Steam release.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.434 (Oct 29, 2017)

  • New Capella hulk assets.
  • New enemy NPCs in Latos F-12.
  • Updated test debris sector in Latos F-12, much denser debris (some slower devices may have performance issues).
  • Debris chunks are no longer selected when selecting enemy ships.
  • Engine performance optimizations for large debris fields.
  • Fixed menu problem with lower-resolution Android devices.
  • Linux version now properly selects the default desktop resolution instead of 800x600 for new installs.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.431 (Sep 18, 2017)

  • Your Home Station is now set to the station you're launching from if you're currently homed to a Training Station and you're no longer in the Training Sector.
  • If you have a Training Blaster and you're not in a Training Sector, performing a Buy Back after your ship explodes replaces it with a free Government-Issued Plasma Cannon.
  • Tilt calibration menu now displays the current tilt angle to help explain what it's doing.
  • Updated Training IV Station Interface tutorial mission to refer to swiping on touchscreen devices that are using Condensed UI mode (mainly phones).
  • In-App Purchasable item descriptions can now be canceled immediately instead of having to proceed to the given App Store's IAP menu and cancel from there.
  • The exit nav point in Training Sectors no longer choose a point behind the large station asteroid.
  • Fixed the direction of trackpad and mouse wheel scrolling on Mac OS X.
  • Added a Show Password toggle in the account conversion menu to reduce mistakes when entering a password and confirming it.
  • Fixed issue with XInput gamepads not getting their analog inputs set up properly on first detection on Windows.
  • Fixed spickle error message in the errors.log file.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.430 (Sep 5, 2017)

  • Latos F-12 demonstration sector is now a larger and more complex scene, using all the capships hulks and floating pieces.
  • Mac version now requires OS X 10.9 or newer, and only supports 64bit Intel processors.
  • PowerPC support has been formally and permanently dropped from Vendetta Online.
  • Mac version defaults to OpenGL 4 drivers for all new installs. We recommend existing users also switch to GL4, and help report any remaining issues.
  • Mac GL4 version's auto-detection of discrete vs integrated GPUs and default graphics options have been updated to match the DirectX 11 version.
  • Mac Retina display support is now possible. Defaults to "off", but may be added with "Enable Retina Support" in Video Options. It may impact performance.
  • Mac version should now better handle Cmd-Tab, "Spaces" (virtual desktops), and other MacOS features.
  • iPad version now uses specialized archive files with much faster load times.
  • iPad users may now configure their gamepad sensitivity curves, under Options -> Input.
  • Clearly, a major update for Mac users, with also some cool new "capship hulks" to check out for everyone else.
  • The Mac version has been in need of a major "architecture upgrade" for quite some time, and this is important to also getting the game on Steam and the Mac Store. If you find any problems, please let us know. There are still some open questions with multi-monitor scenarios and mixed Retina and non-Retina monitors, what we've released should work pretty well, but we're still open to changing default behaviours and adding other feature support.
  • There will still be one more major Mac update, which will basically re-work the way the game actually installs on Macs, to conform to changes Apple has made since our last re-architecture.
  • The new iPad update is to help bring the latest iPhone TestFlight advancements into production for final testing. We are expecting the iPhone version to launch in the near future, more on that later. In the meantime, please report any issues you see on the iPad!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.425 (Jul 17, 2017)

  • When chatting while warping out, the virtual keyboard no longer disappears.
  • Increased accelerometer deadzone for mobile devices.
  • Advanced Options menu buttons now support the Touch-Hover feature like the main Options menu.
  • 'Enter Game' menu buttons now support the Touch-Hover feature.
  • Moved General tab's touch settings into a 'Touch' tab in the Controls menu.
  • Tabs are now larger in the Controls menu.
  • Tilt Sensitivity slider is larger in the Tilt tab in the Controls menu.
  • Fixed green texture on station docking bays on iOS.
  • Hide the 'Don't show this again' check for the Swipe to change menus message when entering station/PDA for 3 times.
  • Removed the 4:3 HUD option for mobile devices.
  • If a mission becomes unavailable just as you attempt to take it, it no longer says "error".
  • Renamed Input tab name to General in the Controls menu.
  • Renamed Accelerometer tab name to Tilt in the Controls menu.
  • Renamed Sensitivity to Tilt Sensitivity in Tilt tab of the Controls menu.
  • Removed Mouse tab in the Controls menu on iOS and Android.
  • Removed Keyboard tab in the Controls menu on iOS.
  • Fixed Samsung GearVR remote controller issues.
  • Optimized multi-threaded rendering.
  • Added basic Oculus Rift Touch controller support.
  • Fixed tutorial text for GearVR.
  • Increased the quality of dynamic shadows being cast onto the cockpit for Rift and Simulated VR mode on PC.
  • Adjusted the positions of HUD displays when using the Alternate 1 cockpit in VR.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.420 (May 28, 2017)

  • New Centaur graphical ship assets, across all platforms.
  • New Ragnarok and Hornet graphical ship assets now available on iOS.
  • Improved Windows XInput device detection.
  • Fixed lines disappearing in Gamepad menu on Windows.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.419 (May 21, 2017)

  • Android gamepad analog sticks now use a linked sensitivity curve.
  • Updated damage indicators for the new Hornet and Ragnarok.
  • Added a Gamepad Settings menu for PC when a gamepad is detected.
  • Fixed blank screenshots on Windows when Anti-Aliasing is enabled.
  • Fixed VR settings not getting properly reloaded when a gamepad is detected.
  • Fixed plugin issues when changing HUD options to hide touch-region discs or changing the size of the regions.
  • When a player with a passenger enters a sector and they are hated by the monitoring faction, and the passenger is also hated by the same faction, the passenger no longer gets ejected.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.412 (Mar 14, 2017)

  • Taking damage now aborts the logoff timer.
  • Added a new, third optional cockpit model for VR.
  • Muted players are now able to remotely command their capship via msg commands.
  • Private messages are now echoed to chat in the SendChat() lua function instead of being echoed by the caller of SendChat(). This is intended to make plugin chat activity more transparent to the person running the plugin.
  • Premium accounts that have never paid (used subscription keys instead) are not eligible for pledging as a Long Term Subscriber, unless the key is for at least a year of time.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.409 (Feb 22, 2017)

  • The new Capella-class capital ship has been added to random NPC convoys.
  • Capship Hangar and station Manage Ship tab ship lists now show the addons and cargo of each ship, and display the ship's total mass in its description.
  • OpenGL 4 driver on Linux now uses 3.1 Core Profile to enable instanced rendering support on hardware that supports it.
  • Self Defense flag now expires only when the 15 minute timer runs out, or the original victim kills the attacker.
  • Gear VR now allows mining guns to operate when they are in the primary weapon group, and no gamepad is detected. The tap-to-select action changes to Select Nearest in Front and the mining guns auto-start when close enough to the asteroid.
  • Previously unseen character names coming from kill messages are now added to the name tab-autocomplete list.
  • Capella's rear launch bay is now also a docking bay.
  • Fixed visual artifacts and improved quality of the Capella's texture maps.
  • Increased number of turrets on the current Capella variant in convoy testing.
  • Fixed crash when starting VO for the first time on a system with no audio driver enabled.
  • A number of substantial changes lately, starting with the introduction of the new Capella-class capital ship previously announced in the Holiday Newsletter.
  • Additionally, GearVR users on headset-only can now mine, something that was impossible before due simply to the limited number of controls and buttons when in headset-only mode (no game controller). Now a new automatic-fire mining system has been created to allow these players to invest in mineral and ore content as well.
  • OpenGL users on Linux can expect some performance enhancements from the additional of Instanced Rendering on the platform, a feature we utilize much more intensively on mobile and we intend to expand drastically on PC as well. It's basically a best-case scenario for handling large numbers of identical objects, like asteroids, and helps enable much higher potential densities in asteroid fields. On the flipside: Players with old graphics chips, that are not OpenGL 3.1-compatible, will have to resort to using our older GL 2.x "Reference" renderer. Overall, we feel this compatibility matrix is the best fit for the game as a whole, as the vast majority of systems now have GL 3.1 support, and we should be targeting the game for the common-case and not the oldest machines out there. Support for older hardware, via the Reference driver, will be maintained for a very long time to come; but performance will not be guaranteed on slower systems, of course.
  • Many other fixes and tweaks in this release as well.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.407 (Jan 29, 2017)

  • Teller-Ulam mine ammo now no longer free in capships.
  • Mine timeout lifespans increased, maximum count per user/sector also increased.
  • Added a 'Local' option to the Mission Category filter that shows all missions that are local to the sector.
  • New gamepad configuration menu in Options -> Advanced -> Controls -> Gamepad for Android when a gamepad is detected.
  • Added an 'Insufficient Energy' warninig message when using weapons that require 400 energy or more and the power cell doesn't have enough available.
  • Auto-fire and the target lead-off reticule now work when non-blaster weapons are in the primary weapon group.
  • An itemized list of storage rental deductions is now displayed in the log when you are charged each week.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.400 (Dec 5, 2016)

  • Updated the crystal intro menu to better explain the Free-To-Play business model.
  • Added Speech-To-Text feature on the virtual keyboard for Android. It requires a Play Store App update.
  • Added Text-To-Speech for mission text for Android. It requires a Play Store App update.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.399 (Dec 5, 2016)

  • Improvements to analog stick sensitivity is now applied to all Android versions.
  • Fixed launch bay positioning on the Goliath so your ship doesn't scrape the side of it when launching.
  • Removed unused device selection controls int the Voice Chat settings menu for Android.
  • Updated OpenSSL library on Android.
  • Updated the voice-over for the Offline Training Simulator's Ring tutorial intro menu.
  • Fixed a couple of uncommon lua errors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.398 (Nov 27, 2016)

  • GearVR: Significant improvements to analog stick sensitivity, for game controllers such as those made by SteelSeries, Moga, Razer and Nyko. Custom sensitivity curve is now applied, allowing better "small motion" accuracy when aiming. Center deadzone has been reduced, and outer saturation deadzone has been eliminated entirely, giving an additional 13% of analog input range. Continued feedback on this is welcome, on our forums.
  • Basically, the goal here is to improve support for playing the game with a console-style game controller, particularly in VR. From our own testing and usage, this above change is a big improvement, but we may continue to tweak things before we bring to across to other platforms. We also intend to eventually add more heavily customizable options for controller sensitivity.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.397 (Nov 23, 2016)

  • Powercells are now classed as "Large" and "Small" for capships and fighters respectively. Each type of ship may only use powercells for the given class. This allows more expandability of powercell types for both classes of ship, without concern of exploitative usage of powercells on other-than-intended ship types.
  • This change has been met with a certain amount of (expected) controversy. However, the description is accurate. The goal here is to create a system where Capship class powercells can become an intriguing and expanded set, without impacting exploitability cases on smaller, fighter-class ships.
  • This is particularly critical for the introduction of new classes of capships, like the upcoming Goliath. The Goliath will likely introduce its own powercell, with different properties, and we'd like to see various other upgrades available for all capships.
  • This is always what was intended. The usage of fighter-class FC powercells on Tridents was never part of the design. It was simply held over for a long time, due to a lack of development resources. So, now we're going about improving things, and this is the first step.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.396 (Nov 13, 2016)

  • All empty sectors in Capitol systems that contain Training Sectors are now Monitored.
  • Fixed issue where no menu was visible after doing an auto-generated account conversion on mobile devices.
  • Made some tweaks to the management of powercell energy in capital ships, during jump-out.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.395 (Oct 30, 2016)

  • The Goliath has been added to random NPC convoys.
  • Gear VR version now applies a dead-zone to the analog triggers on gamepads; this mitigates flawed controllers with non-zero "button-off" states, and helps prevents spinning in space.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.393 (Oct 19, 2016)

  • Self-defense mechanism now propagates to the capship and all crew members if any member triggers it. If anyone docks before the self-defense timer expires, it will also propagate to them. The victim will be able to defend theirself without faction penalty from anyone who was ever inside the capship during the self-defense time.
  • Fixed crash/lockup at startup on Linux64 version.
  • Updated Oculus Rift version with updates from Gear VR.
  • Minor bug/crash fixes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.385 (Aug 29, 2016)

  • Simulated VR Mode now has a bindable key or button for looking around, called "+VRLook". It currently defaults to right-mouse-button.
  • Fixed a Lua error for capship owners launching their fighter while manned to a turret.
  • New dynamic server packet-queuing and priority change to drastically improve chat and effect delays during larger capship battles. Tested in development with 200 close-proximity capships per battle. Prioritization only dynamically scales with larger numbers of ships per sector, so less populated regions and sectors are unaffected.
  • Changed the distribution of services within the game-server cluster, to enhance performance with higher peak player counts.
  • Fixed issue with dropped key and mouse inputs in OS X with the new OpenGL 4 video driver.
  • Fixed lua error when joining a group and Voice Chat is enabled.
  • Removed dark background of HUD notification text when not in VR mode.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.384 (Aug 8, 2016)

  • Added /voicegroup set of commands, similar to /group, that creates arbitrary Voice Chat channels (up to 32 players). Use the /voicechattoggle command to switch between subscribed channels, such as Group, Guild, and others. Type /voicegroup to display its usage.
  • Added a description overlay to the nav map in VR mode, when Look-To-Select is enabled, to show the description of the currently selected sector.
  • The new general-usage voice chat system is just a first pass. We intend to also add an elaborate UI around it, but after we do some more testing with VR and other use-cases to determine what kind of interface will work best.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.383 (Jul 30, 2016)

  • Mines can no longer be dropped in No Fire Zones.
  • Cargo inside of ships that are docked in the Trident's cargo will now drop when the Trident is destroyed.
  • A message notification now appears on the HUD when attempting to pick up cargo but your ship's cargo hold is full.
  • Fixed Marauder, Valkyrie, Prometheus rendering issues in DirectX 11 dynamic lighting mode.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.380 (Jul 7, 2016)

  • New user-selectable fonts for PC platforms, with the new default font set to 'Play-Bold'. Fonts can be selected at Options -> Interface -> Font
  • New UI skin called 'Platinum' and it is now the default for PC platforms. The old skin can be set at Options -> Interface -> Skin
  • New option to enable first-person warp/jump/launch animations located at Options -> Game -> Cinematic Camera Mode
  • Performing 'Activate' will continue certain missions if there is only a 'Continue' button and nothing else to activate.
  • Y-B gamepad chord added to open the jettison menu by default.
  • Added a shadow behind HUD Notification text for better legibility.
  • The blinking docking bay arrows are now angled inwards for easier head-on visibility.
  • New head-based flight models for VR.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.378 (May 13, 2016)

  • Fixed voice chat failing to load on Android.
  • Fixed lua error when leaving Offline Play mode on all platforms.
  • Fixed issue with Vendetta Online not resuming after waking up the Android device and it doesn't have a lock screen, like Android TVs.
  • Sony DualShock 4 controllers are now properly detected when connected via Bluetooth.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.377 (Apr 16, 2016)

  • Serco border defense turrets have been added to the Geira Rutilus O-4 wormhole, on the Serco-Deneb border.
  • The giant Latos M-7 station has been replaced with something more reasonably sized, to let capship owners get from place to place more quickly.
  • Faction standing display and radar-color for ships with multiple docked players now shows the highest standing of any given player onboard the vessel.
  • Sporadic rendering glitch, related to shadows and threaded rendering, has been fixed on OSX and Linux.
  • Guild member limit increased to 1,000 members.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.371 (Feb 29, 2016)

  • The "Furie" related missions have been added back into the game.
  • Furies no longer target players if they or the targeted player is in the No-Fire Zone. Temp KoS ramifications of Furie actions are now applied to the owner of the Furie, as though the action was performed by that player.
  • Removed support for Windows XP.
  • Added a CAPTCHA for anyone who is not a premium subscriber and has been logged in for 6 total hours over the previous 12 hours. The CAPTCHA must be solved within 5 minutes, or the player is kicked offline; after which it must be solved the next time the player tries to log in.
  • Updated Leap Motion drivers.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.370 (Feb 21, 2016)

  • Updated Voice Chat, now available again on Mac OS X! (Intel only) Voice Chat quality should also be better, and use less bandwidth, thanks to a new codec (Opus 20kbit).
  • Improved pre-release Oculus Rift VR implementation, with new VR ship-cockpit and VR space-station hangar. Please understand, this experience and related graphics are still in development. VR-specific tutorials and other features are still missing.
  • Background Detail settings improved, now with Off, Low, Medium, High. The "Medium" setting is similar to the previous "Highest" setting, but uses higher resolution textures. The new "High" setting is similar to the previous "Super High" setting, but is faster to render thanks to some engine optimization. Because of these changes, the Background Detail setting will now reset to the new default for your particular hardware.
  • When a player gets kicked offline for logging in when already logged in while in space, their ship now stays around for 1 minute instead of disappearing instantly.
  • Added an Account Setup button to the Login menu that includes the ability to request a password recovery email.
  • In-game players are now informed of the duration of any mute that has been applied to them.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.368 (Feb 2, 2016)

  • Missions that may only be taken a limited number of times for a given period will now remain visible, but grayed out, when unavailable. A countdown timer indicates when the mission may be taken again.
  • Border Patrol now tells Itani players to go to Deneb and records the final destination sector to the mission log.
  • Optimized rendering of individual stars in the background.
  • Active mission dialog now says to check the mission log for more information, and the nil 'Location' line was removed.
  • Hopefully the new handling of limited-availability missions will make things a lot clearer to newbies, and also be helpful to veterans. This was raised in a Suggestions post recently, and was pretty fast to do, so we bumped the priority to get it in there.
  • Speaking of priorities, we have a lot of other big changes going on right now, which are time-sensitive as we need to hit certain release dates that coincide with the shipment of other products. Much of this is VR and immersion related, but the changes we're making go well beyond VR, and this will all be pretty beneficial to the game as a whole.
  • For example, we recently enhanced the ability of all game interfaces to be located on a panel that "floats" at a particular location in 3D space. This will be of significant value in allowing us to break up interface or HUD mechanics to different locations in a "cockpit" type environment, docked "hangar bay" scene, or other situations which are critical to a VR experience. But while many of these environments and interfaces are primarily targeting VR, we expect they'll also make a lot of people happier who have long wanted features like cockpits and the like.
  • There are also a number of other benefits that fall out of this enhancement. For instance, floating signs could be interactive interfaces. Race Tracks could show signage with top times, and interactively display other data. To take this to the silly extreme.. with a bit of additional server-communication work, two players could interactively play "pong" over a common interface floating in space, while other players watch.
  • Don't expect a lot of complex, interactive floating signs to suddenly appear in the immediate future, this is just to underscore that the game's capabilities are evolving, and we expect this all to be of significant benefit, both now and for future work on replacing and re-working the current menu system and user interface experience.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.367 (Jan 18, 2016)

  • Linux version no longer attempts to rescan for joysticks whenever certain keyboard keys are pressed.
  • Radar blip coloring can be modified by plugins again. When a plugin wants to change the status of a player by overriding the GetFriendlyStatus function, it must call the UpdateRadarFriendlyStatus() or UpdateAllRadarFriendlyStatus() function to update the radar with the new status.
  • The Advanced Combat Training and Border Patrol group missions are now available.
  • For multi-theaded rendering with dynamic lights and shadows, shadows are now processed in their own thread.
  • Raptor UDV armor increased from 10,500 to 12000.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.366 (Dec 20, 2015)

  • New client CPU optimization should make the game run smoother and better across all platforms, but especially those with slower CPUs (older PCs, mobile devices, etc).
  • Strikeforces now include Warthogs in all levels of response.
  • Strikeforce Power Seeker combat tactics have been improved slightly.
  • Power Seekers no longer drop drain weapons or other addons on death.
  • The CPU optimization is a pretty big deal on some devices. For slower phones, it may be as much as a 40% framerate increase for some cases. Unfortunately, we're also seeing some new sporadic bugs crop up in the implementation, which is related to radar dot-coloration (friendly/enemy). We're actively working to resolve these bugs, but please be aware in the meantime (we did test this pretty thoroughly before release; but in any code this complex, it's tough to cover all cases).
  • The Power Seekers no longer dropping PCBs is a side effect of testing a new feature that allows us to vary the addon drop-rate of individual NPC types. We've wanted this for a long time, it helps enhance situation where, for instance, we might want a particularly difficult NPC to drop their addons more often, or other cases where we want to avoid trivial farming of some valuable addon on a relatively fragile bot. Please let us know if you see any addons being dropped by Power Seekers. We are not moving towards a general "no-drop" policy on bots (that would be.. bad), we're just making the capabilities more flexible so we can offset the rarity against the difficulty of the individual bot.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.365 (Dec 15, 2015)

  • Strike forces now include new "Power Seeker" NPCs, who fire energy-draining weapons.
  • Tab-complete on mobile devices now work the same way as on PCs.
  • Fixed issue with friendly IFF not getting set on turrets for conquerable station user keys when the station is first conquered.
  • Fixed the text at the end of the Offline Training Simulator to reference free-to-play instead of trial accounts on mobile devices.
  • Fixed issue with gamepads on Android and joysticks/controllers that don't have any D-pad/POVhat on PC platforms rapidly scrolling through menu items.
  • Fixed issue with flight controls getting changed by plugged-in but unused joysticks/gamepads on all platforms.
  • Fixed mouse becoming visible when using the mousewheel while flying in space.
  • Fixed issue with not being able to toggle the navmap and mission log with the n/m keys while in space.
  • Improved usability of the UI when using a gamepad.
  • Added ability to use a gamepad in the navmap to manipulate your navigation route. When the navmap is highlighted, press A to activate it. Then use the D-pad to highlight a sector and press A to select it or long-press A to add it to your existing route.
  • The gamepad help menu now highlights the relevant controls in the Offline Training Simulator.
  • The HUD is now locked to the ship instead of the player's view in the Offline Training Simulator demo scene when in Rift VR mode.
  • Keychain list is now properly sorted by id. Owner keys and their user keys are first, with user keys second.
  • Fixed issues with Offline Training Simulator not properly explaining gamepad controls when in Oculus VR mode.
  • Fixed backwards controls with horizontal scrollbar when manipulated with the D-pad.
  • New characters should now be automatically joined to channels 100 (general chat), 11 (nation chat), and 1 (help chat).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.361 (Dec 4, 2015)

  • Oculus Rift "Beta Test" VR support updated to the 0.8 SDK. As always, the presence of a Rift is auto-detected on runtime, and prompts for the option of starting the game in VR mode.
  • New "VR Welcome" panel on startup, lists the currently known issues and workarounds.
  • New "VR Options" added to Options area, when a VR headset is detected.
  • VR game startup environment, for initial orientation and controller settings.
  • Improved Windows gamepad support for Xbox One, 360, PS4 and Logitech F710.
  • If you have a Rift, please consider posting feedback on the Windows forum of our site, vendetta-online.com!
  • Temporarily disabled default anti-aliasing (in non-VR, 2D mode) for new installs with AMD GPUs, due to a crash with their most recent drivers. It will be re-enabled when the issue is resolved.
  • Our Oculus Rift VR headset support has been updated! We were widely reported as the first MMO to launch support for the Rift, back in July of 2013, and we're happy to now bring it up to the latest 0.8 SDK support, along with adding many new VR-specific features and improvements.
  • This is also concurrent with the launch of our recently-updated DirectX 11 rendering engine, adding a lot of new visual effects and image quality, with more yet to come.
  • This is still considered a Beta Test of our VR-headset implementation, and will undergo considerable change between now and when the Rift headset finally launches to retail in Q1 of 2016. For the moment, we'd appreciate feedback (on our Windows forum) from any early adopters of the Rift DK2 development device. We still consider our VR support to be "rough", it's lacking some of the more VR-specific interface solutions we intend to add, and the tutorials and mission system need improvement. But re-working our DX11 engine over the last year, getting the right performance and image quality has been the top priority. Once that is proven stable, it's easier for us to add in newer features (which may make a lot of non-VR players happy as well, since they've often requested "cockpit" interfaces and the like).
  • We've also spent some time improving PC integration of gamepad controllers, specifically targeting the Xbox One controller (Oculus's recommended default), as well as 360, PS4 and Logitech F710 controllers. Some aspects of controller integration are also still a bit rough, particularly navigation in the UI, but this will be improved. The benefits of this work go well beyond the Rift implementation, to help all gamepad users, across PC, mobile, AndroidTV, Steam "big picture" mode, etc.
  • Bringing the Rift implementation up to date has always been a goal of the 1.9 release, and a key part of our Steam plans, and we're happy to get this out the door. We made a lot of generalized improvements to game performance to help this development, which are also to the benefit of all players (VR or otherwise, including mobile).
  • Related to all of these changes, we recently updated the game's Official System Requirements. Please pay particular attention to the new VR requirements: if you want to do VR in the game, you will need very strong, recent desktop system with a big discrete gaming card. Oculus themselves specifies a Core i5-4590 CPU (or AMD equiv) with an NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD R9 290 as the bare minimum. We'd suggest going further than that, if you can. You aren't going to want to do VR at the "minimum" settings. Laptops are not currently recommended for the Rift (not yet, anyway).
  • Players have periodically asked us if they should buy a one of the Oculus development kits, and we've generally said "no, wait for the finished product". Well, we've used the pre-release Consumer devices, and we think the experience is great. If you're an avid VO pilot, you will find an incredible level of immersion with VR. It can be pretty intense, you may want to try out VR in general before buying, to make sure it's compatible with your particular inner ear sensibilities (some people get motion sick).
  • To players looking at other types of VR headsets and the like, we are considering broader support down the road (SteamVR in particular). "VR" development is mostly a user experience and performance issue: once one integrates one type of headset, others should be pretty simple to add.
  • Lastly, to any wondering about upcoming gameplay changes and improvements, yes those are coming soon as well. We have a whole laundry list to get through before 1.9 drops, but it has been important to get the Rift update "out there" for testing sooner, so that can now be happening in parallel, while we switch back to other development. That's why the timing was prioritized.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.360 (Nov 27, 2015)

  • Improved quality and efficiency of the glow effect.
  • Windows version now requires SSE2 support. It should be faster as a result.
  • Removed the loading progress bar under the Guild logo on startup
  • Fixed ice crystal rendering error when changing resolutions in DirectX 11 mode.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.359 (Nov 16, 2015)

  • Modifications to Livery system to allow more dynamic addition of new ship skins.
  • Mitigated issue related to Hive Queens disappearing from the game universe.
  • Key IDs are now shown in key lists.
  • Key lists are now sorted by Key ID.
  • User keys now default to IFF and can-dock access.
  • F2P specific: Crystal limit on bot-kills is doubled to 20 crystal per day.
  • F2P specific: Some Hive bots now give increased crystal rewards, from 2 crystal for Assault-class bots, up to 5 crystal for Hive Queens.
  • F2P specific: All ship addons/weapons at or above level 3, in any license, now cost 1 crystal each.
  • Several changes for Free To Play users, allowing them to gain more Crystal through daily bot kills, while also adding long-planned Crystal costs for addons and weapons. The Free To Play game balance will be changing over the coming months, including potential improvements to level limits and the like.
  • The "Key" changes, for keys related to capship and station ownership, were suggested by the player base easier this week, and integrated to help lower the hassle-factor in key management. As always, we'd appreciate continued feedback on how this is working.
  • Beyond that, we intended this release to also debut the next-generation beta of our Oculus Rift support, but after some testing we chose to defer a little longer and make sure things are solid (probably until next week). We initially only expected the Rift to be disabled for a week or so, but Oculus also released their 0.8 SDK in the same timeframe, so we chose to update and optimize for that, in addition. The upcoming release will still be very "beta" for Rift support, the game needs quite a few improvements to help polish the VR experience, but we think early Rift adopters will still enjoy it in its interim state.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.358 (Oct 31, 2015)

  • Fixed rendering issue with fog on Android.
  • Added setting to toggle fog blob particles on Android. The setting defaults to on for Android 5 and above, and for higher-end Tegra and Snapdragon devices. The setting is at Options -> Advanced -> Graphics -> Show Fog Blobs if the effect is too slow on your device.
  • Specialty development for an upcoming OEM promotion, across phones, tablets and TVs.
  • Improved UI navigation with gamepads and remotes.
  • Rearranged some hotkeys for Capship PDA tabs.
  • Attempt to improve issues with ANR (Activity Not Responding) errors on Android.
  • Reduced black screen time on startup on Android and slower PCs.
  • Fixed issue where selecting the Livery button during the initial in-game ship purchasing tutorial would cause the tutorial to restart.
  • PatchStorm Update Server cloud has new nodes in Dallas, Texas and Sydney, Australia.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.356 (Oct 26, 2015)

  • Fixed a server crash caused when too many hive skirmish missions were created at the same time.
  • Fixed player online status information leaks.
  • The automatic guild disband timeout that is started when there is less than 5 council members has been changed from 48 hours to 7 days.
  • Guild Commanders can now limit display of current-login status of their members, via interface on the website.
  • Improved server resilience to certain types of potential cloud issues.
  • Improved server status, emergency monitoring.
  • Fixed a server-side bug related to tracking of reloaded swarm missile ammunition, and a few other cases.
  • We did some critical work this week, and it appears that we have drastically improved the stability of specific server-side components. We've also strengthened our monitoring, and also updated and improved our ability to roll-back from a faulty release, should one occur (always a possibility).
  • So, obviously this is a lot of infrastructural work and not "exciting gameplay changes". But all things considered from recent experiences, these were pretty important issues to resolve and improve.
  • If all goes well with stability over the weekend, we intend to swing back to our previously-interrupted development schedule next week, and move forward with some planned game improvements. The delays of the last month have put us up against another hard-deadline at the end of next week, for a particular game partnership/promotion, which will also be taking some dev time (albeit just a few days).
  • In other news, we have some seriously new environmental content in the works, intended to demonstrate how we're changing some areas of space, and give some notion to the kind of "scale" we'll be rolling out in our game universe. It should be noted: these are purely graphical improvements right now, and are not delaying gameplay changes at all; but rather they will play a very important part in the forward evolution of the game, through version 1.9 and beyond.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.355 (Oct 13, 2015)

  • The Windows version now defaults to DirectX 11 on initial install.
  • Oculus Rift support has been temporarily disabled, until we can complete our update to the 0.7 beta of the Oculus SDK. Rift support will likely return next week.
  • Fixed crash bug when changing certain Video options and multi-threaded rendering is enabled.
  • Increased the font size of the list of available liveries on mobile.
  • Fixed hotkey for the 'Livery' button to be 'i' instead of 'p'.
  • Changed game-pad help placeholder text to say '(none)' instead of 'Stuff'.
  • Those Windows users who want to try the auto-detected DX11 settings can rename their "wgaf.cfg" and "config.ini" in their install directory, and re-run the game. We welcome feedback and bug reports (Bugs forum) on DX11 problems. Thanks!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.354 (Oct 8, 2015)

  • Enabled multi-threaded physics engine, defaulting to 4 threads.
  • Fixed rendering issues for ships with liveries applied to them.
  • Livery is no longer applied to the Anniversary Edition Vulture.
  • Fixed issue with livery setting not being saved in ship presets.
  • Fixed issue with not saving /alias commands correctly if they contain double quotes.
  • Several issues conspired to delay development this week. For one thing, we were notified of a maintenance that will impact our web-server next week, which prioritized some re-organization and administrative work on our end.
  • Similarly, we hoped to launch the DX11 engine into production this week, but we found a threaded-renderer bug at the last minute. By the end of the evening we pretty well resolved that issue, but chose to delay release until next week, to allow further testing. So it goes in the world of development.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.353 (Sep 28, 2015)

  • Fixed DirectX 9 display problem of new configurable Ship Liveries.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.351 (Sep 21, 2015)

  • Vendetta Online adds independently configurable "Ship Livery". This new type of skinning system will allow a variety of different aesthetic ship "looks" to be available. Ship Livery may have diverse requirements, including faction standing or affiliation, purchase with credits or crystal, or be related to an accomplishment or badge of some sort. Any mission outcome could result in a special Livery, and may eventually be something that can be picked up as Cargo. The "Livery" button can be found in the Ship Purchase menu, near the color-picker. (Livery only available for the Vulture, so far, more are in the works).
  • Commodities and ship lists now retain their current scroll positions when the station interface updates.
  • The rotating ship view no longer resets its orientation when changing ships.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.350 (Sep 15, 2015)

  • 21 new missions added by members of the Player Contribution Corps! These new missions tie together and further extend a number of existing mission-trees. They also result in some interesting rewards, including limited creation of capship components. Credit for this new content goes primarily to Phaserlight for writing the new missions, along with Meridian for extensive editing, as well as further testing and feedback by Mr_Spuck and Darth Nihilus. Be sure to thank them for their efforts in bringing new content to the game. If you've never played any part of these mission trees before, you might start with "Hazardous Site Investigation" (UIT), "Lesson Among the Stars" (Itani), or "Errant Transports" (Serco). If you're interested in creating missions for Vendetta Online, check out the "PCC" area of the Vendetta Online website!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.349 (Sep 8, 2015)

  • Trident capship-owners may now message basic commands to their ships ("/msg"), while they are un-docked. The "follow" command will cause the player's trident to follow them, as best it can, within the given sector. The capships will not yet follow across jumps or wormholes. The "park" command causes the given ship to park in its current location. An expanded command-set will be coming in a future release. Only the ship's owner may issue commands at this time.
  • We've made several changes and updates to the Voice Chat system over the last few weeks, including some major fixes that may resolve the long-standing "channel-leaking" problem. We'd appreciate it if people on supporting platforms (Windows, Linux, and Android/ARM, but not Android/x86) could try using the voice chat system, and let us know how it's working. Please post any on-going problems on the Bugs forum. Thanks!
  • We have mitigated and resolved a server-side issue that was causing brief moments of connection issues (~20 seconds) every night around 12:30 central time.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.348 (Aug 29, 2015)

  • New prototype dynamic economy in the Orion Mining station located in Latos N-2. Locally produced goods are now manufactured at a fixed rate, and can be depleted; non-local goods arrive only by NPC Trade Convoy or Player Trading. Any commodities, ships, and addons sold to the station become available for purchase, but currently retain the common pre-requisites for the respective item (Level, Faction Standing, etc). As the quantity of an item increases, the price drops, and vice versa. Custom items such as event trophies cannot be sold to the station at this time.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.347 (Aug 21, 2015)

  • Updater and game client now use a threaded getaddrinfo to look up the server's IP address; if DNS fails to resolve within 10 seconds, it will fall back to a visible error, instead of using OS timeouts.
  • Updater now directly uses the patch cloud hostname, instead of redirecting through vendetta-online.com.
  • Hive Stronghold sectors idle timeout is set to 5 minutes, a more reasonable length of time to return and pick up Leviathan drops.
  • OpenGL driver restores the window title if it has to be recreated for video option changes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.346 (Aug 3, 2015)

  • Changed the 'Route' button in the Mission Info to 'Dock' and displays text saying to dock to the local station to accept the mission when clicked.
  • The "PLAYER_DIED" lua event now triggers for anyone who dies within your sensor range (15km). Chat messages are only displayed if you are the victim or the killer.
  • After un-docking from your own persistent capship, your capship now retains current velocity and slows to a stop, instead of stopping immediately.
  • Jumping into a sector and landing directly into a capship docking bay no longer auto-docks your ship.
  • Fixed typo in Training Neutron Blaster description.
  • Also, server-side changes from this week: new production database system, new game webserver, etc.
  • Lots of infrastructural changes took place this week. We're still kind of "settling in" with the new servers and database systems, so please continue to let us know if anything isn't working properly. We'll have more announcements about all of this next week. Have a great weekend, everyone!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.345 (Jul 19, 2015)

  • Removed older, deprecated method of creating account from within the game client.
  • Other background changes to make possible an upcoming server migration.
  • Not the most exciting update, but we've been really busy with a couple of tasks. One is that we're trying to address a number of recently-reported problems with the MacOS X version of the game, when using the new GL4 renderer. This is proving tricky and time-consuming to debug, as we're finding some surprising and unpredictable OS behaviour.
  • To our non-Mac users: please have patience. The lack of content updates in the meantime is not that fun, but we really need to squash these kinds of major bugs (across all platforms and versions) prior to the 1.9 release.
  • Additionally, as mentioned in the release notes above, we're also working our way up to a major server migration. We hope for part of that to wrap next week, which will mark a major improvement in our infrastructure. There'll be an announcement when it goes live, but it's one of those things where.. if all goes well, you won't be able to tell anything changed at all. Nonetheless, take our word for it that this is much-needed (a bit overdue, even), and we'll write more about some of the specific improvements after it goes live.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.344 (Jul 12, 2015)

  • Increased support for anti-aliasing with certain Intel GPUs, and perhaps others.
  • Mitigated issue with Mac OS X mouse cursor when cmd-tabbing in fullscreen.
  • Windows version now built with a better optimizing compiler, some performance improvements should be evident.
  • Fixed intermittent sector crashes.
  • Fixed a rare potential issue with /vote mute.
  • Fixed issue with joystick input on the Windows version.
  • NPCs now require more collision damage to be applied to them before they will consider the attacker a threat.
  • New station designs for Sol II H-13.
  • Added anti-aliasing and gamma correction to the Mac OpenGL 4 driver. The Linux version already has anti-aliasing.
  • Added ability to manually set the screen rotation on Android. The option is in Advanced -> Controls -> Input and has Landscape, Reverse Landscape and Sensor Landscape as the three options.
  • NPC capships now target and attack PC capships with their primary weapons.
  • Optimizations to multi-threaded rendering.
  • Multi-threaded rendering is now default to enabled on DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 versions. When switching to those drivers, a restart of the client is required to enable multi-threaded rendering. The setting can be turned off by editing the config.ini file and adding multithreaded=0 in the [Vendetta] section.
  • A variety of infrastructural improvements, in the lead-up to VO 1.9. We also have quite a bit of server-side work going on in the background as well, along with some interesting new gameplay scenery and content. Next week we may start to reveal some of these enhancements, as well as prepare for some significant server migrations, to increase game capacity and performance. Have a great weekend!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.342 (Jun 29, 2015)

  • New station designs for Itan J11 and Odia M14.
  • Six missions updated in the LAR Project tree, substantially improving issues with the Stygian Furies.
  • The mission "Rush job! Ores and minerals needed" may now be re-taken (Xang Xi Research locations, Respect standing) to acquire the Xang-Xi Self Propelled Concussion Mine Launcher. Mission is available once per week, per character.
  • Concussion Railgun grid power requirements dropped from 12 to 9, allowing dual-usage on the Raptor UDV, etc.
  • Rendering optimizations for the new DX11 and GL4 engines. On some machines, that are more CPU-limited, these updates can make a big speed difference. More related improvements next week.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.341 (Jun 21, 2015)

  • Android version now supports both landscape modes. Requires Play Store App Update or sideload update. The Amazon Store version will come out at a later date.
  • Added Video driver options to change the number of dynamic lights and toggle shadows in the DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 drivers.
  • Fixed a crash when switching from OpenGL 4 to the OpenGL Reference driver when multithreaded rendering is enabled and the glow effect is on.
  • Border Skirmish Teradon firing distance has been lengthened and the average combat distance is shortened by 100 meters.
  • Please rate the Android version! The Android version gives the choice to review the app when docking to a non-training station after 10 minutes of being online or after an in-app purchase. You can choose to have it ask again later (one week later) or never.
  • We're nearing the DX11 and GL4 drivers becoming the production standard, so please continue to help us test them, and report any issues on the Bugs forum, or in a Support Ticket if privacy is needed.
  • The new rendering-engine becoming "production-ready", as well as some other emerging features, will help mark a major update planned for the near future.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.340 (Jun 13, 2015)

  • New station design for Dau L10, more carefully integrating the Capship Hangar components. In the future, there will be more fully-customized stations replacing those with recently added capship hangars.
  • Experimental: Fog and radar limitations now impact bot's targeting visibility and aggression. However, this may have undesirable secondary effects, and may require on-going tweaks and changes. Strikeforce NPCs have integrated radar extenders.
  • Maximum rent-able cargo capacity of new capship-capable stations now increased to 100,000 cu. Existing cost thresholds for extended cargo space still apply.
  • When a Trident pilot switches to a turret view, the local (Trident) ship is now properly visible.
  • When launching from a Trident while it is mining, the ore is now properly placed into the Trident's cargo hold.
  • Fixed a bug where a persistent Trident may collide with the player's copy during the change-over.
  • Have a great weekend, please provide feedback on any of these changes, especially if you run across undesirable ramifications (such as the fog/radar situation). Bugs is a great place to report, or open a Support Ticket if something is critical. Thanks much!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.339 (Jun 13, 2015)

  • Fixed Deneb War Stats web page. The dates were off by one day under certain circumstances.
  • Integrated Mineral Scanner on ships can now be used for the prospecting missions.
  • Changed Conquerable station under attack warning timeout to 5 minutes from 1 hour and report each station separately.
  • Improved Updater robustness when unable to write to storage.
  • Added a larger mouse cursor for Retina and other high-res displays.
  • All cargo nested within ships inside of capships will now drop when the capship explodes.
  • NPCs can no longer turbo or jump/warp out of a sector if their energy level is too low.
  • Mac OS X Updater no longer crashes if there is no network connection.
  • We've had some larger development projects going on in the background, while I was away, and some interesting announcements coming up pretty soon. In the meantime, we've been continuing the flow of cool gameplay tweaks and changes. Particularly notable is the energy impact on NPCs, which should have expanded value as we re-work some of our NPCs and other things with the coming universe changes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.337 (May 24, 2015)

  • Fixed issue with queens and its escorts getting reset to full health when the idle-sector timeout occurs.
  • Idle-sector timeout experimentally reduced back down to 30 seconds, except for conquerable station sectors which retain their 5 minute timeout.
  • Improved fallback resiliency of the game launcher/updater under certain conditions, particularly on Android.
  • Android version now includes a call to help translate the game, on non-English devices (vendetta-online.com/translate).
  • Geo-located patch servers are now back into usage, including two in Europe. For best results, we recommend using your ISP's local nameserver, and *not* a global public provider like Google DNS or OpenDNS.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.336 (May 17, 2015)

  • New temporary placeholder "capship" stations in: Itan J11, Dau L10, Sol H13 and Odia M14. These will allow Trident owners to dock with these major capitols. The station configurations will be changing to something more customized to each sector (and nearby hazards, like asteroids), but for the moment they each have the same capship-hangar module, attached to the existing station.
  • Idle-sector timeout experimentally reduced from 5 minutes to 30 seconds, to potentially reduce server ram usage in high-concurrency situations (very large numbers of players). As we have recently made mines, capships and other content persistent, this change should not have a significant gameplay impact. Note, this is simply the sector-shutdown that occurs after all players have already left a given location.
  • Experimental "emergency instancing" added to all sectors: if a very large number of players should congregate in a single sector (many hundreds), additional players "jumping in" will be transparently sent to a secondary instance of the same sector, to better distribute load across the server cloud. This will only be an emergency-level tool to help deal with unexpected peak loads of huge numbers of new players (mobile-platform promotions, etc), and we'll be doing updated stress-testing to set it as high as possible. It can be dynamically defined on the server-side, to support very large future player-events, as needed.
  • Fixes to server-side issues related to players getting stuck at "entering universe" during the login process.
  • Lots of other development work is on-going. Please keep in mind that we intend to expand the number of capship-capable stations to include all "capitols", but that some additional testing and development time is needed to roll things out more broadly. In the meantime, have fun everyone!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.335 (May 5, 2015)

  • PowerCell Blaster has been buffed to 215 velocity, 8 energy per shot, 60 drain.
  • We are now accepting Character Nation Change requests again. Once per character, per lifetime, submitted by Support Ticket. The character inventory will be WIPED (ships, items), but credits and stats will remain. Be sure to sell your character's inventory before requesting a Nation Change.
  • We are in the process of moving to a much more robust and distributed patch-update architecture. However, the transition may continue to have some bumps as we discover and resolve issues. Please be patient with any connection delays.
  • Updated the secure-HTTP connection functionality of the Android version, and added it to all other platforms and versions. Will help enable future game features.
  • Training Sector Beam Cannon defenses have been significantly buffed, to reduce threats to newbies by more advanced player capships.
  • Fixed issue with application full-screen interface on pre-4.4 Android devices.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.334 (Apr 26, 2015)

  • Fixed turret leadoff indicator color when target is outside the field-of-view.
  • Temperature Scanner now properly obeys its range limit.
  • Added Retina support for the OpenGL 4 driver on OS X.
  • Fixed touchscreen virtual keyboard issues when using plugins on Android.
  • Fixed double-press issue when going into the Nav menu from the HUD on Android.
  • Fixed issue with the Auto-Aim Advanced Game Setting being set to Disabled when touchscreen mode is disabled and a gamepapd is being used on Android.
  • We're expecting some bigger changes next week, and we're approaching some major announcements. As a result, we've been spending time to build out and improve our server infrastructure:
  • A new "update server cloud" will be launching next week, including new patch servers in Los Angeles and Europe. A combination of BGP Anycast and GeoIP DNS will make sure you receive the update server closest to your location, while careful monitoring and automated failover of the individual servers will minimize the impact of any outages (which are very unlikely anyway). Even if the entire new cloud should fail, the game update-client itself will fall back in a few seconds to our current, long-running Midwest-US service. As time goes on, you may see us expand our patch cloud into other locations, like Asia, Australia and Brazil.
  • It should be noted that this new proprietary global patch network will not actually improve your "ping times" within the game. They are purely to improve the distribution and resilience of the game patches, although your patch downloads should be faster. Beyond this, we are also working on other changes to the fundamental game infrastructure, which we think will be a big improvement for most players, but those changes are still a little ways out.
  • In the meantime, a lot of game content is in development, including new Capship Station Components that will allow Trident docking at most Capitol stations. We think this will usher in a new relevance to the Trident, and its usage as a platform for trading and other activities.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.333 (Apr 20, 2015)

  • Raptor UDV gains integrated Cargo and Addon scanners (2000m range), as well as Mineral and Temperature scanners (300m range).
  • New Training Neutron Blaster MkII is available in all capitol stations. The same stats as a Neutron MkII, with only one damage.
  • Training Sunflare Launcher also added to capitol stations. Same stats, but 15 damage.
  • The Windows Updater now waits until the game is finished starting up before exiting. This is an attempt to fix the issue with DirectX 11 sometimes not entering full screen on startup.
  • Fixed freeze when alt-tabbing back to the game after taking a screenshot with the /dump command on Windows.
  • Added a setting to the Mac OpenGL 4 driver to try to get it to choose the discrete GPU instead of the integrated GPU.
  • Android touch inputs that start while in space, and end in the station, will no longer activate any station buttons. This should avoid situations like accidentally triggering the Launch button just after docking.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.332 (Apr 15, 2015)

  • New higher-definition asteroids for Verasi I5 (and elsewhere), on PC versions.
  • Lifetime manufacturing limits for the Teller-Ulam Mine have been removed. Daily limits still in place.
  • Concussion Railgun mass reduced from 4000 to 2000.
  • Turret auto-aim field-of-view has been set to match the limitations of the turret object.
  • Further improved billing robustness for various mobile platforms, updates still being released on a platform-by-platform basis.
  • Still more critical debugging and bug-fixing, in advance of a major release intended for this month. Next week will probably involve a bunch of important rendering-API fixes that are required to take the new DX11/GL4 renderers from "beta" to "final/production". We'll hopefully also see some gameplay tweaks at the same time.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.331 (Apr 5, 2015)

  • Improved High Drain Power Cell has been buffed to 50/sec generation and 18 grid power.
  • Extreme Drain Power Cell has been buffed to 52/sec generation.
  • Auto Aim for Turret weapons has been changed to use weapon stats rather than a fixed AA threshold.
  • Major changes to improve the robustness of billing support on Play Store and Amazon, which will require installation of APK updates from those stores. Please report any new billing problems as soon as possible.
  • These billing improvements took up quite a bit of time, but are critically important, especially if we see a big influx of users from being "featured" on a mobile platform. We have a lot more cooking in the background, but until then, have a happy weekend everyone!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.330 (Mar 28, 2015)

  • Raptor UDV thrust increased from 215 to 225.
  • Renamed "Gatling Turrets" to "Gatling Cannon" MkII and MkIII.
  • New "Gatling Turret" created for actual turret usage, by small vessels with turret capabilities.
  • Fixed problems with collision hulls for recently-updated, high-def asteroids on PC platforms.
  • Fixed Voice Chat menu size issue on Android.
  • A couple of belated enhancements based on Suggestions Forum threads from earlier this month. The new Gatling Turret is only available in a couple of sectors. That may be controversial, but it's easy enough to expand availability later.
  • We have a lot more major development going on in the background, which should come to light before long. In addition, we're in the midst of completing a pretty major network migration for our office, which we've managed to make largely invisible to the game itself (does not change the servers), but does have a huge impact on our development. So, getting through that migration has been pretty important, although also time consuming.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.329 (Mar 21, 2015)

  • One set of asteroids (tan, shattered rocks) have been updated on the PC to a new "high definition" standard, with greatly increased polygon counts.
  • Fixed dynamic lights and shadow shaders for OpenGL 4 on Mac and Linux.
  • Fixed issue with DirectX 11 driver sometimes not restoring the correct screen size when alt-tabbing while in full-screen mode.
  • We've been very busy this past week, with a large amount of unexpected infrastructural and server work, as one of our ISPs is going through some transitions. This cut into development time for this build, but we hope you enjoy the changes we were able to ship. Hopefully some cooler content next week.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.328 (Mar 16, 2015)

  • Fixed rendering errors when switching to the OpenGL 4 driver.
  • Fixed glow effect showing through objects.
  • Fixed shadow rendering errors.
  • Alt-tabbing should be more robust for the DirectX 11 driver.
  • Fixed inventory list and other tree-controls jumping around when selecting items.
  • Fixed Google Play Achievements being given at the wrong time.
  • Updated account creation process on mobile devices.
  • A slightly belated announcement on this version, as I was out of town last week at the Game Developer's Conference.
  • Most of this version continues our process of cleaning up and debugging the new GL4 and DX11 shaders and related code. We still have some more fixes to drop in, further fixing some Linux renderer problems that have appeared recently, but those will have to wait until next week.
  • Big announcements are coming soon, describing more specifics for our plans for 2015. In the meantime, you'll also see some newer "HD" assets appearing on the PC version, and other tweaks intended to polish things up prior to the Steam launch. Further enhancements to our VR support are also planned (Oculus, Leap Motion, etc).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.327 (Mar 1, 2015)

  • Fixed issue with not being able to type in chat while jumping and warping.
  • When alt-tabbing out in full screen DirectX 11 mode, alt-tabbing back will return to full screen mode.
  • The wireframe radar extender effect is now visible in DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.
  • The Windows executable binaries are now signed with a certificate.
  • The DirectX 11 version now uses a different shadow technique (Poisson PCF with slope-based depth bias), also implemented across all OpenGL 4 versions.
  • Very experimental, optional OpenGL 4 driver added to MacOS X. Switching drivers is a little strange, and a full game re-start may be needed to avoid graphics corruption. We're still working on it, this is an optional early-access, use at your own risk.
  • Fixed the capship shield effect not rendering properly.
  • The glow effect should now work on the experimental OpenGL 4 driver.
  • A plugins/ folder is now automatically created on first run for the Android version.
  • Changed the default active button for the EULA menu.
  • The 'Play' button is now automatically made the active button when changing characters.
  • When a menu is closed and it doesn't have active focus, the current active focus control no longer gets unfocused.
  • Fixed a couple of lua errors.
  • Obviously a lot of changes being made in the past week, as 1.8.326 dropped on Monday, followed by 1.8.327 on Friday. The biggest news here is probably the experimental GL4 driver for the Mac, which will finally bring our new rendering engine across all our major PC platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux).
  • There are still other changes coming to the new rendering engine, before it will be considered "production ready" and actually become the default on supporting hardware. But, we are making good progress, and in the meantime, we greatly appreciate people testing things and reporting any issues via the Bugs forum. The more feedback we get, the more solid the new graphics engine will be.
  • Many other fixes and tweaks in the works, with much more significant gameplay changes intended to follow this period of graphical/engine work. Stay tuned!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.325 (Feb 13, 2015)

  • Improved experience of using the UI with a gamepad on Android.
  • Fixed flickering button in touch-hover mode on Android.
  • The /givemoney command is no longer case sensitive.
  • Successful /vote mutes now last for two hours.
  • Beyond our release from Sunday night, this actually fixes several additional problems that faced players trying to use a D-pad type gamepad to navigate the game interface. We've improved a lot of the scenarios to make D-pad navigation much easier. There are still some areas that could made better still, but we think those with gamepads will find this helpful. It should be particularly beneficial for those on the FireTV, the NVIDIA Shield, OUYA, GameStick, Moga Pro, upcoming AndroidTV, and other similar hardware.
  • Improved controller support also has long-term benefits for use cases like VR (Vendetta Online being one of the first titles to officially support the Oculus Rift, back in 2013). Playing the game on a mouse and keyboard can be optimal, but tracking key-positions while "blind" (wearing a VR headset) is challenging for a lot of people. To them, it's more accessible to play with a game controller, and a small number of tactile controls that can be trivially identified without looking.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.324 (Feb 9, 2015)

  • Increased usability of gamepads to navigate through the UI using mostly just the D-Pad and A button. The D-Pad now performs a key repeat for quicker scrolling.
  • D-Pad Left/Right no longer scrolls up/down. Instead they switch to the previous/next control.
  • Changed the default mouse-over/focus highlighting of buttons and tabs to be more noticeable.
  • Reduced the number of votes to mute someone to 10 votes.
  • Increased sound falloff of new ship and swarm explosions.
  • Added a reminder that chat channel 1 is only for Help questions and to /join 100 for main chat after every fifth time you chat in channel 1.
  • Experimentally tweaked Crystal acquisition rates, for upcoming improvements to level caps and other F2P barriers.
  • A whole array of minor gameplay tweaks, intended to improve the game in a number of cases, including Controller Improvements enhance playability on the Amazon FireTV, OUYA, GameStick, and other "10 foot experience" platforms (ie, where you're 10 feet from a TV and only have a game controller). This will also improve upcoming AndroidTV support, as well as gamepad-centric experiences like the Moga Pro and NVIDIA Shield.
  • Beyond this, administrative tweaks to help us manage our growing userbase, as well as some tweaks to Crystal balance. We've been very busy for the last couple of months on rendering updates, you can expect a lot of small changes and adjustments to the free-to-play business model, as we approach our major iOS update (again, those who want to be a part of testing for ios, should check out vendetta-online.com/ios).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.323 (Jan 31, 2015)

  • Added new sound effects for small ship explosions, swarm missile impact; also updated and improved existing capship explosions.
  • Added dynamic light sources to additional "neon-style" signs and station floodlights, visible in the prototype DX11 and OpenGL drivers.
  • API enhancements for Android and AndoidTV.
  • Only three lines in the update log, but a lot more happening behind the scenes, and changes "under the hood", so to speak. We've done a lot more engine development and tweaking over the past week, but nothing that's ready for exposure in the game yet. Assets and visual effects are being updated, etc.
  • Beyond that, we also have some time-sensitive development going on, relating to necessary updates of certain platforms, as well as support for emerging systems like AndroidTV. Support for AndroidTV may not be that exciting to everyone, but it has taken very little time for us to support (as we already helped launch the FireTV, OUYA, and similar devices), and opens up the prospect of playing Vendetta Online natively on your next-gen SmartTV from Sony, Sharp and other manufacturers. Set-top boxes like the Nexus Player are not the intriguing long-game for us, but rather integration of the AndroidTV experience into millions of SmartTVs. That has the potential to be a market share worth pursuing.
  • We expect more graphics updates next week, but we'll try and make some game changes as well if we possibly can. We have a whole backlog of changes that I've been promising on Suggestions.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.322 (Jan 25, 2015)

  • Added prototype shadows to Linux OpenGL 4 driver. This implementation differs from the DirectX 11 version in that it uses a Percentage Closer Filter with a Poisson distribution to anti-alias the shadows.
  • Added dynamic light sources to more "neon-style" signs, visible in the prototype DX11 or OpenGL drivers.
  • Decreased the font size of the account conversion menu for mobile devices.
  • Getting closer to wrapping up our work on the renderer, we should hopefully have just a bit more related work, and then be done for awhile.
  • Shadows are kind of an interesting set of challenges, as each algorithm comes with its own set of visual problems (artifacts) that need to be mitigated. We're using 4X anti-aliased variance shadow maps (VSM) on DX11, as we appreciated the smooth shadow edges we get from anti-aliasing, but we don't love its inherent problems with thin-object shadows "fading in" near their origin.
  • Thus, on OpenGL (for Linux, not yet for Mac) we're testing an implementation of traditional Percentage Closer Filter (PCF) shadow maps using a poisson disc to smooth the edges. This has the added benefit that it can be implemented on mobile by packing floats into RGBA, where this is not really possible (or is at least highly problematic) with a numerically-unstable variance algorithm. It may also be a little faster on older hardware (and uses less memory); but really, shadows have not been a big speed hit for us, compared to dynamic lighting and other factors. Unfortunately, PCFs also come with their own set of visual problems/artifacts, issues like shadow acne, a kind of flickering of maps appearing on certain surfaces, that have to be optimized with specific bias settings. There are particular challenges with rounded rotating asteroids. But on average it looks pretty good (which can be said about either algorithm).
  • In both cases, the maps are placed on a single texture atlas for all four cascade levels. Cascades being shadow maps rendered to cover various distance-ranges, so you get high resolution close to you, but lower resolution off in the distance. Because of our huge view distance (20km or more), we're probably going to need another set of cascades to achieve the desired "final" fidelity on PC, but it's not bad as it is.
  • So far, these algorithms have all been implemented for relatively fixed, "directional light" shadows coming from the primary lightsource (the nearest star/sun), but we intend to also add another couple of cases. Omni/spot lights under some situations (short distance shadows that don't travel far, cast by ship engines, for instance) will add a lot of nice effect with movement; a capship flying near a station or asteroids, for instance. Similarly, a special shadow map on your own ship (for 3rd-person views) will add a lot higher fidelity to self-shadowing than what we can achieve using the cascades-covering-20km.
  • It's very common for game engines to use several different types of shadows for different environments and effects. Variance shadow maps can be easily blurred in hardware, for instance, where PCF shadow maps cannot. Thus, if we want to create heavily softened maps for omni lights in a fogged sector, for instance, that might lend itself to VSMs. Or, even with all directional and omni lights in unfogged scenes using anti-aliased VSMs, we might still use a PCF for self-shadowing your ship, so that all small details are sharply shadowed and defined (even when the shadow-caster is relatively small or thin, like a winglet or turret).
  • As always, game development is a series of calculated tradeoffs to try and achieve a desired effect. There are few ideal solutions, mostly it's based on what works best for the specific kind of game, content, environment, desired experience, etc. This is one of the reasons we've been happy to have our own in-house engine. While we may spend time on this kind of R&D, where shadows might simply be a "check box" on an available middleware engine, we're doing the best implementation for our specific situation. Most engines are built for first-person shooters and/or lightweight "casual" games, not for open-world space MMOs with galactically-gigantic universes. Even at triple-A studios who are actually making first-person-shooters (many friends of ours), they often end up spending practically the same amount of time heavily-modifying and "hacking" the middleware engine to do what they want, a sometimes-ironic set of tradeoffs.
  • Of course, back when we started in the mid/late 90s, there practically were no middleware engines anyway, let alone the free ones of today (the quake1-test debuted about the time we were building network code, and by the time Unreal shipped, VO was recognizably playable). But even so, being able to implement our own optimal solution to our specific set of challenges has always been a strength, and the game is better for it.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.321 (Jan 18, 2015)

  • Added dynamic light sources to many of the "neon-style" floating signs, visible in the prototype DX11 or OpenGL drivers.
  • New sound effects: Avalon Torpedo impact/explosions, queen and capship explosions, and special Heavy Assault Cruiser explosion effects.
  • Preliminary dynamic lights have been added to the docking and launch bays.
  • Fixed the glow effect so it isn't so over-bright.
  • Shadowmap cascade levels are consolidated into 1 texture atlas
  • instead of 4 separate textures.
  • Tweaked the shadow cascade transition to be more subtle.
  • Tweaked render state changes in the DirectX 11 driver.
  • Ice asteroids and solar panels now receive shadows.
  • Improvements continue to the rendering engine, and the assets to help enable them. Plus, some new sound effects, and you can expect more to appear as well.
  • It's hard to convey the impact of lighting our signs dynamically, and having them influence their surroundings; it adds a tremendous sense of "presence" to the environment. Our "floating neon" signs flicker on and off, and change colors as they always have, but now they illuminate nearby objects and ships as well. This may seem like a subtle change, and it is, but I'm really enjoying the overall effect:

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.319 (Jan 7, 2015)

  • Fixed long blank screen pause when switching video drivers.
  • Fixed performance issue for DirectX 11 driver when not rendering the station behind the station interface.
  • Improved and tweaked shadow settings for DirectX 11 driver. Shadows are now anti-aliased and the darkness of shadows has been decreased further.
  • For those who are interested, and can't yet see the new DX11 changes, I've made a little before-and-after demo screenshot of the current state of the engine. Please bear in mind that this is a very preliminary screenshot, and not indicative of anything remotely final.
  • In fact, we're still deep in development on the DX11/OpenGL 4 renderer. There are some particular challenges that we face as an open-world game set in space, with sectors of unlimited scale. Shadows maps, for instance, have a set resolution and need to cover the entire viewable terrain. For most games, even some recent "open world" shooters, that's still relatively modest compared to even our (current) view distance. Since 2002, we've had a 20 kilometer far-Z, which (for reference) would let any current player's view encompass about 3x the entire gameworld of Skyrim. This adds challenges to stretching shadow maps over such a large area, while making them "look good" up close, and not using a tremendous amount memory.
  • On top of that, we're looking to drastically increase our visible Z range (due to extremely large capship-stations and other objects coming in future versions), perhaps to "near-infinitely" through the use of multiple Z ranges along with imposter rendering. All of this makes for a lot of R&D and testing, to find something that works "best" for our particular usage.
  • Usage is key, as each effect implementation, and rendering architecture choice, has its own set of tradeoffs. Different algorithms come with particular artifacts, and a lot of this kind of research is figuring out what looks the "best", while also giving you the desired flexibility, framerate and overhead that you require.. and that's going to vary, game-to-game. We're a space title, so "soft" shadows aren't really our thing, except as a special case (ion storms, mining-debris fog), as we generally don't have the kind of environmental atmospherics that provide this sort of "soft" diffusion. So we're currently testing some effective sharp-edged (anti-aliased) solutions that scale well over long distance.
  • But what's most important is how the effects will be used. Eye candy is nice enough, but it really needs to justify its existence (and impact on framerate) through value in storytelling, and in the immersive experience. It's these environments that I find the most exciting, the most inspiring of game design. Situations that might fill a player with genuine fear, or awe. Images that might let us each tell how we've "seen things you people wouldn't believe.."

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.318 (Dec 26, 2014)

  • In honor of the occasion, we have a few things to announce, including a newsletter update, and some graphical improvements in the latest versions (Shadows in DX11!).
  • Additionally, we also are in our standard Holiday Promo, welcoming back any player who has previously had a Premium-level subscription to the game (more than 60 days ago), they may play for free between December 25th and January 1st! We hope we see a lot of older veteran players popping by to say hi!
  • VO 1.8.317-318 included:
  • Very "beta" prototype implementation of Shadows, for DirectX 11 only (OpenGL will require some changes and will come later). Contains numerous known artifacts, bugs and things that need tweaking. Made available as a demo-prototype only, to let people see something we have cooking.
  • To disable shadows if the framerate is too low, type "/set rdoshadows 0" (without quotes) in the console or chat.
  • For those interested in rendering tech, this is a test using cascaded variance shadow maps, and is not necessarily the final algorithm we may choose (and even if we did choose to use this, there would be many tweaks and fixes). We're in an R&D phase on much of this rendering technology.
  • Tweaked the shadow cascade level distance calculations to improve quality.
  • Decreased the darkness of the shadows.
  • Removed shadows in fog sectors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.316 (Dec 14, 2014)

  • Fixed buffer overrun in prototype OpenGL driver for Linux.
  • Added reminder to mobile version to convert the one-click account so character progression isn't lost.
  • Added a periodic request to rate the mobile version of Vendetta Online.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.315 (Dec 6, 2014)

  • New prototype OpenGL driver has been added to Linux. To try it out, go to Options -> Video -> Change driver... and select 'OpenGL 4 GKGL driver'. Multiple dynamic lights are enabled with this driver if your GPU supports the GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility extension. Dynamic lights include weapon fire, rocket/missile/ship exhaust, and explosions.
  • Strikeforce are now launched when you have Temp-KOS against Corvus and you enter Corvus monitored space.
  • Auto-aim can only be toggled up to twice per second.
  • Fixed a bug where Capture-the-Cargo ended twice at the same time.
  • Fixed rendering issues when changing Scaling mode on certain Android devices.
  • Optimized nearby dynamic-light finding algorithm.
  • Added optimization to consolidate multiple nearby lights.
  • This new version continues the recent graphics improvements, now with a prototype renderer for Linux players. We expect there to be problems and artifacts on certain drivers, so please report any issues in detail on the Bugs forum (a thread has already been started). Linux drivers are unfortunately not quite as gaming-robust as Windows, simply because the chip manufacturers making the original drivers tend to put more time into the platforms with the largest gaming market share. The teams of volunteers working on the open-source drivers do a great job, but often have fewer developer resources than the huge teams placed on Windows and console platforms. Thus, we could really use everyone's help to track down and work around any bugs we discover under Linux OpenGL, to try and make the experience as stable as possible.
  • Although the new driver is called "OpenGL 4", it does not necessarily require openGL 4.x native support. It does require the GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility extension, which for some chips is available even though the rest of the driver only supports OpenGL 2.x or 3.x (Intel integrated laptop GPUs, for instance). The GL_ARB_ES2_compatibility extension became required in OpenGL 4.1, but is also supported by many GPUs that do not actually support 4.x.
  • As a final reminder, if you're interested in testing Vendetta Online for iOS, please sign up here! We are only taking a limited number of people, so sign up as soon as possible!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.314 (Nov 27, 2014)

  • Trident Powercells now have 125 Grid Power, but very high mass.
  • New Trident-specific turrets, requiring 25 grid power, available in certain sectors (Capship Swarm Turret, Capital Cannon).
  • Added dynamic lights to the Jump and Warp animations.
  • DirectX 11 dynamic light shaders are more efficient.
  • Added screen resolution and anti-aliasing options to the DirectX 11 driver.
  • Added support for x86 based Android devices.
  • Added support for AndroidTV and the Nexus Player.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.313 (Nov 22, 2014)

  • Mine explosions no longer do double-damage to the person laying them.
  • Weapon shot visual-effects are less likely to pass through objects.
  • Re-arming free equipment during Deneb War military missions now includes text to say the purchases are free.
  • Touch-screen HUD graphics slightly improved, to indicate the left input area is a region, as opposed to buttons.
  • Initial single-player tutorial now uses the TPG Raptor instead of the EC-89.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.312 (Nov 16, 2014)

  • Added dynamic lighting to asteroid mining effect.
  • This was actually a very productive week, as Ray has been working really hard to back-propagate many of the newer DX11 effects to OpenGL. Unfortunately, this also uncorked a whole slew of new issues, related to particular chipset drivers and various incompatibilities. He's pushed through and straightened out much of it, but we still have more work to do before this will be production-ready.
  • In the meantime, Curt has added some cool new lighting effects for those who can see it , with the mining impact-area now illuminating things (the asteroid, for instance). It is not currently colored, as the actual mining flare itself is always white. But, we may change that, to make the flare match the color of the mining beam, to add a little more color (and information) to the universe. For the moment though, we think it jazzes up those skyscapes of NPCs mining in the distance.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.311 (Nov 8, 2014)

  • Improved two areas of player hit-checking to make hits more accurate under all circumstances. This should improve PvP for everyone, whether individual player ping-times are high or low.
  • Added dynamic lighting to ship damage fire effects.
  • Fixed problem with dynamic lights sometimes not being removed.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.310 (Nov 1, 2014)

  • Fixed X-based multithreaded rendering crashes on Linux.
  • Fixed problem with not being able to enter the universe on very lossy network connections.
  • Changed the fallback MTU network packet size if MTU discovery fails.
  • Dynamic lighting now supports DirectX 10.0 hardware using the DX11 driver.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.309 (Oct 26, 2014)

  • Lightsources from weapons are now colored to match their visual effect.
  • Added support for multiple lightsources to more ships.
  • Fixed crashes when changing video drivers or resolution when in multi-threaded rendering mode.
  • DirectX 11 driver now chooses window-mode if it cannot go to fullscreen-mode instead of falling back to the DirectX 9 driver
  • Switching video drivers should no longer cause graphical artifacts.
  • This release brings the new lighting model in DX11 much closer to its intended goal, although still missing a few things. Fire effects from damaged ships don't yet emit light, nor do station floodlights or "floating neon" advertising signs, etc. A few types of materials still don't receive dynamic lighting (station solar panels), although most of them now do.
  • Many of the stability issues have been addressed as well. If anyone is still having problems changing to or using the DirectX 11 driver, please post to the Bugs forum and let us know (with screenshots, if possible). DirectX 11 will soon become the default driver for Windows, although we'll still retain the other driver as a compatibility fallback for a long time to come.
  • But, before it can become the default, there's some optimization work that has to happen, as well as adding a lot of the well-known options to the driver. Once the optimization work has happened, and the shaders have stabilized, we'll begin back-propagating support to the other PC platforms (Linux and Mac). A much newer OpenGL version will probably be required for advanced graphics features, possibly OpenGL 4.1; although again, we will still retain the older driver as a fallback for older hardware.
  • If the new lighting is slow for your computer, don't lose heart. Continue using the DirectX 9 version for now. We expect to speed things up quite a bit in the near future. We'll go into a bit more of a technical discussion about the nature of the changes once things have stabilized as well.
  • If graphics updates aren't your thing, no worries, it'll only be a few weeks and we'll be back to other topics

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.308 (Oct 18, 2014)

  • New prototype DirectX 11 driver has been added. To try it out, go to Options -> Video -> Change driver... and select 'DirectX11 GKGL driver'. Multiple dynamic lights are enabled with this driver if your GPU supports DirectX 11-level features. Dynamic lights include weapon fire, rocket/missile/ship exhaust, and explosions.
  • Corvus Greyhound (and Painted variants) changed from 250 to 190 thrust, 8250 to 7500 armor.
  • This version includes a significant renderer change, that being the addition of dynamic lightsources. For the moment, this includes a limited subset of the flare "lights" in the game, but does cover a lot of the most common (ship engines, rockets, energy weapons, as mentioned above). The light color is not yet correct to the visual effect in some cases.
  • This is still early in development, and we're still testing, but we think it looks pretty cool thus far. For now the feature is limited to those with DirectX 11 support, using the DX11 internal driver on Windows. You can manually select the DX11 driver in the Video area of Settings. Once the lighting has been stabilized, we'll add support to Linux, Mac and possibly other platforms. These improvements are primarily directed at the PC, where the performance margins are quite large.
  • There will be other renderer improvements coming as well. We have a lot of gameplay work to do, but for specific reasons we needed to get this renderer development out of the way quickly. Thus, it's been bumped up a little in priority. On the flipside, the game should get a lot cooler looking in a short period of time. I hope you all enjoy it.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.307 (Oct 14, 2014)

  • Fixed weapon hit-check failures.
  • Masked off the regions near the HUD's touch controls from being used for touch-targeting so it is more difficult to accidentally change your target while flying.
  • Linux OpenGL drivers now use the pbuffer extension if available for off-screen rendering.
  • Fixed incorrect Vendetta Online logo size when loading the different Offline Training Simulator sections.
  • Android version now automatically re-tries certain types of download failures during installation.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.306 (Sep 27, 2014)

  • Added support for Oculus Rift DK2 by updating the SDK to 0.4.2. The DK2 must be in Extended Desktop mode and rotated to 1920x1080. If you experience a massive amount of flickering, try turning off Anti-Aliasing in Options -> Video -> Antialiasing mode.
  • The amount of Crystal your character has is no longer shown on Trial accounts and does on PC Lite accounts.
  • Fixed clipped Sector Notes menu on 1080p devices.
  • Fixed inter-sector loading screen size on mobile devices.
  • The 5 minute Lite warning menu is no longer shown on PCs if you are subscribed as a Lite account.
  • Training II mission's explanation of the No-Fire-Zone (NFZ) has been fixed to say 'damaged' instead of 'destroyed'.
  • Some much-needed bugfixes, and an important update for the Oculus Rift. Probably a raft of other bugfixes coming as well, before we can focus on new content.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.305 (Sep 27, 2014)

  • Introducing "Crystal": Vendetta Online's cash currency for Free-to-Play mobile players! Crystal may be acquired in bulk via in-app purchase, or accrued more slowly through gameplay, such as gaining experience and levels, destroying Hive Bots, and reaching Achievements. Lower level equipment requires little or no Crystal, where upper level ships and gear may have increased requirements. Crystal is used for each individual quantity of item purchased, and is in addition to Credits and other factional and license-related gameplay requirements (ie, all regular gameplay requirements remain).
  • Premium Subscription players do not need Crystal, and do not earn it through gameplay.
  • All non-Premium mobile players will retroactively receive Crystal for experience and achievements they have already earned.
  • As a special thanks to our supportive mobile players, everyone who previously made in-app purchases for access to ships and addons will receive double (2x) the Crystal that their funds would normally purchase. This has been automatically added to the most recently used character on your account.
  • The "Crystal" system replaces the previous interim "ship-access" in-app purchase method, which has been removed. Thus, it is no longer necessary to make a purchase to gain "access" to a given ship. Because Crystal can be acquired through gameplay, it further mitigates potential pay-to-win advantages between Free-to-Play users. Crystal will also make it easier for us to increase the Free-to-Play license caps in the future.
  • Free-to-Play mobile users who convert to Premium Subscribers will still retain any previously-earned Crystal if they revert to Free at a later point; but while the Premium subscription is active, the previously retained Crystal will no longer be visible, and they will not accrue additional Crystal until they have reverted to Free.
  • Added a new "First Kill" badge for new users, with a notification and description pop-up the first time the player docks after earning the badge.
  • New simplified account conversion menu and removed the captcha.
  • Improved readability of some menus on mobile devices.
  • Improved gamepad usability for most dialog boxes.
  • Fixed issue with swiping not always working on initial Ship Purchase tutorial.
  • Changed default framerate limit to 60 FPS from 40 for a smoother UI scrolling experience.
  • New Snapdragon splash screen for Snapdragon-based devices.
  • Increased default font size for high-res phone devices.
  • Fixed potential sector crash when a mine times out and gets damaged at the exact same time.
  • Fixed crash on iPad when docking after gaining the First Kill achievement.
  • Fixed issue with seeing when logging in for the first time on mobile devices.
  • The addition of a cash currency (for mobile/free-to-play users only) is obviously a huge change for us, and an important one. Some kind of "free to play" business model is a necessity on mobile, a non-negotiable expectation of that market, and this hybrid solution will let us bring in new players while maintaining our Premium subscriptions as the "gold standard" for our game experience. There is sure to be an extensive period of tuning and tweaking of numbers that will go with this kind of rollout, but it all adds up to a really useful step in the right direction.
  • With this out of the way, we intend to head back towards gameplay-related development (between bug-fixes), along with some engine/platform work that will dovetail into helping us add additional gameplay.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.304 (Aug 25, 2014)

  • Fixed station conquering issue when player docks to the station just as the last defense turret is destroyed.
  • List control scrolling now follows the touch drag more precisely on Android devices.
  • Mission icons are now colored based on their category.
  • Fixed crash with multi-threaded renderer.
  • Chat mode radio buttons have been moved to the right-hand side In Condensed UI mode on mobile devices.
  • 'Press the Activate key to leave the turret' now fully persists
  • The ship sell menu now only shows the local inventory instead of the whole inventory.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.303 (Aug 16, 2014)

  • Fixed crash when logging in, mostly on the Android version.
  • Improved scrolling vs. panning on small screen Android devices such as phones.
  • Improved usability of a couple of menus on small screen high resolution Android devices.
  • The Purchasing menu no longer shows that mobile free-play accounts are in Trial mode.
  • Some smaller, iterative fixes we wanted to get out there, while we're still working on the Big Stuff. Some of this development has taken longer than expected over the last couple of weeks (such is the life of software development), due to changes, tweaks in design, bug-tracking and so on. But, overall we've been making good progress, and the work is all the better for the additional time. Expect a few things...
  • We're still experimenting with the mobile business model. This is a big one. More to come on that.
  • Infrastructural changes are in the works, to make the game server scale even better.
  • Additional polish to the early game, as well as a lot of other common cases. As many as we can hit in a short period of time.
  • Improvements to station and national defenses, strike forces and the like, to improve balance in some situations. There will still be No Safe Place, but the implementation of that gradient may be tweaked a bit.
  • Upcoming new release announcements.
  • Lots of other things (yes, content drops, Trident stuff, bot stuff, other stuff).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.302 (Aug 2, 2014)

  • Reenabled multi-threaded rendering for 64bit Linux. If you have previously disabled it by editing your config.ini, you will need to reenable it through the config.ini. If you experience crashes, manually disable multithreading by adding multithreaded=0 to the [Vendetta] section of your config.ini file. Please report any issues with the threaded renderer on Linux.
  • Renamed 'Free-Play' mode to 'Offline Play'.
  • Increased the default font size of 1080p Android phones.
  • Improved client-side "targeting" tutorial on Mobile versions.
  • The iOS and Windows Store versions now display a warning when attempting to perform an in-app purchase on an item instead of showing that the purchase was aborted.
  • All background textures are now loaded when entering a sector instead of on-demand to prevent stuttering when planets become visible, for example. iOS and WinStore versions will have to wait for an app update.
  • We're putting a lot of effort into polishing up the game experience on smaller mobile devices, to help us take advantage of some time-sensitive marketing opportunities. Once that work is out of the way, we have a lot of gameplay development planned. Stay tuned!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.301 (Jul 31, 2014)

  • Macros in the virtual keyboard can now be saved when long-pressing the action button on gamepads on Android.
  • Fixed multithreaded rendering crashes. To test it, edit your config.ini file to add multithreaded=1 in the [Vendetta] section. Please report any issues.
  • Fixed the incorrect placement of layed mines relative to the port locations on your ship.
  • Fixed the bouncing 'm' HUD mission icon location when it finishes bouncing.
  • Fixed lua error and crash when attempting to swipe station/pda menus.
  • Fixed issue with PDA menu showing back up when pressing 'Jump' or 'Jettison All' buttons in the PDA in Condensed UI mode.
  • Fixed occasional crash when attepting to set a navroute to a training sector.
  • Beyond this, we've also pushed an Android APK update to provide some additional fixes and enhancements.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.300 (Jul 21, 2014)

  • Fixed multithreaded rendering artifacts. We're still working on the crashing bugs.
  • Save Password checkbox is now always present on platforms that support it.
  • Touch-hover now works when dragging your finger from a listbox or textbox when they aren't scrollable.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.299 (Jul 12, 2014)

  • Added a 'Save Password' option to the Android version. It saves an encrypted copy of your password to the private data area of the app.
  • Updated OpenSSL library on the Android version.
  • All small screen devices now default to a static background image in the station menu so swiping between menus is smoother.
  • Cleaned up more java reference leaks.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.298 (Jul 7, 2014)

  • Only Premium subscriptions are allowed to pilot Tridents now.
  • Any non-Premium subscribers capships will be moved to the capship Shipyards in Latos M-7.
  • Optimized Panning feature to switch between station menus on Android.
  • Added macro buttons to the virtual keyboard. To set the macro, type in the text you want and long-press a macro button. To clear the macro, long-press when no text is entered.
  • Changed Linux 64 version to default to single-threaded rendering until the multithreaded rendering problems are fixed. It can be manually enabled/disabled through the config.ini as usual.
  • Fixed a very uncommon issue when attempting to launch from your own capship and you get an error saying that your grid power is too low.
  • New capship turret assets. These increase the framerate on mobile devices.
  • Fixed touch-hover overlay being displayed when it shouldn't be. For example, while rotating the ship view.
  • The Close button in the PDA menu did not have touch-hover enabled.
  • Various other tweaks and changes in the works, including some big performance bumps that will be helpful on certain platforms, and allow us to expand gameplay.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.295 (Jun 17, 2014)

  • Conquerable station defense turrets no longer fire on access key holders while the are leaving the sector.
  • Friendly-fire deaths caused by Avalon explosions no longer kick players out of Border Skirmish missions.
  • Added experimental network quality reporting. To enable report logging to your chat window, type /set nShowNetQualReport 1
  • Added idle-detection captcha to non-premium subscriptions.
  • Fixed problem where the player's persistent capship fails to leave 5 minutes after the owner logs out when the owner attempted to control their own capship but timed out or otherwise has excessive lag.
  • Deleted characters are no longer listed as holders of access keys.
  • Fixed some Java object reference leaks on Android.
  • Some widely-requested changes and tweaks, as well as further work towards feature improvements like network-quality detection. This is all working towards some larger launches later this month, stay tuned!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.294 (Jun 7, 2014)

  • Improved shaders for PC platforms. The secondary lightsource now uses the object's bump map.
  • Hangar tab was still visible in the Tactical tab in ships with turrets but no hangar.
  • Repair and Reload buttons were the wrong color.
  • If a player attempts to lay a mine and the mine limit has been reached, the client no longer thinks the mine was layed.
  • The password field no longer allows the text to be copied from it with CTRL-c. "************" is now copied into the clipboard.
  • Dueling players are now notified if the duel will not count towards their duel ratings. For example, if one of the players license level is too low.
  • When autodocking is enabled, the text on the HUD now says "Docking..." instead of "Press the Activate key to dock."
  • Fixed occasional clipping of the speed and energy indicators on the HUD.
  • Fixed various lua errors.
  • Lots of little fixes, plus some meaningful graphical updates on the PC. One more step along the road. We have some additional utilities coming soon, like tools to show player latency and packet-loss issues, to help people determine whether their internet connection is a problem (resulting in issues often blamed on the game itself). Those tools were slated for release this evening, but need a little more time for testing.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.293 (May 24, 2014)

  • CTC cargo gets auto-jettisoned when the capship owner leaves their capship and they have CTC cargo.
  • Ship buy-back/buy-preset no longer swaps empty weapons in storage with newly purchased weapons when they are auto-equipped.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.292 (May 12, 2014)

  • Left and Right thumb buttons of the DualShock 4 controller on Android have been fixed to report as their proper buttons.
  • Reduced network traffic for cases where the player is being damaged with multiple weapons at the same time.
  • Fixed issue with Outer Hull Plate name.
  • Improved high resolution asteroid LOD popping artifacts.
  • Added guild member login/out notifications.
  • Fixed problem when capship owner launches from their capship directly from controlling a turret.
  • All sectors are now running the new sector code.
  • The new assets have been integrated a bit better on the PC, and we've made quite a few improvements to battle situations involving large numbers of players. The entire galaxy is now running the new optimized sector architecture.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.290 (Apr 26, 2014)

  • Replaced some asteroid chunks with higher resolution models and textures for the Win/Mac/Linux versions. Mobile versions still use the older assets.
  • Added support for Oculus Rift HD.
  • Oculus Rift is no longer required to be in mirror display mode. It should now auto-detect the secondary display.
  • Added code to the experimental sector code to try to identify why sectors are being randomly lost.
  • Fixed a crash bug when exiting early from the offline tutorial and attempting to log in.
  • Server optimization work is still on-going, we'll have a big capacity-test event once that's all been solidified. Have a great weekend, everyone!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.289 (Apr 24, 2014)

  • Added more optimizations to reduce possible lag during large player battles.
  • Private messages, guild, group, and vote actions no longer reveal online status for privacy reasons.
  • We're been doing a lot of server-side optimization, to improve performance in large battles and build towards the even more epic situations we all want to see. Thus far, we've had a lot of success, although bigger changes are in the works. This latest version includes some tweaks that are nearly a thousand times faster for very specific situations (but perhaps only twice as fast in common cases).
  • This is not all related to PvP performance, some of it includes the behaviour of NPCs and how well we can get them to work when scaled to really large numbers. I would like to see some terrifyingly large fleets of capships and escort-fighters.
  • In the meantime, we are also still debugging a rare, but persistent issue in our threaded sector code that's currently running in Grayspace. So, if you experience sudden logouts in that area of the game, please submit a ticket and let us know. We're instrumenting and debugging the hell out of it, but it's quite a sporadic issue.
  • Once these improvements have matured a little further, we'll run some big Events and see how it all shakes out. Thanks everyone, have a great weekend!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.288 (Apr 5, 2014)

  • Optimized of UI updates when mining asteroids.
  • Capship energy drain now properly persists between NPC and player controlled capships.
  • Capships can no longer be used to conquer stations by wedging it into the docking bay of the station when it is conquerable.
  • Players are now notified if they get Temp KOS by damaging a conquerable station defense turret.
  • Fixed conquerable station issue when a Temp KOS player attempts to conquer the station. The 30 secon requirement was no longer in effect after that case.
  • Fixed conquerable station issue when players set it as their home station. They weren't properly respawning there and were bounced to a different station instead.
  • Fixed problem when a player owned capship was destroyed when the owner was logged off and logging back in would send them to a station other than their home station.
  • When a player logs in while in a station and they are not allowed to dock at that station (access key is revoked for example), the player is bounced to another station but their ship stays at the original station. The player will need to regain access to the station to get their ship back.
  • Fixed disconnect error when a passenger is in a capship when it explodes.
  • VO 1.8.287 included:
  • All grey space systems are now running the experimental threaded code. Please report any problems through support tickets.
  • As the final release note states, we have rolled out the new sector code to all sectors in grayspace. We'll be continuing to monitor things, and then eventually roll it out to the entire game. We're doing this in stages to make sure our fixes don't compromise other areas of game stability.
  • At the same time, we aren't convinced that we've fixed all hit-check related issues with these architectural change, and we're continuing to monitor and enhance things as we move forward. If you experience problems with shots not hitting, please submit a Support Ticket to let us know when/where. If you're seeing a large ping time, then that is likely to blame, but we're targeting those occasional situations where the ping times are very low, but hits are failing to register.
  • There will be a major next-generational enhancement to the engine rolled out soon, allowing far higher asteroid densities, which will first appear in a few sectors. In the long run, this will completely re-make the face of our galaxy, and make expansion of the universe a far easier and more interesting concept.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.286 (Mar 29, 2014)

  • Conquerable station sectors Bractus M-14, Latos I-8, and Pelatus C-12 are now running experimental code to test a solution to weapon hits sometimes not registering. Please test these sectors and report any problems through support tickets.
  • The virtual mouse (when used through a gamepad controller) on mobile devices now highlights the virtual keyboard button that was selected so multiple presses of 'A' on the gamepad will repeat the same action again.
  • Please note the changes to the current conquerable station sectors. We've been putting a lot of development effort into tracking down and eliminating the periodic "no-hit" issues that crop up during certain types of player events. We think we have greatly improved the situation, but as the changes are quite major, we're unwilling to roll them out universe-wide without smaller "regional" testing in specific sectors. So, testing and feedback on this new implementation is both welcome and likely to result in a more rapid adoption of the new code throughout the galaxy.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.284 (Mar 15, 2014)

  • The Capship Shipyards station maximum cargo storage limit has been increased to 150,000 from 50,000 cu.
  • Windows Store version has been updated to add gamepad support, tweaks to graphics settings on AMD tablets, and capship owners can control their own turrets like how PC/Android platforms can already do.
  • Capship owner's mines no longer get triggered by their capship.
  • Updated the Oculus SDK to drastically reduce drift.
  • Capture-The-Cargo convoys report updates on their respective channels (201/202) again.
  • Several larger projects are also proceeding in the background. We're working on improving the scalability of larger player events, as well as tracking down some persistent bugs that have been cropping up from time to time. Graphical updates are also in the works, and a more thorough post with some before/after shots will appear soon.
  • We've also added joystick support for iOS, and will be releasing an iPad update with joystick support in the not too distant future.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.283 (Mar 9, 2014)

  • Group owner's mines will no longer detonate on other group members if the mines were layed before the group was created.
  • Mines will no longer detonate on a group member if the member joined the group while in the proximity of the mine.
  • Fixed Voice Chat cross-talk.
  • A few fixes here, but much greater and more important development is currently in the works.
  • We've long planned to roll out a "universe redux", a far denser and larger assortment of asteroids within individual sectors, along with an expansion and potential explorability of the greater galaxy.
  • Our universe and game engine have always had this in mind, going back many years. But now with far higher densities of objects, we need to engineer some clever optimizations to allow us to still generate wholly "new" parts of a galaxy, without necessary needing to do a "patch" (ie, wholly new content that is dynamically added, while connected to the live game). This set of optimizations lately boils down to a couple of things, a way to effectively transmit complex arrays of data to the client very quickly over a network, and methods of optimizing our rendering of very large and complex environments over extreme view distances.
  • Right now, we're working on the first of the two, developing "smart objects" that contain programmatic information about how they're utilized, allowing a single object to expand into massive asteroid ring, or any other feature, once it has been interpreted by the client. This gives us a lot of flexibility for re-using assets in interesting new ways. Plus, the actual data sent across the network is far less, resulting in much improved load times.
  • From our testing over the past week, we found in the best-case scenario (connected to the test-server on local gigabit ethernet) that load times of a complex sector were cut to 1/10th of what they are when loading the sector content the "traditional" way. These improvements would be even better when used over the actual internet.
  • Beyond these next-generation changes, we're also doing capacity testing, to improve the responsiveness of the game under large battle scenarios. This should allow us to track down and squash any remaining bugs in larger multi-player environments, while also helping us scale up our battle situations and allow the ever-more gigantic battles that we envision for the future.
  • Plans are still in the works for rolling out new Trident variants, along with some cool new artwork and content drops that I'll be talking more about in the near future.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.281 (Mar 3, 2014)

  • Trident Type M maximum shield strength bumped to 40k.
  • Player-owned capship shield repair timer now resets after each hit, like the NPC shields.
  • Group health and sector list health now includes shield strength.
  • Shield strength while manning a player-owned turret now shows the correct value.
  • Repair guns no longer damage player-owned capship shields.
  • Shields no longer look like they disappear when the capship pilot mans their own turret.
  • Fixed infrequent lua error when the capship pilot launches from their own capship.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.281 (Feb 22, 2014)

  • Player-owned capships now have shields that work the same way as NPC capship shields.
  • Ships stored in capships can now have their ammo refilled by the capship owner without having to launch and dock with the capship.
  • At long last, player-owned capital ships now feature re-charging shields, just like their NPC counterparts! This was an important step in development, making the shields persistently the same whether the player logs off or not. All of this is going to be very useful in the future, when we're dealing with more cases of larger player ships, player-owned stations, territory and factions.
  • Please continue to bring any issues to our attention on this. Major changes always bring up the potential for bugs, and while this underwent an entire extra week of testing and tuning, there's always the potential for something to be missed. We want to squash any bugs as quickly as possible.
  • Another feature was also added in this latest release, but not yet enabled. I'll discuss that in a future post, when we're closer to rolling out that feature.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.280 (Feb 10, 2014)

  • Added Sony DualShock 4 support to Android and Windows.
  • Faction logos now display properly on ARM Mali Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition.
  • Players can no longer dock to capships with CTC cargo. It will need to be jettisoned first.
  • Radar extender addons now only work if they are equipped as addons, not if they are in your cargo hold.
  • Google+ Achievements are now supported in the Android Play Store and sideload versions.
  • Fixed PVP Veteran 1 achievement for Amazon GameCircle and iOS GameCenter.
  • Added a 'Log off' button to the mutually exclusive faction choice menu.
  • Your character name is now displayed in the faction choice verification menu.
  • Added a 3 month non-recurring in-app purchase to the Android version, supporting Play Store "Gift Cards".
  • Persistent capships now mirror the player's weapon addons after player log-off.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.278 (Feb 1, 2014)

  • Serco Vulture Guardian turbo drain changed from 56 to 55, top speed increased from 220 to 225.
  • New Raptor UDV available in UIT stations, requires high Admire standing with UIT, also minimum of Dislike with both Serco and Itani.
  • Faction standing for major "foreign" nations (to which your character does NOT belong) are now capped at +600. This only impacts Serco, Itani and UIT standings, there are no changes to minor and corporate factions.
  • For instance, this means if your character is UIT, the highest Itani faction standing you may acquire is "Respected" (the reverse also being true). The levels of "Admire" and "Pillar of Society" are reserved for native faction members.
  • Serco/Itani mutually exclusive faction standings have been changed to equalize at Neutral (0). This means that if a character achieves +600 with Serco, the character's Itani standing will fall to no-higher-than -600, and visa-versa.
  • The default faction standings for Itani on a new UIT character has been changed to Neutral (0) to reflect the updated mutual exclusion of Itani/Serco.
  • Player-owned capships now inherit the owner's keychain so the capship won't get attacked in conquerable stations.
  • Player-owned capships are always visible on the keyholder's radar no matter how far away they are in the same sector.
  • Turreted non-capital scale ships no longer persist.
  • Player-owned persistent capships should now use their custom name.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.276 (Jan 18, 2014)

  • Corvus Greyhound turbo thrust increased from 350 to 450.
  • Mines now persist for 30 minutes.
  • Added a Drain Proximity Mine that drains power cells by 250 units when it explodes. It is available at some Serco stations and requires a high faction standing to purchase.
  • Added ability for players attacked in monitored and guarded sectors to attack back in self-defense without any factional loss if they kill their attacker. This self defense ability persists for 15 minutes from the last hit by either player or until the original attacker dies for any reason.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.274 (Jan 8, 2014)

  • Music now crossfades when changing sectors.
  • Killing 3 players in a 7-day period, within a single faction's Guarded space, will result in that faction placing Temp KoS status on the killer for 24 hours. Exceptions are made for killing players of Hated or lower standing with the local faction, and active duels. This only impacts Guarded regions (ie, station sectors). Corvus stations ignore all kills and are not affected by this change.
  • Linux Sandybridge and Haswell Intel drivers use full shaders now.
  • Lowered the default texture detail settings for Android devices with 512megs or less of system memory.
  • Other internal changes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.272 (Dec 18, 2013)

  • Plasma Annihilator has been buffed and re-balanced per the Suggestions Forum thread.
  • Group member mines are now blue on the radar.
  • Android gamepad virtual mouse sensitivity and axis invert settings are now configurable in Options -> Advanced -> Controls -> Mouse.
  • Fixed Android touch-HUD so the elements don't overlap in 1080 mode.
  • Fixed possible crash on the Amazon Appstore version if GameCircle fails to initialize.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.270 (Nov 30, 2013)

  • Collision damage calculation now works more like the 2012 version, but retaining the improvements to threading, etc.
  • Concussion Railguns now reloadable.
  • Collisions of less than 50HP of damage are ignored, so small bumps don't result in actual hull damage.
  • New "Power Cell Blaster" available at a Research station, somewhere in the galaxy. Depletes the enemy power cell by 50 units per hit.
  • The Xang Xi Self-Propelled Concussion Mine can now be reloaded.
  • Fixed missing textures on improved ETC1 assets for Android if the shaders are disabled.
  • Fixed Tegra 4 detection on Android 4.3.
  • Tegra 4 and Adreno 320 (and above) based devices now use full screen resolution instead of upscaling.
  • Better auto-detection of android-based consoles.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.268 (Nov 26, 2013)

  • Ships now display their volume as cargo in their description.
  • Improved performance of inventory updates in the client UI.
  • Added assets for a variety of graphical markings for ships.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.267 (Nov 2, 2013)

  • New Vulture variant is now available at the Corvus capitol.
  • Players' ships now count towards the cargo of capships when they dock. If not enough cargo space is available, the player cannot dock.
  • Capship owners can now give their ship a custom name. The custom name is displayed in the upper right area of the capship menu. Use the /renameship "New Name" command to change it. You must be piloting the ship to use the command. A GUI interface is forthcoming. Names are validated by the server the same way character names are.
  • Fixed a bug that prevented some news posts from being viewable.
  • Requiring cargo space for ships docking in capships was always part of the intended design, but had been temporarily avoided to make the initial rollout a little simpler. Now that the limitations are enforced, you can dock different numbers of ships based on their relative size. For instance, a Behemoth is 300cu, allowing two of them to dock with a current Trident Type M; where the smallest of fighters is 100cu, allowing up to six ships to dock.
  • We can, of course, continue to tweak the cargo stats and other aspects of the Tridents, as we move forward.
  • The new Vulture is the testbed prototype for replacing the existing asset. It is currently configured identically to a Vulture MkIV, to give people a 1:1 comparison against a widely-available, existing ship. Polite feedback on the forum is welcome.
  • Naming of capital ships is of course a first-generation implementation, mainly to get the ship name concepts stored on the server. Once we have a population of named ships, we'll move ahead with adding the ship-name to locations on the HUD, etc.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.265 (Oct 19, 2013)

  • Fixed problems with the group radar extender addon. Multiple extenders in one group (one per member) are also supported.
  • 1-9 hotkey support for the sensor-list.
  • For plugin developers, the GUILD_MEMBER_REMOVED event now contains the reason for the event as the second argument.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.264 (Oct 14, 2013)

  • Fixed upside down display issue with Android devices with Mali-400 GPUs.
  • Reduced network traffic when capships with turrets are in the sector.
  • Changed login menu background for aesthetic reasons.
  • Added ETC1 compressed texture assets for fresh installs of the Android sideload apk (/sdcard/VendettaOnline doesn't exist and the app is uninstalled). This improves memory usage on Mali devices.
  • What's not mentioned in this update changelog are all the other changes that are happening, like the imminent appearance of the new Vulture (thanks to a server restart), along with development of new Trident variants. There will be a more substantial newspost in the near future.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.263 (Oct 5, 2013)

  • Updated Oculus Rift sdk to 0.2.4 which allows the magnetometer to be calibrated through the Oculus Rift calibration utility.
  • Added tutorial voiceovers specific to consoles and gamepads.
  • Proximity and lightning mines are no longer triggered on group members.
  • Added experimental texture loading to Linux 64 version. Please report any rendering/missing texture issues.
  • The new vulture is still in the works, we need to do a server restart and some other maintenance, so it may be another week. In the meantime, we've gotten a lot further with procedural texture compositing; this should be really useful for all kinds of things, from player-owned capships to stations to NPCs and general fighter variants and so on.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.262 (Sep 28, 2013)

  • New Vulture ship assets added for upcoming testing.
  • Improved gamepad support for Android. Better default buttons for OK (A) and Cancel (B)
  • Added experimental texture loading to Linux 64 version. Please report any rendering/missing texture issues.
  • Fixed auto-fire on Android microconsoles.
  • Fixed ice texture when shaders are turned off on OpenGL PCs.
  • Increased Oculus Rift field of view.
  • Mines now sympathetically detonate when other players mines explode nearby.
  • Fixed Moga controller X/Y buttons not working properly under certain circumstances.
  • Conquerable stations are no longer chosen as trade mission destinations.
  • NPCs and turrets no longer attempt to fire on players entering the sector (while they are invulnerable).
  • Removed OpenGL Intel DRI check for Ivybridge so shaders won't get disabled.
  • Fixed in-game capchas when running on Android consoles with overscan compensation enabled.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.260 (Aug 17, 2013)

  • The 'station under attack' notification received by keyholders of conquerable stations now includes what station is under attack.
  • The word 'cockpit' is no longer filtered in chat.
  • Turret fire delay now persists between leaving and entering turrets.
  • New Amazon GameCircle 2.0 support; requires the app to be updated through the Amazon Store.
  • Players can now decline a guild invite if they are already in a guild.
  • Horizontal scrollbar in Jettison menu was not visible if any items' names were too long, hiding the individual 'J' buttons.
  • Chat messages are more robustly handled during the tiny instant while you jump between sectors.
  • Keychain error messages now include the name of the player you were attempting to give the key to.
  • Larger changes are in the works, potentially including some content drops as well as new ships and graphics. A lengthy "status" post will be coming in the near future, and a newsletter following after. We've had a number of people out sick and traveling lately, which has delayed some upcoming announcements by a couple of weeks; but I expect to have a firmer timeframe next week. Take care all!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.258 (Jul 24, 2013)

  • High-resolution planet textures, drastically increasing the visible detail of planetary surfaces.
  • Totally new procedural nebula backgrounds with much greater resolution and detail. (Nebula development is ongoing).
  • For the moment, these new textures and graphics are only available on PC platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.255 (Jun 29, 2013)

  • Delivery missions now only deliver to stations and not capships.
  • Virtual keyboard can now be turned off on the Ouya version.
  • Added Amazon Appstore In-App Purchasing.
  • Improved tab order for UI controls.
  • Fixed corruption when only one light source is in the scene.
  • Basic control support for the NVIDIA Shield.
  • More substantial updates will be appearing, including some gameplay tweaks and graphical changes. See last week's Development Status newspost for more information.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.253-254 (Jun 1, 2013)

  • Increased conquerable stations' capture timeout from 2 minutes to 5 minutes.
  • Adjustments to several weapon-based trade routes.
  • Virtual keyboard preserves the currently-entered text if it is closed by a non-user action. For example jumping between sectors.
  • Conquerable station turret hitpoints have been significantly reduced.
  • Fixed crash on Android when Voice Chat is enabled.
  • Android version uses a different timing function so timeouts shouldn't occur if the device's clock gets re-synced.
  • Fixed issue with the joystick still controlling your ship if the virtual mouse mode is enabled.
  • The virtual keyboard setting is now independent of the HUD touchscreen mode.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.250 (May 7, 2013)

  • Fixed issues with low framerate on all platforms when getting damaged repeatedly, shooting ammo-based weapons, or collecting ore.
  • Added tilt calibration menu in Options->Advanced->Controller-> Accelerometer for accelerometer-enabled devices (iPad and WinRT devices need to wait for an update in their respective stores).
  • Added Premium In-App product purchases for iOS and Android versions.
  • Serco Vulture Guardian is now available at level 3, giving access to iPad players and other "Lite" subscribers.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.244 (Mar 9, 2013)

  • Initial mission list updates are much faster now.
  • Error message when attempting to create a guild on a Lite Mode account.
  • Fixed some UI issues with large fonts.
  • Faction logo in station menu is now clickable. The faction's description in the faction standings menu is displayed.
  • Fixed Australian Lite Mode purchase price.
  • Revamped virtual keyboard. It looks different and should allow for faster typing.
  • Increased the polygon count of background planets
  • Improved checkbox, radio button, and access key item UI images.
  • Planet textures now get unloaded when they're not used to conserve memory unless Cache Resources setting is enabled.
  • Added an option (disabled by default) to alert about npcs entering/leaving the station bar.
  • New characters are automatically joined to chat channels 11 and 100 and keep their active channel as 1 when they leave the training sector.
  • Improved long-press for touch devices to drag-drop addons between your ship ports and inventory in the Ship Configuration menu.
  • Moved some Options menu items into an Advanced Options menu for mobile devices.
  • Signup button in Advanced Options menu now goes to the account conversion menu if your auto-generated account hasn't been converted yet. This removes some confusion by new players.
  • Selecting 'Route' on a non-local mission sets it up to automatically pop up the mission dialog when you dock to that station. If you change your navroute or log off, the info is currently lost. If you dock to a different station and take another mission, the info is lost. If the mission becomes unavailable while you are en-route, when you dock, you will be notified that the mission is not available at that time.
  • A username history is now available in the login menu. Select the arrow to the right of the username entry field to see the list and select a previous one. Because this is a new feature, the history will initially be blank. To edit/clear the history, you must edit your config.ini file with a text editor. The history can be used to recover a new auto-generated account before it is converted if an existing account is used to log in.
  • Changed the in-station camera views that are seen behind the station menu. The training sector's camera is placed in a better position.
  • Changed the message that is displayed when docking with a capship.
  • Fixed a bug with Lua/IUP that was causing some invalid IUP handle errors.
  • Fixed a rare Android crash on certain devices when attempting to initialize the audio system.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.242 (Jan 18, 2013)

  • Fixed wrong login menu being shown if you log in with a normal account and you had created a one-click account.
  • Added Local Faction standing to targeted player info menu.
  • Added ability to turn on/off complex shaders on Android version. It requires a restart of the game.
  • Fixed bug with one DirectX 9 shader causing some station components to have the wrong lighting under certain conditions.
  • Scaled down the jump-out effects of capships.
  • NPC capships no longer suddenly twist their rotation when they jump out.
  • Delivery missions will no longer remove items immediately unless all items needed are present. However, entering the destination station will remove all the mission items you currently have, even if you don't have all of the required items. This allows one to take the mission to see what items are needed without any items actually being delivered. The mission considers you to have entered the station under these circumstances: Docking, logging in while in a station, and respawning at your home station.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.241 (Jan 16, 2013)

  • Fixed delivery missions so they now take items from your inventory without you having to launch and dock again.
  • Fixed Android virtual keyboard being too long if the text being edited is too long. Added right/left arrow buttons to move the text cursor.
  • Fixed UI being slightly too wide on some aspect ratios/resolutions.
  • Increased robustness of the Android version, and added crash detection and compatibility mode. Compatibility mode includes lower texture quality and simpler shaders.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.240 (Jan 5, 2013)

  • Improved long press to add waypoints to navmap. The waypoint is added immediately after the long press instead of waiting until the press is released.
  • Fixed default font size on Kindle Fire HD 7" tablets so the station menu isn't clipped off the right side of the screen.
  • Fixed some lua errors.
  • You will now be sent to Corvus if your home station and nation hate you instead of being bounced back and forth between stations.
  • Temp KOS is now properly removed when you die in an empty sector.
  • If you acquire Temp KOS with your home station's faction, your home is moved to your nation's capital or Corvus if you are hated by your nation.
  • Increased convoy activity in station sectors: this is an ongoing testing process that will begin over this weekend. It may not appear immediately, but should solidify over the coming week.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.239 (Dec 27, 2012)

  • Fixed blank screen on certain Android tablets when running in joystick-support mode.
  • Fixed joystick configurations getting reset every time VO is run.
  • Fixed the problem with certain missions being displayed that cannot be taken.
  • When cancelling chat in touch-screen mode, the chat entry box in the HUD is also closed.
  • Added long-press support for the navmap to add waypoints. The long-press is .5 seconds.
  • Added a one-click mode for mobile devices to create a guest account without having to enter user info, which allows new players to get into the game quickly. A conversion menu is in place to add required information before you can convert the account to a subscription. A Windows Store update is required for one-click support on Windows 8, which is forthcoming.
  • Changed 'Android Market' references to 'Google Play' for the Android version.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.238 (Dec 8, 2012)

  • A massive new 39-mission tree, developed collaboratively by a group of our PCC members, organized and evangelized by Phaserlight. Many thanks and congrats to him, as well as Pizzasgood and everyone else who contributed to building and testing these missions!
  • Graphics updates for the standard cargo-crate have been totally updated with a new asset. We will eventually also use this crate at multiple sizes to visually indicate crates that have larger quantities of items or use more cubic units of space.
  • A couple of other changes were also intended for this update, but needed to be pushed back for further testing. So those can likely be expected next week. Have a great weekend, everyone, and please post any issues to the forums.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.237 (Nov 24, 2012)

  • Enhanced password security. Maximum password length has been increased to 64 characters.
  • Fixed problem with video options not getting saved.
  • Increased default settings for Adreno 320-based Android devices.
  • Removed storms in Deneb.
  • The biggest news in this update are the major security improvements added with our new password handling system. Note: In order to take advantage of these improvements, you MUST update your password on the game website. We don't prevent you from re-using your old password, but we strongly recommend taking advantage of the new 64-character password length by making a fairly long, memorable passphrase using random words, the benefits of which are described in this famous xkcd comic. In fact, an xkcd fan even created this common word password generator to serve that purpose.
  • For those interested in the technical details, I'll elaborate a little more. The old password system was quite state of the art for the time when it was created (the late 90s), albeit with far too short of a password character limit. The new design is very much like the old one, which was always similar to bcrypt, but is now enhanced with bcrypt's ability to increase the password CPU-cost in the future. This will let us react to the changing landscape of possible brute-force attacks, and increase security dynamically as necessary (and informing our userbase of the changes if/when they should occur). The current CPU cost is designed to take half a second for the game client to hash on a 1ghz NVIDIA Tegra2-based mobile device. We intend to also thread the client's hashing of passwords, to make the computation process less intrusive on the user interface, at which point we may increase the cost further.
  • Beyond this, we've improved the cryptographic randomness of the unique salt used to strengthen each password hash, as well as the nonce used to mitigate replay attacks. These have always been features of the protocol, we've just updated and improved them.
  • In addition, the game server and website still retain the measures to slow down any remote brute-force password attacks, which we added some time ago to mitigate the password length limitations we had at the time.
  • Of course, all of these technical measures are in vain if the end-user chooses a password that is too short and too easy for computers to guess. So please consider making a new and longer password for the game, perhaps a phrase of random words, and keep it unique to Vendetta Online! Don't use it anywhere else.
  • In other news, we enhanced the default settings for devices with the Adreno 320 GPU used in the Nexus 4, Asus Padfone 2 and other recent devices. These settings are utilized on first runtime, so existing Nexus 4 players may wish to delete their config.ini and wgaf.cfg from /sdcard/VendettaOnline and allow the game to re-configure itself.
  • We wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all our US players, and a great weekend to everyone!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.236 (Nov 19, 2012)

  • Added touch-to-select HUD feature to Android version. Just touch the target (making sure no other touch region is touched) and it is selected, depending on your HUD's "Target" mode.
  • Reduced network traffic when logging in.
  • Storms once again appear in Edras and Pelatus.
  • Fixed problem with Trade Guild mission choosing wrong destination stations.
  • Added code to the audio system to fix missing sound on some Windows Vista/7/8 desktop computers.
  • It is also noteworthy that an updated Windows Store build of the game (for Windows 8 and Windows RT) has also passed certification with Microsoft, which enhances the default graphics on Intel Ultrabooks and fixes a number of bugs. It should also be possible to use plugins with this version, by placing them in the /user/your name/AppData/Packages//LocalState folder.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.235 (Nov 12, 2012)

  • Fixed ice asteroid rendering problem on the Windows Store version.
  • Improvements to deal with higher latency connections.
  • Android version should no longer show a black screen if you press Home
  • during the initial loading screens.
  • Added Options button to the PDA menu.
  • The "improvements to deal with higher latency connections" should substantially help with logging into the game and acquiring the dynamic mission data on mobile devices and for those playing outside the US.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.233 (Oct 27, 2012)

  • New visual effects for Starflare rocket explosion.
  • Support for MOGA game controller for the Android version.
  • Upon first launch, a MOGA menu will show what the controls are bound to.
  • The menu is also available from the HUD by typing /help in chat.
  • Our support for the recently-launched PowerA MOGA bluetooth game controller is worth noting. We've found this device to be a very cool way to play the game on an Android phone, providing perhaps the best mobile Vendetta Online experience we've seen to date. We have no vested interest in their success, this referral stems purely from our usage and impressions of the Moga, and our desire to see mobile gaming evolve to match the technical capabilities of modern devices. Flying with the controller still takes some getting used to, and it isn't a replacement for a mouse and keyboard; but Moga is a huge improvement over a touchscreen, and superior (in my opinion) even to the Xperia Play.
  • We hope you like the new Starflare rocket effects. We have some more improved effects in the works that were actually patched into the game tonight, but we need to do a bit more development before they can become visible in the game.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.231 (Oct 18, 2012)

  • New visual effects for Mining Beams.
  • Fixed Linux joystick calibration menu.
  • Fixed rare "invincible" Hive Queens.
  • Fixed common case where Linux crash-reporter would fail to appear.
  • Orun Collectors in the training sector no longer leave.
  • Anyone involved in mining should see a pretty drastic improvement in the related visual effects, marking the latest graphical update to the game. We think the new effect is pretty cool, and thus far the feedback as been very positive from all of you as well.
  • The engine threading updates are still ongoing, we hit a few snags that have further delayed the tentative initial release, hopefully we'll be seeing them on Friday.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.230 (Oct 6, 2012)

  • New icons for mission categories.
  • New visual effects for the Charged Cannon.
  • Fixed Joystick calibration menu on Mac version.
  • Fixed crash on Android version when attemping to see what commands the accelerometer is bound to in the console.
  • This update debuts the new icons for mission categories, which are intended to be stylistically consistent with those we recently added for station classes. The visual effects for the Charged Cannon have also been modestly improved. Moving forward, we'll be continuing to improve effects and other visual aspects, making more significant and graphically intensive improvements as time goes on.
  • Gameplay changes and bugfixes are also coming, but are still being delayed by a need to wrap up some of the major architectural work we undertook this past summer. Hopefully the updated game engine will debut this coming week on a limited selection of platforms, bringing with it improved scalability, and openig the door for a lot of future gameplay, content, and graphical improvements.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.229 (Sep 29, 2012)

  • Added station type logos that indicate whether the station is a type: Capitol, Barracks, Mining, etc.
  • Added more default joystick configurations for the Android version.
  • When a player flying a capship times out, the players docked to it are no longer killed. They are now launched from the capship.
  • Along with the new factional logos added recently, the new station class icons give a quick view of where you're docked, along with adding a little more cultural coherence to the game universe. We will be continuing to add this kind of art content over the coming months. Next week should include a new weapon effect, as well as a first-generation test of some major engine architecture changes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.228 (Sep 24, 2012)

  • Added faction logos to the respective descriptions in the Faction Standings section of the PDA.
  • Added default binds to the Logitech F710 gamepad for Android.
  • Fixed possible crashes on Android Jelly Bean (requires Google Play or sideload apk update).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.224 (Aug 17, 2012)

  • Enhanced ship explosion effects.
  • Snapdragon splashscreen is displayed when a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor is detected.
  • Fixed a lua error in the off-line Android demo/tutorial.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.219 (May 5, 2012)

  • 'Entering Universe' takes time on your first post-release login, but is much faster from then on.
  • Fixed problem with leaving the gunnery position of a ship while that ship is docked to an npc capship. You are now sent to your home station.
  • Removed Voice Chat errors from in-game chat log. They now only appear in the errors.log file.
  • All finished Border and Hive Skirmishes should now be removed from the mission list.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.216 (Apr 24, 2012)

  • All missions that you can take are now visible, across the galaxy. Each mission shows the nearest station to you that has the mission.
  • Serco/Itani and Valent/Axia factions are now mutually exclusive above Neutral. All players with characters that violate this are given the option to select on which factions they want keep their standings.
  • Temp KOS now persists across logins and sector jumps for 15 minutes.
  • If your ship is jittering while you are stopped, you should now be able to log off without the log off timer aborting.
  • 3rd-person camera now moves away from your ship instead of towards your ship when you accelerate.
  • Capships can no longer dock to small docking bays.
  • Fixed crash on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) when attempting to use a plugged-in joystick.
  • Added 'Route' button to the mission extended description dialog when the mission is not at the local station. Pressing it will create a nav route to the station with the mission and display the navmap.
  • Missions no longer lose their category when they are accepted.
  • Fixed problem with faction choice dialog not displaying properly or displaying with clipped text.
  • Clearly, to our veteran player base, the last few releases have included some quite significant changes. Certain faction standings being mutually exclusive has been desired for a long time; this is only the first step in that factional redux, but a very important step. Temporary Kill On Sight status persisting across logins and sector jumps will make things more immediately challenging for those who choose to behave aggressively at stations.
  • All missions becoming visible from everywhere is a huge step forward in making our game content more discoverable to players (especially new players). But this is only the beginning of our goals for a centralized mission system. Player-postable missions will become available, helping people find one another for specific activities, like posting a mission for someone to help hunt the Hive or take down a Leviathan, or find a combat escort for a dangerous trade run. As player-owned stations become more common, users will be able to post missions to their own stations, requesting deliveries of raw materials for their Manufacturing projects, or simply replenishment of other items to support their guild or common gameplay.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.214 (Apr 21, 2012)

  • All missions that you can take are now visible, across the galaxy. Each mission shows the nearest station to you that has the mission.
  • Serco/Itani and Valent/Axia factions are now mutually exclusive above Neutral. All players with characters that violate this are given the option to select on which factions they want keep their standings.
  • Temp KOS now persists across logins and sector jumps for 15 minutes.
  • If your ship is jittering while you are stopped, you should now be able to log off without the log off timer aborting.
  • 3rd-person camera now moves away from your ship instead of towards your ship when you accelerate.
  • Capships can no longer dock to small docking bays.
  • Fixed crash on Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) when attempting to use a plugged-in joystick.
  • Added 'Route' button to the mission extended description dialog when the mission is not at the local station. Pressing it will create a nav route to the station with the mission and display the navmap.
  • Missions no longer lose their category when they are accepted.
  • Fixed problem with faction choice dialog not displaying properly or displaying with clipped text.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.213 (Mar 24, 2012)

  • The ship in 3rd person camera mode no longer jitters at low frame rates.
  • Joining or creating a group when you have an active mission will now tell you to complete or abort the mission instead of immediately aborting the mission without warning.
  • Updated Lua to 5.1.5.
  • The HAC explosion effects are now pre-cached so the demo doesn't stutter the first time it explodes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.212 (Feb 18, 2012)

  • Fixed rendering problems on Samsung Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note.
  • Sector list now properly updates when a player is controlling a turret of a capship after the capship has changed sectors.
  • Storm exit navpoints now appear when leaving a station during a storm if the player logged in to the game and is in the station.
  • Interface work for upcoming faction changes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.209 (Feb 5, 2012)

  • Teller-Ulam mine changes: Timeout increased to 1 hour, damage increased to 15k, capacity increased to 2, reload cost reduced by half.
  • Added ability for capship owner to dismiss a player from a turret through a new turret tab in the Tactical tab of the owner's PDA. Also added a /gunner dismiss "character name" and for lua a Gunner.Dismiss("character name") function.
  • Capship turret list now shows what weapon is attached to each turret.
  • HUD mission icon is removed when the mission ends.
  • Loading screen image when changing texture resolutions is now properly scaled.
  • Fixed screendump /dump command on Android devices.
  • Tegra 3 Android devices now properly default to Super High background detail.
  • Fixed some cases where a player may not receive their mission rewards while they are jumping/warping.
  • New turret weapon: Gemini Homing Missiles. Same stats as non-turreted Geminis. Available in certain grayspace locations, to those with standing and required levels. This adds to the selection of existing turrets: Shield, FireCracker, Neutron MkIII, Gauss MkII, etc.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.207 (Jan 16, 2012)

  • If nothing is selected, the target direction arrow now points to your next jump-out location (jumppoint, wormhole, storm exit point).
  • Next jumppoint sector is now displayed above the navpoint reticle.
  • Xperia Play now defaults to Flight-Assist mode for new installs.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.206 (Jan 8, 2012)

  • Added new 3rd-person flight camera modes for all platforms. It is the default for new Android installs and can be changed in Options->Game->Flight Camera Mode Turn off mouse-look when using them on PC platforms.
  • Added Auto-Fire mode for Android version when in Touch-screen mode for a better new-player experience. Auto-Fire is default to on and can be toggled in Options->Game->Auto Fire and is an optional setting for the 'Activate' HUD touch button. Auto-Fire only fires when the selected target is an enemy ship outside the No-Fire-Zone and is close enough to be hit. Only the Primary Group is hooked up to Auto-Fire.
  • Flight-Assist mode now has the ability to fly backwards. When the desired speed is zero, pressing decelerate further will cause the ship to fly backwards.
  • Android HUD touch regions no longer release when dragging out of them. This mainly affects the Look Direction touch region in the lower right of the HUD.
  • Escort, Border Skirmish and Hive Skirmish missions are now aware of partial damage and will credit players for "assists."
  • Border Skirmish mission descriptions now include an indication that there are players in the opposing mission.
  • Fixed Trade Guild missions to count ore given to the mission as being sold to the station for Mining Badge credit.
  • Fixed a broken docking bay in the Training Sector.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.205 (Jan 1, 2012)

  • Fixed crash on exit after changing certain Video Options on Mac/Windows/Linux versions.
  • PCC Missions now have an optional Begin/End Time requirement that allows missions to be visible for a certain time.
  • Ore taken by missions now count as being sold to the station for awards such as Basic Miner badges.
  • Accomplishment and faction awards now cause the station Buy menus to update automatically so new items are available immediately.
  • Added Front/Rear text labels to Front and Rear HUD radars that disappear when you hit Combat license 3. The labels are also togglable in Options->Interface->HUD->"Show Radar Labels when Combat < 3".
  • In addition to the above, another change should be mentioned that was accidentally left out of a previous patch log. We altered PvP collision damage to do only a fraction of the damage it did previously. Thus, when player ships ram other player ships, it does less damage than when they ram stations or NPCs. This was done to help alleviate a certain exploitative tactic of PvP killing designed to avoid faction loss in monitored or guarded space. The lack of faction loss for collision deaths was itself a previous work-around for a much older exploitative tactic where players could get others to lose their faction by suiciding themselves against their enemies. So, let's hope this latest alteration removes some of the issues for the moment, until some future problem is discovered stemming from players colliding too much (heh).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.203-204 (Dec 28, 2011)

  • Five new PCC missions from Phaserlight.
  • Added support for Sony Tablet P.
  • Bots no longer attack their defend target if the defend target damages itself.
  • Bots that damage their defend target no longer get attacked by other bots with the same defend target.
  • New players are now notified when they fly too far away from the station in the training sector and will be given the option to return to the station.
  • Newsposts accessed from the character selection menu are now properly formatted.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.204 (Dec 24, 2011)

  • Five new PCC missions from Phaserlight.
  • Added support for Sony Tablet P.
  • Bots no longer attack their defend target if the defend target damages itself.
  • Bots that damage their defend target no longer get attacked by other bots with the same defend target.
  • New players are now notified when they fly too far away from the station in the training sector and will be given the option to return to the station.
  • Newsposts accessed from the character selection menu are now properly formatted.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.202 (Dec 12, 2011)

  • Added joystick support for Android 3.1 and above.
  • Added PLUGINS_LOADED plugin lua event that triggers after all plugins are loaded.
  • Fixed another bug with changing channels in Voice Chat.
  • Added experimental Voice Chat for Android version.
  • Added Heyzap Check in button to Android Updater.
  • Fixed problems with switching between group and guild voice chat.
  • Fixed problems with Border Skirmish.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.200 (Dec 4, 2011)

  • Fixed a client crash when logging off while a capship shield effect is active at the same time.
  • Hotkeys are removed from the Forgive Kill dialog so typing when the dialog appears does not cause accidental forgiveness.
  • Removed extra PLAYER_ENTERED/PLAYER_LEFT_SECTOR lua events.
  • Border Skirmish accounting will no longer be incorrect after server restarts.
  • Consolidated bounty news reports now display correct locations.
  • Best prices of addons in ship cargo are now properly updated when jumping between sectors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.199 (Nov 24, 2011)

  • Bots no longer drop cargo if they are not damaged at all by players. If a player damages a bot but does not destroy it, cargo is still dropped.
  • Nation choices are now randomized in the Character Creation menu.
  • Added support for Android devices with PowerVR graphics.
  • Further reduced raw materials needed to manufacture the Trident.
  • Trident Type M cargo expanded to 600cu.
  • Mass of Fused Composite Plating significantly reduced.
  • Bot Drops We had developed a bit of an issue with people "mining" bot drops by having NPCs fight one another, and keeping the sector artificially "alive" by flying out into the distance. This was both troublesome for my ability to create rare drops that couldn't easily be mined, as well as a load on the server (some of these NPC battles are pretty intensive, meaning server resources are being used where no one is actually playing).
  • Thus, the solution was to have bots only drop items when they have sustained damage from a player character. We didn't do that originally, in the interest of maintaining a kind of "equality" between PC and NPC characters, but it really wasn't worthwhile given the later tradeoffs.
  • Trident Changes Hopefully this will make the tridents more easily constructable. We are planning more capship changes, but all development has to be juggled by immediate priority. To get a more complete list of what changed in the Trident Type M build tree, see this Suggestions Forum thread.
  • PowerVR support on Android This is a big deal, and has been a long time coming. We had to put in quite a bit of work to make this happen, along with support from our friends at Texas Instruments (OMAP CPUs) and Imagination Technologies (PowerVR GPU series). Aside from the challenging ARM Mali GPU series (Galaxy SII, etc), we now support the major game-capable Android chips of NVIDIA Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragon and now PowerVR (TI, Samsung). We welcome testing and reports (good or bad) posted to our Android Forum.
  • Happy Thanksgiving! To all our US-based players, and frankly all our friends everywhere in the world. We have a lot to be thankful for. All the best.
  • This will be the planned "release" for this week (barring major bugs). Some of us have family events on different days, and while we'll still be working, this will probably be it for content changes until next week.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.198 (Nov 21, 2011)

  • Avalon Torpedoes now do 15,000 damage and require only 60 energy per shot.
  • Newsposts and Events being no longer marked as 'New' once it is read.
  • Show Station in Login/PDA menus options for all platforms.
  • Added graphical enhancements for NVIDIA Tegra 3.
  • Fixed a condition where depositing credits into a guild bank took the player's credits but didn't deposit the credits into the guild account.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.197 (Nov 14, 2011)

  • In non-fogged sectors, other vessels are no longer visible on the sector list beyond 15km. There is no longer "universal knowledge" of all other ships in the sector, regardless of distance. This may continue to be tweaked and adjusted, moving forward.
  • This has been a more technically complex change than we originally anticipated. We tried to drop it in last week, and then had to revert while we sorted out some bugs. So, please let us know if you see any issues with this particular feature.
  • This is also likely to be a feature that comes with some attached controversy. If you'd like to read some of the backstory, check out the five-page 2009 feature-proposal thread on Suggestions (post don't respond to that thread or revive it). Limitations to awareness have always been part of the intended goal here; after all, with limitations comes the ability to alter those limits through various equipment changes, creating a richer and more diverse option selection, as well as making "stealth" tatics more of a possibility.
  • It's also notable that 15km is pretty far, in the game. We definitely have sectors that have things spread across larger areas, but in most "social" cases (like stations), this pretty easily covers the areas where people congregate. 15km is also a lot of ground to cover to "sneak up" on anyone.
  • Also, as a reminder, changes like this should be seen as a first step, not a final and absolute statement. We welcome feedback, as always. We may need to tweak distances, or change things based on sector content (beyond fog-vs-no-fog). Perhaps have major station sectors with larger "ranges" thanks to some radar-enhancing feature of stations, while more far-flung sectors have smaller and more claustrophobic visibility ranges (plus variability due to addons or ships, or grouping with capships, etc). All these things are possible, and should be duly discussed on the Suggestions Forum.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.196 (Nov 6, 2011)

  • Arklan Guardians now have a one-in-ten chance of dropping an Avalon Torpedo launcher. They will eventually be for sale near Deneb as well, or potentially dropped by certain convoys; this is a first step.
  • All platforms now default to autodock mode. This can be changed in Options -> Game Settings.
  • Single-player Android tutorial now does autodock.
  • Miscellaneous UI tweaks for Android version.
  • Marshall only gives a list of bounties that have logged in within the past year.
  • Bounties are sorted by number of bounties and then the total bounty price.
  • Collector bot behaviour in Training sector have been changed to not attack unless being attacked and to not fly away as easily.
  • Empty bounty news posts now say there were no bounties collected instead of being blank.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.195 (Oct 31, 2011)

  • Drastically reduced requirements for manufacturing the Trident Type M user-playable capship. Various plating, panels and other parts are now needed in smaller numbers. A few additional rare minerals and ores are required, but overall a big reduction in the time and effort needed for construction.
  • Additional cores added to server cluster, further expanding capacity.
  • Added Updater timeout handling to Windows and Mac platforms.
  • Auto Dock mode. Enabled by default for Android and disabled for all other platforms. It autodocks you when you fly into the docking bay without you having to 'Activate' it.
  • Separate error messages for Android Updater for connection timeout vs. connection failures.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.194 (Oct 24, 2011)

  • Updated universe map background.
  • Updated textures for Leviathan, Hornet, Centaur, Wraith, Atlas, Ragnarok, Revenant, and some station components.
  • Updater times out on Linux and Android platforms if the connection stalls for more than 40 seconds.
  • Added different default settings for various Android devices.
  • Consolidated Bounty Hunter news reports to once a week.
  • Graphics Updates - Texture resolution and detail have been improved where possible. In other cases, we simply improved efficiency and compression to reduce the memory footprint and give better performance. The new universe map background blends in better with the overall look of the game.
  • Updater / Game Launcher tweaks - We've made some changes to the timeout behaviour of the update client that patches the game, in an effort to improve network error handling. For the moment, these changes are only present on Linux and Android, but will eventually be added elsewhere. If you have any problems, please let us know via forum post or (if critical) a Support Ticket.
  • Bounty Hunter Consolidation - The automated bounty posts have been saturating the in-game news for some time, and we've now consolidated them to a single post which will appear once a week. This has been done in advance of making more significant use of the in-game news system, for special gameplay, more involved RP stories and other upcoming features.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.193 (Oct 17, 2011)

  • Updated textures for Valkyrie, Prometheus, and Marauder.
  • Expanded hardware server-cluster capacity (number of cores).
  • Improved software server architecture, should eradicate "stray NPC" issues. Please let us know if you see any remaining stray convoy bots.
  • User Keys can no longer be chosen as the main Access Key for capships and conquerable stations.
  • Access Keys should more accurately reflect their active status in the Keychain UI.
  • Added Audio Limiter setting to allow it to be disabled. The setting is located in Options -> Audio.
  • Changed default in-flight action for Android device 'Menu' button from toggling Flight-Assist to opening the Mission Log.
  • When using the Condensed UI mode on Android devices, a reminder about using the 'Menu' button to change game menus is displayed when the station or PDA menus are displayed.
  • Fixed a bug that allowed the capship Tactical menu to become visible on ships without turrets.
  • Improved race track graphics.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.192 (Oct 9, 2011)

  • Xang Xi Self-Propelled Concussion Mine now has double the ammo (8), double the proximity radius (60m) and costs 1/10th to reload (10k per ammo).
  • Turbo sound effect modified to remove slight repeating pop noise on long duration usage.
  • Improved graphics for system backgrounds in Navigation interface.
  • Better visual quality for compressed textures on Snapdragon devices.
  • Made improvements to server stability and robustness, relating to sector startup and shutdown.
  • More Graphics and Asset Tweaks - The system backgrounds in the Nav interface will look a bit different to most, but the degree of resolution will only be apparent by zooming in or with a very high resolution monitor (30-inch). However, even with the maps at four times the previous resolution, they're occupying half the video memory as previously. Plus, we have long-term intentions for these higher resolution assets.
  • Server Side Changes Ongoing - We're still tracking and fixing some NPC related bugs, and re-working the way we handle certain types of database access. You should not be seeing any more "stuck" sectors, as we had pop up in the last week (this was an unintended side-effect of debugging the convoy problem). Please let us know if you see any problems, and use the Support Ticket system if you need to reach us more quickly.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.191 (Oct 2, 2011)

  • New and improved textures for the Centurion.
  • Centurion mesh now looks correct on Android.
  • Higher resolution textures for the Behemoth.
  • Texture efficiency improvements to the Trident, Teradon, Constellation, Vulture and Warthog (not a visual change).
  • Higher resolution nebulae for space backgrounds.
  • More memory-efficient startup logos and other images.
  • Some flare, sun, and effect textures mildly improved.
  • Game logo is now shown in loading screen between sectors.
  • Floating crates will now persist for 15 minutes, regardless of sector shutdown.
  • Player-owned capships no longer have any factional docking restrictions.
  • Audio limiting effect is now performed on all platforms instead of only Windows.
  • Music volume setting is now applied at startup.
  • Graphics Updates - The upcoming wide-area release of Vendetta Online for Android handsets (phones) has pushed up the priority for any graphical changes that are generally desired or beneficial in the short-term. We don't want to push 40MB of patches to every new phone person, especially if there are a lot of them, so we're avoiding the issue by pushing the changes in advance of launch.
  • Some of these changes have been requested for some time, others are simply a good idea to improve performance, efficiency and memory utilization (across all platforms). The upgraded background nebulae has been requested for years; the background changes can be a subtle change in some systems, or quite noticeable in others. The updates are most visible with the "Super High" background settings.
  • Owing in part to the modem era in which we started, we have historically erred on the side of smaller downloads, as opposed to using the highest resolution textures or opting for the most performance. The pendulum has swung pretty strongly the other way in recent years, and while we're always going to try and maintain a modest total download, we are now beginning to dial up the detail on some of our available graphics assets.
  • Not all of these changes will be striking. Many will not be noticeable at all, but will be easier and faster for video chips to process. You may expect some further graphical changes in the near future, before we freeze the assets once again and commence our handset rollout.
  • Game Changes - The new persistency of cargo drops is no small thing. It makes a lot of other gameplay possible (eventually), like the caching of drops by users in specific locations, raiding the mining-cache of a hive, or discovering random "treasure". For the moment, cargo is still all treated the same as before, with a 15-minute timeout. Eventually, we would like to roll this into more of a cargo-class based timeout, expiring "trivial" drops more quickly than unique, valuable or crafted items.
  • We're still working on the convoy and NPC related issues that have been reported. We've identified the problem and are working towards a solution, but it's not a trivial issue, so please bear with us there for a little longer. We will apply more resources to ongoing game improvements once this issue has been resolved.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.190 (Sep 26, 2011)

  • Fixed internal Android platform-reporting issue.
  • Added more debugging for Deneb stats.
  • Android client Java crash fixes.
  • The game now warns you if it cannot find OpenSL ES audio drivers on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and above. This affects Galaxy Tab 10.1 devices, as some have that file missing and therefore no audio is heard in-game.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.188 (Sep 12, 2011)

  • The Trident Type M, player-constructable capship, now includes an integrated 2000-meter Heavy Storm Radar Extender (the feature is present on all existing and future vessels).
  • The Trident Type M also now features a 2000-meter Shared Group Radar Extender, allowing the sharing of radar data with those in a group with the capship.
  • PC versions now feature the updated graphical startup and loading screens used on the Android build.
  • "Delete Key" button added the key info interface, allowing removal of keys used for station and capship ownership. Read the Help menu in PDA->Inventory->Keychains for more information.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.181 (Jul 3, 2011)

  • Ship damage percentage should now display properly on player-owned Trident Type M capital ships.
  • Trident Type M turbo drain reduced to 45.
  • New mission: "Intermediate Combat Practice" from Phaserlight!
  • Mission "High Risk Courier Needed" now records failures and will become unavailable if too many take place (along with some other changes).
  • Some weapons (Rails, Posis, etc) now reach much higher trade value peaks (up to 12k for Advanced Rails), with smaller drop per unit sold, but are profitable to sell only at demand-driven stations.
  • Users piloting the Trident Type M can now participate in Ship Chat.
  • Selecting a small ship (Behemoth, etc) that has attached turrets will now target only the ship and not the turrets.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.177 (Apr 26, 2011)

  • Guild Commanders can now vote with the same privileges as Council members.
  • Guild votes now last for 7 days instead of 1 day.
  • It should no longer be possible to create more than one User Key for a given Owner Key.
  • Added a condensed group view for the HUD in anticipation of increased group size limits, but the limit has not yet been changed.
  • Deneb nation scores should now be properly retained across server restarts.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.170 (Mar 21, 2011)

  • New capship stations in preparation of player-owned capships.
  • New offline tutorial for Android that shows players how to look around.
  • Android updater now times out after 30 seconds if initial download fails.
  • Android updater progressbar is now set to indeterminate mode until progress actually occurs.
  • Fixed occasionally crashing sectors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.170 (Mar 21, 2011)

  • New capship stations in preparation of player-owned capships.
  • New offline tutorial for Android that shows players how to look around.
  • Android updater now times out after 30 seconds if initial download fails.
  • Android updater progressbar is now set to indeterminate mode until progress actually occurs.
  • Fixed occasionally crashing sectors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.169 (Mar 14, 2011)

  • When in Turret-mode, the 'Press Activate to leave the turret' no longer fades away.
  • Added the ability to invert the x/y axes of the Android HUD aiming touch region.
  • The Android Controls Defaults button now properly resets the controls to the Android version.
  • The Android virtual keyboard's Shift button now acts as a shift button instead of a shift-lock button.
  • Updated Android's off-line flight tutorial to have the touch regions outlined in green instead of blinking.
  • The Android updater displays errors if there is no internet connection or the initial download fails.
  • Email verification notifications have been reworded to be more consistent.
  • Email addresses need to be verified before support tickets can be submitted.
  • We have also increased the user limit on the primary update server, so many more people should be able to connect before you start to see an update queue.
  • Many of these were much-needed short-term changes and fixes for the recently-release Android build. We have not forgotten the capship content, and we're in fact very much in need of finishing that up and releasing it in the near future.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.163 (Feb 7, 2011)

  • Keychain access menu now shows a full list of access instead of just the first station's access.
  • Windows version no longer tries to warp the mouse cursor when the game is not active.
  • Created new single-player game tutorials, initially for Android, but eventually for all versions.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.162 (Jan 17, 2011)

  • Queens will now rarely drop the Queen Gatling Cannon.
  • 15 new missions from Phaserlight, winner of the holiday PCC Mission Contest!
  • Windows Vista/7 audio system now supports 5.1 audio setups.
  • Key ramping is now off by default. This only affects new installs, it does not change your current setting.
  • Added Guild Voice Chat. Guild members are automatically joined to the Guild Voice Chat channel when they log in. If you join a group, the Group Voice Chat will be active. You can toggle between Guild and Group Voice Chat using the /voicechattoggle command.
  • Android updater no longer keeps the screen on while downloading, saving battery life.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.161.5 (Jan 10, 2011)

  • Removed debug print statement

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.160 (Dec 27, 2010)

  • Upgraded to new version of VoiceChat technology.
  • Fixed ice shaders for Android version.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.157 (Dec 5, 2010)

  • Added basic lua UI support for iup.Image{} for iup.label{} controls.
  • Fixed SHA1 functions for 64bit platforms.
  • Reduced memory leaks in Buddies menu introduced in the previous update.
  • Slightly increased the size of checkbox controls.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.156 (Nov 28, 2010)

  • Three new Optical Sensor manufacturing missions, located in the Conquerable Stations.
  • Bounty Hunter license for a given faction is lost if the faction standing for that faction drops to Hate or lower.
  • Buddies can now be optionally notified of your location. Click the checkbox next to their name in your Buddies list to toggle the notification. A checked box means your buddy is notified of your current location. An unchecked box lets your buddy be only notified of your login status (online or offline).
  • Fixed a lua error when trying to change joystick or keyboard bindings from the Input Options menu.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.152 (Nov 6, 2010)

  • Fixed issues with turreted player not using radar extenders.
  • Two new missions to manufacture Siepos and Prosus Master Computing Systems, available in specific conquerable stations.
  • In-game news no longer shows unusually encoded text.
  • Android version properly handles the case where there is no /sdcard.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.151 (Oct 30, 2010)

  • Milanar, Prosus and Siepos Leviathans now drop a large, hive-specific Data Aggregator object.
  • New Manufacturing mission in one of the conquerable stations, for construction of a Master Computing System.
  • Some manufactured items and hive drops now have a category specific main description, instead of simply "Trade Goods".
  • Turreted players now share any radar extenders that the pilot equipped to the ship.
  • Escorts properly awarded for Dynamic Hive kills.
  • Critical Hive Skirmish Queens should no longer leave the sector, hopefully precluding the "Double Queen" bug.
  • Giving out a Friend Key no longer provides sender's real name.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.150 (Oct 24, 2010)

  • Increased rate of Escort mission posting and leaving-without players. This should result in more (and somewhat smaller) convoys in flight, while the average number of Escort missions posted remains roughly the same.
  • Masses of all Valkyrie ships increased by 100kg.
  • Optimized graphics rendering for all platforms.
  • Killing NPCs now properly give faction penalties when appropriate.
  • New demo scenes for Android version.
  • Volume control on Android version.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.147 (Oct 4, 2010)

  • A problem with Leviathan kills not being counted towards the Levi badge was fixed.
  • The Android tablet flight model was improved.
  • New touchscreen-specific tutorials for Android were provided.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.146 (Sep 27, 2010)

  • The edit controls no longer delete everything inside it if the first key pressed is the backspace.
  • Milanar/Prosus/Siepos MkII hive bots now give XP rewards.
  • Ship cargo is now visible in the Load/Unload tab of conquerable stations.
  • Sell price of items now show up as 0c if the station doesn't want to purchase those items.
  • Added a 'Save group' button in the weapon group tab to compensate for the fact that launching immediately after changing weapon groups doesn't properly save the weapon groups.
  • Fixed a typo in the "Premium Ferric wanted" mission.
  • Added an Android demo mode and the Android updater has been majorly updated.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.144 (Sep 20, 2010)

  • New manufacturing mission and associated item: Merged Cybernetics Array, located in the Bractus conquerable station. This uses one Neural Nodule from each of the major Hives (Milanar, Prosus, Siepos) to construct an element of a station or capship Master Computer.
  • Improvements to orientation interpolation of remote ships. This should be smoother visibly under certain conditions, and also potentially remove some of the stuttering when one is turreted onto another player ship.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.143 (Sep 6, 2010)

  • Mission postings are sanity checked, hopefully preventing any cases of non-functional Hive Skirmish missions.
  • A shader error was fixed in the Android version.
  • A bug with being unable to sell Synthetic Silksteel at stations has been fixed.
  • The Windows version is better optimized due to the use of a newer C++ compiler.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.142 (Aug 30, 2010)

  • New station textures were provided.
  • Hives: Siepos in Serco space, Prosus Hive in Itani space, and Milanar in grayspace were updated.
  • Each hive now has unique Neural Nodule drops, which will factor into "manufacturing" driven gameplay later.
  • Hive problem relating to NPC mining ships attacking instead of mining were fixed along with a hive issue with bots not respawning in the Milanar hives.
  • The frame limiter is now enabled by default and set to 120 frames per second.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.140 (Aug 22, 2010)

  • Gray hive is now called the Milanar Hive, and is made entirely of specially named bots, including a new type of Collector.
  • Many other changes will follow soon, with Siepos and Prosus hives appearing in Serco and Itani territory respectively.
  • Different hives will have unique looks, drops, behaviours, etc.
  • All will play into the Manufacturing (crafting) system.
  • The client now includes a framerate limiter, under Options, Graphics.
  • This can be set to a desired FPS, such as 60, to help newer hardware run cooler.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.139 (Aug 15, 2010)

  • Increased detail and efficiency of some station textures, and many other small changes and updates to support the upcoming Android release.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.136 (Jul 25, 2010)

  • New story driven missions.
  • Removed Border Skirmish turret from Deneb C-10.
  • Ship preset purchase/buyback now connects addons to the correct ports.
  • Players are tagged as tempKOS if they are a keyholder and they damage a turret.
  • TempKOS players are not allowed to dock to a conquerable station if they have an access key.
  • Keyholders of conquerable stations are notified of attack when a turret drops below 80% health.
  • Conquerable station turrets respawn at 10% health and gain 10% every minute for 9 minutes.
  • Conquerable turrets ignore IFF keys if the player is tempKOS.
  • 'Killing spree', 'spy', and 'hydrospanner' missions are now deprecated.
  • Added ability to sort inventory list by item type.
  • Conquerable station guards now cause tempKOS if they are shot by a key holder.
  • Conquerable station turrets now properly use the IFF status of User
  • Keys when the key's IFF status changes.
  • New Manufacturing Missions for the Neutron MkIII Turret, Aeolus Light Repair Turret, FireCracker Turret.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.135 (Jul 20, 2010)

  • This release adds the ability to sort the inventory list by item type.
  • Conquerable station guards now cause tempKOS if they are shot by a key holder.
  • Conquerable station turrets need to be damaged down to 80% before a notification goes out to key holders.
  • Conquerable station turrets now properly use the IFF status of User Keys when the key's IFF status changes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.132 (Jul 3, 2010)

  • New and improved missions were included.
  • The Border Skirmish turret was removed from Deneb C-10.
  • Ship preset purchase/buyback now connects addons to the correct ports.
  • A rendering bug with cargo in space losing their glow when a capship or queen explodes was fixed.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.131 (Jun 26, 2010)

  • Low-priced items that were previously useful for trade XP have been restored.
  • More lucrative trade routes added, particularly in grayspace and nation capitols.
  • Holders of Owner Keys of stations get notified when a conquerable station turret gets destroyed. The notification occurs no more than once per hour.
  • Added an optional 'Unload and Sell All' confirmation prompt.
  • Fixed a rendering bug for Vulturius Anniversary Edition and other ships.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.129 (Jun 6, 2010)

  • Training Blaster and Government-Issued Plasma Cannon shot velocity increased to 145.
  • Fixed a rendering bug with certain textures on the PPC mac version.
  • Fixed navpoint distance indicator flickering between distance and the "Activate now" message and missile lock-on sound not working correctly.
  • Fixed a bug when a new character is created successfully after trying to create a character with a name that already exists; the new character was not showing up in the character selection menu.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.128 (May 31, 2010)

  • The +Shoot1/2/3 commands available to alias and plugins again.
  • Radar calculations are now performed in a separate thread.
  • Linux32 version now requires at least a Pentium 3 and has additional optimizations.
  • Significant adjustments to most of the trade items in the game, in specific regions. Many new lucrative routes opened up, both grayspace and between major Nations. Some historically worthless items may now command high values in certain locations. Route bounceback times also drastically shorter in some regions, and price drop per item significantly reduced in many cases. Changes will be ongoing, and some routes may require a little time before they become apparent.
  • Certain Bot processor cores (Orun, Dentek, Artemis, Guardian) are now valued at Research stations.
  • Removed ability to set ship acceleration from Lua (plugins, aliases). Turbo triggering should still work (turbo-lock, etc). This change occurred due to extensive forum complaints over a recent community-created plugin.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.120 (Apr 3, 2010)

  • All station access keys have been deleted and Latos I-8 station ownership has been reset.
  • Two new conquerable stations added, in grayspace. Other features will be appearing, making conquering and holding all three stations a lucrative prospect. Where are they located? Explore and find them!
  • In statically fogged sectors, the sector list (the "u" menu) now only shows users within radar range, allowing total concealment through use of occlusion and fog. In non-fogged sectors and storm sectors, old behaviour still applies.
  • Friendly Fire restrictions have been removed from all but Nation Capitol systems (Serco/Itani/UIT).
  • Active Players list on website now displays Buddies Online for your logged-in account, and graphs of player populations.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.116 (Mar 7, 2010)

  • Behemoth Heavy Miner MkII now available in mining stations, requires Basic Miner III. Integrated 1000m mineral scanner, 3 large ports.
  • Fix for case causing human-only Hive Skirmish to be started/posted.
  • More reliable reward mechanisms (get rewarded for escorts even if you are warping).
  • Navroute set again when leaving station after death in Border Skirmish.
  • Windows 7 audio driver now properly plays at the correct speed when the audio device is not running at 44.1 KHz.
  • Fixed UTC dates in Events menu and Keychain Menu.
  • Station radar blip for conquerable stations is only visible to players who have docking privileges.
  • A sector message is now displayed when the conquerable station is actually conquered.
  • Giving a User Key through the Owner Key no longer creates a new User Key.
  • Client build number in Credits menu now shows the downloaded version.
  • Added auto-detection and changed initial default settings for certain Intel graphics chipsets, for improved netbook support (GMA500, GMA950, GMA3150).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.110 (Jan 23, 2010)

  • Warthog Mineral Extractor now features an integrated Free Mineral Scanner (Range: 500).
  • Improvements to Game Updater. The game patching system now handles certain situations more elegantly, such as running out of disk space.
  • The current Mac client version is now present in the app metadata, under "Get Info", the Finder and elsewhere.
  • Basic Station Conquest: A new station located in Latos I-8 may now be conquered by players. This is a very limited, basic implementation of station conquest, only for testing purposes. Once all turrets are destroyed, the first person to dock may generate or select an Owner Key for use. Any player with a key for the station will be able to dock and not be fired upon by the turrets.
  • Bounty System Revival: We've brought back the old Bounty system, with a 1-million-credit upper limit on bounties. For now, only NPC-driven bounties may be allocated, handed out by governments for illegal activities, such as killing station guards. You can talk to NPC Marshals in Capitol stations for more information about becoming a bounty hunter.
  • Raptor MkII now available in Latos N-15 (same requirements as Dau).
  • Corvus Greyhound now features an integrated cargo scanner and turbo energy usage dropped to 45.
  • Combat level 4 required to be featured in Duel Rankings. Characters less than 4 may participate in Duels, but will not gain or lose points.
  • Duel Rating Elo k-factor is now scaled by rating number. Players over 2000 (Master) now gain/lose points at half the normal rate, over 2400 (Grandmaster) at one quarter the normal rate.
  • Duel Rating lower limit clamped to 900, only characters above 900 are displayed on the ranking page.
  • Middle Mouse button click now acts as ^v (paste) when an editbox has focus.
  • Sun flare effect is no longer rendered in foggy sectors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.104 (Dec 6, 2009)

  • Small-port Cargo Scanner and Scanner Blocker (available in capitol stations)
  • Fix for convoy traders repeatedly bumping convoy capships.
  • Slower top speed for convoy capships.
  • PCC Mission Editor additions: give-item to-npc, park and drift actions, gave-money-to-npc event.
  • New limited edition Five Year Anniversary merchandise available.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.101 (Nov 8, 2009)

  • New characters can now be mentored until they reach level 3 in a license instead of level 2.
  • Convoy capships can carry cargo.
  • New optimized server-side collision mesh for Queen bots.
  • Fixed a bug that caused sectors to not start up properly under certain circumstances.
  • Optimized sectors so they shouldn't timeout while under heavy load when players are present.
  • Added two special 5-year Anniversary Edition Vultures, access to be granted via upcoming promotion to limited newbies and current players with at least 3 months subscription.
  • Fixed sort order of Corvus Greyhound in ship list, it is now grouped with other Warthogs.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.98 (Oct 25, 2009)

  • NPCs no longer trigger the proximity alarm if the NPC Prox is disabled.
  • Fixed bug with getting stuck in capships when they jump between sectors.
  • Tridents are once again part of larger escort missions.
  • Bug reporter should now run when x64 version of the client crashes.
  • Experimental fix for intermittent client crashes on all platforms.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.97 (Oct 18, 2009)

  • Added options for proximity warning to activate on players, npcs, or both.
  • Fixes for intermittent problems with Training V and other missions.
  • Added debugging info for mac version when enumerating joysticks and other HID devices.
  • Various fixes for Netbooks running Linux.
  • Bots and players now properly show up on radar in Linux and Mac versions.
  • Added a 'One-Off' proximity warning that will warn the first time a ship is seen within the defined proximity but won't warn again until the ship leaves the defined proximity.
  • All asteroids now perform high-accuracy obb occlusion instead of sphere occlusion.
  • Occluded ships no longer show their health in the sector list.
  • Radar Next/Prev selections now properly ignore occluded ships.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.94 (Oct 7, 2009)

  • All asteroids now perform high-accuracy OBB occlusion instead of sphere occlusion.
  • Occluded ships no longer show their health in the sector list.
  • Radar Next/Prev selections now properly ignore occluded ships.
  • Plugins can no longer get ship distances when the ship is occluded.
  • Server-side sector performance was improved.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.93 (Oct 5, 2009)

  • All players and NPCs are occluded from the radar by asteroids and ice.
  • Occluded ships no longer show their distance in the sector list.
  • Radar occlusion calculations are performed in a separate thread.
  • Asteroid occlusion behavior can differ by asteroid type.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.89 (Sep 5, 2009)

  • Improved capship asteroid avoidance logic.
  • Changed static wireframe radar extender effect to a sweeping effect.
  • Changed secondary light source in fog/storm sectors to be the colour of the fog/storm when present.
  • Tridents are now included in the occasional convoy.
  • Turbo Thrust stats now displayed for all ships.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.88 (Aug 31, 2009)

  • Raptor MkII Turbo Thrust (acceleration) was increased from 260 to 300 kN.
  • An Aeolus Light Repair Module (Small port) was added.
  • The game now tracks player repairs for future badges.
  • There were various server-side fixes.
  • A new HD game trailer is available.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.85 (Aug 9, 2009)

  • Asteroid sectors in Deneb now have a disableable turret. When the turret is disabled, a fighter skirmish begins.
  • New detail textures for bone asteroids.
  • Added ice refraction resolution setting for DirectX 9 driver. The High setting uses more video memory.
  • Fixed DirectX 8 driver so it properly fails to load compressed textures instead of displaying white textures.
  • Small optimization for most shaders.
  • Fixed certain missions so they no longer choose training sectors as destinations.
  • NPCs that have logged off no longer show up in the Bar.
  • Fixed problem with DirectX 9 driver that was causing it to not be chosen as the active driver.
  • Fixed crash in OpenGL driver.
  • Significantly improved all crystal and ice graphics.
  • Added OpenGL Antialiasing modes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.81 (Jul 11, 2009)

  • Mining missions now re-appear after shorter intervals.
  • Three new mining missions added: Premium Ishik, Lanthanic, Apicene.
  • New Advanced Training mission added: Welcome to Combat License 3!
  • Updated Queen, Heavy Assault Cruiser and drone textures.
  • More compressed textures to lower video memory usage.
  • Fixed asteroids not showing their textures for Intel graphics chipsets on Linux.
  • Background is no longer rendered when in fogged sectors (faster).
  • NPCs can now enter bars.
  • Fixed client-side memory leak.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.79 (Jul 5, 2009)

  • New high-resolution compressed textures for EC and Raptor series.
  • Re-exported and compressed textures for all rocky asteroids.
  • Compressed starfield textures.
  • 256MB Visual Quality settings no longer enable Texture Compression.
  • 256MB VQ settings also enable Super High backgrounds.
  • New Shader Model 2.0a low precision setting available, mainly for the Geforce FX series of chips.
  • Improved Shader 2.0 graphics and fixed other shaders.
  • New compressed normal maps for Shader 2.0 hardware to improve video memory usage. Non-Shader 2.0 hardware will fall back to uncompressed.
  • Fixed bug where items in local non-active ships were not sellable unless there is an active ship.
  • Fixed major OpenGL vertex buffer crashing bug.
  • Improved texture load time slightly.
  • Initial loading screen now has a percent complete counter.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.77 (Jun 22, 2009)

  • Added Detail Textures to some asteroids. These can significantly increase surface detail when nearer to the object, under some circumstances. Only compatible with Shader 2.0 hardware, or better. See Dau G11 for example.
  • Turrets on player-owned ships can no longer be a part of weapon firing groups.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.76 (Jun 15, 2009)

  • Fixed Voice Chat volume control.
  • Slightly optimized inventory menus for players that have large inventories.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.65 (Apr 2, 2009)

  • Friendly-Fire restrictions removed from all of gray space.
  • More server-side Border Skirmish performance enhancements.
  • Server-side performance enhancements are now used everywhere.
  • Border Skirmish now features live countdown timer in mission description.
  • Fixed HUD component size issues.
  • Improved client-side collision detection in highly active areas such as Border Skirmish.
  • Fixed bug that caused ship radar blips to turn blue when binding a joystick button to a command when the joystick button already had a command bound to it. Also fixed other possible crashing bugs with joystick menu.
  • HUD is centered in the middle 4:3 aspect region on the screen by default when starting the game in 1920 widescreen. This option can be turned on and off in the Interface HUD options menu.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.63 (Mar 28, 2009)

  • Optimized capital ship weapon collisions for large battles.
  • Improved capship collision hulls for Border Skirmish usage.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.62 (Mar 18, 2009)

  • New Ship: Corvus Greyhound, a Warthog Interceptor only available in Odia.
  • One new PCC mission: CtC Information for the Itani.
  • Friendly Fire has been enabled in all of Odia, Sedina, and Bractus.
  • Testing more performance enhancements in Border Skirmish sector.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.61 (Mar 7, 2009)

  • This version adds six new player-created "PCC" missions, created by members of the Player Contribution Corps.
  • In addition, LuaJIT is used experimentally and related performance enhancements are being tested in the Border Skirmish sector.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.60 (Feb 28, 2009)

  • Border Skirmish capships were repositioned more appropriately for Serco/Itani jump-in locations.
  • Friendly Fire exclusions were removed from Latos M-7.
  • Warp in and Warp/Jump out effects now have sound.
  • Targeted ships now show health and shield strength percentage on the health bar.
  • Sector notes now have multi-line support.
  • The mission notification icon on the HUD now jumps further to get your attention.
  • Many other changes were made.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.59 (Feb 21, 2009)

  • Eight new trade routes were added to and from grayspace: Corvus Holodisks and Textiles (Sol/Itan), Manufacturing Tools, Metana Sweets, Oxygen Recycling Systems, Rare Books, Serco Cybernetic Implants, and Textured Vegetable Protein.
  • Extra wormhole turrets were removed from Verasi O-7.
  • Border Skirmish positional and targeting enhancements were made for Teradon.
  • The Mac version's gamma setting now uses the current gamma ramp as the initial values instead of a linear gamma ramp.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.58 (Feb 14, 2009)

  • Reworked training missions for new players and three new PCC missions branched from the Orun Processor tree.
  • Border Skirmish capship positional tweaks were made.
  • The Voice Chat library was updated.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.57 (Feb 7, 2009)

  • New starting locations and a training weapon for new characters and Matrox TripleHead2Go Surround Gaming support.
  • The sector player list sort mode is now saved.
  • Hive Skirmish missions give free repair and ammo refill in Hive Skirmish capships.
  • Border Skirmish capships now start in formation and stay close to their original position.
  • Battle music starts in BS and HS sectors.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.56 (Jan 31, 2009)

  • This release adds six new mining missions available at all mining stations and new enhanced Grayspace trade routes: Betheshee Spices, Deneb Rum, Divinia Spice, Commercial Textiles, and others.
  • Dueling players now show up as light blue in the radar.
  • Border defense turrets now respawn after 5 minutes.
  • Vote Mutes now last for 1 day instead of 7 days.
  • Vote Mutes no longer show how many votes have been cast.
  • A client crash when new items are dynamically pushed into the game was fixed.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.55 (Jan 25, 2009)

  • Five new missions were added, appearing in Itani territory.
  • Seven items now have greatly enhanced trade destinations in grayspace: Silksteel, Consumer Robotics, and others.
  • The EULA now displays the date it was last modified.
  • Mute votes no longer accumulate if the votee is already muted.
  • The jettison menu now uses comma-deliminated numbers.
  • A couple of minor lua errors were fixed.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.54 (Jan 18, 2009)

  • The Jettison menu now shows the best price for each item in the current system and the station at it's located.
  • It updates once per minute and whenever you enter a sector or launch from a station.
  • 3D rendering distance has been reduced to 20km from 60km to speed up rendering of large sectors.
  • Additional voice chat connection information is printed to the console.
  • Corvus stations now show correct license requirements for ships.
  • Many other minor bugs were fixed.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.53 (Jan 10, 2009)

  • This release includes experimental new fog in Dau K-10 and Verasi I-5, Lua version 5.1.4, and fixes for crashes in Windows related to screenshots.
  • Voice Chat now prints connection status and errors.
  • Sound ducking now properly turns off if you are talking while you leave a group.
  • Visual Quality settings are now correctly set and recognized under all circumstances.
  • Video RAM detection was improved on Vista, and many other Windows fixes were made.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.52 (Dec 20, 2008)

  • Demand at stations for mined minerals and ores now increases at a drastically higher rate (over twice as fast for low-value ores, a little less for high-value ores).
  • Storm fog bugs with grey asteroids and when changing resolution/window mode/antialiasing mode were fixed.
  • Crashes on startup with 256MB+ video cards and when logging out with the Behemoth Heavy Miner ship were fixed.
  • All previous subscribers from more than 45 days ago may play for free until the end of December.
  • 1-month MMORPG.com extended trial keys are still available.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.51 (Dec 6, 2008)

  • Pixel shader 3 capable hardware now renormalizes normal maps at render time.
  • The "Renormalize Normalmaps At Loadtime" video option was removed for Pixel Shader 3 capable hardware.
  • Server capacity was increased.
  • Default video and graphics settings were changed for systems with 128MB or more of video memory.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.48 (Nov 25, 2008)

  • "Very High" resolution texture settings are now included and are intended for players with 256MB or more of video memory.
  • These new textures provide fine detail to some of the bumpier asteroids and the like.
  • Additionally, a new "Re-normalize Normal Maps" option allows additional fidelity at a cost of extended load time.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.47 (Nov 22, 2008)

  • This release added a video option to reset FOV and HUD size upon video resolution change.
  • An issue with changing HUD size while being damaged was fixed.
  • Improvements were made to server stability.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.46 (Nov 16, 2008)

  • The "Sell Selected..." menu now includes profit/loss information.
  • The zoom out command now restores the FOV to the previous setting instead of 75.
  • A dialog now asks if the current desktop resolution should be selected as the initial resolution for fresh installs on Windows and Mac OS X.
  • FOV is based on aspect ratio of the selected resolution and HUD scale size is selected based on initial resolution in fresh installs.
  • More F5 HUD scale modes have been added for fresh installs.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.45 (Nov 9, 2008)

  • Players may now "Forgive" PvP kills in faction-standing loss situations.
  • The "Sell Selected" button in the Commodities Sell tab was changed to "Sell Selected...".
  • The size of speed/energy/distance HUD indicators was corrected for wide-screen modes.
  • The aspect of the loading screen and startup splash screen was corrected for wide-screen modes.
  • A trade xp exploit was fixed.
  • An interface resolution bug was fixed.
  • The ship buyback price display when not all items were bought back was corrected.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.43 (Nov 2, 2008)

  • Bug fixes to Training VI mission.
  • Ship view rotation slowed down by half.
  • Updated Voice Chat library.
  • Locally produced commodities are now properly labeled as such.
  • Ships are no longer listed as high-demand items in stations.
  • Fixed killed-by ratio calculation.
  • Added /clear command to clear the chat log.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.42 (Oct 25, 2008)

  • Warthog TD price dropped to 45k.
  • Warthog TD turbo thrust increased from 260 to 300.
  • Valkyrie X-1 price increased to 70k.
  • Added No Fire Zone indicator to center region of HUD. It can be disabled in HUD Options menu.
  • Reduced NFZ of Corvus stations to 1000m.
  • Ship repair and ammo reload are free in Border Skirmish capships for Border Skirmish participants.
  • Buyback ship is free for Border Skirmish participants if they die while in a Border Skirmish sector and homed in a station that has Border Skirmish missions available.
  • Ships repriced across the board.
  • Added defensive turrets to capitol system wormholes.
  • Station storage entries in inventory menu are now colored differently if additional storage is rented or total storage is exceeded.
  • Fixed a couple of lua errors when trying to rent storage space at a station where there are no items in storage.
  • Removed Bots Sighted list from hive skermish system sector descriptions in nav menu.
  • Fixed problem with 'Getting Characters...' menu being shown on top of Survey menu.
  • Additional storage can now be rented at stations.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.39 (Oct 10, 2008)

  • Station cargo limits reduced from 200,000cu to 10,000cu. People with more than this will be unable to offload more items on stations that are over-capacity. Short-term space (docking, etc) is unaffected. While over-limit, new ships can be purchased by selling the Active ship and buying a new one. Station cargo expansion space will be purchasable next week.
  • UIT-hated or KoS personnel may no longer dock with stations of any faction in UIT Capitol systems (Dau, Arta Caelestis).
  • All Nation Capitol stations now have defense turrets.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.38 (Sep 28, 2008)

  • Reworked early-level Centurion, EC and Revenant license requirements.
  • One-time faction standing recovery missions available in Corvus stations.
  • The Vista version will now use the last selected sound driver instead of always selecting the Vista Sound Driver.
  • Vista sound support is now a separate driver. Players using Vista will have to manually switch to it via the 'Change Driver...' option in Audio Options.
  • Border Defense turrets now surround nation wormholes in gray space

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.36 (Sep 13, 2008)

  • New Addon: High-Efficiency Mining Beam.
  • Group leaders can now kick players from groups not created by a mission.
  • Fixed Windows Vista sound issues.
  • Windows Vista Updater is Styles and DPI aware.
  • Added Group.Kick(playername) lua support function to complement new feature.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.35 (Sep 9, 2008)

  • New Courier tree mission.
  • New ship: Raptor Mk II.
  • Capships now eject any onboard players before going offline.
  • Players can no longer /ignore Guides.
  • Temporary ignores now properly removed on logoff.
  • Fixed misc mission log bugs with multiple active missions or no active missions
  • Fixed Windows Vista specific DirectX bugs.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.34 (Aug 30, 2008)

  • Nine brand-new missions for lower level players.
  • New Weapon: Gauss Canon MkIII
  • New Ship: "Aeolus Light Behemoth" variant, 80 cargo, 175 top speed, single Large port.
  • Sector Changes: Verasi O7 has been modified and now has a test of border defenses.
  • New update server and client update architecture allows automatic failover to secondary update server if the primary update server is unavailable.
  • Voice Chat now falls back to default device if currently selected audio device is not avilable. Usually if a USB headset is selected but unplugged.
  • Fixed problem when accepting EULA too quickly causes connecting to not complete.
  • Fixed small memory leak in Mac version.
  • Fixed bug with new mission objective list prevented mission log from being scrolled all the way down.
  • Fixed crash when calling radar.SetAimDirIconColor() in a plugin without a 5th argument.
  • Fixed misc lua errors.
  • Fixed a rare crash on exit in the Windows version.