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Vendetta Online Changelog

What's new in Vendetta Online 1.8.494

Aug 19, 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 1.8.493 (Aug 16, 2019)

  • Player-owned capships are now automatically added to the owner's group and do not count towards the group size limit.
  • Sector notes now include an option for the color of the sector in the nav-map.
  • Added Audio options to toggle the collision and jettison sound effects.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.491 (Jul 22, 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.
  • VO 1.8.491, last week, included:
  • Added 64bit support for Android, requires App Store update.
  • Fixed crash on exit for Android when Voice Chat is enabled and disabled.
  • Some of the visible changes recently haven't been the most exciting (like 64bit Android), but we've had some external deadlines that needed to be met, like Google mandating a hard requirement for 64-bit Android apps in August. Normally, something that would be trivial for us, but because of an external library requirement, it became something that required a bit more time and planning to come together.
  • We intend to push a variety of mobile updates over the next month, bringing the mobile versions "up to date" for another lengthy period of time, while also hopefully streamlining the introductory experiences for new players, as well as rolling out a lot of engine improvements to mobile.
  • There are also other major projects and server-side developments that more directly impact gameplay, which are slated for the near-term. All in all we hope to see a few different areas of content be updated or improved in the near future. Stay tuned!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.490 (Jul 11, 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.
  • Basically, this may be the biggest single improvement in mobile/touch game usability that we've made in a long time. It covers a number of areas, including the discovery of a long-standing bug in the touch control UI, and a lot of small improvements to help people configure things to best suit their particular play style.

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.
  • VO 1.8.486.1 included:
  • Capship hulks no longer prevent you from jumping out of the sector (people incorrectly thought this was a "time delay" in the Unrat sector, for instance).
  • Fixed issue with Android Updater on old devices.
  • VO 1.8.486 included:
  • 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.
  • A number of updates and improvements lately. This latency indicator has been long-requested, and hopefully it provides some value to people, being able to see how their ping compares to that of others, during PvP combat.
  • By putting some work into this area, it does open up the possibility of more elaborate mitigations to certain network-related issues in the future; but make no mistake, a lot of this is complex and time-consuming engineering, with a lot of testing and tuning required. We still have a huge current-workload that's on a fixed timetable, so don't expect us to suddenly change our entire priorities from what we've been explaining over the last year. But, know that it is an area where we're making enhancements when we can.
  • Feedback is welcome on all of this, particularly the new "selection box" visibility stuff on Windows, and the functionality of the Ping Indicator. Please use the Forums appropriately for any thoughts (Suggestions, Bugs, General, etc).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.485 (May 20, 2019)

  • VO 1.8.485 includes:
  • 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.
  • VO 1.8.484 included:
  • 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 6, 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.
  • More changes in the works, but some last-minute bugs prevented shipping some new updates for Windows and elsewhere.
  • We highly recommend that existing Android users switch over to the ES3 renderer, on compatible devices. In heavy sectors it can make for a 7x performance difference, or more.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.482 (Apr 17, 2019)

  • Enabled multi-threaded rendering on all Android versions.
  • New collision sound effects.
  • New jettison sound effect.
  • VO 1.8.481 attempted to include (back in March). Everything in here was released, except the threaded rendering was reverted at the time:
  • 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.
  • Updated explanation:
  • Basically, this multi-threaded improvement was intended for mid-March, but ended up having some unforeseen stability problems. This caused us to revert and hold the release until we could really thoroughly run it through testing on a wide variety of systems and cases, and make as certain as possible that everything was completely stable, before releasing it again.
  • Android players using the "Free" version of the game should see a noticeable performance bump from this update, and there will probably be more to come. We have a lot of plans for Android updates, but Android is also our most-challenging platform, in terms of driver stability and other issues. Thus, we prefer to release a long string of many "smaller" updates over a period of time, and see how each update works "in the wild". That way, there's a more limited number of possibilities if something goes wrong, and issues are quicker to resolve.
  • Android devices have become much faster, on average, since the last time the game was optimized for them, but also much more "capable". It's a little ironic, but as newer hardware emerges, it's usually not only faster in a generic sense, but also has architectural options that can make rendering far more efficient (and thus, faster, or less power-intensive). It's ironic, because one would really wish the "efficiency" features had been in the older chips that needed it more, but that's not really how i
  • So, over the next couple of months, we'll probably be making the Android version quite a bit more efficient, and possibly updating graphics and other areas as well.
  • To non-Android players, understand that this isn't "months of development time" that we're putting specifically into Android. These are features we already have, and we've had for years. We're going to be doing staged Android releases, over several months, but largely of existing changes.
  • These changes couldn't be released previously, in the standard "Free" version, because the OS drivers tended to be too unstable. Thus, we had to wait for Android 7 and 8 to become more pervasive, with their included updated drivers, before we could realistically ship some of this.
  • Other changes:
  • We have a lot more in development than just "Android maintenance tweaks", but it's sufficiently broad development that it's all taking some time to ship. Any time you make a lot more changes, it requires a lot more testing. Bear with us a little longer; you should see some new technology testing on the PC soon, as well as a few other things.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.480 (Mar 10, 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 11, 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.
  • We've been trying to ship this release for almost two weeks, so we're happy this is finally out. I'm sure it will have some controversy, so let me touch on a few points..
  • The change to the Caprail FoV has been in process since September. I was concerned when we made the turret FoVs 180 degrees, that the caprail specifically would be overpowered, and that I had no real way to balance its value as a "single turret" against its new value as an "unified assault weapon". The FoV change was the simplest additional mechanic, but it actually took quite awhile to implement, because the FoVs of turrets were deeply hard-coded.
  • This change was not made because of any specific player, or usage, as I said it's been in-process for quite awhile. But it should be understood that Capital Ships are not yet in a place where they are configurable enough, from the developer side, to be rolled out as assault-craft. Basically, they can't be "balanced" very well yet. It's very easy to make such an "assault" level capital ship quite over-powered, which means they need to be mitigated with concepts like finite ammo, tradeoffs with energy versus shield strength (or choosing temporary shield shutdown) and other factors to make them intriguing, yet properly-integrated into the game. Capships should (sometimes) be awesome and fearsome sources of high-grade firepower, but also vulnerable to a greater variety of Torpedo class weapons, and with their own set of challenges and factors to mitigate their capabilities.
  • We have plans for all of this, and letting people use "turrets" as offensively-aligned weapons was just a quick tweak to see how it would work, and what the ramifications of fully-automated turrets might be. It's been interesting and helpful for this. But, there are very few aspects of Vendetta Online that are not subject to on-going tweaking and adjustment, based on testing.
  • Some people submitted tickets about the turret FoV change, which changed back on November 30th, as "bugs". Those tickets went un-answered because, frankly, we kept thinking the release was going to ship every day, which would clarify the issue, and it kept not-shipping. Sorry about that.
  • The changes to Deneb will hopefully improve the battles. If spectating is desired, we might add a "spectator" mode that one could take as missions from one of the nearby Stations. We'll likely be introducing other balance changes to Deneb, in general, and also greater ramifications to the side who wins or loses. But in the meantime, this mitigation was a starting point.
  • We intend to keep expanding the value and usage of the Latos N2 prototype economy, and fixing things related to that. Much like the Capital Ships, it actually needs more developer-side tune-ables before it can go fully prime-time. We are working on that. In the meantime, things like the Superlight are an interesting test-case, and we're open to hearing more about other challenges and enhancements of the system, via the Suggestions Forum.
  • The improvements to server-side Physics are quite significant, and will hopefully allow us to continue to expand the scale and scope of the game, and should have a long-term beneficial impact on both player and NPC capital ships.
  • That's all for now, Happy Holidays everyone.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.477 (Oct 23, 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 1.8.470 (Aug 31, 2018)

  • Latos D-14 is now more dangerous.
  • Flight stick Throttle axis is now saved properly on Android.
  • Fixed velocity direction indicator API functions.
  • Added further mitigation of spy bots. If you run another type of bot, be sure it stays docked to a single station.
  • Added code to mitigate capship turret firing delay exploits.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.468 (Aug 13, 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 1.8.466 (Aug 1, 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 1.8.463 (Jun 30, 2018)

  • Improved XBox One S gamepad support for Android.
  • Improved deadzone calculation of gamepads on Android.
  • Improved UX when a gamepad is detected during play on all Android VR platforms.
  • The 'A' button on gamepads and the Fire button on other joysticks can now be configured through the Options -> Keyboard menu on Android.
  • Increased detail of asteroids on Oculus Go.
  • Improved multi-threaded performance.
  • Removed response message from group invites, to eliminate information-leak about whether a player is currently on or offline.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.457 (May 2, 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.
  • Hopefully some more joystick and other improvements coming soon, as we continue to clean up the PC version in advance of a Steam launch. Enjoy!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.445 (Jan 22, 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.
  • A lot of changes intended to bring some of the commonly-desired "plugin" functionality into the base game client; also making the features more available to players on mobile, where player-created plugins can be challenging to install.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.444 (Jan 15, 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 8, 2018)

  • New Behemoth graphical ship assets, across all platforms.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.442 (Dec 31, 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 18, 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 1.8.438 (Dec 4, 2017)

  • New Warthog graphics, with much higher polygonal detail and advanced shaders.
  • New Weapon: Capital Rail Cannon, 10k damage, 25 grid power, 25,000Kg.
  • Capital Swarm Missile damage increased from 850 to 3000, missile timeout increased from 25 to 30 seconds.
  • Screamer Rocket energy requirement dropped from 60 to 30.
  • Warthog MkII is now available at Sedina D-14.
  • Fog has been removed from Sedina H9.
  • Fullscreen mode on Mac OS works better with Spaces and switching between apps.
  • Fixed certain OpenGL 4 shaders that were not properly renormalizing lighting calculations

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.437 (Nov 20, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.436 (Nov 13, 2017)

  • New "Debris Test" sector in Latos D-14. This sector uses new asteroid-style debris, as opposed to exploded-ship and battle debris, but in much the same way these objects are physically interactive. The asteroid-derived debris has much higher mass than the ship paneling, as one might expect, but it will move if struck with enough force. We're still optimizing the performance of these kinds of sectors, to potentially use this type of content more widely in the galaxy.
  • Fix for high-resolution asteroid on PC that was not loading correctly.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.434 (Oct 20, 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.
  • Fixed mouse issues when closing the PDA on the Mac OSX version.
  • The buzzing sign sounds are now muted when docked to stations.
  • Added a $2.99 Bag of 250 Crystals in-app purchase product for Play Store and Apple Store.
  • For mobile players, Station Storage rent now costs 25 Crystal per 10,000 CU in addition to credits.
  • Lite mode now adds a 50% increase to the maximum amount of daily crystal from NPC kills.
  • Fixed wrong menu being displayed after timing out from the server the first time the game is run.
  • Updated the initial Tilt/Touch menu on first run to be less confusing.
  • Added warnings for new players when attempting to set up a nav route outside of their nation.
  • Added HUD warnings when leaving your Capitol system for the first time and when entering nation border wormholes.
  • Increased the resolution of the Mic image in the virtual keyboard.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.431 (Sep 12, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.429 (Aug 28, 2017)

  • Items and Ships that are visible in the station menu, but not purchasable by the user, will now provide a more detailed explanation of their purchase requirements.
  • Fixed issue where selecting an un-purchasable addon via the arrow keys caused the 'Purchase Selected' button to not become disabled.
  • Fixed issue with the description of un-purchasable addons showing a "Item will be placed in station storage." message.
  • Added more hulk and space-junk assets, not yet released into the demonstration sector.
  • Updated Constellation hulk collision mesh.
  • Added more types of collidable debris.
  • Fixed possible crash or extreme memory usage under certain circumstances when starting Vendetta Online.
  • Added five new types of physically-interactive space debris.
  • Space debris can now be damaged and destroyed.
  • Latos F-12 test sector updated to use additional types of debris.
  • Capship hulk no longer requires 3000m distance for sector jump.
  • Capship hulk is now dynamically colored to a random color.
  • The additional physically-interactive debris, along with capship "hulks" is expected to help enable quite a bit of new content for the game, but we're still in the process of making everything functional. We do hope to have more extensive testing environments soon, as well as the addition of "physically-interactive" debris in all capship explosions. Yes, we are moving towards concepts like "salvage", but we still have some work to do to get there.
  • Additionally, we have some major work on-going to improve the Mac and Windows versions, in advance of higher-profile releases on platforms like Steam. While the game does currently function on both platforms, the standards of the recent OS versions have changed enough to where it's realistically necessary for us to modernize and update the architecture of our game's installation and runtime.
  • As a result, we're completely revamping aspects of the game's installation and functionality, beginning with the Mac version. The next Mac release will likely be a 64bit-only install that requires OS X 10.9 or newer, drops all legacy support for the PowerPC, and hopefully integrates much better with modern Mac desktop functionality (such as the "spaces" virtual desktop environment).
  • This kind of development is not particularly "exciting" to announce, as it doesn't directly result in big gameplay changes. But, it should make the game more usable for people, and it will make it possible for us to ship the game to large-scale marketplaces where it would not otherwise be allowed. So, this makes the development highly worthwhile.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.426 (Jul 31, 2017)

  • New test-content in sector Latos F-12, featuring dynamic ship debris and a damaged Constellation "hulk". The new dynamic debris can be pushed around and impacted by explosions, and will physically interact with objects in the sector. The new "hulk" objects are intended to be used for upcoming dynamic gameplay of discovery, rescue, salvage and other situations.
  • Fixed buffer overrun that could cause crashes at exit on some platforms, mainly Windows.
  • Fixed a problem with Mac game launchers (if the launcher locks up, you may need to reinstall).
  • Fixed a crash related to joysticks on recent Windows 10 installs.

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 29, 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 22, 2017)

  • 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 1.8.418 (May 16, 2017)

  • Goliath may now be manufactured from the shipyards in Latos.
  • New Ragnarok graphical ship assets, across all platforms except for iOS (delayed there, but coming soon).
  • Older non-manufactured Goliaths purchased through the LTS testing program have been revoked, but their inventories and addons will be retained in the respective stations.
  • All Manufacturing missions will now return components to inventory if the mission is aborted before the current set of objectives are achieved.
  • Fixed possible buffer overrun in multi-threaded renderer when there are a lot of effects going on at the same time.
  • Fixed issue with many effects starting up concurrently when a entering a sector that has been running while empty of players.
  • Input menu should now fit on smaller screen mobile devices.
  • Touchscreen HUD components are now sized and placed relative to a 1920x1080 screen size for phones that are higher resolution.
  • Fixed an issue with the look-around tutorial in the Offline Training Simulator where it stopped responding to input.
  • Added option to hide the touchscreen discs on the HUD. It is located in Options -> Advanced -> Interface -> HUD Settings
  • New Hornet graphical ship assets for Android.
  • Added "Designate Enemy" option in the Target HUD menu. It tags the currently selected ship as an enemy when pressed.
  • Added optional larger HUD touch regions on Android and default to using it on phone-scale devices.
  • Touchscreen analog (left) throttle/strafe region now uses linear input for more rapid response.
  • Touchscreen analog (right) orientation input now defaults to an improved "vector cube root" curve.
  • Multiple input curve options now available for both touchscreen analog regions.
  • Touch input regions now use linked X-and-Y axes for more uniform sensitivity.
  • Disabled input filtering for touchscreen devices, with options to re-enable.
  • Touch tracking circles are now drawn in the HUD touch regions.
  • New "flight/strafe" tutorial back-propagated from "HD" version to regular Android release.
  • All Android versions now default to the Platinum UI skin.
  • Android non-VR font now defaults to NTR-Regular.
  • Removed un-needed "Use UI With Head Tracking" option for Gear VR and Daydream.
  • Improved graphics for Hornet variants, on PC platforms.
  • The old EC-88 is now only available in the Latos N-2 station. Related missions have been updated to indicate this.
  • Fixed potential crash on Android Daydream version.
  • Daydream version now defaults to "look-to-select" user interface, if a full gamepad is detected.
  • VR Cockpit now defaults to Alternate 1 when HUD is not in locked-to-head mode on Android.
  • Moved the radar displays inward and chat display downward when VR HUD is in locked-to-head mode on Android.
  • Added Render Depth setting for VR Android versions. Gear VR version requires updated app from the Oculus Store.
  • Added better error messages when unable to create a new one-click account on Android.
  • Touchscreen strafe tutorial no longer resets when the screen stops being touched.
  • Changed exit timer for backgrounded Android versions to 20 minutes from 60.
  • Added a 30 second progress meter to the radar-look-select VR tutorial.
  • Added a strafe tutorial in the Offline Training Simulator for Android.
  • The initial in-station ship purchase tutorial now uses a custom voice-over instead of the text-to-speech system on Android devices with small screens.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.412 (Mar 13, 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 13, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.407 (Jan 30, 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 1.8.405 (Jan 9, 2017)

  • Gear VR 'Stop Ship When In PDA' setting is now saved on exit.
  • Ships launching from the Goliath no longer scrape the sides of the launch bay.
  • Fixed issues with resetting the calibration of the Left and Right Triggers on Android gamepads (also for GearVR).
  • Increased timeout length of DNS server name resolution to 30 seconds.
  • Added IPv6 Support option in Network Settings to disable it if there are problems connecting to the game server.
  • Fixed lua error when taking missions and 'Mission Text To Speech Volume' audio setting is set to Mute.
  • Android version now defaults to first-person flight mode for new installs.
  • Text-to-speech is now disabled for Training V and Hive/Border skirmish missions.
  • Music and sound effect volume is now lowered while Speech-To-Text or Text-To-Speech are active.
  • Removed extra highlighted gamepad controls in the help menu before the Rings tutorial.
  • Fixed Mission History list control to work properly with controller and/or headset in VR.
  • The selected Nation logo in the character creation menu is now highlighted.
  • Fixed issue with being unable to equip Goliath Powercell to the Goliath after un-equiping it.
  • Fixed issue with preferring IPv6 over IPv4. IPv4 is now preferred on Android platforms.
  • Fixed issue with mission log Text-To-Speech setting not being saved on Android.
  • Internal changes to support new Android APK expansion files for the Play Store version.
  • Fixed issue with power cell sometimes not recharging after jumping into a sector.
  • Fixed issue with text-to-speech and recorded voice-over playing at the same time for the Training I mission on Android.

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.
  • 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 24, 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.
  • Notably, this change was a direct result of recent feedback from GearVR players on the Suggestions forum. Thanks for the input, everyone, and please continue to let us know how this update changes things.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.397 (Nov 21, 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 14, 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 1.8.394-395 (Nov 1, 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.
  • VO 1.8.394 previously included:
  • Mines and cargo crates can no longer be laid inside of asteroids or stations.
  • Players are now moved outside of asteroids if they are found to be inside of one when they log in.
  • Self defense ability is now given to all crew-members of a ship so they can defend themselves. It is applied at the time of the attack and does not propagate to players who dock after the attack, unless the ship is attacked again.
  • Fixed capship station docking bay zone sizes and other misplaced station components.
  • Added Goliath assets for future debut.
  • The Goliath is getting ever closer to production usage, now appearing in automated trade convoys for the first time. We're also putting time into fixing and mitigating issues related to our recent platform releases, like GearVR. We intend to dedicate more time to content and gameplay related changes, as things begin to stabilize post-release.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.385 (Aug 22, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.381-383 (Aug 1, 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.
  • Fixed chat entry while changing sectors in Simulated VR.
  • Enhanced compiler optimizations for both Linux 32 and 64bit versions, potential performance benefits.
  • Glibc 2.14 and Glibc++ 3.4.15 are now required for the Linux 64 version (Linux from 2012+).
  • Large port on the Corvus Greyhound has been changed to a Small port (per extensive Suggestions forum thread).
  • Updated Oculus Rift PC SDK to version 1.6 and included basic support for the Oculus Touch controllers.
  • Improved default settings for the Oculus Rift, to enhance performance.
  • Added Simulated VR support for Mac and Linux.

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 5, 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 18, 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 1.8.369-370 (Feb 22, 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.
  • We drastically updated the Voice Chat system last week, please post any issues you find with it to the Bugs forum. It should be significantly better than at any point previously, but we're still working hard to make it as solid as possible, and will eventually add support to the iOS version as well. We're also looking at expanding the usage of Voice Chat to include large user-created channels; this is something that has been requested for a long time, and we think it will be a bit more feasible with the new Opus codec.
  • Only players with Oculus Rift devices can see the new prototype VR content, but it's pretty cool. Cockpit views and other graphics may become more generally available, but for the moment we're just working through the process of streamlining the VR user experience. This prototype is still missing much of what's planned for final VR release, but the upside is that it's also acting as the testbed for implementing many of the interface and user experience changes that the game has needed for years.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.368 (Feb 1, 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.

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 21, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.362-365 (Dec 14, 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).
  • The 'Continue' button in missions should now always be the default focused button.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.361 (Dec 1, 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 AM

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.358 (Nov 2, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.355 (Oct 12, 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'.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.354 (Oct 5, 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.

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 19, 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 14, 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).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.349 (Sep 5, 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.
  • Please keep in mind that this is very much still a prototype economy model. We're tweaking pricing and a number of other factors. Yes, it will eventually spread to other stations, but we have a lot of tweaking and measurement to do before it becomes the dominant economic system of the galaxy.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.347 (Aug 8, 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 1, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.345 (Jul 20, 2015)

  • Removed older, deprecated method of creating account from within the game client.
  • Other background changes to make possible an upcoming server migration.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.344 (Jul 11, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.342 (Jun 27, 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 22, 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.

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 carg

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.338-339 (Jun 7, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.337 (May 23, 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 4, 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.
  • One of the bigger additions here is the ability to do administrative nation changes, once again. This required adding some custom functionality to our admin toolset, so hand-editing of character is no longer needed. However, please heed the above warnings.. the character's inventory is wiped, so be prepared to lose all items/ships when you change nations.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.334 (Apr 27, 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 18, 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 11, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.331 (Apr 4, 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 1.8.329 (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 14, 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 (Feb 28, 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.

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.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.322 (Jan 26, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.320-321 (Jan 19, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.319 (Jan 5, 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 27, 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 13, 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.
  • The new Trident weapons should open the door for some exciting new combat usage of these fine player-own capital ships. This was a gameplay change specifically requested by the player base, and I'm glad we could make it happen.
  • Additionally, the DirectX 11 dynamic lighting shaders are about 20-25% faster, which should be helpful on slower DX 10 hardware, like integrated laptop GPUs. We expect to optimize this further, but we need to see do some more profiling and analysis. We had hoped to also include OpenGL support for dynamic lighting in this release, but it will have to wait until the next one.
  • Support for x86 (Intel) based Android devices is a fairly significant change for us. X86-based Android phones and tablets represent a growing market share that we want to support. One of these is the new Nexus Player device, which lets you play games (like ours) on your TV, using a special subset of the platform called "AndroidTV". Our game now supports this, but it may still be a little while before the title actually appears on AndroidTV devices, as it requires specific testing and approval from Google.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.313 (Nov 24, 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.
  • Also: iPad owners, if you're interested in helping test the next iOS version of Vendetta Online, then sign up here. This initial build is iPad-only, but future versions will include support for the iPhone and iPod Touch (devices with iOS 7 or better required). The beta testing pool is limited, so sign up now!
  • In other news, we're continuing to develop and optimize the next-generation graphics engine. We managed to get another 25% performance boost out of a new version of the dynamic lighting shader; we have not yet released this shader update, as we're continuing to work on enhancing framerates.
  • Gameplay changes are also coming up, but the rendering engine work needs to be "done" all at once, so we're pushing to get that out of the way.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.312 (Nov 17, 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 3, 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.
  • Please immediately report any major/recurring problems in connectivity or game-login via support tickets on the game website. We've done quite a bit to improve the game's robustness under unusual networking situations, but there could always be side effects to what we've changed.
  • If you have DX10 hardware, definitely check out the new dynamic lighting implementation. But be aware that we intend to make it considerably faster.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.309 (Oct 25, 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 11, 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 1.8.304 (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 18, 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.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.300 (Jul 19, 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 14, 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 1.8.296 (Jun 28, 2014)

  • Added a new Condensed UI Panning feature to the Android version to be able to switch between station menus without the need for the Menu button. Quickly swipe your finger across the screen while in-station to switch between the different menus.
  • Added a new touch-hover feature to buttons around the edge of the screen for Android devices. Touch-drag your finger over tabs and buttons around the edge of the screen to show a large version of what button is under your finger. When you release your finger, that tab or button will be selected.
  • A 'Please wait...' msg now appears when showing the mission list for the first time to show that it may take a few seconnds to update the list.
  • Fixed a problem with allowing players to In-App Purchase an item even though they can't equip or use it.
  • The mission info dialog now includes the name and short description.
  • Fixed a reference to Amazon GameCircle when using Google+ for achievements.
  • Fixed issues with long-pressing the nav menu to add multiple navpoints.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.295 (Jun 16, 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.

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.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.289 (Apr 22, 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.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.285-286 (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 17, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.283 (Mar 10, 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 1.8.282 (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 25, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.279-280 (Feb 8, 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.
  • Pressing X+Y at the same time on the gamepad in Android now displays the gamepad help menu that shows what the different controls do.
  • Dialogs with 'Do not show this again' checkboxes now default to the OK button being focused instead of the checkbox.
  • Attempt to fix clipped screen on HTC One devices.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.277-278 (Feb 4, 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.
  • Players can now leave their capship if they have a flyable ship in the cargo hold. The ship is chosen in the PDA Tactical->Hangar tab. When the capship owner docks to their own capship, they can regain control of the capship through the PDA Tactical->Operations tab. Passengers will experience a short interface update when the capship owner logs out/in, launches from, or regains control of the capship.
  • Capships now stay around for 5 minutes after their owner logs off.
  • When a player logs in and they have a capship floating anywhere in space, it will immediately spawn whereever it was last located.
  • Capship owners will be notified if their capship is under attack. The capship's health in the owner's inventory list does not currently update.
  • While the capship owner is not in control of their capship, it is displayed in the sector list as the custom name of the capship if set, or the owner's name plus a unique identifier.
  • The capship owner currently can always dock with their own capship even if no space is available, so they cannot be locked out of the capship.
  • The same capship access key currently works for all of a player's capships. This will change to allow a different access key per capship in a future update.
  • The Connecting dialog text has changed and now includes a timeout progress-bar.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.275-276 (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 1.8.273-4 (Jan 6, 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 19, 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 1.8.271 (Dec 12, 2013)

  • Mine persistency! Your mines no longer disappear when you log out or change sectors.
  • Because mines now persist, if you get Temp KOS with the faction that owns the station you're currently in, you will get launched out or thrown to your home station if you don't have a flyable ship.
  • Added preliminary Leap Motion support for the Windows version. 6 new binds are available: LEAPOX, LEAPOY, LEAPOZ, LEAPTX, LEAPTY, LEAPTZ; where LEAPO* are the three axes of orientation and the LEAPT* are the three axes of position. When a Leap Motion device is detected at startup, flight-assist is enabled, mouse-look is disabled, and LEAPOX, LEAPOY, LEAPOZ, LEAPTZ default to Pitch, Turn, Roll, and Accel analog controls respectively.
  • Fixed button positions in the one-click login menu for mobile devices.
  • Default Moga binds have changed to be more usable.
  • Changed the default invert mode for the Right-Stick Y axis on mobile gamepads.
  • The D-Pad on Android gamepads can now be used to select controls in the UI.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.269-70 (Dec 2, 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

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.

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 1.8.263 (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.

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.
  • The new Vulture will not be "released" immediately, instead we're going to put off the Release Event until late next week/weekend. The process of patching it into the game took a bit longer than expected, and I'd like a little more time for testing and preparation before releasing the ship "into the wild", so to speak.
  • Linux64 is also testing our new next-generation unified material system, which is experiencing a few issues and will be patched up shortly.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.261 (Sep 21, 2013)

  • Capship missile-based turret fire delay persist properly.
  • Fixed problem with chat entry field on the touchscreen HUD losing focus if Tab is pressed on a connected physical keyboard. The Tab button on the virtual keyboard now auto-completes names.
  • Added Quit confirmation menu on Android.
  • Added option on mobile devices to disable vibration feedback for button presses.
  • Fixed memory corruption bug on certain mobile devices with specific chipsets and driver versions.
  • Fixed graphics error under very specific circumstances that caused some 3d objects to not render properly.
  • Capship turret list in the Tactical tab are now sorted so they are always in the same order.
  • The list of key possessors in the Key Info menu is now sorted alphabetically.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.260 (Aug 19, 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.

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 1.8.257 (Jul 24, 2013)

  • Conquerable stations now require you to stay in the docking bay for 30 seconds before you conquer the station.
  • Capship pilots can now enter and leave their own turrets through the Tactical menu in their PDA. (iPad and Windows Store versions do not yet support this)
  • Offline tutorial is now available to Windows/Mac/Linux PC platforms.
  • It will start on first run of a fresh install and are accessable through the Options menu from the Login Menu.
  • If a Green Throttle controller is detected, the on-screen HUD touch controls will be disabled.
  • PC platforms now use the same button-click sound that the mobile platforms use.
  • Fixed problem of not being able to control turrets when not in mouselook mode.
  • Fixed startup error on Windows XP when attempting to load the Windows Vista/7 audio driver.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.256 (Jul 24, 2013)

  • Fixed black/wrongly colored ice asteroids on OpenGL drivers when shaders are turned off.
  • Capship owners now get Entered/Left messages in the capship's chat room so the owner knows when someone docks/leaves their capship.
  • Fixed a lua error for /key console command if any arguments are missing.
  • Android version now ignores SIGFPE instead of crashing.
  • Android controllers can now be used to open dropdown listboxes (with the 'A' button) to change settings.
  • Fixed problem with not being able to open the virtual keyboard on some editboxes with the 'A' button on game controllers of the editbox was already focused.
  • Preliminary testing support for upcoming feature, TBA.

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.

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 1.8.251-252 (May 27, 2013)

  • Added a new XAudio2 audio driver for Windows Vista, 7, 8 that should work across more hardware configurations. Existing players will need to change to that driver in Options->Audio->Change Driver... but will default to that driver on new installations.
  • Fixed bug where some settings weren't being saved.
  • Targeted Character Info menu now fits on smaller device screens.
  • Account conversion menu now allows for choosing an account name instead of using the auto-generated one.
  • iup.image has returned for use in UI plugins.
  • Improved game controller support for Android (including Ouya). Changed some of the default analog binds for new installations. For specifics of device support (including flightsticks), see the new sticky thread on the Android forum.
  • Added a 'virtual mouse' that is controlled by the left stick with 'A' being the 'left mouse button'. Any other button will cancel the virtual mouse. You can press and hold 'A' to drag items or to long-press in the navmenu to create waypoints. Added D-Pad support in the virtual keyboard. Other controller buttons are shortcuts for different actions in the virtual keyboard. 'X' is backspace, 'Y' switches between symbols and alpha characters, 'L3' toggles Shift, 'R3' is space, 'L1' and 'R1' move the caret left and right. 'A' selects the active key, and 'B' cancels the virtual keyboard.
  • Game controllers can now be connected to an Android device while the game is running and the controller will be automatically detected when any of the analog controls on the controller are moved.
  • Added native support for game controller HID devices but requires an apk update.

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.

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.

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.

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

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.234-235 (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.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.232 (Oct 20, 2012)

  • New visual effects for Iceflare and Sunflare rocket explosions.
  • Linux64 version now has experimental multithreaded rendering and physics support.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.231 (Oct 17, 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.

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.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.228 (Sep 22, 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 1.8.227 (Sep 15, 2012)

  • New minor faction logos in station menus.
  • Temp KOS for a faction was not being applied if it was already active for another faction.
  • Players who damage themselves and then get killed by someone else no longer get a PK assist.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.226 (Sep 8, 2012)

  • New Trade Reparation missions, allowing recovery of standing to "Dislike" with a minor faction for a 20 million credit payment (once per week usage limit). Thanks to TheRedSpy.
  • New nation logos. The new logos appear in the character creation menu and in the upper-right corner of the menus for the stations of the three nations.
  • Fixed a bug with capship menus not showing mission timers.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.224 (Aug 16, 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.
  • Preliminary backend support for Windows RT.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.220-223 (Aug 11, 2012)

  • New accounts now are free to play in the training sectors until the trial time begins. The trial time begins the first time any of your characters leave the training sector.
  • Added an idle-timeout of 30 minutes and a captcha challenge every 6 hours in the training sectors for free-to-play accounts.
  • Added ability to enter promotional keys to the in-game new account signup menu for the Android version.
  • To reduce lag problems, the training sectors are now instanced when they fill up too many players or the load exceeds a certain value.
  • Fixed audio problems on Windows Vista/7 for surround or 7.1 (anything more than stereo) setups.
  • Your home station info is now properly updated when your home station is forcefully set by the server.
  • Added subscription support through the Google Play Store. Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) or higher and an app update is required for full support.
  • It is now possible to create new accounts for the game within the game client on Android.
  • Fixes for the in-appp account creation captcha. It now uses lower-case letters.

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 1.8.217 (Apr 30, 2012)

  • Added a progress indicator in the "Entering Universe..." dialog.
  • The F9 camera mode toggle now toggles through the 3rd person modes in the correct order.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.214-216 (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 1.8.210-212 (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 4, 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 1.8.208 (Feb 4, 2012)

  • Fixed problem with ice asteroids on Tegra 3 devices running Android 4.0
  • such as the Transformer Prime.
  • Tegra 3 devices now render in 32bit mode

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 7, 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 3, 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".

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.203-204 (Dec 27, 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 1.8.201-202 (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 3, 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 25, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.197 (Nov 12, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.195 (Oct 29, 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 25, 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 15, 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 1.8.191 (Oct 8, 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.190 (Sep 30, 2011)

  • Added more debugging for Deneb stats.
  • Android client Java crash fixes.
  • Thr 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 1.8.189 (Sep 17, 2011)

  • Increased max resolution of the game icon for Windows. You may need to force the desktop to refresh for it to take effect.
  • Fixed an issue relating to certain types of NPCs becoming lost or stuck under certain circumstances.
  • Added further debugging to help detect and detail any other issues relating to persistent and convoy NPCs on the server.
  • Improved game-launcher resiliency and error handling on Xperia PLAY (and Android in general).
  • Fixed Voice Chat.

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 2, 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 23, 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 1.8.176 (Apr 18, 2011)

  • Prototype player-owned capship is now constructible through a series of missions.
  • New versioning system for plugins and interface replacements. See the PCC Lua Forum for more information.
  • Added Capship Access Key dialog when launching from a station with a capship for the first time. There's a time limit of 1 minute to choose an access key before a new one is automatically generated. Once a capship access key is chosen, it cannot be changed and will apply to all your capships. This is subject to change in the future.
  • Unknown binds no longer get deleted from the wgaf.cfg when the game exits.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.174 (Apr 9, 2011)

  • Added Secondary Fire option for Android Tablets, as a selectable option for the Mission/Nav button on the right-side of the tablet UI (hold down until all options appear, then select Fire 2).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.169 (Mar 12, 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.

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 20, 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 1.8.160 (Dec 23, 2010)

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

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.157 (Dec 6, 2010)

  • Intel Mac Updater will no longer crash after this update.
  • 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 27, 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 1.8.153 (Nov 13, 2010)

  • Hive skirmish sectors reduce faction penalties by three quarters. Faction gains are unaffected.
  • Hive Observers now occasionally drop Milanar, Prosus or Siepos Observer Optics.

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 25, 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 1.8.148 - 1.8.149 (Oct 16, 2010)

  • Border skirmish bots now give weapon XP.
  • All ships now use the same storm exit point.
  • Fix for crash when buying back or swapping out addons.
  • Removed debug print.
  • Selectable targeting mode for Android version.
  • Updates to Android installer and touch-screen interface.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.147 (Oct 2, 2010)

  • Fixed Levi kills not being counted towards Levi badge.
  • Improved Android tablet flight model.
  • New touchscreen-specific tutorials for Android.

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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.144 (Sep 18, 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. Further improvements to interpolation will be forthcoming.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.143 (Sep 4, 2010)

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

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.142 (Aug 30, 2010)

  • Modified Hives: the Siepos hive now spreads through Serco territory, while the Prosus hive appears in the Itani region of space. Milanar presence continues in grayspace.
  • Each hive now drops unique Milanar, Prosus and Siepos Neural Nodule items, which will factor into "manufacturing" driven gameplay down the road. These nodules are easily destroyed in combat, and as a result are only a 1-in-10 chance of dropping from most hive members. Only the Leviathan, with its larger neural array, is guaranteed to drop some nodules.. but not very many.
  • Fixed hive problem relating to NPC mining ships attacking instead of mining.
  • Fixed hive issue with bots not respawning in the Milanar hives.
  • Frame limiter is now enabled by default, set to 120 frames per second.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.140 (Aug 30, 2010)

  • Modified Hives: the Siepos hive now spreads through Serco territory, while the Prosus hive appears in the Itani region of space. Milanar presence continues in grayspace.
  • Each hive now drops unique Milanar, Prosus and Siepos Neural Nodule items, which will factor into "manufacturing" driven gameplay down the road. These nodules are easily destroyed in combat, and as a result are only a 1-in-10 chance of dropping from most hive members. Only the Leviathan, with its larger neural array, is guaranteed to drop some nodules.. but not very many.
  • Fixed hive problem relating to NPC mining ships attacking instead of mining.
  • Fixed hive issue with bots not respawning in the Milanar hives.
  • Frame limiter is now enabled by default, set to 120 frames per second.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.140 (Aug 21, 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.
  • 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. It currently defaults to 0 (unlimited). The defaults will probably change to 120 once we know the feature works well.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.139 (Aug 14, 2010)

  • Increased detail and efficiency of some station textures.
  • Many other small changes and updates to support the Android version.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.138 (Aug 7, 2010)

  • Serco Vulture Guardian turbo drain reduced from 60 to 56.
  • Classes for recently-added bot drops changed from "Special" to "Commodity" to support normal trade behaviour.
  • Synthetic Silksteel is now dropped by static hive bots (different bots drop more/less often).
  • New Manufacturing Mission for Latos Conquerable Station: Fused Composite Plating.
  • New Manufacturing Mission for Pelatus Conquerable Station: Fluid Formable Silksteel Alloy.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.137 (Jul 31, 2010)

  • New Manufacturing Mission for the Neutron MkIII Turret
  • New Manufacturing Mission for the Aeolus Light Repair Turret
  • New Manufacturing Mission for the FireCracker Turret

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.136 (Jul 24, 2010)

  • New Manufacturing Mission for the Neutron MkIII Turret
  • New Manufacturing Mission for the Aeolus Light Repair Turret
  • New Manufacturing Mission for the FireCracker Turret

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.135 (Jul 20, 2010)

  • 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 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 1.8.134 (Jul 12, 2010)

  • 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 90% 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 have been deprecated.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.132 (Jul 3, 2010)

  • New and Improved missions, courtesy of CrazySpence and Phaserlight.
  • Removed Border Skirmish turret from Deneb C-10.
  • Ship preset purchase/buyback now connects addons to the correct ports.
  • Fixed rendering bug with cargo in space losing their glow when a capship or queen explodes.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.131 (Jun 28, 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 5, 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 29, 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 includes additional optimizations.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.128 (May 29, 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 includes additional optimizations.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.127 (May 26, 2010)

  • 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. Depending on feedback, we may be able to come up with an improved solution next week, but this appeared to be the best option on short notice.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.126 (May 8, 2010)

  • Only those taking a given Border Skirmish mission may dock with that mission's capital ships.
  • If you destroy a player or NPC in Border Skirmish, your standing with that side's faction will be reduced a small amount.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.125 (May 3, 2010)

  • Warthog TD substantially improved: armor, thrust, braking, turbo, etc. Reduced cargo capacity and slightly increased turbo energy usage.
  • Consumer Robotics, Civilian Textiles, and Personal Defense Systems now command significantly higher peak prices and demand rates in Odia.
  • Increased payment for participation in Deneb War. Per-kill increased from 1500c to 5000c, overall skirmish success bonus increased by 4X.
  • Owner and User keys listed in your keychain now have an indicator to show whether the key is associated with a station.
  • Conquerable station turrets now recognize the new owners without the sector needing to restart.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.124 (Apr 24, 2010)

  • Escort mission rewards are now reduced in proportion to how much of the mission you spend docked.
  • Nation-specific Constellations in War Convoys (not equipped with swarm missiles).
  • Significantly increased XP rewards for Guardians.
  • Slightly increased XP rewards for Overseers.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.123 (Apr 17, 2010)

  • Increased Conquerable Station Turret Armor by 25% and Respawn time by 50%.
  • Fixed bug with guild creation that prevented 2 letter acronyms.
  • Fixed Lua error with muting group members in voice chat.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.122 (Apr 12, 2010)

  • New Friend Key promotion. You can send a key to a friend that they can apply to a trial account to receive 2 free weeks of time. You are given 1 additional key per month that you are subscribed up to a total of 5 keys available to give out at a time. The keys are given out through the client interface and is located in Your PDA under the Comm tab. The new tab is labeled Friend Keys and shows all the keys you've given out and whether each key was been redeemed. Once you send a friend key, your friend will receive an email notification with the actual key and instructions on how to use it. Note: This has nothing to do with in-game station access keys.
  • War Convoy bots now guard a spot on or near the wormhole, and should target properly (just hated for now).
  • War Convoy blockade locations for the Itani side have been changed (Ukari A-10 w/ caps, B-5 w/o). Their numbers will also persist between server restarts. Other improvements to come.
  • Removed console debug message.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.121 (Apr 7, 2010)

  • War Convoys! New series of blockade convoys that are spawned daily based on the win/loss ratio of respective nations in Deneb. The convoys travel through grayspace to blockade their enemy's entrance into grayspace.
  • Hive Skirmish missions no longer show up in conquerable stations.
  • Fixed sector note not being able to be cleared if opened via Add Note shortcut.
  • Plugin update: All PLAYER_ENTERED_SECTOR events should have matching PLAYER_LEFT_SECTOR events.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.120 (Mar 27, 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.
  • Changed lua function SplitStationID() to SplitLocationID(). This affects some plugins. A simple search and replace in the plugins folder will fix the problem.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.119 (Mar 20, 2010)

  • Changed random number generator for new character name creation. It is seeded once a second, so new names can only be created once a second.
  • Colliding with other ships will no longer cause their radar blips to change from green to red.
  • Fixed a CTF race condition.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.118 (Mar 15, 2010)

  • Unaligned Station guards now help defend the conquerable station.
  • Convoys really have cargo in them now. No, really, we mean it this time.
  • Fixed visual mission timer on HUD. It now counts down to zero and stays there until the mission ends. If the timer was created outside of a mission, it will go away when it reaches zero.
  • Textured line effects now have a minimum screen size so they don't glitter as much when they are far away. This affects things like ship exhaust and some weapon effects including swarm missile trails and mining beam effects.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.117 (Mar 9, 2010)

  • Manufacturing the Teller-Ulam Mine in the Conquerable Station now has reduced requirements (Queen Processors instead of Queen Matrix). Mission can only be taken twice per day.
  • Missile turrets around Conquerable Stations now do less damage and have a lower top speed. Other missile turrets are unaffected.
  • Web page submission system for in-game player-created events. See http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/events for more information.
  • Audio system now has a limiter to prevent clipping when too many loud sounds are played at the same time.
  • Audio system resamples the sound to the sampling rate that the OS reports. This only affects Windows Vista and Windows 7.
  • Fixed 'Empty Convoy' bug.
  • Fixed a bug where turreted ship weapon group tab would permanently hide the turret ports.
  • Fixed a bug where taking an escort mission, launching, and then changing the nav route would cause the jump navpoint to be too near the station.
  • Fixed a bug where two people would try conquering a station at the same time and they're both let in but only one can set a key.
  • Station conquer timer is now shown to players who enter the sector after the 2 minute countdown already started.
  • Conquerable station docking bay no longer says 'Press the Activate key to dock' during the time the station isn't conquerable.
  • When in a capship turret, the 'Target too far to scan' message is no longer displayed on the HUD.
  • High-density sectors in Deneb can no longer have storms appear in them.
  • Fixed a bug where Intel GMA950-based PCs running Windows XP would default to showing the station in the menu instead of hiding it for performance reasons.
  • Fixed a bug where the player who conquered a station wouldn't get free ship repairs until they redocked.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.116 (Feb 27, 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.
  • Changed added auto-detection and changed initial default settings for certain Intel graphics chipsets, for improved netbook support (GMA500, GMA950, GMA3150).

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.115 (Feb 22, 2010)

  • Player-owned ships with turrets no longer accumulate area-effect damage based on the number of turrets on the ship.
  • Vista Audio driver under Windows 7 tries to set the audio playback rate to 44100 Hz.
  • Events/Newspost menu is wider so longer titles aren't clipped.
  • 30 second logoff timer is now properly enabled when a private message is received from someone in the same sector regardless of whether the sender is ignored.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.114 (Feb 15, 2010)

  • New Events and Newsposts menu shows Game Events that are scheduled and the last five Newsposts that are on the web site. The menu will auto-display whenever a new Event or Newspost exists and there is an option to disable auto-display.
  • Three new Axia-based missions, located in Verasi, courtesy of Phaserlight.
  • The Conquerable Station now has a unique Manufacturing mission for the Teller-Ulam Mine.
  • The Conquerable Station conquering timer is now displayed on the HUD similar to mission timers.
  • Added threat-to-shields logic, enabling more responsive queen (and other shielded-ship) defense.
  • Fixed bug causing old instances of the Border Skirmish advertising-mission to remain posted.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.113 (Feb 8, 2010)

  • New Keychain tab in Inventory tab of PDA to manage your keys. Suggestions to improve usability are always welcome.
  • There is now a restriction of one User Key per Owner Key.
  • Slight changes to /key command. /key user access command no longer takes a sector name. It instead only works when you are docked to the station you control.
  • Fixed defense behavior of static queen escorts.
  • Fixed a recently-introduced bug with Border Skirmish scheduling.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.112 (Feb 1, 2010)

  • New user keys and key command. Type /key for an explanation. A user interface to manage keys is forthcoming.
  • Hive skirmishes no longer appear in Latos I-8.
  • Fixed capship drifting problem in Border Skirmish.
  • Fixed Border Skirmish advertising mission.
  • Fixed conquerable Station turret targeting.
  • Improved bot aggressiveness behavior.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.111 (Jan 26, 2010)

  • EC-89 and free battery are now available at the conquerable station so players cannot strand themselves there.
  • Conquerable station defense turret hitpoints have been quadrupled.
  • Conquerable station defense turrets now respawn after 10 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
  • Conquerable station defense turrets should now try to fly back to their position if knocked away.
  • There is a 2 minute wait period between when all conquerable station defense turrets are destroyed and the station can be docked to in order for the station to be conquered.
  • Improvements to conquerable station defense turret targeting system.
  • Trade Guild mission no longer disconnects the player when the mission is taken.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.110 (Jan 23, 2010)

  • 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. The console command /listkeys can be used to show the current keychain, which each have a number next to them. Then /giveownerkey (key-number) can be used to give an owner key to another player. 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.
  • 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.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.109 (Jan 9, 2010)

  • 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 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 1.8.108 (Jan 4, 2010)

  • Dueling badges are now awarded based on Duel Rating. "Duellist" at 1600, "Master Duellist" at 2000, "Grandmaster Duellist" at 2400, and Legendary Duellist" at 2800.
  • Race track badges and credits are awarded on a monthly basis to players with the best track times for the previous month. See earlier newspost for details.
  • Fixed bug with the Search feature of the Duel Stats page.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.107 (Dec 28, 2009)

  • 64bit and 32bit Linux copy-paste with CTRL-C in edit boxes updated to support X Selection event protocol. It now works with other X apps like xterm.
  • Also, there is an Event planned for later today.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.106 (Dec 19, 2009)

  • Server-side sector load time optimizations. Further improvements can also be expected here, as we move towards larger and more complex sectors.
  • High Density Sectors. Most sectors in the central ring of Deneb (not those with stations) have been replaced. These sectors were already statically fogged some time ago, in anticipation of the increased object count. The new sectors have much higher crystal density, and represent the first production test case for the "Universe Redux" process. Future sectors will be even larger and denser, but more development work remains before this can happen.
  • VO "Happy Holidays to Long Lost Vets" promotion: All un-subbed accounts that were last subbed in September or earlier may play through Jan 1st!

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.104 (Dec 7, 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 in Vendetta Online 1.8.101 (Nov 9, 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 if two players entered it simultaneously.
  • Optimized sectors so they shouldn't timeout while under heavy load when players are present.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.99 (Oct 30, 2009)

  • Sectors should no longer time out.
  • Fixed a UI bug that sometimes showed the wrong ship sell price.
  • Accomplishments tab should no longer reset the selected badge when the tab gets updated.
  • "Microsoft Strategic Commander Controller" should now work on the Mac version.

New in Vendetta Online 1.8.79 (Jul 9, 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.