VO 1.8.212 includes:

- 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.

VO 1.8.211 included:
- Added support for Arm Mali devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7. Support is currently only available through the sideload apk because the Android Market does not show VO as being available for those devices.

VO 1.8.210 included:
- Added ice effect for Kindle Fire.
- Fixed lua error when client connection times out when trying to create a new character.

Aside from this, I should recap some other developments from the last two weeks:

Vendetta Online released for the Kindle Fire

That's right, Amazon's wildly popular 7" Android tablet now has Vendetta Online available in the AppStore as a free download. This version includes some special graphics work to make things look as cool as possible on the Kindle Fire. The device actually runs the game pretty well, if you have one be sure and check it out. As with all our other ports, it logs into the same game universe, so you can pretty seamlessly switch from PC to Tablet to Phone and back.

Ongoing development of Faction System changes

Tonight's release includes some as-yet invisible menus and interfaces specific to the upcoming faction changes. The updated faction system will include degrees of mutual exclusivity to faction standing, meaning that one will no longer be able to maintain the highest standings with two factions that hate one another. These newly-added menus will permit the user to select, for any given character, which of the mutually-exclusive standings to keep at the higher level. This is primarily just to convert us over to the new system, once it is in place people will be expected to be aware of their relative standing changes.

More involved information about the mechanics of the new faction system and implementation specifics will be posted to Suggestions before the changes actually go into effect.

A nice new article about Vendetta Online on Massively

In a very unexpected and cool turn of events, a new article on Vendetta Online recently appeared on Massively. The reviewer appeared to enjoy his time in our galaxy, appreciating our strengths while also acknowledging of some of our weaknesses. Check out the article, it's worth a look.

VO 1.8.209 includes:

- 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.

VO 1.8.208 included:

- 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

Please let us know how the various capship changes and turret weapons are working in practice. The factional change is still the top priority for major gameplay (perhaps next week?), but didn't make it in for this release.

As always, thanks for your support, and please post any issues to Bugs.

VO 1.8.207 includes:

- 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.

VO 1.8.206 includes:

- 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.

A Few Comments:

The addition of "reverse" to Flight Assist has been requested for a very long time, and we're happy to finally add it for all those who favor this control method.

Third-person flight might not seem that useful to experienced people on the PC, and aside from the control of capships, first-person remains the best option (especially for combat). However, for new users on phones and tablets, the display of the ship helps bring across a certain rapid understanding of distances and helps make the overall experience a little more intuitive. Playing VO on a touchscreen is no picnic to begin with, so these improvements are pretty meaningful. It is notable that there are actually two different 3rd-person control models available, which can be selected from the Game area of the Options menu.

The addition of auto-fire may cause controversy in some circles. Generally we aren't big on automating the control of weapons or flight. VO is a very skill-driven game, and we prefer to stay pretty close to the recipe. For touchscreens, however, some improvement needed to be found, to let people play with only two inputs (fingers/thumbs). Auto-fire allows one to aim with one hand, strafe/accel/decel with the other, while leaving the firing up to the client when the ship is properly pointed to the target's leadoff reticle. The improvement in combat usability on a tablet is pretty dramatic. One can actually do some low-level botting of collectors and the like. Touchscreen devices will still be hilariously crushed in PvP interactions, this is no real "advantage"; and in any case, I don't think serious PC pilots would use the feature anyway (auto-fire overuses energy by firing constantly at the maximum rate, and is generally wasteful and inflexible). But as far as basic PvE, the ability to take on some bots with a touchscreen and actually succeed, it is a night and day difference.

The Escort and Skirmish missions properly recording "Assists" is a big improvement in the fairness of allocating XP and the like. Plus, it is also another step towards having a lot of cool stats on the website, showing off the Skirmish skills of pilots.

Border Skirmish missions now indicating when people are playing them will hopefully make it a bit easier to locate other player-pilots within the Skirmish framework.

Thanks all, please report any issues you find on the Bugs forum (or the Android forum for Android-specific stuff).

VO 1.8.205 includes:

- Fixed crash on exit after changing certain Video Options on Mac/Windows/Linux versions.
- PCC Missions now have an optional Begin/End Time requirement that allows missions to be visible for a certain time.
- Ore taken by missions now count as being sold to the station for awards such as Basic Miner badges.
- Accomplishment and faction awards now cause the station Buy menus to update automatically so new items are available immediately.
- Added Front/Rear text labels to Front and Rear HUD radars that disappear when you hit Combat license 3. The labels are also togglable in Options->Interface->HUD->"Show Radar Labels when Combat < 3".

In addition to the above, another change should be mentioned that was accidentally left out of a previous patch log. We altered PvP collision damage to do only a fraction of the damage it did previously. Thus, when player ships ram other player ships, it does less damage than when they ram stations or NPCs. This was done to help alleviate a certain exploitative tactic of PvP killing designed to avoid faction loss in monitored or guarded space. The lack of faction loss for collision deaths was itself a previous work-around for a much older exploitative tactic where players could get others to lose their faction by suiciding themselves against their enemies. So, let's hope this latest alteration removes some of the issues for the moment, until some future problem is discovered stemming from players colliding too much (heh). Until then..

Have a happy new year, everyone!

VO 1.8.203-204 include:

- 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.

Holiday Gift to Past Subscribers

As has also been posted via our Newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, and other outlets.. past subscribers whose accounts expired before October 1st of this year, may now play for free through January 1st! Have fun!

Vendetta Online for Android Phones

For any who missed it, the official press release went out this past week, announcing Vendetta Online support for many Android phones (Tegra, Snapdragon, PowerVR), as well as the recently added Joystick and Voice Chat support in the Android version.

VO 1.8.201-202 include:

- 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.

On the face of it, this may not seem like that significant of a release. However, a few of the things added over the past week have some meaningful ramifications:

Joysticks for Android - The biggest complaint about playing VO on Android mobile devices is usually the control mechanics, especially when one attempts combat. Our touch interfaces will always be improving and evolving, but there's only so much that one can do with a touchscreen: it gives no tactile feedback (you don't "know" you've pressed the button by feeling it depress downward.. haptic shakes and things are not the same), and it gives no positional feedback (you don't know that your thumb is in the right place by the "feel" of the button). The custom interface on the Xperia PLAY does a little better in this regard, and keyboard-mode has always worked pretty well (Asus Transformer tablets, etc). But for the average phone or tablet owner, there have been limited options for good gameplay control.

Hopefully, joystick support will be a solid step towards improving that situation. General support for joysticks and gamepads was added in Honeycomb 3.1, only available to tablets, and unfortunately was only added for java-based Android "activities" (we prefer to use "native" activities, also something added in Gingerbread and Honeycomb, for potentially improved performance and reduced memory usage). So in order to support joysticks in the meantime, we had to come up with a way of spawning a java-based version of the game in cases where joysticks are desired. As of this release, you can plug in a joystick, then run the game. It will detect the presence of the joystick and offer you the option of running a java-based activity that will support the controller.

We've tested this with an Xbox 360 controller, an older Logitech wired-USB gamepad, as well as a flight stick and some other devices. We'll also eventually test it with the Logitech F710 wireless joystick. You still have to manually define and configure the joystick, setting up the axes and buttons and so forth, and use our not-super-intuitive joystick interface (we'll improve on that at some point), but it should work. We welcome feedback.

Now it is notable that joystick support is only present on Honeycomb 3.1 or better. Honeycomb is a tablet-only OS, and joysticks are not supported on Gingerbread (2.3), the more common phone OS. So for phones, anyone on less than the very recently released Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 (Galaxy Nexus) will be unable to use a joystick or a gamepad for the time being. As phones are upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, joystick support will be propagated out to more of the devices that need them. Also, you may need some sort of micro-USB-to-USB adapter to physically plug a joystick in to most of these devices. There are also bluetooth joysticks in development; we've heard some of the prototypes are working well, but we haven't personally used any yet.

Integrated Voice Chat for Android - This is still pretty high on the "testing" curve, and we've also juggling a few issues on the voice chat server (we made some big updates lately), so don't expect this to be 100%. However, we do have voice chat support in Android now. People will immediately ask things like "does it work with my bluetooth headset", etc. I honestly don't know. Things are still very early, we're mostly focused on "does it.. work." If you would like to play around with the released version, feel free. Be aware that voicechat can use significant bandwidth, far more than the game itself, so either play from Wifi or be sure you have some kind of unlimited data plan.

Where is all of this Going? - The goal is to eventually see phone-based devices as equal citizens in their ability to play Vendetta Online. Mobile support was always approached with the idea of the "best playability that we could manage", and the Android version has met (our) expectations of that. To date, it has been a great platform for checking in on the game while mobile, or doing some mining or lower-intensity missions. It has not been the best platform for involved combat, or especially PvP (arguably the strongsuit of our game). Hopefully joystick support will eventually help close the gap, and Voice Chat will add more equality to bigger game experiences (Border Skirmish, Guild activities, etc).

The end-run is to be able to really play the game no matter where you are. This could be sitting in a hotel room, with your phone hooked to the TV via HDMI (wireless HDMI is also coming), with a wireless mobile joystick hooked to your device. Or it could be with a tablet propped up on a table outside somewhere, and a wireless controller. Or it could be using a phone with one of those nifty little micro-projectors (which have been built into certain phones) to let you play the game on a "bigscreen" with any nearby wall. These cases are all basically possible now.

We want Gameplay Changes! - A fairly significant amount of our userbase is not super overjoyed by Android-exclusive changes, especially when they come (sometimes) at the expense of gameplay changes. We understand this. Please appreciate that the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is happening in January, this is a big deal for the electronics world, and can yield cool opportunities if we are able to showcase the game. For instance, CES earlier this year directly resulted in our presence in Verizon's Xoom TV launch ad. All that said, there will be more (and more significant) gameplay changes coming. As I said in-game the other day, fixing the faction system is currently slated as my Next Big Project. I'll post some reflections on the changes in the near future.

PLUGINS_LOADED event - This is something we added at the behest of those players who choose to also develop Lua-based plugins for the game (which, as of recently, also work on Android). This feature will help them create libraries of functionality, so one plugin can depend on others, rather than everyone having to re-invent the wheel. We will continue to expand and improve on the plugin system when we can (this was an easy change).

HeyZap for Android - HeyZap is a San Francisco based startup that maintains a kind of social network for mobile gaming. This makes it pretty easy to check in with friends and say that you're playing such-and-such a game, which is particularly beneficial for online and multi-player titles. It was an easy addition for us, and seems to have minimal annoyance for those who don't want to use it, so we thought it was worthwhile. The first time you run it without the HeyZap app being installed, you will see a message in the notification area about the benefits of HeyZap, but only the one time. You will not be bothered by it again, if it isn't your style, simply ignore the icon on the game launcher.

That's all for now, have a great weekend everyone!

VO 1.8.200 includes:

- 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.

Some much needed debugging and fixing across the general game, while we've also released stability improvements to the Android build in the background (Samsung-based PowerVR devices are reportedly working better, albeit with reduced graphical quality).

VO 1.8.199 includes:

- Bots no longer drop cargo if they are not damaged at all by players. If a player damages a bot but does not destroy it, cargo is still dropped.
- Nation choices are now randomized in the Character Creation menu.
- Added support for Android devices with PowerVR graphics.
- Further reduced raw materials needed to manufacture the Trident.
- Trident Type M cargo expanded to 600cu.
- Mass of Fused Composite Plating significantly reduced.

Bot Drops - We had developed a bit of an issue with people "farming" bot drops by having NPCs fight one another, and keeping the sector artificially "alive" by flying out into the distance. This was both troublesome for my ability to create rare drops that couldn't easily be farmed, as well as a load on the server (some of these NPC battles are pretty intensive, meaning server resources are being used where no one is actually playing).

Thus, the solution was to have bots only drop items when they have sustained damage from a player character. We didn't do that originally, in the interest of maintaining a kind of "equality" between PC and NPC characters, but it really wasn't worthwhile given the later tradeoffs.

Trident Changes - Hopefully this will make the tridents more easily constructable. We are planning more capship changes, but all development has to be juggled by immediate priority. To get a more complete list of what changed in the Trident Type M build tree, see this Suggestions Forum thread.

PowerVR support on Android - This is a big deal, and has been a long time coming. We had to put in quite a bit of work to make this happen, along with support from our friends at Texas Instruments (OMAP CPUs) and Imagination Technologies (PowerVR GPU series). We now support all the major game-capable Android chips, with the exception of ARM's problematic Mali GPU (Galaxy SII, etc), which may work with uncompressed textures. Currently, our official support includes NVIDIA Tegra, Qualcomm Snapdragon and now PowerVR (TI, Samsung). We welcome testing and reports (good or bad) posted to our Android Forum.

Happy Thanksgiving! - To all our US-based players, and frankly all our friends everywhere in the world. We have a lot to be thankful for. All the best.

This will be the planned "release" for this week (barring major bugs). Some of us have family events on different days, and while we'll still be working, this will probably be it for content changes until next week.

VO 1.8.198 includes:

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

Please continue to post feedback about the Avalons and other areas to gameplay to the Suggestions forum. More changes are in the works.

VO 1.8.197 includes:

- In non-fogged sectors, other vessels are no longer visible on the sector list beyond 15km. There is no longer "universal knowledge" of all other ships in the sector, regardless of distance. This may continue to be tweaked and adjusted, moving forward.

This has been a more technically complex change than we originally anticipated. We tried to drop it in last week, and then had to revert while we sorted out some bugs. So, please let us know if you see any issues with this particular feature.

This is also likely to be a feature that comes with some attached controversy. If you'd like to read some of the backstory, check out the five-page 2009 feature-proposal thread on Suggestions (post don't respond to that thread or revive it). Limitations to awareness have always been part of the intended goal here; after all, with limitations comes the ability to alter those limits through various equipment changes, creating a richer and more diverse option selection, as well as making "stealth" tatics more of a possibility.

It's also notable that 15km is pretty far, in the game. We definitely have sectors that have things spread across larger areas, but in most "social" cases (like stations), this pretty easily covers the areas where people congregate. 15km is also a lot of ground to cover to "sneak up" on anyone.

Also, as a reminder, changes like this should be seen as a first step, not a final and absolute statement. We welcome feedback, as always. We may need to tweak distances, or change things based on sector content (beyond fog-vs-no-fog). Perhaps have major station sectors with larger "ranges" thanks to some radar-enhancing feature of stations, while more far-flung sectors have smaller and more claustrophobic visibility ranges (plus variability due to addons or ships, or grouping with capships, etc). All these things are possible, and should be duly discussed on the Suggestions Forum.

VO 1.8.196 includes:

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

VO 1.8.195 includes:

- 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.

We welcome continued feedback on any of these changes, particularly that of the Trident Manufacturing. There will be two other trident types released in the not too distant future, but they did not make it into tonight's updates.

The auto-dock feature was mainly implemented to make the game a bit easier on a phone or touchscreen tablet, but is also kind of nice on a PC. It should be pretty helpful when trying to dock with a moving capship.

The updater-timeout changes should help improve connection resiliency, and also give users a bit more information to help debug connectivity problems relating to the game.

VO 1.8.194 includes:

- 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.

VO 1.8.193 includes:

- 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.

Like the changelog says, we should hopefully have addressed any problems with stray convoy bots or NPC capships sitting in random areas of space. If you should see anything like this, or experience any other issues, please let us know. If the problem is critical, please submit a Support Ticket to get our attention more quickly. Thanks!