VO 1.8.250 includes:

- 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.

Most of these changes went into effect on Monday, the SVG was updated yesterday, but we're a little behind on formally announcing the updates. I wanted to propagate them onto News to give everyone a heads-up, particularly in regards to the Vulture, which is a pretty major ship availability improvement for our "Lite" mode playerbase.

We have more updates queued up, but we need to wait for the new iOS version to be passed by Apple before pushing them out.

Have a great weekend everyone, and be sure to check out some of the Events!

We're proud to announce that iOS has joined the family of platforms supported by Vendetta Online, launching today for the iPad2 or newer (including the Mini!), with at least iOS 5.x. Those interested may immediately obtain the game from the iPad App Store:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vendetta-online/id563305375?

Additionally, some may be curious to read the early positive reviews, such as MMORPG's first look at the game. If you do purchase the game, we'd really appreciate it if you'd consider posting a positive review on the App Store! We need all the help we can get.

The iPad version is a fully 1:1 native port of the production game, with the addition of support for Retinal devices and iOS GameCenter. We've also put some time into polishing the introductory new user experience and the overall flight interface, and we hope you like it. The game does also support external keyboard control and other options, and as always we'll be continuing to polish and improve the game as we move forward.

The game is a $0.99 purchase on the App Store, including a free month of "Lite" mode access (capped at level 3, can't be a Guild officer) for the first "single-click" account created with the installed copy. Existing subscribers can log into their current accounts normally (the free month only applies to new accounts). In App Purchase makes additional "Lite" subscription time available for $1/month.

As always, please feel free to give us feedback about the new fledgling platform and device support. We've created a new "iOS" forum for exactly that kind of discussion. Any major bugs should be posted to the Bugs forum or submitted via a Support Ticket if privacy is a concern.

Thanks Everyone!

In preparation for the upcoming launch of Vendetta Online for iPad, we're doing some server architecture testing which may result in sporadic outages over the coming weekend. In particular, outages are likely between 10am and Noon central time on Saturday the 6th.

We will be temporarily moving the game from our own local server hardware to a virtualized configuration in the "cloud", to test the option in the event of extreme scalability needs. Then on Sunday night, we'll migrate the game back to our local server cluster. Any outages will hopefully be brief, and this testing will make the game more stable for the future.

Once the game is up and running on the optional cloud server on Saturday, please report any new gameplay issues on the Bugs Forum. Thanks for your help!

VO 1.8.244 includes:

- 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.

We have more changes in the pipe, we just wanted to get these out there and make sure they're tested. Please post any issues you see on the Bugs forum and we'll look into them right away. While the above list does mention some "planet" related improvements, the really noticeable graphical updates to the planets have NOT yet been released, and will be in an upcoming patch.

For those interested, we may also be offering a beta program for the upcoming iPad version in the near future, so keep an eye out for that (information will be posted when available).

Yes, you read that correctly. After several threads of suggestions from the userbase, prodding us to do this, we built an extensive Kickstarter Campaign to support a launch of the game on the iPad, plus the VO 1.9 milestone late in the year. If this is something you'd like to see, please consider helping us promote the campaign. I consider it to be a pretty good value, given that we're including massively-discounted subscription time, plus a number of cool rewards!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/guild/vendetta-online/

For those interested, there's also a high-quality (1080p HD) version of the Kickstarter video available here:

http://youtu.be/MKt_AKdU2_M

VO 1.8.242 includes:

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

Look for a big announcement tomorrow..

VO 1.8.241 includes:

- 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.

A big announcement should be coming later this week..

VO 1.8.240 includes:

- 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.

Free play for previous subscribers! Happy holidays everyone. Anyone subscribed at any time in our history, prior to this past October, may now play for free through the new year. Have fun!

VO 1.8.239 includes:

- 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.

The current Newsletter is now going out via email, recapping the development we've made since the last newsletter (some time ago) and laying out some of our plans for how we intend to use these improvements to expand the game moving forward.

If you didn't receive a copy of the email (it can take a couple of days to get through, sometimes), double check your Account Settings, your spam folder, and try adding noreply@vendetta-online.com to your address book to reduce the chances of it being flagged as spam.

Otherwise, you can also take a look at it online here:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/newsletter.12.2012.html

As always, we're offering free play for all former subscribers (anyone whose account expired prior to October 1st), from December 24th through January 1st. We'll try to pull together some events during this time as well. Take care all, and have a Happy Holiday!

VO 1.8.238 includes:

- A massive new 39-mission tree, developed collaboratively by a group of our PCC members, organized and evangelized by Phaserlight. Many thanks and congrats to him, as well as Pizzasgood and everyone else who contributed to building and testing these missions!
- Graphics updates for the standard cargo-crate have been totally updated with a new asset. We will eventually also use this crate at multiple sizes to visually indicate crates that have larger quantities of items or use more cubic units of space.

A couple of other changes were also intended for this update, but needed to be pushed back for further testing. So those can likely be expected next week. Have a great weekend, everyone, and please post any issues to the forums.

VO 1.8.237 includes:

- Enhanced password security. Maximum password length has been increased to 64 characters.
- Fixed problem with video options not getting saved.
- Increased default settings for Adreno 320-based Android devices.
- Removed storms in Deneb.

The biggest news in this update are the major security improvements added with our new password handling system. Note: In order to take advantage of these improvements, you MUST update your password on the game website. We don't prevent you from re-using your old password, but we strongly recommend taking advantage of the new 64-character password length by making a fairly long, memorable passphrase using random words, the benefits of which are described in this famous xkcd comic. In fact, an xkcd fan even created this common word password generator to serve that purpose.

For those interested in the technical details, I'll elaborate a little more. The old password system was quite state of the art for the time when it was created (the late 90s), albeit with far too short of a password character limit. The new design is very much like the old one, which was always similar to bcrypt, but is now enhanced with bcrypt's ability to increase the password CPU-cost in the future. This will let us react to the changing landscape of possible brute-force attacks, and increase security dynamically as necessary (and informing our userbase of the changes if/when they should occur). The current CPU cost is designed to take half a second for the game client to hash on a 1ghz NVIDIA Tegra2-based mobile device. We intend to also thread the client's hashing of passwords, to make the computation process less intrusive on the user interface, at which point we may increase the cost further.

Beyond this, we've improved the cryptographic randomness of the unique salt used to strengthen each password hash, as well as the nonce used to mitigate replay attacks. These have always been features of the protocol, we've just updated and improved them.

In addition, the game server and website still retain the measures to slow down any remote brute-force password attacks, which we added some time ago to mitigate the password length limitations we had at the time.

Of course, all of these technical measures are in vain if the end-user chooses a password that is too short and too easy for computers to guess. So please consider making a new and longer password for the game, perhaps a phrase of random words, and keep it unique to Vendetta Online! Don't use it anywhere else.

In other news, we enhanced the default settings for devices with the Adreno 320 GPU used in the Nexus 4, Asus Padfone 2 and other recent devices. These settings are utilized on first runtime, so existing Nexus 4 players may wish to delete their config.ini and wgaf.cfg from /sdcard/VendettaOnline and allow the game to re-configure itself.

We wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all our US players, and a great weekend to everyone!

VO 1.8.236 includes:

- Added touch-to-select HUD feature to Android version. Just touch the target (making sure no other touch region is touched) and it is selected, depending on your HUD's "Target" mode.
- Reduced network traffic when logging in.
- Storms once again appear in Edras and Pelatus.
- Fixed problem with Trade Guild mission choosing wrong destination stations.
- Added code to the audio system to fix missing sound on some Windows Vista/7/8 desktop computers.

It is also noteworthy that an updated Windows Store build of the game (for Windows 8 and Windows RT) has also passed certification with Microsoft, which enhances the default graphics on Intel Ultrabooks and fixes a number of bugs. It should also be possible to use plugins with this version, by placing them in the /user/your name/AppData/Packages/<vo package>/LocalState folder.

VO 1.8.234 and 1.8.235 include:

- Fixed ice asteroid rendering problem on the Windows Store version.
- Improvements to deal with higher latency connections.
- Android version should no longer show a black screen if you press Home
during the initial loading screens.
- Added Options button to the PDA menu.

The "improvements to deal with higher latency connections" should substantially help with logging into the game and acquiring the dynamic mission data on mobile devices and for those playing outside the US.

VO 1.8.233 includes:

- New visual effects for Starflare rocket explosion.
- Support for MOGA game controller for the Android version.
Upon first launch, a MOGA menu will show what the controls are bound to.
The menu is also available from the HUD by typing /help in chat.

Our support for the recently-launched PowerA MOGA bluetooth game controller is worth noting. We've found this device to be a very cool way to play the game on an Android phone, providing perhaps the best mobile Vendetta Online experience we've seen to date. We have no vested interest in their success, this referral stems purely from our usage and impressions of the Moga, and our desire to see mobile gaming evolve to match the technical capabilities of modern devices. Flying with the controller still takes some getting used to, and it isn't a replacement for a mouse and keyboard; but Moga is a huge improvement over a touchscreen, and superior (in my opinion) even to the Xperia Play.

We hope you like the new Starflare rocket effects. We have some more improved effects in the works that were actually patched into the game tonight, but we need to do a bit more development before they can become visible in the game.