VO 1.8.727 includes:
- Two new Persistent Events have been launched, and will start on Saturday the 22nd in Ukari and Helios.
- Translated 50 early missions into 19 additional languages.
- Fixed issue with ActivateTurrets and triggered turrets not working after ReloadInterface() is called.
- Fixed crash on Android when the game is backgrounded and the system decides to terminate it.
- Updated German and Ukrainian translations.
- Input mode is automatically changed when switching between touch and gamepad on Android.
- Added resolution options for MacOS version when Retina support is not enabled.
- Added more font options for Cyrillic languages.
- The list of font options now only includes fonts that support the selected language.
- Fixed issues with certain characters not rendering properly in some languages.

A lot of work has gone into this, which may not be immediately obvious. For instance, we had to build a whole mass-translation tool for the missions, which has gone through a dozen or so rounds of improvements and fixes over the last few months.

Please post any issues you find to the Bugs forum, and have a great weekend!

VO 1.8.726 includes:

- Improvements to Persistent Event Missions and management of bots in non-running sectors.
- Reduced possibility of ANR stalls on Android during initialization of shaders.
- Added a message when disabling plugins that recommends to restart for the change to take full effect.
- Added debugging code to track down mismatched ship health numbers in different menus.
- Updates to some SDKs in mobile versions, coming in next App Store versions.
- Added debugging code to track down certain Android crashes.
- Started the process of translating a few more missions into all 19 languages. More next week.

Please post any problems on the Bugs forum; have a great weekend everyone!

VO 1.8.725 includes:
- Added '/beacon drop' command to allow players piloting capships to drop navbeacons.
- Updated Spanish translations.
- Fixed crash on exit after viewing Buddies list.
- Fixed issue with chat sometimes going to channel 0 while moving between sectors.
- Fixed issue with NPCs attacking other friendly NPCs that are on the same mission.
- Added more analytics to help track down client issues.

We're still trying to track down some other persistent bugs that have been eluding us, and we appreciate the reports and feedback we've been receiving on the Bugs Forum.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.724 includes:

- Fixed crash on Android when exiting.
- Added more analytics to help track down client issues.

This may seem pretty like a pretty light update, but there have also been some non-game improvements over the past week:

- Fixed errors preventing people with browser translation from logging into the website. Other, related site improvements are still on-going.
- Substantially improved Newsletter deliverability and email infrastructure.

Sending email Newsletters has never been an easy thing to manage, and some players complained that our message from last month showed up in their Junk folder, so we've done some updates to potentially improve that throughput for the next one. We'll probably be sending out more Newsletters throughout the coming year.

Social media has become increasing bizarre over the last decade, to the point where reaching our own followers has become infeasibly expensive, and as a result, direct email is effectively the only way we can actually talk to our own players anymore (other than Discord). So, if the Newsletters are something you want to receive, be sure and add the "noreply@vendetta-online.com" address to your personal Address Book, that usually helps.

For anyone who missed last month's Newsletter, you can also find it online here:

https://www.vendetta-online.com/newsletter/12.2024/newsletter.12.2024.html

VO 1.8.723 includes:
- Dropping an 11th nav beacon now replaces the oldest beacon instead of preventing it from being created.
- Added a "/beacon clear" command to remove all of the beacons you created.
- Fixed issue with HUD chat text color not being applied when chosen from the color picker swatch.
- Added more analytics to help track down client issues.

This release includes a few small player-submitted improvements from the Suggestions and Bugs forums, along with a lot of under-the-hood fixes.

Beyond the topics list above, we're also fixing problems with our custom mission localization (translation) software, so we can hopefully expand our multi-language mission support to include more languages and advanced gameplay.

We do have new content in the works, but we've needed to dedicated an unexpected amount of time to fixing problems over the last few weeks. Some of these issues were practically invisible to existing players, but impacted thousands of new users every month.

So, while game-content changes are still in development, we also want to help these (many) new players have a better initial experience, and also understand the areas where they're struggling, which will also help guide our next-generation User Interface design.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.722 includes:

- Added an Overscan option for Android devices, defaulting to 1% for most devices, and expanding to 3% if cutouts or rounded corners are detected. The setting can be changed in Options -> Advanced -> Video options.
- The next iOS App Store Update will include Overscan detection for curved-corner iOS devices, to attempt to resize the input area to better fit the physical space instead of the actual rendered display.
- The Training mission arrow indicator is now hidden when a mission is active and the Mission Log menu is visible, and points to the Mission Log when the Missions list is visible and a mission is active.
- Added several analytics to try and help us track down multiple new user problems that have recently emerged.

Another week with a lot of testing, fixes, and trying to solve reported problems. We do have gameplay enhancements in the works as well, but addressing bugs and other challenges were the priority. Have a great weekend, everyone.

VO 1.8.721 includes:

- Touch devices now default to Third-Person Improved mode for new installs.
- Small tweaks for some translations for Russian, German, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
- Increased the size of the Login menu on TV Consoles.
- Added an arrow to the station interface in the Training sector to direct players to the Missions menu.
- Streamlined the initial game controller menu on TVs with only a remote.
- Increased the default dead-zone range of Nintendo Switch Pro controllers to reduce drift.
- Fixed issue with missing background image when cancelling from the offline tutorials.
- Fixed wrong camera angle for Third-Person Improved mode.
- Added support for more fonts for most European languages.

Beyond this, the next iOS App Store update (whenever Apple approves this) will include a couple of major fixes:

- Fixed issues with rendering Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text.
- iOS missions now use the correct Text-To-Speech voice language with non-English locales.

Furthermore, we added more debugging and analytics to help track down issues that have appeared over the last few weeks. Larger projects are still in the works, but there has been a lot to test and fix of late.

Please post any issues on the Bugs Forum. Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.720 includes:

- Fixed issue with 'Docking...' incorrectly appearing, in different circumstances.
- Fixed issue with cargo tractor beam incorrectly activating if the ship is over-full.
- If assets files are missing or become unreadable during game runtime, the user is notified of the issue and re-install is suggested.
- Fixed various Lua errors and NULL pointer references.
- Added instrumentation to track down certain rare client crashes.

This is a sizeable bugfix release to manage some issues that were reported over the holidays. Larger changes are planned for next week, but would have taken too long to test for this release.

Please report any problems on the Bugs forum. Happy new year!

Further updates and improvements from last week, building on the major release of the week before.

VO 1.8.719
- Fixed issue with 'Docking...' message briefly appearing while flying a capship.
- Improved customized localization for Russian and Spanish, button references properly use the translated button names for all languages.
- More Missions are now localized into more languages.
- Addressed problem with localized missions not appearing in some cases, due to server state.
- Fixed recent bug causing the incorrect tutorial type to be chosen for Gamepad users on TV hardware.
- Fixed issue with not being able to log in with existing VO accounts if Google Sign-in had been used previously.
- Account Setup and Connect buttons now expand to fit the translations.
- On Android devices, if a prerecorded Client Tutorial voice-over is not available for a language, the Google Text-To-Speech service is now used.
- Increased the font size of initial offline training tutorial dialogs for touch devices.
- Fixed issue with incorrect expiration times of User Access Keys.

As always, please report any problems on the Bugs Forum. Happy Holidays all!

Some big changes, from a couple of weeks ago:

VO 1.8.718
- New "TV Remote" gameplay control mode, to support basic play on GoogleTV devices with only a remote control. GoogleTV remotes only provide four directions, one center-button, and "Back"; this is NOT enough for complete gameplay. A full-sized game controller is still recommended.
- Gamepad and "TV Remote" users on TVs now receive the "Asteroids" introductory tutorial that has been previously prototyped on VR.
- Touch and "TV Remote" tutorial training missions have been updated.
- Preliminary "beta" localized client text support for 20 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Bengali, and Arabic.
- Improved in-client tutorial voiceovers are available in a subset of languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Chinese (Mandarin), Korean, Japanese, Hindi and Arabic.
- Other mission voiceovers may use platform-specific text-to-speech in local languages, with varied quality (we cannot store high-quality voiceovers for all missions, the game would be too large of a download).
- TRANSLATION CAVEATS: "Full" localization only extends to the game-client and initial mission tutorials. Some missions are translated after that, into a few languages, but not yet all languages. Not all Client content is localized, and some interfaces have layout issues with long word-lengths. Machine translation has been temporarily used for some languages, and may be less than ideal. Again, this is a "beta" localization update.
- Prototype Brightness / Contrast controls on Android version. This does not affect backlight display or screen brightness, only the "relative" rendered brightness of in-game content.
- Many default settings tweaks for TVs. Font and layout changes, graphical quality. Overscan reduced to 1% as modern TVs do not need this. If you have an older TV, use the Option.
- Many fixes and usability improvements related to usage of Google Login. Account creation has been streamlined.
- Render-Scaling option (Video->Scaling) now shows both the scaled and native resolution. Note, the GoogleTV Streamer "4K" only gives a 1080p render target to games, it does not allow 4k output.
- GoogleTV Streamer 4K has "sound-ducking" problems inherent to the device (dynamic volume), this is not the game's fault.
- Custom improved graphical settings for the GoogleTV Streamer 4K.
- Improvements for Nintendo Switch Pro controllers. More coming.
- Fixes for Google text-to-speech using the wrong locale for the given voice language.
- Improved D-Pad Navigation in some parts of the menus, but others are still poor.
- Changes to ship Station Docking to reduce the visibility of player latency.
- "Private Crates" (Tutorials) are now better supported by the Cargo Tractor Beam.

A few updates from recent months:

VO 1.8.717
- Hive Leviathan is now more effectively fixed in place.
- Quest trigger chord bind setting is properly saved.
- Fixed issue with empty target selection boxes when targeting crates.
- Fixed issue with crate pickup sound effect not always being played.
- Fixed issue with remote capship spawn positions when entering sectors through wormholes.

VO 1.8.716
- Duelling players are now automatically marked as enemies for the duration of the duel.
- Fixed issue with repeated crate pickup sound.
- Fixed additional "follow" bug with capships, which could cause them not to immediately jump when it was otherwise permitted.

VO 1.8.715
- Switch Pro controllers and clones are now properly detected in the Android version.
- Fixed issue with Multiclick after using the Hold bind where only the first tap would work.

VO 1.8.714
- If a remote capship is commanded to follow its owner, it will attempt to use the closest jump point instead of the group jump point, reducing "follow" delays.
- Your own ship health percentage should now match across all menus, and is quantized to the nearest whole-percentage point.
- Fixed issue with displaying the wrong 'cargo full' message in some cases, now correctly says there is insufficient capacity. "Cargo full" is not shown anymore.
- Fixed issue with cargo tractor beam related to filling the cargo hold when mining. This feature should be solid and universally beneficial now, please report any on-going problems on Bugs.

Recent updates included:

VO 1.8.713
- Improved collision detection for Avalons/rockets/missiles.
- Fixed issue with incorrectly receiving Cargo Full message when the cargo isn't actually full.
- Changed 'Your cargo hold is full.' message to 'Insufficient cargo space.'

VO 1.8.712.1
- Improved alignment of name text under 2D selection box on the HUD.

VO 1.8.712
- The range of the Cargo Tractor Beam for non-capships has been extended to 15 meters, acceleration increased to 80 m/s^2, and an extra conic tractor region has been added to the front of the ship.
- Fixed rendering issue with missing shadows on certain ships on Android.
- Improved robustness of sector shutdown under extreme conditions, to fix a rare problem.
- Lua bug fixes.

The last couple of weeks have seen some really significant changes. We've been able to start digging into important improvements to the collision detection system, which are necessary to support certain types of next-generation combat gameplay.

Similarly, we're continuing to pursue a major "redux" of the entire new user experience, and all related interfaces. Part of this has been enhancing the Cargo Tractor Beam to help new players (on all platforms) be more easily able to pick up cargo, and to help them identify that cargo once they've acquired it.

We still have a lot to do in enhancing the experience for new players, including interfaces, tutorials and localization challenges, but we are making progress. As mentioned previously, small "features" are each added and tested, usually just one or two at a time; then at a later point, a lot of changes will be pulled together into a version update and polished into new defaults that provide a "smoother" experience.

We've seen some important updates in the last month, especially adding support for the new Quest 3S, and some improvements to usability. Additionally, there have been a bunch of general enhancements to Android, which will eventually be rolled into updated "default" settings for mobile, once their stability is fully proven out.

VO 1.8.711
- Fixed crash in graphics driver on Android.
- Added more debug logging to track down crash on logout.
- Added auto-detection for the new Quest 3S with improved default graphical settings.

VO 1.8.710.1
- Fixed crash on startup for older Android devices.

VO 1.8.710
- Added a text notification on the HUD when a crate is picked up that shows what was picked up and how many units. It can be disabled in Options -> Advanced -> Interface -> HUD Settings -> Show HUD notification when item is picked up.
- Fixed issue with infinitely repeating crate pickup sound.
- Added more debug logging to track down crash on logoff issue.

VO 1.8.709.1
- Fixed crash on Windows version using DirectX 9 driver.

VO 1.8.709
- Added Quest 2/3/Pro controller meshes to the Quest version.
- Added Detail Textures to the Android version, they can be enabled in Options -> Advanced -> Graphics.
- Improved the line width of the 2D selection boxes on the HUD.
- Additional logging to help track down reported player capship-docking bug.
- Improved resilience of game server architecture to intermittent datacenter outages.

A brief recap of the last few weeks of releases:

VO 1.8.708
- Fixed issue with collision sound effect being played when picking up cargo in space.
- Fixed issue with '?123' button on the in-game touch keyboard not always displaying the numeric keypad.

VO 1.8.707/.1
- Fixed issue with new Third-Person Improved camera mode for capships.
- Auto-detection of Quest 3, with improved default graphical settings.
- Workaround for recent, rare issues with Quest devices, where the app loses focus on startup.
- Workaround for Quest lifecycle bugs apparently introduced by a recent Horizon OS update.
- Improved crash reporting for the Quest version, to help us react more quickly to future issues.

VO 1.8.706
- Added Third-Person Improved camera mode to PC platforms.

VO 1.8.705
- Added a new "Third-Person Improved" camera mode, selectable in the Game Options menu, intended for mobile/touch devices.
- Increased range of cargo tractor beam from 8 meters to 10 meters.
- Added more server monitoring and automatic responses to better handle certain uncommon conditions.
- Fixed several Lua errors.

Stay tuned, more substantial changes are in the works. Have a great weekend, everyone!

VO 1.8.704 includes:

- Fixed Lua errors for new Event Advertisements in the Nav Map.
- Added accumulated "player damaged NPC" event, for Persistent Missions, tracked per-player.
- More analytics to track down a rare but persistent sector bug.
- Added more server alarms and monitoring to better handle certain uncommon conditions.
- Fixed bug with display of pre-scheduled events on the Nav Map, discovered last week.

We also endured a lengthy fiber-cut outage this past week, at one of our datacenters. This disabled our website and some other services, but the game itself remained online and intact for most players. We were able to execute an emergency migration of our own to minimize our public-facing outage exposure; but some 400 meters of fiber had to be dug up from beneath concrete buildings for almost 32 hours. More details were posted to the General Forum Thread:

https://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/38954

That's all for now. We have a lot of cool work in development; fingers crossed that we won't have any more weird "acts of god" to delay us. Have a great weekend, everyone!