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!

Recap of the last few weeks of updates.

VO 1.8.703
- Added ability to set the volume of or mute the Hit Confirmation beep sound in Audio Options.
- Added client functionality to allow Persistent Events to self-advertise their locations and schedule start time on the client Nav Map.
- Fixed issue with turret firing rate being reset when the capship owner switches turrets.
- Fixed issue with the faction standing menu showing the capship's aggregate faction standings instead of your own.

VO 1.8.702
- Improvements to allow the Persistent Event system to allow probabilistic definition of item-inventory and drops for NPCs.
- Persistent Event enhancements to permit the usage of Private Drops, visible only to individually tracked player-participants.
- Enhanced anonymous game analytics to help debug problems with new mobile users encountering interface problems.

VO 1.8.701/.1-2
- Added preliminary support for Razer Chroma RGB effects. These can be disabled from Options.
- Fixed Lua error when attempting to take a mission just as it was removed from the list.
- Fixed rare crashes in IUP and timer functions.
- Added more server-side analytics for enhanced performance analysis at scale.

VO 1.8.700
- Fixed rare lua error when the UI is reloaded.

VO 1.8.699
- Fixed crash in IUP if a radio group or frame is empty.
- Touch Mouse Look mode is now turned off when Tilt-to-Steer is enabled in the Accelerometer settings.

A lot of effort has been going into the new Persistent Event editor system, as well as improving game stability. Hopefully we'll start to see more Persistent Event content in the near future.

A recap of the last month of updates:

VO 1.8.698/.1
- Reduced touch input latency for ship rotation on Android.
- Fixed crash on startup for non-English localizations on Android.

VO 1.8.697
- Fixed Linux video drivers failing to use X randr to detect video modes in window mode.
- Fixed issues with resetting Controls to defaults in Android not properly resetting all settings.
- Fixed issue with frozen app on Android when quitting after resuming from the background.

VO 1.8.696.1
- Fixed incorrect Play Store In-App purchase price for 3 month Lite membership.

VO 1.8.696
- Fixed issue with the screen size changing on Android TV devices.

VO 1.8.695
- Fixed issue with navmap disappearing when clicking on it and pressing Escape.
- Fixes for several crashes and other problems on Android.
- Improved error reporting for future Android crashes.

We addressed a variety of crashes and stalls on Android, and have also increased our Android system requirements for the Play Store:

Vendetta Online now requires Android 8.0 or newer, with OpenGL ES 3.1 hardware that fully supports the Android Extension Pack. The concept of the AEP goes back to 2014, and all 8.0-or-later devices should have support. This also effectively lays the groundwork for us to roll out Vulkan support universally, at some point in the future, as that has the same hardware requirements.

Existing Android installs of Vendetta Online, using older devices, should still continue to function the same they have for some time to come. At a later point in the future the game may cease to function on older devices, but for the moment we're just limiting new installations on the Play Store, to better support our upcoming goals around game-engine improvements.

VO 1.8.694 included:
- Fixed crash when giving or revoking Access Keys.
- Fixed client lua error when using the Jettison menu.

VO 1.8.693 included (last week):
- Four new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Fixed lua error with auto-repair/reload when the interface is reloaded.
- Prototype improvements to the Mission Editor to allow new unrat-style "Persistent Event" missions to automatically spawn around the galaxy. More detail on this will appear once the system is stabilized and proven out.

VO 1.8.692.1
- Fixed lua error when turning on/off Condensed UI mode on mobile devices.

A lot of other server-side changes and fixes to the new "Persistent Event" missions have been released over the past week. For those who are members of the Vendetta Online PCC or "Player Contribution Corps", more information on the changes to the editor will become available on the Suggestions Forum in the near future.

Further releases have been deferred for the long-weekend, to preserve game stability and give people some sanity during time-off. A bunch of technical changes are intended to ship next week.

VO 1.8.692 includes:

- Seven new custom-made missions available in various trees.
- Fixed issue with keychain access info menu being too large on mobile devices.
- Fixed Lua error when ReloadInterface() is called during a pending purchase.
- Fixed issue with server-side collision detection problem causing the sector to lag.
- Removed the string.dump() Lua function from the metatable of string objects.
- Improvements to server-side prioritization and processor usage.
- Fixed issue with player-owned capships not recording damage when attacked by a strikeforce in non-running sectors.

Mainly a bugfix release, but there may be some different content updates in the near future. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Recent Server-Side Updates:
- Further improvements in game synchronization and timing stability.
- Enhanced monitoring of network related issues.

VO 1.8.691 included:
- Added options to enable Auto-Repair and Auto-Reload on docking with stations or capships, with options for only capships. The options are located in Options -> Advanced -> Interface "Auto-repair on docking" and "Auto-reload on docking". The options are disabled by default.
- Added analytics to help improve network performance and timing synchronization.
- Added other analytics to further flag help monitor data processing and throughput capacity across multiple threads.
- Adjusted how timing is processed by the phase locked loop, server-side on the sector, to improve accuracy.

VO 1.8.690 included:
- Network changes to further improve compatibility and stability for players.
- Experimental improvements to networking within the server processes.
- Game client is now more reactive to player synchronization problems.
- Additional analytics to monitor specific network synchronization issues.

A lot of recent development has been "player-invisible", so you'll have to take our word for it that it's been quite helpful to the game. We've uncovered and addressed a lot of "transient" issues that only impact certain players under certain circumstances, or combinations of conditions. These are difficult problems to solve, they require a lot of examination to figure out what is happening, and then careful algorithm design to be adaptive to changing conditions (like, say, player packet-loss or service-provider challenges).

All of this makes the game work better for everyone, and also makes server-side validation systems more accurate.

The issues we found were unexpected (less of "problems with VO" and more like "problems with modern networks"), and delayed our plans, but the game impact has definitely been worth the development effort. We expect to get back to more visible game changes after this is wrapped up.

A bug impacted some Reports from earlier in the year, up until the end of March. This led to a backlog of responses going out to players, which were then manually pushed through all at once, around early April, resulting in some player confusion.

This was a specific bug in the system, and not any kind of "human" lapse in administrative monitoring.

The bug was player-reported via the Bugs forum. After fixing the bug, further mechanisms were added to trigger internal alarms if anything like this should happen again, so we'll become aware more quickly.