VO 1.8.219 includes:- '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. We still intend to improve the "initial" login length for new users, which currently downloads a lot of dynamic mission data. However, for our existing users this patch should be a major improvement.

VO 1.8.217 includes:- 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.We will still be further optimizing the "lengthy login" issue that was created by all missions being available from everywhere. In the meantime, the addition of a progress graph will help to tell people that their game client is taking a bit longer to log in.People should also be aware that quite a few Events are scheduled for this weekend. Be sure to stop by and check them out!

It was 10 years ago that Penny Arcade first linked to us as we began the completely-public stage of our game's never-ending development. For us, this was a huge transition, marking the moment when we had our first influx of users, and when we ceased to be a "theoretical" game and became an actual live service with a vibrant audience. Some of those players from 2002 are still here with us today, sometimes indicated with their special character badges. It has been an incredible and humbling experience to come to know many of our players, watching young teenagers become adults, seeing entire families playing together across three generations (grandparents, parents, grandkids). Since the launch of Vendetta Online for Android last March, we've had users playing from their bus commute through the jungles of Thailand (where, apparently, they have great cell coverage). We have come this far thanks largely to the unflagging support and dedication of our player base, always pushing us to make the game a little better with each passing week, and for this we are very grateful. To our players, past and present: thank you, this anniversary is really about you.The landscape of the MMO market has changed vastly since our initial public release in 2002, and even more since we started on this journey. I first posted about our game's development on our early website back in February of 1997. By then we already had an engine and a prototype game in internal testing, with which we had been tinkering in spare time since 1996; but we had never even heard the term "MMORPG", coined shortly thereafter by Origin's Richard Garriott. Ultima Online, the game whose widespread popularity arguably launched the modern MMO genre, wouldn't even be released for another half a year. I had only the idea that I wanted to make this "huge, online space game", where people would fly around in a persistent world and share in much of the gameplay I associated with classic titles, like X-Wing or Wing Commander. We knew this was technically possible, but no one was around to tell us how hilariously difficult or lengthy the process would be, especially with a development team of only four people building such a game and engine from scratch. Perhaps that's just as well, as they might have dissuaded us from the pursuit, which has definitely been an amazing and educational experience.There have been definite challenges in bringing an indie MMO to market with such a small development team, then maintaining and expanding a live product throughout the years; but this makes us all the more proud to be where we are today, and to have seen such a wonderful community grow up

It was 10 years ago that Penny Arcade first linked to us as we began the completely-public stage of our game's never-ending development. For us, this was a huge transition, marking the moment when we had our first influx of users, and when we ceased to be a "theoretical" game and became an actual live service with a vibrant audience. Some of those players from 2002 are still here with us today, sometimes indicated with their special character badges. It has been an incredible and humbling experience to come to know many of our players, watching young teenagers become adults, seeing entire families playing together across three generations (grandparents, parents, grandkids). Since the launch of Vendetta Online for Android last March, we've had users playing from their bus commute through the jungles of Thailand (where, apparently, they have great cell coverage). We have come this far thanks largely to the unflagging support and dedication of our player base, always pushing us to make the game a little better with each passing week, and for this we are very grateful. To our players, past and present: thank you, this anniversary is really about you.The landscape of the MMO market has changed vastly since our initial public release in 2002, and even more since we started on this journey. I first posted about our game's development on our early website back in February of 1997. By then we already had an engine and a prototype game in internal testing, with which we had been tinkering in spare time since 1996; but we had never even heard the term "MMORPG", coined shortly thereafter by Origin's Richard Garriott. Ultima Online, the game whose widespread popularity arguably launched the modern MMO genre, wouldn't even be released for another half a year. I had only the idea that I wanted to make this "huge, online space game", where people would fly around in a persistent world and share in much of the gameplay I associated with classic single-player titles, like Tie Fighter or Wing Commander. We knew this was technically possible, but no one was around to tell us how hilariously difficult or lengthy the process would be, especially with a development team of only four people building such a game and engine from scratch. Perhaps that's just as well, as they might have dissuaded us from the pursuit, which has definitely been an amazing and educational experience.There have been definite challenges in bringing an indie MMO to market with such a small development team, then maintaining and expanding a live product throughout the years; but this makes us all the more proud to be where we are today, and to have seen such a wonderfu

VO 1.8.214-216 has included:- 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.Clearly, to our veteran player base, the last few releases have included some quite significant changes. Certain faction standings being mutually exclusive has been desired for a long time; this is only the first step in that factional redux, but a very important step. Temporary Kill On Sight status persisting across logins and sector jumps will make things more immediately challenging for those who choose to behave aggressively at stations.All missions becoming visible from everywhere is a huge step forward in making our game content more discoverable to players (especially new players). But this is only the beginning of our goals for a centralized mission system. Player-postable missions will become available, helping people find one another for specific activities, like posting a mission for someone to help hunt the Hive or take down a Leviathan, or find a combat escort for a dangerous trade run. As player-owned stations become more common, users will be able to post missions to their own stations, requesting deliveries of raw materials for their Manufacturing projects, or simply replenishment of other items to support their guild or common gameplay.We hope you are as excited about these changes as we are, to us they're only the tip of the iceberg.

VO 1.8.213 includes:- 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.We have a lot of significant changes in the works, which will hopefully debut next week.

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 FireThat'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 changesTonight'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 MassivelyIn 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 modePlease 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 1.8.209 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 modePlease 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.