Beta 8 is now available! Please see the newspost and give it a shot. With luck, this will be in production in a couple of days. Thanks everyone.

Is there any way to update beta7 to beta 8 without downloading the entire 132mb?

Alright! I hope this will be the last one, Im so used to the betas, I havent touched the regular one in weeks!

mcduff: no, that's part of why we want to get it into production.. so we can use our patching stuff again.

I love how you filled in descriptions in the "This area is not done yet"

Its awesome! :)

The first thing I noticed on starting the Beta8 client is that its load time is 4 times that of beta7, and about double the current production client. Kinda scary, makes me think something must have been changed for the worse. Once in game, however, my frame rate is the same as the production client. For reference, Im on a Quad Core G5 with a GeForce 7800 Graphics card running every setting maxed.

One thing that might explain the slow load, from the errors log:

LoadGKMeshes: Can't load 'station_mod01_hangar_gold_001' in 'gaf/station_mod01_hangar_gold_001.pm'
LoadGKMeshes: Can't load 'station_mod01_hangar_gold_001_lod2' in 'gaf/station_mod01_hangar_gold_001_lod2.dfs'

The next error message I encountered is in the Character creation screen. When you try to type in the Name box, you get this:

vo/if_charcreate.lua:99: attempt to read undeclared variable strip_whitespace
stack traceback:
lua/iup/iuplua.lua:188: in function <lua/iup/iuplua.lua:187>
[C]: in function `error'
vo/vo.lua:205: in function <vo/vo.lua:204>
vo/if_charcreate.lua:99: in function <vo/if_charcreate.lua:98>

ESC does not exit the Nav screen anymore.

First thing I checked after downloading beta8 was that odd ALSA fault that I've had with the prior betas. And yes it's still there. Same thing happened again. Bad fps until I switch sound drivers to OSS then I had great fps.

Stranger

I also have the "LoadGKMeshes" messages that tumblemonster mentioned in my errors.log, and the client also takes much longer to load than it used to.
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I took a procurement mission (with a timer) from Bractus D-9 to Odia C-2. When I left the station, an error window popped out:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/001.jpg

The /dump command saved a blank picture, I had to use an external program for screenshots. The /dump doesn't work for me on any graphic drivers (DX8.1, DX9, OpenGL).

After I closed the window, I noticed that my HUD displays a speed of 2000 m/s:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/002.jpg

although I have been moving with normal speed. Regardless of speed changes HUD still showed 2000 m/s and I couldn't set my speed higher than this:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/003.jpg

This error window:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/004.jpg
appeared when I exited the in-flight options menu.

After all this I decided to log off, but after I typed /logoff this error window appeared:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/005.jpg
and I had to close Vendetta from Windows. Here's the errors.log:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/errors1.log

When I logged back in I finished the mission without any problems, only the timer wasn't visible, but the mission computer still told me the time it took me to finish.
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During my way back with cargo I noticed that something's wrong with the number of cargo units in my ship:
http://misiorysio.net.pl/vo/beta8/006.jpg
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I don't know if this is related to my video card or not (Ati Radeon 9200 SE, latest drivers), but even when there's nothing but background on my screen I get around 80-100 fps both on DX8.1 and OpenGL, but around 7 fps on DX9.

Create Character pops up an error box about undeclared variable strip_whitespace" every time you type a character into the Character Name box. A similar error box appears if you hit the "Create Random Name" button. And the "Create Character>>" button never becomses un-greyed-out.

Also, the loading process is so heavy that on my dual-core system, both cores hit 100% and all other processes block. I can't even ctrl-alt-f1 until the loading is finished. :-/

I don't know if it's a feature or a bug, but during flight when you have the chat tab active, mission messages don't show where they used to and vice versa.

EDIT: Just noticed that when you die in an EC-88 with other equipment than the default free and you choose to purchase it again, the free battery and gun are placed in your inventory. I was surprised after dying numerous times in a bus war to see that I have a stack of free batteries and guns :)

duel rating playerX gives the following error:
Only guild commanders and lieutenants can expel members.

pressing y (select last hostile) is inop.

1. SFX and music breakdowns from time to time.

2. Not a bug, but something aesthetical. The chatbox used to disappear during the load screens, but this time around it stays and kinda, I dunno, makes it look ugly.

http://paganserver.no-ip.org/joyce/vo_errors/chat_box.jpg

3. Playing with the basic combat mission, the mission texts that flash when you kill a bot/reach your kill quota/gain a License appeared too high, so much that the chat screen covered them competely but for a few green pixels at the very bottom.

http://paganserver.no-ip.org/joyce/vo_errors/text_error.jpg

OK. Thanks for the bug reports so far.
This is why I didn't want to put this version into production. I had changed some behind-the-scenes things and it caused more problems than I thought.

Being a scared user in the purist sense of the word I approached the beta8 open minded....

Couldn't create a new char so I worked around by creating in the old client

I played from there...in the station I poked around and everything appeared to look like it was working...i canceled out of the tutorial and took a special delivery to gain some cash...I flew out of the station and was greeted by a blank starfield slowly flying straight out...i found the console key, and managed to explode my way back into the station, where I could click logoff and get out of there....

There was all kinds of wrongness!

Where can I send my errors log, because I don't know anything else to say....

I'm on an iMac g5 using Mac OS 10.3.9 Production client performs admirably with a few graphics options turned a little down while beta8 ran crazy badcrashlike at half the screen size (the defaults it selected)

EDIT:Devs and VO reps...feel free to send me a link to send the errors log in question at the address listed in my account...

--FSNI

I cant seem to control the Shekaris, Ferronen, or Nemesis's turrets while they were sitting in Sol II. While selecting, it would turn grey, but never toggle to the turret view. But I was able to on the Beta 7.

I tried to control the Serco turrets using a UIT character, but when i clicked the Select button it would turn gray and stay like that until I selected a different turret.

The /prompt command is still semi-broken.

Examples:

1) In the chat window (while flying) type: /prompt "foo"
Nothing happens.

2) Issue the same command in the console, it works.

3) Run an alias by name from the chat window that runs prompt, it fails.

4) Run the same alias by binding it to a key and pressing the key, it works.

/logoff didn't like me anymore. I popped up a dialog box with the following in it:

vo/vo_cmds.lua:325: attempt to call global `Logout' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
vo/vo_cmds.lua:325: in function `?'
vo/vo_cmds.lua:10: in function `OnEvent'
vo/vo_event.lua:55: in function <vo/vo_event.lua:55>
[C]: in function `xpcall'
vo/vo_event.lua:55: in function <vo/vo_event.lua:50>
vo/vo_event.lua:74: in function `ProcessEvent'
[C]: in function `GKProcessCommand'
vo/if_chatlog.lua:116: in function <vo/if_chatlog.lua:105>

I haven't yet downloaded/tried the beta 8 client, however, since I see no mention of the issue I'm experiencing in Beta 7 in any of the forums or the changelog, I'll post it here.

after running the Adv COmbat mission for a while, I started having all kinds of weird problems with framerate.

Every time I fired a piece of ordinance (split second after every missile), made a sector or system jump, closed a dialogue, changed viewpoints, or saw the mission computer update, my framerate dropped down to in the neighborhood of 1.8-2 fps for the duration of one frame.

Every time I was hit and saw green, or blew up a bot, my framerate dropped down to around 1 fps for the duration of one frame.

Apparently, the frame rate wasn't the only thing that suffered - each time this happened during an engagement with multiple bots, I would get hit (did my strafe stop during the framerate drop?) and the framerate drops would double up... this resulted in me taking a lot of damage every time I destroyed a bot, until I finally had to stop botting and log out.