Maybe I'm missing something obvious. I just signed up for the trial having seen a video on YouTube of Nation War #253, I'm confused why when I play it's still the 'old' look graphics etc. Where do I get the amazing looking new graphics/screen layout from?

Video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M37SrOWwCc

Whoever took the video has a ton of plugins! The ones I recognize there are targetless, customHUD, and TCS. In addition, they have some sort of non-default skin.

Less 'new' and more optional. See here and here for most of the vast array of plugins and skins available.

Thank you Steve. So it looks like the skin Real HUD created by mdaniel is not available, which is a shame. If I can't have the look of that video I'm not playing Vendetta, I'll wait until the game looks like that before I sign up and play. To me that look is so much better than anything else I've seen, hopefully I won't have to wait too long. If someone posts on the spacesimcentral Vendetta section of the forum I'll see, I'm a regular there, this is my first time here, I hope it's not my last!

This is the skin he's using: http://www.vo-wiki.com/wiki/File:Skin_insurrection_001.png

It wasn't Real HUD. You can tell by the radars and the distance (specific name? can't remember) bar.

Oops, Real HUD looks quite similar. Thanks for your help I will download Insurrection right now!!

Hi, that's my video!
As plugins go, Scuba already covered that.

My skin however is a mix of various skins that are (were?) available. The energy bars for example are from the skin space999999 posted, but the radar's are from one of spidey's skins..
If you really only want that look i got there, get it here

Fantastic video Niki! I've now become a Vendetta 8 hour trial signed up newbie thanks to you, finding your video gave me quite a buzz of excitement watching it, the thrill of space combat is just so good!!

Thanks for the help everyone, I'm currently working through the tutorials and having FUN!!

You'll sub.

Welcome to VO!

Really? You think someone who could be put off from playing through the trial due to their lack of taste in skins will shell out ten bucks a month for anything? Let alone a game that has a habit of changing from time to time?

Yes really genka! I don't know why exactly but a couple of years ago I tried Vendetta and the look wasn't right somehow, it was something about the HUD and screen layout that put me off at the time. My favourite space game has always been Elite, I used to love playing it on my BBC micro back in the 80's, to me back then it was perfect, everything about it felt right. More recently I've been looking for the one thing that Elite never had, namely a massively multiplayer online universe. I quite like Oolite for it's similarity to Elite but it's not an MMO, I have tried other single player games with multiplayer, again not MMO's. I've played Taikodom, been a beta tester on Black Prophecy and gone through a few 14 day trials on EVE, none have felt totally right to me always that 'magical something' has been missing. When I saw Niki's Nation War #253 video on YouTube I was really excited I thought it was a new updated version of Vendetta, I didn't know about skins and plugins.

Between my experience of Vendetta a while ago and now I can see there have been many changes and improvements, I have to say I like what I have found and I like the look and overall feel too, having got Insurrection, targetless, customHUD and TCS I'm very happy. My only concern now is if I can't get other plugins others have but I don't I may be at a disavantage in-game, I'm not sure if that's the case as I don't yet have enough experience to know. I would like TradeAssistant but I wasn't able to download it, the file is no longer available. I'd guess it's the HUD/display plugins etc that help give the edge in space combat rather than help with trading and making profit that are more important to have, I'm sure I will learn given time.

More than anything, the one thing that I just found and read about on the forums is where a new player was complaining about what he considers to be griefing, saying if it's what happens in Vendetta then he is leaving the game. Knowing that nowhere is 100% safe is a real turn-on for me, it adds to the thrill and excitement, the unknown, you could get killed anywhere anytime, I need that, to rely on my skill to survive. Ok so I may have this hang-up about what some might consider a trivial thing like the look of the game, but I DO oh so love Vendetta's raison d'etre, where it's kill or be killed, trust nobody, be prepared to die!

@genka.. so did I come across as lacking in enthusiasm, now I've got what I've been looking for all this time?

Thanks for the welcome Schmidtrock!

So will StarZen sub, you decide..

No, you came across as a fucking moron. "I'll only sub if I have THIS PARTICULAR SKIN OMG IT'S SO SPECIAL!"

I would certainly accept that observation Dr. Lecter, I will take that comment on board. In my case it's what has made the difference to me being here rather than playing somewhere like Eve, it's one more player for Vendetta which has to be a good thing I guess. What I still don't understand is why so many people play on Eve compared to Vendetta, surely this IS the best space based MMORPG?

VO only recently started any sort of advertising, which is the main thing I think.

StarZen: Trade Assistant is available from here.
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/16/19302#242457

I'm sure Vendetta could be equal to Eve given more exposure in the media. Only time will tell I guess. What's lacking are more players populating the VO universe to increase the activity, I've only been in the training sector so far which was quiet, I've yet to find the busy locations and popular hang-outs etc.

Thanks vskye but still no luck with Trade Assistant, the link here

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/9/19302

says 'You do not have access to this forum' and the other link that had the file ta_1_12.zip to download just ended up with main.lua in my plugins folder, doesn't seem to work. Any ideas how to get Trade Assistant working or somewhere else to download please?

There was a past change in the forums that has moved msgboard/9 to msgboard/16 which is the reason why that link no longer works, but the post still exists. The link is now http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/16/19302 but you'll notice that it's the same as vskye's link.

If I read your post correctly, you have ta's main.lua directly in VO's plugins folder. If that's the case, then to fix your plugin problem, you'll have to create a folder to place main.lua in. You can try creating a folder named "ta" inside the VO plugins folder and moving main.lua into the newly created "ta" folder. The resulting relative path would be "plugins/ta/main.lua". Hopefully then the console command /ta will work. For future reference, it'll help to know that a plugin is a folder with at least main.lua in it.

Edit: The plugin's folder name doesn't matter either. You can name it "tradeassistant" or "ta_1_12" instead of "ta" if you'd like.

When I first played VO, I thought the HUD was kind of cartoony or something. Then I discovered that I could press F5 to resize it. Once I made the HUD smaller, it suddenly looked much nicer to me.

Beware that there is a plugin out there that has issues when you resize the HUD, though I think it may have been fixed recently. So if you have trouble with that, just disable all your plugins, adjust the HUD, then enable them again. (Simply renaming the plugins folder will work.)

Thanks for posting that link Niki, the station/pda part of the skin in that version is much better than the glossy black crap in the original Insurrection.

FiReMaGe -- your link doesn't work. Get rid of that comma.

Thanks meridian - I got rid of the comma for him.

Ah, thanks meridian and Whistler, I should have checked.