Hi all, the game suggested I should post ideas for improvement on the forum. So here I am. :-P

First off, the newbie tutorials are a great tool and make starting really easy. Though I hope there is a way to fast-forward through them for a second or third character later?

A) Typos in newbie tutorials: One was in one of the very first dialogs, I think "(something is) requires" instead of "required" (in any case, s instead of d). In a later newbie tutorial, there is a sentence with the word "bank" or "band" in it, that makes not sense. The reason why bug A's description is so horribly unspecific brings me to point B and C...

B) I cannot take screenshots. Please add a shortcut.

C) I cannot switch back to my desktop to take notes in a text file. Please let me use my operating system's application switcher shortcut. Currently "anything + tab" is intercepted by the game (I'm on MacOS).

D) When a newbie accidentally types "t" instead of "r", we are stuck in the chat. Please implement the intuitve way to shift the focus back to the game by clicking outside the chat.

E) I know I can type "m" to get to the current mission. How to get there from the PDA's Mission window? I only see the current mission's intro text, and there, the only option is abort. Why is the "m" window not open in the Mission tab by default? (By accident, I now have the "HUD training" in the mission log three times: First as completed, then as aborted, then as completed again!?)

F) Maybe it's a matter of getting used to it, but the rear and front radar are too transparent. Can you try blurring or dimming the background so we can tell what is _actually_ on the radar and what is "behind it" in space?

G) I know I can adjust the chat colors in the options, but, why is the chat unreadable by default? :-P Can you test whether maybe a 50% opaque black background by default would help?

H) Despite the excellent tutorial, the station HUD is not intuitive. Everytime I dock, I click through all subtabs just to find the "repair ship" and "sell/unload cargo" panel(s). I found another panel that lets me view item stats, but only Frig knows where it was... Sure, I'll learn it by heart eventually, but if the GUI were intuitive on the first day, it would leave a hugely positive impression.

I) Can you make the cargo display e.g. blink red when I try to pick up more loot after the cargo is full? This puzzled me on my first day. Why did I pick up _these_ crates by chance, but I can't pick up _those_?

J) I now found out that the mouse wheel triggers the info display for the object I'm looking at. Can this be mentioned earlier? I saw this key input in the options but the description didn't mean anything to me.

K) The audio feedback takes getting used to. "Picking up crate" sounds like it damaged me, so I thought they were mines and avoided crates at first. (In the newbie tutorial we get no damage so I didn't know what being damaged truly looked like.) "Not picking up crate because cargo is full" has no A/V feedback at all: Did I miss the box or what's happening? Getting a hit on an enemy sounds like a "radar ping" or a "proximity danger" alert to me -- why do we need the tutorial to explain the beep, why not simply play a sound that truly conveys the message "successfully applied scifi-style damage"?

Well, just jotting down my first impressions. Overall, a very well done game (considering that it wasn't done by 100 developers like the others). None of these minor issues actually prevented me from playing.

Wow, the two typos were already reported by someone else in 2009:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/22441
and 2011
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/25637
I didn't know the game was that old. :D But not fixed yet.

Hey podpivnik,

FF through the tutorials is easy; you just have to click "continue" rather rapidly, dock, and undock a few times.

A) Yes, this should be fixed.

B) Yes, you can. I think it's F12 by default (see options).

C) The game lets you play in Windowed mode, which allows you to minimize the game screen to the desktop while running (see options).

D) Best way around this atm is to delete whatever you have entered into the chat bar and press "Enter". Your name will not appear in chat. (or, press esc as Pizzasgood suggests)

E) I'm somewhat confused here. "m" takes you to your current mission log by default. You can also go to Your PDA -> Missions -> Mission Log. Do you have your current mission selected, and are you scrolled down all the way? I'm also not familiar with the mission "HUD training".

F) The further away radar contacts are, the dimmer they appear. You are not supposed to be able to see everything on your radar clearly; it functions more like an F-16's "Threat Warning Indicator". You can also pull up the sector list by pressing "u" to manually select radar contacts. You may also be interested in the targetless plugin, which presents the sector list (u) directly on the HUD (http://targetless.com/).

G) I can read the chat just fine.

H) Repair ship and sell cargo options are available on the first screen every time you dock (unless you clicked the "Route" button for a mission): the station "welcome" screen.

I) I think the devs are working on this:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/20560#322756

J) Some people like to use the mousewheel for other things, and not all mice have a wheel. I had my mousewheel set to toggle autoaim and toggle flight assist for a while. You can select anything you are looking at that is within radar range by pressing 'b', by default.

K) See I. Sounds in general are one of VO's weak areas.

Welcome to the game.

You can also do screenshots with the command "/dump". If you want to use F12, you might have to press it in conjunction with the Fn key if you have a laptop-style keyboard.

You should be able to get out of chat by hitting Escape, without needing to delete any text. Careful to only hit Escape once though, otherwise you get stuck in the Escape Dialog instead.

I do agree that clicking on an empty part of the screen should be added as a way to exit chat. You should make a thread in Suggestions about that. (Try to keep suggestion threads to one idea per thread, BTW.)

As for switching to the desktop, as Phaserlight says it does work from Windowed mode. I think you can toggle between Windowed and Fullscreen mode on the fly with Command+Enter or so. (I haven't played on Mac, so I'm guessing - it's Ctrl-Enter on normal keyboards.)

EDIT: Actually, Arf says below that it's Alt-Enter, NOT Ctrl-Enter, sorry

Aaaah, I found the mission logs, windowed mode, screenhots, escape key for chats, and lots of shortcuts. THANKS!

Dang I didn't see the scrollbar in the keyboard options (but hey, doing pretty good for my second day, I only missed half the key bindings...) ;-)
To get to the key bindings, I pressed escape and O (which gives the impression that you support no-click navigation). Then I pressed pgDown and arrowDown on the list, and nothing happened, so I assumed it didn't scroll further.

B) OK, /dump works for screenhots. Both F12 and fn+F12 are taken by MacOS (but I can change the key in the options).
By the way, in MacOS, VO accidentally saves the screenshots _inside_ the application package (inside the .app)! Should it not be the user's desktop? Most users don't know how, or even that they can open the application package.

E) Right, the "HUD training" mission is actually called "Training IV: The station interface" (Yay, I can now tab between the game and the browser and look stuff up!)

K) Speaking of unrecognizable sound, yesterday I realized that the "ominous evil invisible thing shooting at me near stations" was actually other players' (and sometimes even my own) booster... X-) A booster should have a lower pitch -- low like a blow torch, not high like a phaser. Time for a new sound theme? :-D

Different ships have different turbo sfx; the first ship is particularly high.

You can specify a path after the /dump command for the screenshot to go to.

You can switch between fullscreen and windowed on Windows and Linux by using Alt+Enter. In windowed mode you can move the mouse out of the game to do other things while you're in menus.

Neat idea blurring the transparency on the radar. Might be worth a thread on the Suggestions board. :)