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Request for Comments: Upcoming VO client changes.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, a lot of work has been on-going to improve the game client, for several years. We're trying to consolidate some of that work now. This includes the following callouts from the previous link:
Windows Client - There is going to be a major update of the Windows Client. Dropping 32bit support has been mentioned elsewhere, but we're also completely re-working the installation directories, install experience, game-launcher interface, and many other things.
All Clients - Some good technical improvements (like loading time) have been prototyped on Android and will be back-propagated across to other platforms. Some platforms are more complicated to change than others, and testing is involved and time-consuming.
A lot of effort is going into this, and I think the changes are mostly great stuff that will be well-received (things working much faster, better, etc) but I want to touch on a few areas that may have some impact on veteran players who are used to the game-client working "a particular way".
Game Install Structure Changes
I want to move away from the frequent "UAC pop-up" on Windows, and basically have the game be entirely unprivileged except when absolutely necessary to do a major update. While the specifics are still in flux, this may result in a different directory structure and game installation layout.
Running the game from the Launcher
It is possible that we may end up requiring that the game be started from the new Game Launcher, rather than be a separately usable executable (for those who know), the way it has always been in the past.
There are a few reasons for this, including:
1) We want to try to limit the potential for the game to be illicitly modified and re-distributed by some fake-publisher or spyware shop. This is always theoretically possible with any software product, and it's why we recommend that people only download our game from our site and our approved store channels. Still, this kind of problem has been on the rise, and even though it's outside of our direct control, we still want to try to "harden" the game binary to make it more technically arduous for any adversary to repurpose our game for something else.
2) The change is also beneficial in some ways, we've had a number of Bugs threads that stemmed from someone just "forgetting" to run the updater in a long time, and reporting bugs that had already been fixed as a result. I'm not calling anyone out, I'm just saying: it happens. There are public threads and Support Tickets, etc.
Now, the new Launcher should be dramatically faster and architecturally more modern than the classic Updater (it uses multiple cores and much faster algorithms and so on), so I don't think this will really be a problem. But, because it's "different", I thought I'd call it out and let people know in advance.
The game may become more unfriendly to VPNs and Virtual Machines
Both of these situations stem from abuse cases where people targeted the usage of VPNs and VMs to spam the game, or launch various types of attacks.
I wrote about the VPN issue back in 2023, and if this is likely to impact you, please read my post from back then. This is a nuanced issue, I'm not personally anti-VPN at all, especially given the benefits they have for people located in certain countries with a lot of surveillance and limited options for reaching the internet. I'm not saying we're going to "block" VPNs exactly, but as I mentioned in the linked post above, they may have more limited access to the game.
I posted a bit about Virtual Machines in 2024, mostly in the context of relative performance. But this isn't really about that. The issue here is more about what I'll call "game abuse" scenarios: people who behave badly or try to attack the game or community in some way, with the intent of denying service or doing real harm (not about actual players). Still, much like VPNs, I'm not saying we're necessarily going to "ban" VMs; but they may have diminished access and more careful server restrictions. If we eventually make a hard policy decision against them, then you may start to see account warnings about using them.
Neither of these are black-and-white "we're banning X" type reactions, as is often the case in other games. But, this is a statement that we're becoming more careful about how we're monitoring certain types of usage, and putting ourselves in a stronger position to manage problematic scenarios if they should arise.
Feedback is welcome. As always, we listen and try to find middle ground to accommodate concerns, especially those that we hadn't considered or didn't realize existed, which is why I post this stuff.
One final set of points: We're far from the only game pursuing this kind of policy, but most of them do it for DRM or anti-cheat reasons. We don't care about DRM (server-side game) and anti-cheat we philosophically deal with on the server. We aren't aiming to slow down the game or make it less playable, or more of a hassle. Quite the opposite, everything should run better. FYI.
Windows Client - There is going to be a major update of the Windows Client. Dropping 32bit support has been mentioned elsewhere, but we're also completely re-working the installation directories, install experience, game-launcher interface, and many other things.
All Clients - Some good technical improvements (like loading time) have been prototyped on Android and will be back-propagated across to other platforms. Some platforms are more complicated to change than others, and testing is involved and time-consuming.
A lot of effort is going into this, and I think the changes are mostly great stuff that will be well-received (things working much faster, better, etc) but I want to touch on a few areas that may have some impact on veteran players who are used to the game-client working "a particular way".
Game Install Structure Changes
I want to move away from the frequent "UAC pop-up" on Windows, and basically have the game be entirely unprivileged except when absolutely necessary to do a major update. While the specifics are still in flux, this may result in a different directory structure and game installation layout.
Running the game from the Launcher
It is possible that we may end up requiring that the game be started from the new Game Launcher, rather than be a separately usable executable (for those who know), the way it has always been in the past.
There are a few reasons for this, including:
1) We want to try to limit the potential for the game to be illicitly modified and re-distributed by some fake-publisher or spyware shop. This is always theoretically possible with any software product, and it's why we recommend that people only download our game from our site and our approved store channels. Still, this kind of problem has been on the rise, and even though it's outside of our direct control, we still want to try to "harden" the game binary to make it more technically arduous for any adversary to repurpose our game for something else.
2) The change is also beneficial in some ways, we've had a number of Bugs threads that stemmed from someone just "forgetting" to run the updater in a long time, and reporting bugs that had already been fixed as a result. I'm not calling anyone out, I'm just saying: it happens. There are public threads and Support Tickets, etc.
Now, the new Launcher should be dramatically faster and architecturally more modern than the classic Updater (it uses multiple cores and much faster algorithms and so on), so I don't think this will really be a problem. But, because it's "different", I thought I'd call it out and let people know in advance.
The game may become more unfriendly to VPNs and Virtual Machines
Both of these situations stem from abuse cases where people targeted the usage of VPNs and VMs to spam the game, or launch various types of attacks.
I wrote about the VPN issue back in 2023, and if this is likely to impact you, please read my post from back then. This is a nuanced issue, I'm not personally anti-VPN at all, especially given the benefits they have for people located in certain countries with a lot of surveillance and limited options for reaching the internet. I'm not saying we're going to "block" VPNs exactly, but as I mentioned in the linked post above, they may have more limited access to the game.
I posted a bit about Virtual Machines in 2024, mostly in the context of relative performance. But this isn't really about that. The issue here is more about what I'll call "game abuse" scenarios: people who behave badly or try to attack the game or community in some way, with the intent of denying service or doing real harm (not about actual players). Still, much like VPNs, I'm not saying we're necessarily going to "ban" VMs; but they may have diminished access and more careful server restrictions. If we eventually make a hard policy decision against them, then you may start to see account warnings about using them.
Neither of these are black-and-white "we're banning X" type reactions, as is often the case in other games. But, this is a statement that we're becoming more careful about how we're monitoring certain types of usage, and putting ourselves in a stronger position to manage problematic scenarios if they should arise.
Feedback is welcome. As always, we listen and try to find middle ground to accommodate concerns, especially those that we hadn't considered or didn't realize existed, which is why I post this stuff.
One final set of points: We're far from the only game pursuing this kind of policy, but most of them do it for DRM or anti-cheat reasons. We don't care about DRM (server-side game) and anti-cheat we philosophically deal with on the server. We aren't aiming to slow down the game or make it less playable, or more of a hassle. Quite the opposite, everything should run better. FYI.
There's nothing to respond to here. This all should have been done years ago. These changes will be ineffectual for anyone using the software as intended. Thank you for your efforts.
Making the updater look all fancy with some screenshots and it's own window style won't hurt one bit looking forward to stuff working perfectly on a first run; good luck this shit ain't easy!
Only thing I can add is that to most newbs plugins and skins are interchangeable so making skins load from the plugins folder probably wouldn't hurt; that said luxen's put a lot of work into this so refer to them for more meaningful/useful input!
Only thing I can add is that to most newbs plugins and skins are interchangeable so making skins load from the plugins folder probably wouldn't hurt; that said luxen's put a lot of work into this so refer to them for more meaningful/useful input!
looking forward to stuff working perfectly on a first run; good luck this shit ain't easy!
Yeah, it definitely isn't easy, or simple (or frankly, we would have done it years ago, it took years just to rewrite all this, in between other development projects).
Only thing I can add is that to most newbs plugins and skins are interchangeable so making skins load from the plugins folder probably wouldn't hurt
I'm looking at making a "Documents/Vendetta Online" directory, and putting a Plugins directory in there with a related README (along with other directories for Logs and Configuration), so things are more accessible. We could similarly make a Skins directory, or we could just have a "Mods" directory and have separate README files for Skins vs Plugins? That might be weird for people. Keeping the "Plugins" directory naming convention might be better.
that said luxen's put a lot of work into this so refer to them for more meaningful/useful input!
A good thought, I pinged him directly. I'm trying to make this all "better", so the more feedback I can get on impact to the Community-related mods, the better.
Making the updater look all fancy with some screenshots and it's own window style won't hurt one bit
That's going to happen, but not immediately. Right now the new "Launcher" (replacement for the "Updater") uses very different code and technology and looks identical. I mean, it's a lot faster, and you can scroll the MOTD while patching, but nothing amazing.
In due course the visual interface of the Launcher will be changed and a lot of other functionality will be added. But for starters our main goal is "don't break anything".
Yeah, it definitely isn't easy, or simple (or frankly, we would have done it years ago, it took years just to rewrite all this, in between other development projects).
Only thing I can add is that to most newbs plugins and skins are interchangeable so making skins load from the plugins folder probably wouldn't hurt
I'm looking at making a "Documents/Vendetta Online" directory, and putting a Plugins directory in there with a related README (along with other directories for Logs and Configuration), so things are more accessible. We could similarly make a Skins directory, or we could just have a "Mods" directory and have separate README files for Skins vs Plugins? That might be weird for people. Keeping the "Plugins" directory naming convention might be better.
that said luxen's put a lot of work into this so refer to them for more meaningful/useful input!
A good thought, I pinged him directly. I'm trying to make this all "better", so the more feedback I can get on impact to the Community-related mods, the better.
Making the updater look all fancy with some screenshots and it's own window style won't hurt one bit
That's going to happen, but not immediately. Right now the new "Launcher" (replacement for the "Updater") uses very different code and technology and looks identical. I mean, it's a lot faster, and you can scroll the MOTD while patching, but nothing amazing.
In due course the visual interface of the Launcher will be changed and a lot of other functionality will be added. But for starters our main goal is "don't break anything".
Plugin "concerns" (all probably minor)
• some plugins expect the plugin directory name to be "plugins". I personally would prefer the name to get changed to 'mods' and i'm changing a lot of my things to be very directory-fluid right now (as mentioned in the discord DMs). Those plugins that might not behave if the directory gets renamed might even just be some of my old ones only... but we [the community, not you the devs] ought to look into that.
• I don't think we need a dedicated skins directory. Skins never had a dedicated directory before, and any adapted for reskin are now _JUST_ plugins (as mentioned) that register forwards into reskin to make them selectable.
• To ensure [any of my stuff] continues to work going forward, my only concern is how directory access may change (even if strictly in appearance). If within the virtual environment of the game everything appears the same to plugins, then we probably won't need to change anything at all.
-------------------------
Platform questions (definitely minor)
• All the launcher stuff mentioned here is windows-specific; how would it change for linux/mac users? Any idea on that so far?
• Any chance we could get similar treatment on Android for changing the plugins directory location? Assuming google would even let you, with how they've been behaving... but a few games use to use the ./data/<their folder> directory for public stuff (as opposed to ./android/data/<their folder> for private things). Before scoped storage, of course... This can be its own forum thread if you think, since its kinda independent
-------------------------
And now for some other things:
• I'm sure the eventual end result will look glorious and you've already thought about this, but please add social links (including to our own discord) to the launcher and/or in the game client? Pretty please?
• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• I made a basic program that launches the Vendetta Online client directly, in a way that lets Steam's overlay detect the game and be used. Admittedly, I only wanted to get Valve's performance metric graph, just to see how that'd look for VO... but the current launcher and how it works prevents the overlay from seeing the game. Its such a non-issue, I don't actually expect you to do anything about it, but it is a nice-to-have, having the game detected. If we're ever going to launch on steam, might want to look at that...
/me runs
I trust you to keep making Vendetta Online awesome. You do you - thanks for lending an ear to us and our wierd little quirks.
• some plugins expect the plugin directory name to be "plugins". I personally would prefer the name to get changed to 'mods' and i'm changing a lot of my things to be very directory-fluid right now (as mentioned in the discord DMs). Those plugins that might not behave if the directory gets renamed might even just be some of my old ones only... but we [the community, not you the devs] ought to look into that.
• I don't think we need a dedicated skins directory. Skins never had a dedicated directory before, and any adapted for reskin are now _JUST_ plugins (as mentioned) that register forwards into reskin to make them selectable.
• To ensure [any of my stuff] continues to work going forward, my only concern is how directory access may change (even if strictly in appearance). If within the virtual environment of the game everything appears the same to plugins, then we probably won't need to change anything at all.
-------------------------
Platform questions (definitely minor)
• All the launcher stuff mentioned here is windows-specific; how would it change for linux/mac users? Any idea on that so far?
• Any chance we could get similar treatment on Android for changing the plugins directory location? Assuming google would even let you, with how they've been behaving... but a few games use to use the ./data/<their folder> directory for public stuff (as opposed to ./android/data/<their folder> for private things). Before scoped storage, of course... This can be its own forum thread if you think, since its kinda independent
-------------------------
And now for some other things:
• I'm sure the eventual end result will look glorious and you've already thought about this, but please add social links (including to our own discord) to the launcher and/or in the game client? Pretty please?
• ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• I made a basic program that launches the Vendetta Online client directly, in a way that lets Steam's overlay detect the game and be used. Admittedly, I only wanted to get Valve's performance metric graph, just to see how that'd look for VO... but the current launcher and how it works prevents the overlay from seeing the game. Its such a non-issue, I don't actually expect you to do anything about it, but it is a nice-to-have, having the game detected. If we're ever going to launch on steam, might want to look at that...
/me runs
I trust you to keep making Vendetta Online awesome. You do you - thanks for lending an ear to us and our wierd little quirks.
If within the virtual environment of the game everything appears the same to plugins, then we probably won't need to change anything at all.
I am not intending to change any internal reference path structure, the intention would for things to "just work" 1:1 when moved to "Documents/Vendetta Online/Plugins" versus "Program Files (x86)/Vendetta Online/Plugins"
All the launcher stuff mentioned here is windows-specific; how would it change for linux/mac users? Any idea on that so far?
The Launcher system is a "global" change across all platforms, but the rollout will be done in stages. Right now it is in use only on the Quest. Next will be Windows, then probably Android. As to the per-platform specifics, that's a bit too far afield at this time, and I don't yet know all the details (some things usually come to light during implementation and testing). [EDIT] I can say that "generally" the goals are the same as stated in the OP, across all platforms.
Any chance we could get similar treatment on Android for changing the plugins directory location?
I'm not sure. I'd rather do something "universal" for all mobile platforms, rather than make it Android specific and then leave iOS people "hanging out to dry". That would imply it needs to be an internal downloader that's built into the application, where the game itself stores the plugins, which I think I've written about here before. But.. I don't know all the details yet, that's a bit far afield from our current focus.
I'm sure the eventual end result will look glorious and you've already thought about this, but please add social links (including to our own discord) to the launcher and/or in the game client? Pretty please?
Yes, adding static links to common-case resources are a core part of the first-generation Launcher design. But the intended goals are much broader and more pervasive, as a way of helping people be connected to their guilds, their buddies, the state of in-game events and other activities.
I made a basic program that launches the Vendetta Online client directly, in a way that lets Steam's overlay detect the game and be used.
I can't guarantee that that will work. It is not a priority. If that's something we want to support down the road, we can intentionally add that; but that would be a subject for another thread.
I trust you to keep making Vendetta Online awesome. You do you - thanks for lending an ear to us and our wierd little quirks.
Thanks for the feedback and input :). We'll do our best.
I am not intending to change any internal reference path structure, the intention would for things to "just work" 1:1 when moved to "Documents/Vendetta Online/Plugins" versus "Program Files (x86)/Vendetta Online/Plugins"
All the launcher stuff mentioned here is windows-specific; how would it change for linux/mac users? Any idea on that so far?
The Launcher system is a "global" change across all platforms, but the rollout will be done in stages. Right now it is in use only on the Quest. Next will be Windows, then probably Android. As to the per-platform specifics, that's a bit too far afield at this time, and I don't yet know all the details (some things usually come to light during implementation and testing). [EDIT] I can say that "generally" the goals are the same as stated in the OP, across all platforms.
Any chance we could get similar treatment on Android for changing the plugins directory location?
I'm not sure. I'd rather do something "universal" for all mobile platforms, rather than make it Android specific and then leave iOS people "hanging out to dry". That would imply it needs to be an internal downloader that's built into the application, where the game itself stores the plugins, which I think I've written about here before. But.. I don't know all the details yet, that's a bit far afield from our current focus.
I'm sure the eventual end result will look glorious and you've already thought about this, but please add social links (including to our own discord) to the launcher and/or in the game client? Pretty please?
Yes, adding static links to common-case resources are a core part of the first-generation Launcher design. But the intended goals are much broader and more pervasive, as a way of helping people be connected to their guilds, their buddies, the state of in-game events and other activities.
I made a basic program that launches the Vendetta Online client directly, in a way that lets Steam's overlay detect the game and be used.
I can't guarantee that that will work. It is not a priority. If that's something we want to support down the road, we can intentionally add that; but that would be a subject for another thread.
I trust you to keep making Vendetta Online awesome. You do you - thanks for lending an ear to us and our wierd little quirks.
Thanks for the feedback and input :). We'll do our best.
Amazing! I can't wait to launch the game differently!
Amazing! I can't wait to launch the game differently!
Considering you're one of the people who complained relatively recently about the flaws in the existing Update system (which is part of what we're trying to fix here), yes, it would be appropriate for you to be excited.
Unfortunately, we both know you're just being a sarcastic dick.
Considering you're one of the people who complained relatively recently about the flaws in the existing Update system (which is part of what we're trying to fix here), yes, it would be appropriate for you to be excited.
Unfortunately, we both know you're just being a sarcastic dick.
moar ram; just what i needed.. (believe it or not) ^_^
/me loves how direct Incarnate is! Ngl the "sarcastic dick" comment made me almost spit my coffee. Hahaha!
Thanks for all the work on making it better. The UAC thing has always been annoying on windoze. MS problem not directed at devs, I mean. ;)
Thanks for all the work on making it better. The UAC thing has always been annoying on windoze. MS problem not directed at devs, I mean. ;)