Vecter News

Vecter Launch Day Competition with IRL Prizes

Vecter 1.0 is launching in less than 24 hours on 15th of October 2020 @ 00:00 UTC.

To celebrate, I wanted to run a little prize giveaway to thank the community for supporting me and Vecter all throughout the Early Access process. Freshly arrived today, two pairs of Philips Ear Pods SHB2515BK/10 In Ear Headphones

Before going any further I want to make clear that this competition is sponsored by ABSOLUTELY NOBODY... Not even Raid: Shadow Legends. I just wanted to do something nice for Vecter and the community ːsteamhappyː

Wait Tara, I'm confused, when does the competition start? Countdown timer for your convenience and it ends exactly 24 hours later.

So here's how it's going to work: There are two ways of winning, one based on luck and one based on skill:

[h2]Based on luck: [/h2]

If you play Vecter, Top Dog mode and are on the leader board with a score of over 100,000 for the day of 15th of October, you will be automatically entered into a draw competition to win a pair of Philips Ear Pods SHB2515BK/10 In Ear Headphones. To get on the leader board all you have to do is play Vecter Top Dog mode at some point between 00:00 UTC and 23:59 UTC on the 15th of October and get over the score requirement. Don't leave it to last-minute though, because in order to unlock Top-Dog mode you need to get a score over 50,000 in Training mode as well, so there is a bit of effort you have to do.

[h2]Based on skill: [/h2]

For the more competitive of you, this is where your training pays off. The person who is top of the hardcore leader board on launch day will also win a pair of Philips Ear Pods SHB2515BK/10 In Ear Headphones. If your name is on the top of this list when the 15th UTC ends, you won!

[h2]Some more rules around the competition:[/h2]

- No cheating will be tolerated. Any cheating of any kind will have you immediately disqualified from the competition.
- The competition is only available to those playing Vecter through Steam.
- Your entry is based on your steam ID, so should you win I will attempt to contact you through steam by adding you as a friend. This is done in order to verify that the prize is sent to the correct person so all conversations will be held through Steam chat.
- You must be online when playing on that day in order to record your score correctly.
- I will do my best to ship the prize worldwide and mark the prize as a present, but if your country decides you have to pay import tax on it you'll be the one paying it.
- The competition lasts for the whole of 15th of October UTC. The level starts at 00:00 15ht of October UTC and ends at 23:59 15th of October UTC

With an incredible neon style, Vecter is an infinite racing-shooter that is now on Linux

Vecter from developer Taranasus is a free infinite racing game all about lasting as long as possible and destroying anything in your way. After launching into Early Access in November 2019, it's now officially on Linux too.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/09/with-an-incredible-neon-style-vecter-is-an-infinite-racing-shooter-that-is-now-on-linux

Vecter on Linux, come and get it!

I've learned a lot from porting Vecter to Linux. I'm writing this post on Manjaro because it's my laptop's main and only OS. Linux has come a long way and I'm very impressed so I'll continue using it on my laptop. But enough about that.

[h2]Vecter 0.9.5 is out and for the first time, it's cross-platform. [/h2]

You can now play Vecter natively on Linux straight from Steam. It runs well as far as I can tell but there might be a few hiccups I missed. If there are, kindly shoot me an email to [email protected] and let me know what's wrong. Or open a discussion on the community as I monitor it closely. There's still 3 weeks of Beta left so there should be plenty of time to fix any lingering issues.

The Linux release has also brought along a few changes, most of them good, one of them bad and one of them sad which I'll get to at the end. So here's what else is new.

The in-game leaderboard now shows a little OS icon next to the player's name to illustrate what platform the score was set on. It's not the most useful thing it but with future versions of the game on various devices, it would be cool to know what the player set the score on. This will also be a feature on the website leaderboard I just haven't gotten around to it yet. http://vecter.online/leaderboard.html

The credit screen now also shows the game's version in the bottom left corner. This is useful in case you get the "You are running an older version of vecter" message in-game so you can check what version you are on and then let me know if you're having issues. "But why in the world is it on the credits screen?". Because nobody EVER looks at the credit screen, even though there's an achievement attached to it, and that makes me a little sad. A lot of people have contributed to Vecter over the years and they deserve to be known!

The save files have gotten a bit of an upgrade. Here's everything that changed:

The save files are cross-compatible between Windows and Linux and I plan for them to be cross-compatible between every single version of Vecter.
Steam cloud will sync your save files between Linux and windows so you can have the same stats regardless of platform
Graphics settings are now also tied to your device, not just your save file, so the graphics settings you set on one PC do not get carried over to a different PC. This is to prevent situations where you set Ultra
High on a bulky pc but then install vecter through Steam on a laptop and it can't run because it can't handle Ultra high.

The bad change: The Linux version of Vecter does not support playing YouTube videos. This is sadly due to Unity (the game engine that Vecter's made in) on Linux doesn't support any of the video formats that YouTube provides (MP4, or WEBM VP9. It only supports WEBM VP8 which is ancient). I, unfortunately, have no power to change this and it's up to the people at Unity to provide support for these very popular video formats. Maybe in a future version of Unity that will change and if it does I will be happy to bring it back in ASAP.

The sad change: I can no longer justify hosting vecter on small sites like GameJolt, Itch.io, Kartridge, discord, etc. They bring very little to no traffic these days and having to maintain the launcher just for them is painful to me, not to mention that it ads extra cost to have it talk to the servers, host all versions of the game, etc.

So, as of this update, The game will no longer be updated on these sites. I will put up a message to direct people to get it on Steam which does all the hosting and updating for me, but otherwise, it will, for now, be the only PC platform from where one can get it.

So yeah, that's pretty much it. Remember that we go out of Early Access and into a full version of the game on the 15th of October. If you've been playing during early access not much is going to change for you, just a milestone in the game's development.

YouTube quality UP!

Been busy trying to make the Linux port and that actually helped the game improve in a different part. I now have a better understanding of how the YouTube api works and can dynamically select the best video quality to play. So here's how that works now:

- The game will look at what resolution you're playing the game first. Say for example 1280 x 720. The "720" is what's important here.
- It will then detect all resolutions available for the video you want to watch, for example: 1440p, 1080p, 720p, 480p, 360p
- It will then pick the highest video resolution available that is equal to or less than your screen's hight resolution. So in this case it will be 720p.

The reason it works this way is because there's no point in wasting someone's bandwidth trying to always play the maximum resolution available if their screen can't render it. It's also because someone playing Vecter at 1280x720 usually means that they do not have a computer capable of rendering, for example, a 4k video, which would cause them massive performance issues.

In conclusion, if you play Vecter on a 4k Screen, and you select to watch a 4k video on YouTube, you will get a 4k video playing in-game.

Oh, and the guns are three times more powerful, but they consume 3 times more points.

[h3]But enough blabber, here are the patch notes:
[/h3]

YouTube video quality is now automatically picked for the best experience depending on your hardware
You can now play VideoSeeds in offline mode. They will not play videos, sadly, for obvious reasons, but they will have a timer and will end when the timer ends just like they would when you're online.
Gun damage increased by x3
Gun point consumption increased by x3
Restart Song option has been added that, if you turn off, will keep playing the same song or YouTube video between runs and not restart on crash
Renamed the option "Stop music on crash" to "Disc scratch on crash"
Updated descriptions in "Sound" options menu section to clearly state which ones affect YouTube videos as well and which ones do not
Non-alphanumeric characters in the name are no longer allowed. This is an unfortunate necessity. There is no font that contains chinese + greek + russioan + latin + japanaese etc etc that I can possibly use to satisfy everyone. I even tried merging multiple fonts together, it did not go well. So here's what happens now:
- You can only type alpha-numeric in the text box. That was always the case but thought I should mention it again.
- A name made just of blanks like: . is no longer allowed. We need to know who you are STOP HIDING!
- When the game picks up your name from steam, it will remove all characters that are not alpha-numeric. If all of your characters are not alpha numeric (say a Chinese name), then you will be renamed to "Player 1" and you will have an opportunity to change your name via the in-game menu or at the end of a run.
This is fixed ---> If you have music turned off/to minimum and turn it back up when playing with a seed that has music, the default music will play at the same time as the youtube video. This only happens when you don't have a youtube link in your clipboard.
Fixed the name menu you get at the end of a run if your name is "PLAYER 1" to also contain a blinking cursor so you know you're supposed to type. Typing is fun guys!
Removed some log message that I left in game by accident
The first person distance counter is turned off and not visible unless you are in first person
Leaderboard navigation in-game has been fixed so it no longer resets its position almost every time you try to scroll through it
FiXeyD SpUd DaMion MIssSpellINGz
There was a very rare bug that one player has reproted where in casual you could have a washing machine (that big spinning triangle thing) spawn right on top of you after dying. This shoud no longer happen (I hope, I couldn't reproduce it but I think I know what was causing it)
Objects should no longer be exploding in the background when you hit something
Fixed a display discrepancy between the speed in Play -> Casual and in Play -> Reset Casual

Release date delayed by 1 month to get the Linux version ready

I'm going to keep this short because there's nothing much to say. Because of a few changes in circumstance I will be delaying the release of Vecter by 1 month, with the new release date set for Saturday, 15th of October 2020. The reason for the delay are as follows:

EgxXPax is currently running between 12 - 20 Sept and I really don't want to compete with all the attention that' event is pulling away.
This month I've first went on holiday for 1 week, then came back and packed all my stuff for a week, then moved house, then spent the next week unpacking everything. It's unfair to you and to Vecter to release without giving it and you the amount of attention you deserve.
I think there's a bit more work still to be done to make it excellent on launch, so it ain't going out until I'm happy that it's ready to go out.

To make up for this delay, I'll also be releasing the Linux version of Vecter at the same time and will be getting it ready over the coming weeks.