Another not-major update, minor changes, improvements and a few requested features (precaching option). Hopefully next week will be more interesting, if everything shakes out well. Kourier is making good progress, so we hope to have something to test there before long. Additionally, there's some mission/sector redux work happening in the near term. Yes, the faction/friendly-fire thing is also coming, but it's become a little more complicated lately.. it's such a widely-impacting change that I want to make damned sure we do it right.

Also in this version, Linux users should be happy to see the updater has been redone with GTK+ 2.x. We had been using 1.2 for the longest time, but it's now being deprecated by a number of distributions, so it was definitely time to upgrade.

On the content front, we'v been working to get some new missions going in the near term. Some of our PCC people have turned out some great missions, they just need a little tweaking before they're ready for prime time.

Finally, there's been some website updates, and you can expect more along those lines, as well as a new full-install version of the game (latest update) in the near future.

Ray's changelog of amusing wording:

- added Preload All Resources Graphics option. Initial load times are much longer and more ram is used with this option enabled.
- fixed ice bumpmap problem where it disappears sometimes
- fixed large ice materials so they have bumpmaps
- hud group display shows where group members are if they aren't in your sector
- added 'Join Group' and 'Leave Group' buttons in target select menu where appropriate
- fixed some lua bugs
- added Heavy Storm Radar Extender available at Ineubis stations
- groups are auto-created when you invite someone to a group
- fixed buddy list so new buddys show up if you previously didn't have any

Thanks much everyone, please keep us posted on any problems, and continue to give us feedback in Suggestions on what's good and where we can improve.