We are proud to present the 0.8.0 release of Naev! This has over 4,000 commits from 0.7.0 and has been under development for the past 3.5 years. The backend and interface has been revamped to be modern with lots of improvements all over the board. Some examples include unicode and internationalization support. We would like to thank all the contributors who have participated in this release. Some of the more notable gameplay changes include making missiles and fighter bays not require ammunition, changed how some pilots spawn, time passes faster in larger ships, and a revamped commodity/economy system. We don't expect there to be many issues, but if you do find any, please report them at the issue tracker. Discussion about the game can also be had on Discord (discord invite).

Full changelog:

Gameplay

* Overhaul of the interface to be more sleek and functional * Interface is much more slick * Dark theme to be more consistent with space * Font uses outlines to be more readable * New map overlay with adjustable opacity * Added rarity indicator to ships and outfits * Changed fonts * Indicate non-common NPC with exclamation marks * Added accessory slot and unique accessory outfits as mission rewards * Simple economy model implemented with map visualizations * Added travelling merchant who sells unique items * Made missiles and fighter bays reload while in space * Modified the balancing of missiles * Added asteroids and mining * Improved player GUI * Brushed GUI is now the default * Improved and fixed escort system * Made Pirates and FLF spawn in a fairer way * Made time pass at different rates for different ships ("Time Dilation") * Made piracy missions available from any Independent or black market planet * Substantially increased pay for unique missions (10x in most cases) * Made references to the player gender-neutral * Made combat music vary from faction to faction * Made it so AI ships spawn with cargo * Improved AI behaviours * Nerfed Quicksilver * Added the ability to buy "fake IDs" from pirate strongholds * Made jammers into activated outfits that increase cloaking * Added Soromid organic ships that level up organs * Improved and expanded NPC portraits * Commodities can be sold/bought everywhere * Added a "slow mode", which runs the game at half speed (like an easy mode) * Added a ship log which records events * Added a "system map" which displays information about known remote planets * Added support for giving commands to individual escorts * New intro images replacing old placeholders * Increased pirate name variety for bounty missions * Ships now travel with you automatically for free, as with outfits * Added map decorators showing locations of factions and the Nebula * Added a dogfight aiming helper * More music * New and/or improved missions * New Za'lek mini-campaign * Completed the FLF campaign * Fixed up the Collective campaign * Improved the Shark (Nexus Shipyards) campaign * Improved the Dvaered anti-FLF campaign * Added and improved piracy missions * New minor Soromid campaign, "Coming Out" * New tutorial mission at the start of a new game * Various newly added and improved generic missions

Engine

* Support for compilation with Meson * HiDPI-awareness * Support for translations * Added shaders to speed up and improve graphics * Added support for non-ascii direct character input * Added support for map decorators * Removed support for Lua 5.0 * Removed support for SDL 1, only SDL 2 is supported * Added support for translating * Made the OSD compact itself to avoid showing redundant information * Made Autonav able to follow ships * Consolidated the effects of cloaking and jammers under cloaking * Added workaround for ALSOFT buggy version that crashes * Added a polygon-based collision algorithm * Added some symbols for partial colorblind accessibility * Support #include in shaders * Multiple font support * Many bugfixes