Naev 0.13.0

BY NAEV DEVTEAM, ON DECEMBER 25TH, 2025

It’s time for the Naev yearly release. This is a big one that paves the way for plugins as first-class citizens of the Naev ecosystem. The development manual has also been changed to be web-based instead of a clunky PDF, and has been updated with many of the engine changes. It should be much more accessible for those wanting to make plugins and content for Naev, and will be constantly updated as development continues.

We would like to thank all the contributors who participated and helped in the making of this release that we hope will both surprise new players and veterans alike!

What’s new?

1. Engine migration begins: Rust + SDL3: The engine now uses SDL3 and the port to the Rust programming language has started, improving stability and paving the way for major future upgrades. This brings better support for newer platforms and fixes a lot of minor quirks with window creation and rendering.

2. Plugins as First-Class with Integrated Plugin Manager: Naev now includes a native plugin browser, installer, and updater, all with access to the online plugin repository built right in.

3. Major content additions with focus on exploration: Lots of space objects are now landable and provide different secrets for the player to find.
   • 28 new missions and events
   • Treasure maps!
   • New intertwined Imperial minor houses
   • New systems, anomalies, portraits, objects, and more
   • 20+ new songs
   • New and reworked outfits
   • 11 new ship variants

4. Significant gameplay tweaks: Heat mechanism removed, pirates are less dangerous to new players, camera is truly isometric, improved forward weapon aiming for the player, and core outfits have been reworked to use a 1 or 2-slot system.

5. Lots of fixes, balance work, and internal cleanup: From physics touch-ups to mission fixes, weapon tweaks, save robustness, and API consistency, a lot has been improved in this release.

You can get the latest version from any of the following sources:

The new version should be compatible with older save games, and will update things as necessary.

Platform support changes

With the move to Rust and SDL3, Naev now only supports macOS 11+ (previously 10.13+) and Windows 10+ (previously Windows 7+). We will keep a 0.12.x branch on Steam as the last version supporting the older operating systems, and those older releases will remain available on Codeberg and itch as well.

Changes since 0.13.0-beta.5

• Lots of fixes relating audio spatialization
• Change and exposed intrinsic audio spatialization settings
• Mass of batteries has been decreased
• More guards against NULL dereferences
• Adaptive camouflage plating got a bit of jamming
• Fixed Lua SPFX erroring out when SFX are omitted
• Fixed creating Audio objects when they should be AudioData in several places in the code
• NPCs using “The Bite” will no longer turn off the player’s afterburner
• Allow passing Audio to LuaSpfx although warn
• 02_sciwrong: simplified logic a bit
• Fixed Taiomi intro event
• Fixed game freezing when finishing race with too many owned ships
• taiomi10: fixed final cutscene
• nelly01/02: minor fixes and streamlining

Full Changelog

Gameplay

• Removed heat mechanic (to be re-added as a new mechanic in the future)
• Made pirates less dangerous to new players
  • Marauders are now intrinsically weaker than other pirates, especially with low pirate presence
  • Made pirates less aggressive
  • Change pirate spawning to be mainly marauders in low presence areas
• Fuel from outfits has been tweaked a bit
• NPCs now have skill levels that can affect their targeting and fighting ability
• Bioships have had their skills and modifiers slightly reworked to be better balanced
• Light, medium-heavy and ultra-heavy ship now have two core hull/systems/engine slots, one main and one secondary
  • Effects of heavier cores can be obtained by stacking smaller ones
• Engines have been reworked to be more coherent and consistent
  • Tricon engines have much higher acceleration to max speed ratio
  • Melendez engines have higher speed, but low acceleration and turn
  • More consistency across lines
• Gauntlet intrinsics are stronger and now mutually exclusive
• Intrinsics from a certain trader are now stronger
• Ships now disabled below a certain armour threshold regardless of stress
• AI is less susceptible to stealth bomber cheese
• Point defence now shoots at all ships prioritizing smaller ones after missiles
• Cargo delivery missions have increased cargo amounts
• Minimum stealth range also affects detection and signature
• Ships can have a minimum cargo-less mass of 50% of the ship base mass
• Damage over time effects now can cause faction loss and other effects
• New harder difficulty
• Gauntlet negative bonuses are now multiplicative
• Stealthing will temporarily jam locked on munitions
• Changed forward weapon aiming algorithm for the player so it is easier to shoot small ships with skill
• Reflective shell now shoots thorns
• Mass of batteries has been decreased

Quality of Life

• Plugin manager built directly into Naev
  • Access to the online plugin repository
  • Can easily add or remove plugins from local or online sources
• Autonav improvements
  • Can automatically land when following a ship
  • Improved autonav behaviour when losing a followed ship
  • Disables afterburner when getting ready to land or jump
  • Shooting non-point defence weapons resets autonav speed up
• Combat and ambient music tries to play from where it was last stopped when applicable
• Gave small untargetable time to player when using hypergates and wormholes
• Ships that are scanning you use a different colour highlight
• Landable but uninhabited space objects use a different icon
• Deployed fighter equipment is no longer random
• Added support for multiple automatic backups with 5 by default
• Game will prompt if exiting the game when save data loss can occur
• Escort mission revamp
  • Escorts now follow the player
  • Autonav will warn the player if jumping or landing will fail the mission
  • Autonav will wait for escorts when landing or taking off
• Radar now has a linear area and a logarithmic area (outside the circle) to show more regional information
• Support for automatically restarting Naev when changing options that require it
• Right-clicking on a spob or jump point will both select it and take you there
• Move config file with rest of files and unified code handling local files

Contents

• 28 new missions and events
  • Go treasure hunting
• 27 new outfits and reworked cores
  • Outfit sets that gain bonuses as more elements of the set are equipped
• 11 new ship variants
• New sensor anomalies
• Two new intertwined minor houses of the Empire with new systems and lore
• More space objects with new things to explore
• New portraits
• Over 20 new songs
  • More variation in landing and situational music
• Significant changes in jumps (hidden and otherwise)
• Reworked the visuals for some weapons using shaders
• Start to more strictly enforce Oxford spelling
• Racing reward system reworked
• Reworked escort missions so that escorts follow the player and improved how it interacts with autonav
• Replaced a bunch of placeholder outfit graphics
• New engine sound effects for different ship makers with more diversity

Engine

• Began porting to Rust
• Spatial audio parameters now exposed as engine constants
• Engine now uses SDL3 instead of SDL2
• Camera is isometric-ish instead of using top-view game play (can be modified by plugins)
• Engine supports modifying some important constants such as those related to the physics model for use in plugins
• Use instancing instead of geometry shaders for space dust
• Ship Lua scripting supports “onshootany” now
• Support for price_mod on tech group commodities
• Mission and Event NPC’s priority default to the priority of the parent
• Local maps can have a range parameter now
• Intrinsic outfits for ships are defined in <intrinsics> instead of <slots> now
• Systems can have waypoints that are accessible from missions
• Fixed some flickering at the end of ship trails
• Diff mode in the editor remembers filenames and diff names
• Slots can have tags
• Outfits can fit an additional slot property
• Support for hiding dynamic ship stats from outfits in the equipment support
• Outfits support inline Lua definitions
• Can override long class names of spobs
• Changed how ship statistics are computed: those from same source will be additive, while different sources will be multiplicative
• New ship stats and changes
  • Weapon speed with variants for cannons and turrets
  • Minimum Stealth Range
  • Absolute Mass
  • Absolute CPU
  • Temporary Invincibility
  • Detection Range only affects ‘Detected at:’ range
  • Ship Visibility that affects detection, signature, and stealth ranges
• Intro text is no longer hard-coded and is handled via Lua
• SVG image support
• WGSL shader support
• trigger library to handle common mission code
• Game will automatically try to detect extensions for image files
• Change and exposed intrinsic audio spatialization settings

Fixes

• The Bite turns off afterburners
• Hiding on screen display information for missions also hides system markers
• Sensor anomalies now appear in the on-screen display
• Fixed texture interpolation when alpha is 0 for pixels
• Fixed adding commodities to space objects via tech groups
• Engine glow decay is less ridiculous on ships with really weird acceleration / speed ratios
• Only try to load missions and events with file names that end in .lua
• Action speed can no longer be negative and disables space worthiness
• Don’t show OSD frame when not visible
• Can’t stack Sirius ferry pilgrim missions anymore
• Add marker mission to help the player find wild space
• Bioships will reset their locked slots when swapping ship and loading
• jump_delay was being applied instead of jump_warmup to the engine warm up animation
• Mass modifiers now affect outfit mass too
• Ships will no longer appear tilted in the equipment view
• dv_antiflf02: Make the vigilances less pathetic
• Gauntlet properly resets outfit cooldowns
• Saves try to save outfits by slot name to be more robust to changes in the future
• Player can’t stealth while disabled
• Getting disabled turns off stealth
• Carried fighters don’t carry commodities
• darkshadow: enemies shouldn’t see through stealth
• Cryogenic Nanobots no longer restore health to 100% on completing cooldown regardless of damage taken
• Improved AI braking skills
• Game will not save in certain cases like loading the game and immediately being forced to take off by a load hook
• Improved handling of fullscreen toggling and resolution changes
• Faction ships no longer show up as “Unknown” when you first discover a faction
• Space mines in restricted systems have infinite duration
• Made Love framework ignore events that were queued before opening
• Lowered reputation gains from aiding hypergate construction sites
• Use higher resolution icon
• Make sure Reynir only appears when you have free cargo space (reynir.lua)
• Escorts spam less messages when trying to land or jump
• Fixed mercenaries attacking the player when fighting pirates
• Fixed waste dumping in REDACTED
• Hide faction hit message when capturing if nothing happens
• 02_sciwrong: simplified logic a bit
• nelly01/02: minor fixes and streamlining
• Lots of spelling and grammar fixes
• Translation updates