Disclaimer

Black Dragon is MY Viewer, i decide which feature i want to add and which to remove, i share this Viewer to show the world that user base size is not important, i do rate quality by effort, thought and love put into the project, not some rough estimated numbers. I consider feature requests only if i you can name proper valid reasons i can agree on. It is my (unpaid) time i'm putting into this project, i'm not here to cater to every Joe's desires.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Release 1.39 (1277)

IMPORTANT: If you are experiencing black flickering flies on sculpties , clear your settings and cache!
NOTE: Not saved transparency settings is NOT a bug! you have to edit the transparency , then select the color picker and just press ok , the color picker is important as it sets the color , NOT the transparency slider!


Phew...
it was a real pain , i was about to pull everything together and suddenly people came out of their holes and nuked me with bugs everywhere.... darn... one worse than the other , i cannot release with the knowledge that those showstoppers exist , so i had to fix them first!

but finally , half a day too late... Release 1.39 coming with lots of homebrew fixes!

User Interface:

Niran hit really hard here... really really hard , some of you might have seen my "secret" project already which wasnt that secret then anymore.... well i cannot keep such awesome news sorry , i can only keep booring secrets like you murdered someone ...something like that...but Graphics? , User Interface? no way of beeing quiet! anyway , my "secret" project was a little revival of the Sidebar known from Viewer 2 , but stripped down and redesigned from scratch for Machinima use , its called , The Machinima Sidebar! tadaaaa



what is it? basically a panel like the sidebar which slides into your User Interface and reveals lots of important options for Photography and Machinima! how does it work? Space Magic! , however in this release it will push Toolbars , Floaters , IMs and your IM Chiclets away and will retract them on hiding , next week i will release the second version of it that acts like shown in the video , as overlay which will not slide into your UI , it will slide OVER your UI , not pushing anything aside , but it will overlap chiclets , maybe toolbars and floaters depending on where they are placed and what screen resolution you use


Theres more , i temporarly moved the Progressscreen below the UI and on top of world rendering , that will cause your Viewer to appear while TPing , so dont worry , thats not a bug , i will later add the ability to switch that to old behavior where the UI is hidden during TP , for those (like me) that do not want the UI in a progressscreen...

Optimizer floater has been removed , the machinima sidebar is now the "new" Optimizer

The place profile has been revamped....well better said it has been taken from my old Kirstens mod.... im curious why no one ever noticed that... me included...


I added Texture Refresh and Inspect to some missing places in non-pie menus and pie menus and translated them aswell as the rest that were missing

oh , probably a very funny but maybe buggy feature is the ability to switch the tools floater to old layout via a simple checkbox option in User Interface - Customisation , in Experimental section below Experimental login in page , it will need a relog!

one of the most enjoying things before you even log in , specially for new users is that media sound now works in login page , meaning that my video will FINALLY play with music! , go and watch it again , it feels different with that sad music!
for those that cannot watch it for some reason , i recorded it :)



oh and before i forget , yes , the blue topbar and sidebar are default now , dont be surprised , i think it looks very nice so i´ve set it as default , you can however revert it back to black if you want

Bugfixes:

Recently i checked my log because someone had a problem again... and what i found...was everything else than funny , error lines.....warning lines... thousands of them.... crazy , so much widgets that cannot be found because i revamped the UI and didnt reflect those changes in code , alot as been done now , the log should be WAY more error/warning free on initial start and User Interface initialisation resulting in a cleaner log , maybe a bit faster Viewer , sometimes a bit less code meaning a smaller and cleaner Viewer , and less bug stacks that might lead to a crash or more bugs :)

Rendering:

Only trivial changes have been done here , nothing you will notice anyway , i just removed the old hoverglow feature which was introduced with Viewer 2 and were also available in Kirstens S19 (which worked way better there than in V2) because it didnt work with shaders anymore , if it ever gets fixed , tell me , i would be more than happy to reimplement it!


Changelog:


1.39


added option to change between vertical and horizontal layout build floater
added a slidable Machinima panel for quick machinima related options + translation
added Object Inspect to pie menus
added Texture refresh to some right click menus
changed Scripts can use UI german translation
moved progress screen temporarly below UI but on top of World rendering to ensure usability of UI during TP
moved progressscreen below UI , so we found a good thing between hiding it and fully having it
removed Vetgrid due to TPV n stuff...sorry
removed old disabled AnimateTrees checkbox and Tree Details dropdown
removed HoverGlow feature from render pipeline and preferences aswell as its debugs
removed a bunch of first start and help aswell as intro video debugs
removed Optimizer button and options aswell as code
removed ability to fix IM Container and Floaters for now
tweaked skins panel
tweaked places profile layout
translated attached particles and light options
reduced application size by 23kb of code! thats a lot of code
reduced skin folder sizes by deleting lots of deprecated textures
cleaned up a lot of skin textures
fixed IM Containers fucking up child panel resizing every time a new session is started
fixed appearance shape edit resizing logic
fixed Streaming media sound label translation
fixed Media sound not playing in login , enjoy the music now =D
fixed shitloads of log errors and warnings
fixed german scripts translation
fixed some missing right click non-pie and pie menu translations
MAINT-841 FIXED ([PUBLIC]Folder "Lost and found" isn't cleaned)

Monday, May 21, 2012

Release 1.38

NOTE: I´ve read some new reviews on Sourceforge , this Viewer is Windows and Linux (seperatly , not on this blog - open links at the right side , theres a link to Tarnix´s blog) only , no Mac because i dont have a Mac compiler , Movement can ALSO be changed to defaults at all times in User Settings - Advanced - Movement! 
Remember that im a stupid Windows user , i cannot compile for a OS i dont own, that includes Linux (thats why its done by Tarnix)

Finally its Monday again =D
you know what that means! - lets jump right into the changes

User Interface:

I´ve been doing some cleanup here and there , moved some options to the moon and back , Chat panel got a bit cleaner and those hit Enter options are clearly seperated now

Favoritebar was ripped out of the Navigationbar and transplanted into the Statusbar making it able to go from far left to far right - time display , depening on if its shown or not



Red colored "special" options in main menu (top right) have been tweaked a bit , they should be better readable now

I´ve moved Right handed editing arm motion to Viewer and added an automatic fly option replacing it
(automatic fly = hold jump to toggle fly)

I´ve also moved Edit Toolbars menu entry into Edit menu instead of View

Windlight floaters where known to have sliders only , to some of them i added spinners in order to make setting smaller and precise values easy and possible at all


I reworked the classifieds and picks panel , changed them from accordions to tabs which should be way easier to use , note that an empty classifieds panel is not a bug! , it shows empty if you dont have classifieds yet , same for picks



Achievements:

Added a bunch new Achievements , those are Oh, this looks shiny , Nice pic of me , Second Life Fanatic , Stability Test, Check! , Faster than Lighting .... aswell as fixed French Lesson and Getting Sorted


Bugfixes:

I fixed lots of logspamming caused by an Achievement , also fixed some Errors

Window size shouldnt revert to default of 1280 x 720 anymore

Favoritebar was reported to disable completely after the topbar hides automatically and another tick of 10 seconds run out , this behavior should be fixed now

Movement:

Only the Space key has been set for jumping when in mouselook with Shooter keyboard layout , nothing too serious here


Enjoy,
Niran

Changelog:


1.38


fixed non maximised window size reverting to defaults after restart
fixed favoritebar getting disabled after second tick of topbar runs out
fixed logspamming due to Packmule Achievement
fixed some errors in Log
fixed wrong labels for rear view text in camera panel
reworked set window size floater
reworked picks and classifieds floater , still bit WIP tho
renamed Lighting to Lightning since i mean the lightning not the light itself
rearranged Chat settings for a bit cleaner look
added spinners to some windlight sliders to ensure text entry
added automatic fly option to movement panel
added Stability Check Achievement
added Faster than lightning Achievement
added Looks shiny Achievement
added Nice Pic of me Achievement
added Second Life Fanatic Achievement
translated Camera floater shoulder view modes
tweaked some Windlight spinners and sliders
tweaked mouselook jump key to space aswell with shooter layout
tweaked time display to nicely slide out/in making more space for favoritebar
tweaked color of main menu special options
moved edit toolbar buttons to Edit menu
moved right handed editing to Viewer panel
moved Favoritebar from Navigationbar to Statusbar making it able to use the full length

Monday, May 14, 2012

Release 1.37

IMPORTANT: Please do not report any bugs related to that you cannot put items into another inventory window , on ground or into landmarks , this is related to lag and the lack of permissions you may have on that object!
NOTE: People demanded a 32x version again so i included one :) , keep asking nicely and you may get what you want

Monday , release day!

Version 1.37 (1169)

User Interface:

I changed the layout of name list items in people to 2 lines like i already did with online notifications , this counters a huge problem , names were cut of previously after a certain length , this cutoff limit has now been moved a huge bunch so names can be way longer before they get cut , distance display is now in a second line and that looks like this:


I also reworked and fixed the Set Window Size floater which is horribly broken in any V3 out there , it adds/subtracts numbers to your set resolution depending on window position on desktop, everytime you move the Viewer around your desktop and click set on the same resolution again it will change...NOT ANYMORE!


Mig continued implementing another Achievement , "High End Rig" , you will have to obtain 45 FPS in Deferred Rendering for a few seconds in order to successfully achieve it



I added a button to the login menu to show the initial selection screen again also , like suggested :)


Rendering:

Well.. not much has been changed here , just a tiny tweak on glow warmth weighting that might easen up the lines in the sky a bit due to my different glow settings


Meshes:

Mig was poking every few days that i have to fix those damn mesh booms , so i checked a few files and managed to fix this issue :) no more mesh booms anymore!

Release Cycle:

From today on i will change to a weekly release in order to make staying in TPVD and accumulating 200.000 mins / week realistic , this does not count if theres something that must be fixed immediately

Third Party Viewer Directory:

Some may have noticed that my Viewer finally pop´d in the TPVD , im really not sure if this will continue due to my Viewer still not having the 200.000 mins /week , but its atlast something , and im even over Exodus :) which surprised me

I´ve also started building a "bunker" on the Open Source Sandbox on my parcel where you can re-read my blog , navigate through the forums , watch videos , pictures , hang out , maybe meet me , ask me something or give feedback, in future i will continue expanding it to contain some "test areas" for advanced rendering features :)  , oh and the bunker is build to be viewed with Deferred Rendering and NO windlight shiny!

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Hippo%20Hollow/111/49/44
(copy this into your navigationbar and press enter to tp)













Snapshots:




Enjoy,
NiranV Dean

Changelog:


1.37


tweaked Rear View a bit
tweaked Login Selection
tweaked Glow Warmth weighting a bit
tweaked Login to slide in at start
tweaked Avatar list item layout to be a 2 liner too and showing distance below names
added Login Button to show Selection screen again
added High End Rig Achievement
renamed Achievments to Achievements everywhere
fixed reset field of view reseting to 1.04 instead of 1.10
fixed Mesh loading booms
fixed trash/delete button in Friendlist not working fully
fixed Set Window Size
fixed Second Inventory tick behavior

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Release 1.36

NOTE: This release doesnt include OpenMP anymore , it might mean a tiny decrease in Performance for those the Viewer worked perfectly

Release day!
something very important at first
Due to so many people having those Application Errors which someone explained why they happen , in one of the comments and no one seeming to be able to fix this issue on their own , i´ve fixed it myself by just taking out OpenMP again, again OpenMP is a huge fail , more than last time where it only caused crashing viewer for some people...

anyway heres Release 1.36
and heres a note you should remember for the next few updates + this one , a lot of bugs have been reported and they are getting more , just like they are multiplicating , without me doing anything , meaning i dont code anything that could even cause something like that , so please double check your end , "most issues sit between chair and keyboard" , thats a fact , not harassment. Im saying this probably very wise sentence not because im wise , im saying it because its true , 89% of all issues lot of people having are issues i dont get , some of them are also Server Side issues , i mean atm we cannot know whats server side and what not as it seems servers can fuck up more than we think...atlast in SL

Achievments:

I´ve finally come along to hook up the Achievment floater and finish some Achievments , meaning you will be able to collect a huge bunch already! And i think you will like it if you care. (another great way to extend our e-peen without having features like ultra long radars =D)
You can find them in NV - View - Earned Achievments



User Interface:

Some bugs reported involved the Autohiding topbar feature which reactivated the favbar after it slides out again , i fixed that and while beeing at it i revamped the system a bit , whenever the topbar hides now or parts of it hide , the toolbars will slide , like on the pic below which awesomely demonstrates how clean my UI can be if Autohiding Topbar is on , if i would be a shortcut junkey now and remove all my Toolbar buttons , i wouldnt need a User Interface checkbox in Snapshot floater anymore as my UI is hidden anyway!


And someone suggested me to make Group Notice Panel resizable... or atlast make it resize automatically with the floater , so i did that , note some other panels will still not resize , thats intended for now. Remember , im working on a lot of things at the same time (sorry i simply cannot work on one thing after another...) so a lot of things will be created , released in a half done way , then finished and finetuned


I´ve also done several tiny UI tweaks and works here and there , more german Translations , moved Admin options to Admin Menu , renamed Recent panel to History panel , fixed [COST] in Inventory menu which i previously fixed by just writing 10L$ but now its [COST] again which will be converted to 10L$ after the Viewer got the prices (i know i could have left 10L$ and instead remove the check code , thats unnecessenary code as those 10L$ upload fee will most likely never change)

oh and...something special... i fixed the Volume Pulldown , it will appear below the button again , not correctly centered but it appears below it! , will fix it that it will show up centered next time ... atlast its usable again! but it only works (Captain Obvious stating the obvious now) for objects you have taken on the SIM you are on. There must NOT be a relog inbetween this take action and your try to restore it!

Misc:

I remember someone suggesting me the restore to last position feature of other Viewers.... so i reactivated it ... yes , it was there... all the time... it was just deactivated because of a DEV-XXXXX Jira entry , i dont know what this DEV Jira entry said as it is not available anymore , but hey! we got the feature back!

Changelog:

1.36

tweaked Group notice panel to resize with People floater
tweaked Group name to resize with People Floater
tweaked Topbar Autohiding to make Toolbar Buttons slide to the top instead of leaving space
fixed Volume Pulldown position
fixed restore to last position
fixed [COST] in Inventory menu
fixed Proxy Settings button leading to Optimizer
fixed Topbar´s autohiding causing favbar to reactivate if it was previously deactivated
added Achievments floater (still WIP)
added I see something you dont, Packmule, FlipSwitch, Faceplanter, Looks too real, French Lesson, Moneybag ,Customizations! ,Getting Sorted Achievment
translated more Main Menu entries
renamed Recent to History in people floater
taken out OpenMP support

Monday, May 7, 2012

Release 1.35

NOTE: This release contains OpenMP again! This time i included the vcomp100.dll in order to prevent the missing error message and the need for you to download it manually

Release ...again too late...

Interface:

Interface, interface , interface.... its in nearly every post ... becaaaaauuuuse its one of the core parts of the Viewer that constantly and most obviously changes , this time i worked on some bugfixes and a bit of help.

The probably best , especially for newcomers and people that are confused by the different keyboard layout by default, you all will now be presented by this screen on the first run , asking you which overall Viewer layout you want to use for my Viewer

I´ve also "fixed" the mini locationbar which auto resized depending on the text and icons , i´ve taken that behavior out and made it go from left to right , that renders the need to hide those controls up there obselete, as they can now still be seperatly hidden

On the way while doing some things i also added the missing Object Profile option into the pie menu

When aborting a TP , your Field of View and Glow will also reset to normal values again , thanks to Penny Patton for telling me

Oh... and Group notes notifiers have been changed , previously they displayed Sendername / Groupname , that often looked like this then [niranv.dean / nirans vie...] ... it cuts because the notifier is not big enough , so how to solve that without making it bigger?! its simple , do what i did to online notifications aswell! make it appear in two lines!

Snapshots:




Experiments:

NOTE: those are made with my Viewer! and arnt after edited , its something i was busy half the week but its just too buggy to take that into release...sorry , even if it looks awesome




Changelog:

1.35

fixed abort TP causes glow strenght and fov to stay as it was while TPing instead of reverting
tweaked Group notes header layout to be better readable
tweaked Group notes text and attachment layout
tweaked Topinfobar to be resized from far left to far right
added OpenMP Support again and this time with vcomp100.dll :)
added missing Object profile menu entry to Pie menu
added Gameplay style selector to login screne on first start
translated Bubblechat color text
STORM-1841 Provide improved flow for selling objects in world - self Fixed

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Release 1.34 (1115)

Sorry that i promised this Release for yesterday....i fell asleep
well and then i used the bit of extra time to quickly fix some things and record a video =D

User Interface:

Im working on a Secret Project , some might have seen some snapshots already so its probably not that secret anymore... anyway...if i manage to get it working it will be fun i think , it will also support people to try and experiment more


i also fixed the SSFUI dependance of the "enable left-click sit" feature ... sorry for those whose IM/Group headers didnt show up...

oh and someone suggested adding a RLVa main menu toggle so i added that one too to the RLVa main menu

Minimap:

The Minimap will now act a little bit different , previously "double click tp" on minimap always rendered "double click opens world map" unusable and overwrote it , now its vise versa , whenever you enable "double click opens world map" , "double click tp" will be overwritten and therefor the world map will open when you double click the minimap , with "double click opens world map" disabled it will behave like it was previously - will TP you at that spot

Inspectors:

We all know them or did atlast see them once , those small thingies popping up when you hover your mouse over Objects (must be enabled) or Avatars which will show their name and a small (?) icon , which will when clicked , reveal a "mini profile" and some options and buttons , in which i now added the abbility to copy the Avatars SLURL and Name aswell as fixed the copy UUID, all 3 of them will work now! awesome


Crash Tests:

Well....i guess this explains itself...
for those it doesnt explain itself: i asked a few people for help in Second Beta Group , i asked them if they got some....crashing tools and could try them at me, i also asked some friends... and well no one managed to crash me nor log me out...



TPV:

When i get my parcel on Hippo Hollow (Open Source Sandbox) i will put up this Bunker there which i will then fill with Terminals for Videos , Informations , Tutorials and maybe even test chambers for "advanced" graphic features xD ...Welcome to Test Chamber 5 Subject # XYZ....reminds me of Portal...


Translations:

I fixed up some translations i totally borked and added a few more missing like the right click menu on toolbars

Teleport:

i added a nice zoom/glow warp effect to the teleportation , see it in action here


Snapshots:

The usual Snapshot things :)



DOWNLOAD
Sourceforge is down atm... may take some while

Changelog:


1.34


fixed IM/Chroup Notifications depending on enable left-click sit
fixed Other Devices button beeing out of the panel
fixed Fix button for chat not beeing clickable
fixed wrong name for Allow Display Names translation
fixed keyboard layout stranslations
fixed wrong naming and translation for Avatar keeps position option
fixed copy SLURL, UUID and Name in Inspectors for Avatars
tweaked IM/Group Notification headers to allow a bit longer names before cutting them
tweaked length of on/offline notifications to allow longer names without going into second line
tweaked Doubleclick open world map/teleport option order
tweaked login Appname label
added Glow/Zoom effect on TP
added RLVa toggle to RLVa Main menu
added second Inventory Window shortcut again
added requires restart label to keyboard layout
updated special thanks and contributions
translated right click toolbar menus
MAINT-813 FIXED crash when trying to access the region info after viewer disconnect.
STORM-1842 Don't save per-account settings if login not fully successfull