Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.1.5 "Speeding Dragon"

First update starting to work down the "Suggestions" todo list, also as always a couple bugfixes and changes.

Tools - Content tab now has a neat little menu button that allows quick access to all script related options, reset, recompile, set running/stopped, that stuff. In the future i'll be bringing more building related options into the Tools window, also next up is copy/paste in Tools (YES, you heard that right, calm down its an official feature now... meaning i'll get it too)

As per suggestion "Since Logoff" filter in your Inventory - Recent tab is now disabled by default, making recent actually display something again and useful. Someone also suggested that the texture memory display is confusing because it shows the entire usage rather than what the Viewer uses, so now Preferences only shows the amount the Viewer itself uses (instead of the total), you can still see the total in the Task Manager and the texture console.

Pressing Enter (just Enter nothing else) should no longer toggle Borderless window... oof, also Show Look At and Show Point At are both enabled again (you better not use it to spy on others)... some tooltips have been improved and clarified because it was apparently confusing that it mentioned turning it off would disable something when the option label reads "Enable" ... and since there is still a very tiny amount of people still having issues with permanently turning when a controller is plugged in (despite the deadzone rework) i turned off avatar movement by default, this should hopefully get rid of even the last reports of this issue.

Since my list of things to do is getting smaller and smaller, the desire to merge the latest code becomes bigger and bigger but as long as RLVa hasn't updated i'm not going to merge (otherwise fixing RLVa is going to turn into a shitshow and will cause a lot of regressions and half-merges), so while waiting on that its more of working down the Suggestions and improving and fixing stuff. On a sidenote, the next couple maintenance releases from LL are going to include a large batch of Alchemy's memory leak and performance improvements, so look forward for that when its finally time to get the latest hopefully-not-freezing-on-right-click code (yea i know that joke is getting old).

By Emeline Laks

Black Dragon Guide: Movement Controls 2.0

 One of the most common questions is: "How do i change the controls to be like Firestorm" or "How do i turn around". If for some reason you are not using your mouse to look around you'll find that the controls in Black Dragon slightly differ from other Viewers.

The following controls have been changed to bring them in line with industry standards:

• A / D / Arrow Left / Arrow Right makes you strafe left and right respectively. This has been changed from Shift + A / D / Arrow Left / Arrow Right.
• Q and E make you turn left and right respectively. This has been changed from A / D / Arrow Left / Arrow Right.
• Space makes you jump. This has been changed from E.
• X makes you stop all motion. This has been changed from Space.

Practically speaking if you have been using mousesteering to look around (dragging your avatar or nametag) only Jump and Stop Movement have been changed since all Viewers will use strafing while mousesteering. Most people however use the onscreen controls or keyboard only and thus notice this change a lot more.

Black Dragon offers the option to change all controls however you like. You can do so by opening Preferences and navigating to the Keybindings tab in which you will find all controls currently set up for each control mode. It looks like this:

In there, you simply double click any of the keybinds you want to change, that is for this example you will want to change the entries for "Turn Left" and "Turn Right", alternatively you can select them and click the "Modify" button at the bottom. This will open a new window that looks like this:

As per the instruction, simply press the desired key you want to change the action to be bound to, that is in this case press A for "Turn Left" and D for "Turn Right" respectively, when done you it will show you that the action will be bound to your pressed key like in the picture above, simply hit "Bind" and repeat this for the other action. After changing both "Turn Left" and "Turn Right" you will have to remove (or change) the entries for "Move Left" and "Move Right" as these are still bound to A and D. Simply select them and click "Delete" at the bottom. If you use the Arrow Left and Arrow Right keys you can simply change "Turn Left" and "Turn Right" to these, or add an entirely new set of two actions for them (this will effectively restore the original control scheme). Adding new actions is pretty simple, you click "Add" at the bottom opening a new window similar to the change binding window above. It looks like this:

Here you simply select the desired action, in this example "Turn Left" and press Arrow Left (or A) and hit "Bind" at the bottom. Repeat this process for "Turn Right" and you are good to go.

All of the above can be repeated for any controls, the Viewer offers all available movement options to be changed. Make sure that when changing or adding controls you select the correct mode at the bottom left. Changing or adding keybinds to "Third Person" is not going to affect controls in First Person (aka Mouselook) or while sitting for instance.

Following the above instructions should change this:

Into this:

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.1.4 "Speeding Dragon"

Another bugfix update, this time quite important actually.

There has been a particularly nasty crash issue with RLVa since the performance update, it should be resolved now, from my testing using RLVa seems to work fine now, still no guarantee that RLVa itself works of course. When Kitty gets around to update her RLVa repo to the latest LL code i'll be doing a massive RLVa sweep to get it updated and fixed again.

Other than this highly important crash fix there have been a few fixes for lesser problems. Shadows shouldn't be appearing anymore when camming close to something (this will only apply if you did not touch the RenderShadowBias and RenderShadowBiasError debugs. If you did, reset them to their defaults).

The missing VSync option has also been added to preferences, some wrong tooltips for the FPS limiter have been changed, Alt + Enter will now toggle borderless (like you'd expect from default windows behavior) and the Outfit menu entry will now toggle the Outfit window instead of opening it only.

With this most of the reported bugs have been fixed and my buglist has shrunken significantly, allowing me to focus on suggestions/planned features now and soon merging up to the latest code (when the maintenance release gets around and fixes the particularly nasty edit bug that is currently in the latest LL release) hopefully fixing a couple other reported issues that also happen in the official Viewer, i suppose after that its back to taking inventory, fixing reported bugs, maintenance and finally some sweep through the entire UI, reworking some UI parts that are in dire need for some touchups (Places)

As always, keep reporting the bugs!

By IzabellaMae

By Emeline Laks

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.1.3 "Speeding Dragon"

 This is a bugfix update, quick get it!

It adresses mainly the reported issues and a couple issues that were already known bug weren't fixed in the last update.

The biggest problem with the last release was the rework on the keybinding process allowing mouse clicks to be bound, this however also created some issues where clicking into the action dropdown would be counted as click towards binding the mouse click, no problem, just press the button... welp the next issue is that it didn't clear the mouse input when pressing a key and vice versa. Once bound it was kept so there was no way to get rid of the mouse bind other than starting over or modifying the binding after creating it. Both issues should be resolved now.

Staying on the topic of controls, the joystick controls were inverted, this should now be fixed too.

Further i added options to control the speed at which you pitch and yaw, this is MAINLY intended to be used for keyboard and onscreen controls, be careful it impacts mouse too.

The poser has also gotten another upgrade, apart from a couple bugfixes with bones not properly resetting it can now "recapture" the current bone positions and rotations for all bones that are currently disabled. This was suggested because a lot of people tend to disable the facial bones, use HUDs to set a facial expression and then would like to continue finetuning these without having to stop posing. This is now possible with the new Recapture button next to Mirror, simply disable all bones (double click or use the button) you want to recapture, then hit "Recapture" and you should be done.

Another often suggested change was adding next/previous arrows to the environment preset selections. Of course i absolutely declined those because it is a Firestorm feature, now that i implemented these new "Tickers" how i call them which just so happen to have arrows i swapped the dropdowns for the preset selection to these new ticker dropdowns, meaning you can now CLICK next and previous and don't need to hold Shift and press Up/Down (yes that's a thing). You can thank me later.

Finally, the right-click selection performance took a massive hit thanks to reverting it to LL code. Needless to say that's fixed, selection performance is once again a million times better and will not immediately drop you into less than single digit framerates when you select a human mesh body. In coming updates i will bring back the old selection outlines again, the new ones stink, the only upside of them is that i get the nice outline without the dots, but we pay with a metric fuckton of other issues, ugh.

By Emeline Laks

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.1.2 "Speeding Dragon"

This update was brought to you buy self-destructing Windows.

No seriously if someone tells you Windows 10 is indestructible, laugh at them. All it takes is... idk a kernel level anti cheat like ...mh Easy Anti Cheat?

Yea so that happened. VRChat pulled an oofers woofers and added Easy Anti Cheat with false lies to cut down on hacking, griefing, ripping/copybotting, crashing and so on. In the process they managed to implement the worst anti cheat into a SOCIAL PLATFORM in the worst possible way. Blueescreens, far as my eyes could see, bluescreens here, bluescreens there, bluescreens everywhere, Easy Anti Cheat doesn't like you not having that very latest security update that installs even more spyware from Microdumb onto your PC so what does it do? Bluescreens! Because its a fucking kernel-level anti cheat. That shit has more power than YOU as administrator. Oh yea those bluescreens? They corrupted my windows so hard it started a wonderful chain of fuckups, first windows didn't install the next update not correctly, so it would undo it but would fuck up doing so, leaving a half broken update, this in turn started cascading into other stuff, breaking all kinds of things, Unity wouldn't start up anymore for instance, Second Life complained about the inability to fill in username EVERY TIME and quite some other stupid stuff until Windows finally exploded and refused to start up, it corrupted so hard, not even safe mode worked anymore. I had to set up Windows from scratch... lovely... so i spent a good week assessing the damage, recollecting everything, reinstalling and setting the build environment back up... and i'm still not done... i just managed to fumble everything together enough to get you the much needed update to get some pressing issues out of the way. What... a... mess.... here i made this to express how i feel.

Anyway!

As mentioned above 4.1.2 brings some much needed fixes for some pressing issues, namely the inability to use scripted triggers in mouselook. Note however since this function is now a keybind you will have to bind it manually OR reset your keybindings, it will NOT work without. Don't report this issue if you haven't done so.

On the upside, you can now bind left click and right click, just not both at the same time, this might actually require a lot of extra work, i will look into that later down the line.

Speaking of binding stuff... the flycam configuration window has been revamped and you will find that binding buttons and axis is now easier than ever with the visual aid of some fancy dropdowns and icons! No more guessing what numbers mean!

Staying with flycam i revamped deadzones too, fixing them and making them work as you'd expect them. Instead of whatever fucky wucky bullshit they did before (scaling down the strength) they will now set a threshold below which all input is ignored, any input above the threshold is then rescaled to fit between the threshold and the maximum value so the "rest" of the available input allows for the entire input range. I also took the time to change the default deadzones and scales to accomodate for this change. For first time users this should vastly reduce the cases where your plugged in controller will make you turn endlessly. For the few cases the deadzones are not high enough, you can now simply turn them up a bit if your controller has extreme stickdrift. These changes also bring destructive changes to space navigators (please do not use them, they are trash and were just a stupid PR stunt), i'd be surprised if they worked at all still. (Seriously, get a controller, Xbox360/XboxOne they really aren't expensive, 30$ and they are super good, they come in handy for games too).

Other than that there's some misc bugfixes here and there.

As always, keep reporting bugs and another big thank you to all Patrons new and old!

By Emelie Laks

By IzabellaMae

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.1.1 "Speeding Dragon"

Just a small update to fix the biggest woes of the last update.

 A couple highights include: Mouselook guns/triggers working again, snapshot preview double click will not crash and break the Viewer anymore, fullbrights are once again subject to fog again, camera modes button works again, Poser no longer breaking when leaving Mouselook and some UI fixes and tooltip improvements.

For mouselook guns to work again you might have to reset your keybindings although it has been reported to work without.

As always keep the bugreports coming.

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.1.0 "Speeding Dragon"

Two long months of wading through a lot of stuff. Now it is finally here, the update you have all been waiting for!

I'll just say this, this update brings the Viewer up to date with 6.6.0 AKA the Performance Viewer, yes you heard that right! 

PERFORMANCE VIEWER. YOU GET PERFORMANCE, YOU GET PERFORMANCE AND YOU GET PERFORMANCE; EVERYONE GETS PERFORMANCE!

Ohwow 10% performance increase! Haha! NO! We are speaking of up to 100% more FPS and MORE! I went from barely 20 FPS @ 5 avatar max (everyone else jellydolled or impostored) to 40+ FPS with a full 20 person (not jellydolled or impostored) hangout. Not counting the fact that all avatars are now rendered, that is a minimum 100% FPS increase, not to mention that its 4 times as many fully rendered avatars!

Bad news is, this update touched practically everything in the Viewer. Expect bugs, expect potential crashes, export features not working (Motion Blur is currently broken). I fixed almost all reported issues and made sure the Viewer is in a usable state to get this wonderful update into your hands ASAP. If you have any difficulties seeing objects, try turning off Object Object Occlusion in Display preferences (in addition to the normal things that you have to do when this object vanish bug appears, get it?).

I HIGHLY recommend clearing your cache for this one!

Other noteworthy things are the inclusion of 360 snapshots and 2FA, all older updates will break when 2FA is going to be mandatory, so this is the minimum update you will have to be on.

As always check out the Discord and report any bugs you find!

By Emeline Laks

By Rosa Aurelia

By IzabellaMae

By Spectris Audax

By Sashi Summers

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.0.6 "Refreshing Dragon"

 Man this has surely been a long time in the coming.

A much needed update to bring the Viewer closer to the latest code from Linden Labs, no other changes though, just fixes for most things that broke with the code merge as i'm not planning to do anything big until the Viewer is up to date (preferably with the performance viewer by then). It's not much anymore but its by far the most breaking changes that are still left to be merged, the update would have gone life months ago if it didn't break the Viewer and make it crash for unknown reasons leaving me to start over and slowly merge up to that point (rather than a massive bulk merge). Good news is the Viewer should be more stable with a lot new crash fixes from the labs as well as some smaller things that were broken in 4.0.5 should be fixed too now.

I'm sorry this took so long but the past couple months have been quite hard, things are going south everywhere, friends are having issues, my mom having to go to hospital (she's getting better now) and personal emotional problems kicking in, there's also my upcoming birthday tomorrow which is going make me yeet myself out the window and the shit just keeps piling on...i'll try to get this next update out as soon as possible (after some fixes) so i can start implementing the feedback and new features people have been asking for and get down to some much needed finetuning.

Oh. I HIGHLY recommend deleting the Viewer folder before installing this update, a lot of files have been removed, renamed, replace and shoved around. It will inevitably cause issues if you just install it over the last update.

As always keep reporting bugs and take care in these dangerous times.

By Sashi Summers

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.0.5 "Refreshing Dragon"

 And here we are with another update.

This time fixing ... actually just the same as always, fixing reported issues. Just making sure the Viewer is in a decent shape before I start merging the all the latest code from LL and bringing it up to date. Been kinda delaying that because it will definitely break a lot of things again.

Anyway, enjoy being able to bind double-click teleport as action via the keybinding system, it comes as default (for all newcomers) but you'll need to bind it yourself (or reset the keybindings if you are using the defaults).

There isn't much interesting to say about this update other than a new button to revert the poser to the initial pose and the ability to "overdrive" sliders by typing in numbers bigger/smaller than their min/max values allow. 

Also the TPV meeting this week was highly... productive! We discussed one whole feature, given its not going to be forgotten again we might get llSetAnimationOverride into the Viewer in the not-so-distant future, which will ultimately mean I can finally work on a Viewer-side AO. Until then its just about nagging LL more so they don't forget.

By Cynical Cloud

By Emeline Laks

My standards and how they are important to me and you.

In the light of recent events on my Discord I feel like it is important to reiterate and clear up what I stand for, what I do and what I don't

It came to my attention that I'm once again being attacked and framed by people with malicious intent for what is solely and exclusively my opinion and nothing but my personal opinion. 

An opinion which anyone is free to have, regardless of whether others agree with it or not, so is the nature of opinions, they differ. 

Attacking, harassing, insulting and witch hunting because someone does not agree with your opinion or view on a specific topic is unacceptable although sometimes unavoidable, we are human after all, we get emotional and we make mistakes, this does not exclude me, I certainly made mistakes too.

One of these mistakes, that I keep repeating is talking about a specific part of a group of people but not making it clear enough that what was said is solely and exclusively meant for that specific group of people, making it look like I'm generalizing when I'm not. 

This hasn't been the first time and will certainly not be the last time this happens, over the years I have tried remedying this by describing the group of people as good as possible and attempting to make it clear when I am talking about a specific type of person or a whole community. 

Obviously this hasn't worked out or at least not enough, innocent people still feel insulted at times and I'd like to apologize for those cases in which I have seemingly lashed out at people that were not my target.

Another one that started this whole situation is my lack of knowledge of the English language, due to my own language (German) sporting only a single word for both "gender" and "sex", both of which are terms referring to different things in English, there has never been a differentiation between these two for me, it was never necessary because it never played any role in how I approach and treat a person. 

So when I referred to "gender", what I actually meant was "sex" or the biological "gender" you were born as. This caused confusion and started this drama, again this was not my intent and I'm sorry if it insulted innocent people.

Despite making these mistakes and repeating some of them to various degrees I can assure you that I hold very deer to my standards and how I treat people, regardless of my opinions or world views. 

Anyone who comes to me asking me for help, be it a friend, random person, even someone who does not like me, will get the same treatment, everyone will be helped to the best of my ability. 

Anyone who does not believe this can see an ever increasing amount of proof every day on my Discord, in the SL Forums and here on my blog. Obviously you can't see what great lengths I go inworld when someone IM's me privately but I can promise that anyone has gotten as much help as I could provide. 

Some issues required making updates, some were fixable right away. Some issues however remain still unfixed and are either being worked on or are simply out of my ability to fix. Despite my best attempts i simply cannot help everyone.

The same goes for chatting with me, talking to me is like talking to a mirror. I treat everyone equally. This does not mean that I'm not free of being a human, I get emotional at times, angry or even feel insulted, just like you do. 

But again I can assure you that regardless of how our conversations go, no matter how lengthy, controversial or argumentative they get, I do not think of you as a lesser person or treat you different unless you do so first. 

This is something that is not immediately apparent and also requires having a lot of patience with me, I'm well aware of that but all I ask you is to have the same patience as I have with everyone else. I'm willing to ask people and let them state or clarify their side and I'm always open to hear new views, regardless of whether I can agree to them or not.

You can see proof of me being open for discussion of any kind on the Discord, I do not censor people's opinion and I do not shoot them down or stop said conversation unless it goes completely out of whack and turns into a insult fest for everyone.

I sound like a broken record repeating this but to put all above once again into one condensed sentence. I can assure you that regardless of my opinions, my world views, experiences, often even past interactions, your opinions, your religion, your ethnicity, your gender and sex, your backstory or anything of that kind I treat you the same until you give me a reason to treat you differently, this almost always means you will have to do the first step, you decide how I will treat you as a person.

Black Dragon 64x - Update 4.0.4 "Refreshing Dragon"

 Happy New Year everyone!

And a couple fixes along the way. Some new options and a change here and there, that should fix all the issues introduced in the last update for now.

By Emeline Laks