Saturday, February 14, 2009

A few words about 1.16.1

Hello there,

Just a quick post to talk about RLV 1.16.1 that will be due when Linden Lab release their SL viewer v1.22 as the official version.

Firstly, it has been confirmed that RLV 1.16 does NOT work with SL 1.22.9 RC. It certainly did with 1.22.8, but it seems to be crashing now. Just to make one thing clear, I can NOT publish a new viewer every time a new RC hits the shelves. Otherwise I would spend my time building viewers. As you might know, it is now more difficult for me to compile on Windows than before. So please be patient, and if you really can't wait, the Cool Viewer is the tool of choice for you.

Secondly, after many discussions about llGetAgentLanguage, I have decided to make it back the way it was before, that is sharing the language settings of the user, and not the version of the RLV. There are several reasons, ethical and technical, the latter defeating all the advantages of actually using that function. Namely, llGetAgentLanguage does not return the version right away after logging on. It starts with an empty string. That would have led the script to be forced to wait (with a llSleep or something) before checking the version.

Thirdly, there was a bug with @getpath which would give away the exact path to whatever piece of clothing the user is wearing (not attachments), whether they were shared or not. If the point of sharing outfits is to "expose" them, the point of not sharing them is to NOT expose them, that makes some sense.

Fourthly, @set/getdebug_avatarsex was not working at all. Really not at all. Fixed now (thanks Henri).

Fifthly (?), while 1.16 was hiding the names of the avatars around under @shownames, then first names, then last names (if any), it was a little too intrusive, and could really mess some messages up. Mo Noel, for instance, had that problem because her first name, "Mo", was getting replaced by "an agent" or something. This lead to very difficult to read messages... I would like to use regular expressions to make the replacement smarter, unfortunately this "string replacement" is a function that is called a lot in the viewer, so it has to stay very basic.

Sixthly (??), and that has only a loose tie with the viewer, some people have complained about the latest update to the blindfold, which hides names and location when locked. While I do believe that seeing the names over the heads is unrealistic, recognizing the "voices" is not, so I hear ya, and have issued an update to the RealRestraint_HUD objects. This means that if you are annoyed with that behaviour, you just have to update your blindfold, but also all your arms restraints (wrist cuffs, wrist shackles, wrist ropes, wrist straps), because the change takes place in the HUD. This only requires a "Type 4" update ("Extensions only"). Then to detach your current HUD (because it does not detach by itself), and let the updated object rez its new one.

Hope this makes things clearer. Have fun !
Marine