ThereCare > 07.24.2008 Client and Server Release Notes

Release notes for 07-24-2008
Client and Server Release

FEATURE ENHANCEMENTS:
In response to your feedback and requests, as well as suggestions from the MAB, we have made changes to several features in There.

GIN
We are excited to announce the release our first 2-person card game. We have incorporated a lot of the feedback from our beta testers in the design of this fun game. Look for Gin tables in Shop Central starting Monday morning (July 28th).

NEW CARS *
We have recently released 2 new customizable cars into There, the Muscle Car and the Coupe, with unlimited options for personalization.

MISCELLANEOUS ACTIONKIT UPDATES
We have made several fixes, optimizations, and additions to the ActionKit API. We believe that these changes will be the final touches needed to release the new interactive products. Look for light sources and fire effects very soon!

UPDATED NAMETAGS
Tablatronix has offered the updated nametag graphics on his web site for quite a while. With his permission, we have incorporated these nametag textures in today's client.

DISTANCE MEASURING TOOL
We have enhanced this feature so that it transfers the distance perimeter from around your avatar to the Preview Drop Location on your PAZ or Lot.

Steps:
1 - Click View -> Measuring Device -> Turn On
2 - Note that the red distance measuring disk appears around your avatar
3 - Click My Things -> Droppable Zone -> Preview Drop Location
4 - Note that there is now a red border added to the perimeter of the Drop Preview
5 - Adjust the distance with Views -> Measuring Device -> Distance
6 - You can turn off the Measuring Device without affecting Preview Drop Location and vice versa.

AUCTIONS IMPROVEMENTS *
Auction Image Enhancements - We have made a change to the auctions pages that will allow easier browsing of all items. Mousing over a catalog image, in any of the auction listing pages, now results in a pop-up box with a larger view of the catalog image.

Auction Share via Facebook - Show off your designs for all of your friends to see! We have added the ability to share auction items via your Facebook account.
1 - Click on the Share link from an auction detail page
2 - Log into your Facebook account
3 - Add any comments and submit.
4 - Voila! A link to your There auction, right on your Facebook page!

Known issue: The auction link posted from an IE page does not show the catalog image. When posted to Facebook from FireFox the catalog image is displayed properly. We are working on resolving this issue.

HELP CENTRAL LINKS IN CLIENT
Since moving our customer support functions to the Help Central system, it hasn't always been clear how to access Help Central. Now finding answers and contacting support is much more straightforward. We have changed the links on the Get Help menu to point to Help Central, leaving one link pointed to the announcements board at ThereCare.

REFILLS BALANCE ON TRANSACTION HISTORY PAGE
We have updated your Transaction History page with information about purchased refills. Now when you refill your paintgun, or add minutes to your PAZ, the new balance will be displayed on your Transaction History page.

Examples:
Refill of 195 shots for Paintgun (Yellow Paintgun Ammo) - balance after refill is 200 shots
Refill of 5,000 minutes for PAZ (Sixteenth Acre PortaZone Mins) - balance after refill is 43,620 minutes

BUG FIXES:
With this release we have fixed several issues that have been reported through Help Central, Developer Chats, and the MAB.

FIX FOR IGNORED AVATARS STUCK IN HOODS
There was a bug where an avatar, ignored by the owner of the Hood, could get stuck in place in the Hood (and possibly crash as well). Now they are properly ejected when ignored. This fix was released with the second test client, and is included in this release.

WORKSHOP ZONE FIX
Fixed an issue with members getting Segmentation Violations when walking out of a Workshop Zone with a decoration piece in hand.

UPSIDE DOWN CARDS FIX
Resolved the issue where the cards would occasionally display upside down in the avatar's hand.

PORTAZONE VIS CLASS CLEANUP *
All PortaZones are now assigned to use the official PortaZone visibility class and thus no longer compete for visibility with signs, Theredocs, and music boxes. This effect is most visible in areas like Duda Beach or Zephyr, where you can now see the budgeted 25 PAZs at once, no matter how many music boxes have been dropped. (Of course, both of those areas are well over-saturated with PAZs, so you still will not see ALL PAZs at the same time, just a lot more than the 3 you could see before.)

DEVELOPER PAGE
Now, as a designer, you can Try or Rent any of your items from your My Submissions page.

EXTEND/CANCEL RENT BUTTONS REMOVED FROM NEIGHBORHOOD PRODUCTS
The Extend Rent and Cancel Rent buttons have been removed from Neighborhoods and Lots. Use of these functions did not do 'the right thing' on the server side. We have removed the buttons until the functionality can be fixed.

NEIGHBORHOOD RENAME FIX
This fix updates the Lot location information when the Neighborhood is renamed. Previously, the update was unreliable.

VOOZOO AERIAL ZOOM FIX
There was a bug in VooZoos, where if you transferred to aerial view and back to standard view, the sound clip would play again. This has been resolved.

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS:
We have been focusing a lot of effort on improving server performance and your experience in There. Since our release in March, we have made several small code releases to address performance issues. In addition, we have released 2 test clients with fixes for client-side performance issues.

CLIENT BLINKING FIX
The previous release fixed all known server-side blinking issues (e.g. zone decorations disappearing and reappearing ad infinitum), but introduced a client side problem with almost identical symptoms. Many members experienced decorated zones that would blink in and out because the client could not load all of the decorations. Test Client Patch #1 resolved this issue and is included in this release.

CLIENT WINK FIX
Our experience testing client patch #1 led us to the root cause of an old Wink bug (zone decorations disappearing and reappearing exactly once in reaction to you entering a zone you own/decorate). Test Client Patch #2 resolved this issue and is included in this release.

CLIENT PAUSE ON ENTRY TO ZONE YOU OWN
If you carry a large inventory, there was a brief pause in the client when you entered a zone you owned/could decorate. This has been resolved.

FASTER OBJECT APPEARANCE AFTER MAINTENANCE *
We found a way to accelerate the re-appearance of world objects (like NH Lots) after a major morning maintenance. This means that after releases and asset push days, zones and Neighborhoods will load in a few minutes, rather than hours.

FIX FOR RACEKIT MORNING SICKNESS *
We found and repaired the root cause for maintenance-morning-related issues with racekit zones, which would claim you were not riding an appropriate vehicle (when you were) until the zone was manually reset.

REDUCED SHADOW COMPUTATION RATE
Some members reported a frame rate slowdown when entering shadow-heavy areas like CC Metro, until after the shadows had been computed. We have reduced the max rate at which we will do shadow computation, improved the shadow computation algorithm (for speed, not appearance) and removed 'invisible shadows' (which were doing no one any good).

In addition, we have also removed many shadows from CC Metro, to allow the area to render faster for everyone.

MISCELLANEOUS AVMAN CRASH FIXES *
We fixed a handful of situations which could still lead to an AvMan server terminating unexpectedly (which can interrupt events and card games). We have resolved these issues as they have come up.

REDUCTION OF UNNECESSARY DATABASE TRAFFIC *
We have achieved approximately a 10:1 reduction in database traffic over recent weeks. This reduces AvMan load, inner network bandwidth, and improves the quality of our backups.

SECTOR MAP UPDATE
You probably/hopefully won't even notice this, but it allows us to cut the world into even more pieces. With this update, we will be able to create more locations in world and to release more Neighborhoods.

MEMORY DEBUGGING TOOL
We created a tool for visualizing content memory usage. It is available with local mode enabled (Ctrl-Shift-L) via the following URL...

http://localhost:9999/fids/listFids

THIS RELEASE BROUGHT TO YOU BY:
Action Kit – TheChaz
Auction Improvements – Skippy
Cards Display Fix – TheChaz
Client Performance Fixes - Samsyn
Developer Page Fixes – KatKat
Distance Measuring Tool – PixelVixen
Faster Object Appearance – Samsyn
Gin – Tablatronix, TheChaz
Help Central – Vertex
Ignored Avatar Stuck in Hoods – Samsyn
Memory Debugging Tool - TheChaz
Nametags – Tablatronix
Neighborhood Fixes – KatKat
New Developer Cars – Trilogy, TheChaz
PortaZone Vis Class Cleanup – Samsyn
RaceKit Morning Sickness - Samsyn
Refill Balances displayed – MyIMV
Server Performance Fixes – KatKat, Samsyn
Sector Map Update – Samsyn
VooZoo Fix – Vertex
Workshop Zone – Samsyn
Testing – Mommm, Kirzten, Light67, many brave Beta testers.

* These changes have already been released into There.