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.

Saturday, November 4, 2017

Black Dragon 64x - Update 2.9.1 "Bit Dragon"

Ugh

So 2 weeks later and i've been nothing but circlejerking in the Viewer trying to get something done.

Sometimes you're just working for days on something and it just wont work so you seem like making 0 progress and its kinda saddening as it delays the entire update... but ohwell here we are. I got it under control.

Today i some fancy changes for you, starting off with the new screen space reflections look, you'll find it to be a bit faster and generally better looking, have a look:

Old
New


Then there's the interface overhaul, specifically the inventory and people windows. Inventory has been one of my biggest annoyances, it's one of the most used windows in the Viewer and it just looks like someone quickly threw it together, i wanted to fix that and make a new consistent layout for all sidebar-like windows, this includes the people window and later the other ones like places, picks, groups and so on. For now it's just inventory and people, both have a menu at the top right, both show info related to it at the top left and both have just one single bottom button bar now, everything looks neatly organized now. Finally. I made the groups list a bit less crappy looking too while i was at it.


New and never before seen is the ability to preview .anim animation files directly inworld on your avatar with the Pose/Animation Manipulation window. Simply open it and hit "Create", select an .anim animation file and it will be loaded and temporarily created for you to be used. Simply select yourself and hit "Apply To" to play the animation on yourself and preview it. AWESOME.

I also made it possible to put calling cards into the top favorite bar. Currently doesn't have any special functionality besides dragging it in and showing the profile on click. I want to extend it to allow more inventory object types such as objects and MAYBE even folders for favorite outfits. I also want to change calling cards to request a teleport if the person is in your friend list and automatically track and initiate a teleport to said person if you got their map rights, just like you'd do via the map but without having to actually open it and use that stupid dropdown, favoritising your favorite friends, yay! Totally made that word up.

Now comes the bad part. Still no launcher. I decided to bite the bullet here and continue naming the versions like i previously did as it makes no sense delaying the "update versioning" because the launcher is not working, i'd end up with a gazillion betas and gammas and alphas and release candidates. Screw that we'll resume the normal versions. Right now it appears like the launcher is fully incompatible with third party viewers so you'll have to update manually when i force an update... which... is the next bad news.

I noticed that Alex Ivy (64bit) changed the way the channels are displayed, i don't know if this has any impact on the update channels so when i force an update nothing might happen... that or the Viewer will be completely locked out... in the worst case that is. There's sadly only one way to find out, so bear with me here when i start forcing this update. If shit hits the fan i'll try to get this fixed as fast as possible.

Last bad news for today. No merge with latest Linden Viewer code because... i delayed this update for 2 weeks which is already way too long and i felt like i should show some actual progress and i wanted to show a fully working Viewer before making any big changes again. I know for sure that when i merge the latest code something will break again and i'll most likely notice it 6 years later down the line, like i did with a few other things... also making smaller incremental updates makes it a lot easier to find out on which version a specific issue started happening, making it easier for me to find the specific change that caused it and thus making it easier to fix said issue.

I'd like to say that the Patreon thing has received some really positive feedback so far, and quite some people have already started supporting me via Patreon.

Thank you very much

Kei Kurono
Maddy Gynoid
Richard Call
Shiruviana
Ulrike Woltering
Viki Tran
William Betteridge
YoungBlood

Enough talk for today, enjoy 3 fancy pictures i made with the Poser and another fancy random one showing the new SSR.




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