June 8th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
If you’re a Windows user who had used the 1.1.0 RCs, you may be seeing these errors when you run Imprudence 1.1.0:
The ordinal 67 could not be located in the dynamic link library zlib1.dllThe procedure entry point gst_rtp_buffer_calc_header_len could not be located in the dynamic link library libgstrtp.dllThe procedure entry point gst_rtp_buffer_payload_type could not be located in the dynamic link library libgstrtp.dll
If you’re having those or similar errors, you should re-download the Windows installer for Imprudence 1.1.0! There were some old DLLs left by the RCs which were causing trouble. The new installer should get rid of them.
June 7th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
It has been a long time coming, but Imprudence 1.1.0 is finally here!
This final release of 1.1.0 fixes several issues that were present in Release Candidate 2, as well as a few miscellaneous tweaks and additions. Most notably:
- The pie menus have been reorganized again, in response to the user feedback we received. Check out our wiki page about the pie menus for the details!
- The music and video subsystems have been vastly improved, eliminating many of the hiccups, freezes, and crashes that occurred in the release candidates. It’s still not perfect, but it’s a lot better!
- Confirmation dialogs have been added for several actions, to help avoid accidently triggering them: Restore to Last Position, Teleport Home, Toggle Fullscreen, Take Off All Clothes, and Mute (avatar / object).
Be sure to check out the full release notes to see all the other stuff we changed and fixed in this version!
Good news for Mac users: this release comes with a Mac version! We have only prepared the Intel-only version so far, but if there is enough demand, we can offer a Universal version without music or video support. Leave a comment here or in the forums to let us know if you need a Universal version.
Regardless of which platform you’re on, you may experience some issues with audio, music, and video support. Please continue to report issues in the forums — but, as I explained in my post a few days ago, McCabe and I won’t be working on audio, music, or video issues anymore, except for the most serious and widespread issues. We have each spent dozens of hours per week for 3-4 months just to get things working as well as they do now, and we’re eager to move on.
Now, without further ado, the links:
Enjoy!
June 4th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Things have been quiet on the Imprudence front lately, I’ll admit. So, you might be wondering: What’s going on with Imprudence?
Vacation
McCabe and I got pretty exhausted working on cross-platform GStreamer and OpenAL support, which has been a long and frustrating campaign, much longer and more stressful than we had anticipated. The end always seemed just a little bit further, so we let it drag on way too long, and it wore us out and used up a lot of time that could have been spent on other improvements.
So, we’ve been on vacation on and off for the past month or two, resting up and recharging. But we’re gearing up again now, and getting back to work. But we won’t be working on sound, music, or video issues anymore, except when critical issues (widespread crashing or freezing) demand it. Fixes for less critical sound/music/video issues will have to come from other community members.
We plan to release 1.1 this weekend, and then move on to 1.2.
Moving Right Along
So, if we’re not going to be hammering on GStreamer and OpenAL, what will we be working on? Fun and interesting (to us) things! UI improvements, new features, and other things that make the viewer generally more awesome. In other words, the stuff we started this project for.
Here are a few things (but not the only things) planned for 1.2 and beyond:
- Updating to SL 1.22 core. Imprudence has been based on the Second Life Viewer version 1.21 source for nearly all of its history. For Imprudence 1.2, we’ll be changing bases to SL 1.22. (We’ll be changing to 1.23 some time after LL has made a full release of that. But, we’ll probably borrow specific, known-good changes from the 1.23 RCs in the meantime.)
- Restrained Life support. Imprudence 1.2 will feature support for the Restrained Life API, most popularly used in SL bondage gear, but also in a variety of other useful devices. However, we will not be using the official Restrained Life Viewer patches due to licensing issues. Instead, we will be using Kitty Barnett’s RLVa (Restrained Life Viewer Alternative), which is licensed under the GPL.
- Account / Grid Management. We’re planning to add better support for third party (OpenSim) grids in Imprudence 1.2. This will be similar in functionality to the Hippo Viewer’s grid manager feature, but with better usability and an added account manager feature, so that you can just select an account from a drop-down list on the login screen.
- Object Import and Export. This probably won’t be done in time for 1.2, but we’re in planning stages for an object import and export feature, i.e. saving and loading prims to/from your computer. The tool will respect object permissions. You will only be able to export objects you have rights to. We recognize the risk of someone modifying the code to disable permissions checks, but believe that the legitimate uses and benefit to content creators — content backup, transferring to and from offline build tools, migrating content to and from OpenSim, etc. — far outweigh the illegitimate uses and potential harm. There are already numerous tools that allow illegitimate copying of SL content, so content thieves won’t gain much. The lives of builders, on the other hand, will be a great deal easier.
Project Evaluation
It’s hard to believe, but two days ago, June 1, marked the 9-month anniversary of the announcement of the Imprudence Viewer Project. We’ve made some significant steps towards better usability in that time, but there’s still so much further to go.
Over the next few weeks, McCabe and I will be evaluating various aspects of the project itself (policies and workflows and such), seeing what has worked, what hasn’t, and what needs to be improved. Things we’ll be evaluating include stuff like the effectiveness of the forums as a channel for bug reports, whether an active mailing list would be worthwhile, how we should deal with the ChangeLog (manually maintaining it is a significant timesink and flow-breaker), and how to encourage more involvement from other developers and designers in the community. We’ll also be trying to establish design guidelines for the viewer, a general development strategy, and a proper roadmap!
So… that’s what’s going on with Imprudence!
May 4th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Hi all!
I’ve updated our wiki with instructions for enabling voice chat in Imprudence for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It’s not hard — you just need to copy a few files from a standard Second Life installation. If you’re a voice chat fan, give it a try!
April 22nd, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Greetings, Imprudence fans!
I am super-excited to be able to tell you that, at long last, sound effects work on Mac Imprudence!
Credit goes to Thomas Shikami of the GreenLife Emerald Viewer, who pretty much dropped a working implementation in my lap this weekend. My gratitude for this knows no bounds. Thank you, Thomas!
To recap the current Mac status:
- All sound effects are expected to work. This including in-world sounds, UI sounds, gestures, etc.
- Most music streams are expected to work. Please report any that don’t work so that we can hammer on them.
- Some but not all video streams are expected to work. We’re still gathering information about what formats aren’t working right, so please report any streams that don’t play, especially ones that crash or freeze the viewer.
- Streams may take several seconds to start, after you press the play button. We’re not sure how or whether we’ll be able to shorten that.
- This test build is expected to work on MacOS X 10.4 and 10.5 on Intel Macs. This build will not run at all on PowerPC Macs.
If your experience differs from this (e.g. something doesn’t work), please speak up in the forums or leave a comment here. If you’re reporting a stream that doesn’t work, please include the stream URL in your post. You can use the “Advanced > View Admin Options” menu item to be able to see the URL of parcels where it is usually hidden.
Download:
Again, please let us know in the forums if you have any issues with this viewer.
P.S. If there’s enough demand for one, I can compile a test build for PowerPC with sound effects but no streaming, but I’d rather wait until the RC3 release, since it’s a bit of a hassle.
April 18th, 2009 by McCabe Maxsted
Ahoy!
Seems like it’s been a while since I’ve posted on here (or any of my social networking sites for that matter: sorry plurk account!), but that’s just because we’ve had our noses to the grindstone, working out this viewer mess. First, an update.
Jacek’s done a great job removing much of the Linden cruft. The media system now utilizes its own thread that keeps bad urls from crashing or freezing the viewer (a known issue with RC2). She’s also been working on the mac release, so more power to her across the board.
On my end, I’ve been taking a large mallet to both XP and Vista in order to get streaming working on both OSes (Vista definitely being the more painful one). This brings me to the point of this post. I have a viewer that appears to have working streaming across the board, but I need Windows users–particularly those running Windows Vista (or 7 if you’re brave)–to help me test it.
Please, let me know if this viewer solves the media problems you were experiencing under RC2. If it doesn’t, it’d help me tremendously if you could let me know what’s going on. Crash when you play a certain stream? Stop? Sound problems? Whatever.
I’ll be watching here and over in the forums.
April 11th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
I’ve uploaded a new test build of Imprudence for Intel Mac, with GStreamer support (i.e. music and some video). This version should work for both Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5. Whichever one you use, please confirm that it (still) works for you! (Unfortunately, PowerPC Mac users are still out of luck, as I’m having trouble compiling some libraries as Universal Binaries.)
We’ve gotten reports of some video streams that cause problems with the last test build. I expect those strems will still cause problems in this build, but please keep posting troublesome stream URLs to the Mac feedback forum thread. (For parcels where the stream URL is hidden, you can cheat and turn on “Advanced > View Admin Options”, then close and re-open the About Land window to see it.) Reporting problem URLs is super important for helping us get media support working well for a variety of media types.
This build includes some of the changes going into the upcoming release candidate, so Mac users get a “sneak peek” at RC3! I won’t bother going into detail yet, since it’s mostly minor stuff.
But I will mention, since it affects testing, that streaming audio/media playback is threaded now, so the viewer will load (buffer) the stream in the background, instead of stalling the whole viewer while it loads. So, please wait up to 30 seconds before deciding that the stream doesn’t work, as it might just be taking a while to get ready. Eventually we’ll provide some sort of visual feedback about the stream progress, but we haven’t gotten to that yet.
Download:
And don’t forget to report in the forums!
April 1st, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
No foolin’ — I’ve recently made some critical breakthroughs with GStreamer on Mac (huzzah!), so support for streaming music, video, and web should be in place and working acceptably.
A few notes.
- This version is Intel-only. Preparing Universal Binaries (or even separate Intel/PPC versions) of GStreamer and its plugins will be another can of worms entirely.
- Sound effects are not expected to work. Sound effects are done through OpenAL, which is not working yet. (There is a teeny tiny chance that sound will work for some people, and please let me know if it does!)
- If you try this out, please let me know in the forums what works and what doesn’t, along with your system info.
- Please test a variety of different music and video streams and files, in many different file formats. If you find any streams that don’t work, please post the URL in the forums, too.
Now then, the link:
March 28th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Boy Lane has put out a call for Windows users with ATI graphics cards to try out the latest test build of her Cool Viewer.
Her build incorporates Luricos Alderton patch for VWR-12540, and apparently some users are seeing a 40-100% increase in graphics performance on ATI cards!
Luricos’ and Boy’s efforts on this issue will benefit users of all viewer variants, so I encourage everyone to test it out and let Boy know how well it works for you!
March 24th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
There’s good news and bad news. The bad news is I’m having continued difficulty with dynamic libraries on Mac. Actually, the difficulties I mentioned last time have been solved, but I’ve run into a whole new set of baffling difficulties. It loads most of the libraries correctly now, but for some reason it likes to load the wrong gstreamer libraries, still. Ah, such fun! *stabbity stabbity*
I’ll return to work on that soon, but in the meantime, the good news: I’ve got a soundless version of Imprudence 1.1 RC2 for you to try! You won’t be able to hear sound effects or use streaming media, but everything else — including new features like Quick Filter and the Worn Items tab — should work correctly!
So far I have only the Intel version ready, but I’m currently attempting a Universal compile. Without the new libraries (OpenAL and GStreamer) to worry about, compiling a Universal binary should be much simpler. I’ll update this post with the Universal link as soon as it’s ready. [Update: It's ready!]
Downloads:
Once you’ve tried it out for a while, please please please head to the forums and let me know what worked and didn’t work for you! (Obviously, you don’t need to mention that sound and streaming media don’t work…)
