Archive Page 2
September 28th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
We’re super stoked to announce the release of the Imprudence 1.2 beta. This new version has tons of great stuff that we know you guys will love!
- The Object Backup feature allows content creators to import and export objects they’ve created to their hard drive. You can save backup copies for safekeeping, or even migrate your products to another grid! Woot! Thanks to the folks at the Meerkat Viewer for developing this great feature!
- The Grid Manager allows you to customize the list of grids you can connect to, plus it comes pre-loaded with a variety of popular grids already. This is just the first step in our ongoing commitment to enhanced interoperability with OpenSim grids. Thanks to the Hippo Viewer and Meerkat folks for developing this.
- Optional Restrained Life support allows Imprudence to work with a variety of BDSM items and scripted gadgets. Our gratitude to Kitty Barnett for her excellent work on RLVa.
- The new Minimap Radar shows you a list of all the nearby avatars within a customizable range. Try selecting a name on the list to make their minimap icon big and red!
- A selection of great Emerald Viewer features: Phantom mode, search inventory by creator name, double-click someplace to teleport there, and a bunch more!
- The Windlight toolbar tab gives you easy access to to your sky settings, including a built-in selection of presets from Ana Lutetia, CodeBastard Redgrave, and Torley (thanks, guys!). Plus, click the arrow to expand it and adjust your draw distance on the fly!
- Tons and tons and tons of other cool features, fixes, and improvements! Check out the release notes for all the juicy details.
This is a beta release, though, so expect to see some bugs. We’ve got a list of issues we already know about; in particular, you should probably avoid using the Logout feature until we fix a peculiar bug related to that. If you encounter any other issues, please post about them in the forums so we can make sure to fix them!
Now for the goodies:
Enjoy!
September 28th, 2009 by McCabe Maxsted
With the 1.2 beta coming up, I’ve updated our How To Compile page. The Windows build instructions should be a bit more straightforward, and I’ve added some missing links, as well as instructions for building with Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, Microsoft’s free C++ compiler, which is now supported in develop.py (would love to know if Visual Studio 2008 works; anyone want to test and/or submit patches?). The downloads page is also up to date with links to the latest source.
As some of you might have noticed, there were a few annoyances when compiling Imprudence 1.1 on Windows. These should all be fixed in 1.2 (if not, lemme know on the forums, or better yet submit a patch to fix it). Cheers.
September 23rd, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
The end of September draws near, so we’re starting to wrap up the development cycle for Imprudence 1.2. The emphasis now is on testing and polishing everything to make sure it’s done right.
Unfortunately, the improved user account manager feature will not be part of 1.2, as it was not on track to be ready in time. Instead, we’ll ship 1.2 with a polished version of Meerkat’s grid manager (which works fine, but is not as nice to use as we would like), then include the user account manager in 1.3.
But there’s good news: we’re planning to put out a 1.2 release candidate this week. That will give you, our kind, loving, and beautiful users, a chance to try things out and give us feedback on anything that’s not working right (which hopefully won’t be much). Then we’ll fix up what we can, and have the 1.2 final released next Wednesday!
Now, I had better get back to work!
September 19th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
A quick recap from this past Tuesday’s ImpDev meetup:
- Jacek has been focusing on the login manager feature. She hit a mental block for a while, but has gotten past it and is making good progress. Still, she expects it to keep her busy until the end of the month, and possibly a bit longer. If it’s not ready in time, we’ll ship 1.2 with Meerkat’s grid manager interface as a temporary solution, but won’t delay the 1.2 release.
- McCabe has been making enhancements and fixing bugs in many areas, including the new Windlight quick-access toolbar tab and avatar scanner, as well as an improved layout for avatar profiles and other cool stuff!
- Things still seem on track for releasing 1.2 by the end of the month!
Full transcript on the wiki, as usual.
September 15th, 2009 by McCabe Maxsted
Want to change something?
In looking over our How You Can Contribute page, it occurred to me that we’ve never formalized our patch submission guidelines. To rectify this, I created a new page on the wiki for submitting patches.
There are three ways to submit a patch to Imprudence:
- (preferred!) Clone Imprudence on GitHub.com and push a branch containing your patch, then let us know about it either on the ImpDev mailing list or on the forums. This allows other developers to cherry pick your change and include it faster (see git tutorial).
- Attach your patch in our forums. If you’re solving a bug or implementing a feature, attach it to the appropriate post. Letting us know on ImpDev it exists will also help get it applied faster.
- Submit your patch directly to the ImpDev mailing list.
I understand not everyone’s keen on mailing lists, but posting on ImpDev is the best way to bring your patch to our attention (bonus points for having a git repository we can follow!). I’ve also included some guidelines for what we like to see in patches, mainly UI-related things.
If you’ve never generated a patch before, that’s okay. There’s a section on that, and I’m always available inworld to help, even if it’s just a one line xml fix.
We’ve got a bunch of cool stuff coming up in the next version of Imprudence. I hope to see some of your names in our release notes!
September 10th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Here’s a quicky status update. As usual, full summary and transcript from our weekly meetup are available on the wiki.
- Jacek has imported RLVa and Meerkat’s object backup feature. Still some polishing left to do. Login manager is next on the list after that.
- McCabe has imported (or will soon be importing) several Emerald features: Double click inworld to TP; Asset (texture) browser; Animation list; Fetch inventory at startup; Phantom avatar; Sit anywhere; Show object’s previous owner; New prim presets in the create tab; Set chat channel; Draw distance slider.
- (We’ll be borrowing other Emerald features later, but we don’t want to get carried away and miss our deadline!)
- Everything is on track to have Imprudence 1.2 ready before the end of September! \o/
September 1st, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
It was one year ago today that McCabe and I launched the Imprudence Viewer project with the goal of greatly improving the usability of the viewer through a more open, pro-change, community-driven development process.
A great deal has happened since then; some good, some bad. There have been unexpected developments, and surprising changes in the viewer landscape. We’ve made a good deal of progress, but perhaps not as much as we wanted to.
The first few months of Imprudence went fairly smoothly. We established the project online, started discussion, generated interest, and pushed out the first release candidate version by mid-November, and the first full release version, Imprudence 1.0, just a month later. It worked fairly well, but it was missing some major features: sound, streaming music and video, and voice chat.
Linden Lab uses properietary software for those features, which meant that we would have to replace them with open source software. Unfortunately, the struggle to do that — and to get it to work across all platforms — took over 4 long, grueling, frustrating months, and thoroughly burnt us both out. Then to make matters worst, when we were nearly recovered and ready to start again, I was loaded down with a stressful and never-ending project at work, which very nearly burnt me out all over again!
So, although Imprudence has been around for a year, only the first four were spent at a healthy pace of development. The past eight months have, rather unfortunately, resulted in very little visible progress on Imprudence.
In the meantime, new viewers have come to the foreground. Emerald appeared on the scene this past spring, and has introduced a great many useful new features. Meerkat, although founded around the same time as Imprudence, finally established itself this summer with new releases boasting an object backup tool and enhanced inter-grid support. And of course, Linden Lab launched its Snowglobe project, attempting to alleviate many of the same development problems that prompted us to start Imprudence in the first place.
Naturally, with Imprudence’s lack of visible progress, the attention of most third-party viewer users and developers shifted to these other viewers. Speaking candidly, Imprudence has become mostly irrelevant.
This sobering thought raises the question: “So, what are you going to do about it?”
Our answer is simple: We’re gonna kick it up a fuckin’ notch, that’s what!
The first order of business is to “catch up” and become active again. We’re aiming to release Imprudence 1.2 by the end of September. The key features of that release will be:
- Object import/export support, borrowed from Meerkat.
- Account/grid manager. Also borrowed from Meerkat, but we’ll be giving it a major usability overhaul.
- RestrainedLife API support via Kitty Barnett’s RLVa.
- Many smaller features from Emerald (avatar scanner, phantom mode, sit anywhere, double-click to teleport, and perhaps others).
- Rebased to SL 1.22 source. In the interest of getting Imprudence 1.2 released ASAP, we’re putting off updating to SL 1.23 until Imprudence 1.3.
Also, we’re welcoming Armin Weatherwax as a full-fledged Imprudence team member, joining McCabe and myself. Armin has been a great help over the past year, contributing many patches and porting over features from other viewers and from JIRA patches. Indeed, Armin has already ported several of the main features that will be in 1.2, as well as many smaller enhancements. So, it’s about time that we officially recognized his efforts! Thank you, Armin, and welcome aboard!
Imprudence’s future after 1.2 is still being charted, but it’s safe to assume that we’ll soon be contributing new features, fixes, and usability enhancements to the third party viewer ecosystem again. We’re meeting every week to discuss and plan Imprudence’s development, and we’ll continue to post regular updates here on the blog, as well as transcripts on the wiki.
So, happy birthday Imprudence, and cheers for the year to come!
August 27th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
Yesterday’s ImpDev meeting went quite well! We decided that the immediate goal for Imprudence is to catch up with the other third party viewers. The Meerkat and Emerald viewers in particular have made fantastic advances, and we’re eager to integrate those changes and features into Imprudence.
We’ll also be rebasing Imprudence to the SL 1.23 source (Imprudence 1.0 and 1.1 were based on SL 1.21). That should bring some improvement to texture loading speed (McCabe estimates a 25% improvement), as well as new features like default upload permissions. We’ll eventually integrate Snowglobe’s HTTP Textures, which should really speed up texture loading, but we would need to do it in a way that doesn’t break compatibility with OpenSim.
Those are the main highlights of the discussion, but we talked about quite a few other things, too! You can read the summary and full transcript on the wiki, if you are interested.
Next week’s meetup falls on September 1 — which just so happens to be Imprudence’s 1st birthday, too! It’s hard to believe that it has been so long since we launched Imprudence. Phew!
August 19th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
After a lot of distractions and procrastination, I’ve scheduled the weekly ImpDev Meetups to be every Tuesday at noon SLT. The first meetup will be next week, August 25.
- What: ImpDev (Imprudence Development) Meetups
- Who: Imprudence developers, and anyone else interested in following Imprudence’s progress
- Where: The Imprudent Alcove in Second Life
- When: Every Tuesday at Noon SLT (i.e. San Francisco time)
The meetups are meant for Imprudence developers to get together, socialize, talk about what we’ve been working on, and come up with plans and ideas for the future. The meetups will be pretty relaxed and informal, and I think will usually run for less than 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, there was no possible meeting time that would have been compatible with the schedules of everyone who responded, so I had to give priority to people who are already fairly active with Imprudence development. But even if you can’t attend the meetings, you can get involved through the mailing list and IRC channel, and of course through the forums. Transcripts for the meetups will be posted on the wiki, and I’ll also try to post summaries here on the blog.
August 15th, 2009 by Jacek Antonelli
McCabe and I have been pretty busy lately with RL things and work, and Imprudence development, sadly, slowed down a great deal as a result. But we’re working to get it moving again, and to get more people involved and active with Imprudence development. (I must confess to being personally rather neglectful about that in the past.)
To that end, I’ve set up a new mailing list and IRC channel for discussion of Imprudence Viewer development. “Development” means programming, design, artwork, and anything else related to improving the viewer.
- ImpDev Mailing List: Subscribe and view archives online. After you’ve subscribed, send email to impdev at lists.imprudenceviewer.org to post to the list.
- #imprudence IRC channel: Point your IRC client to the #imprudence channel on the freenode network (irc.freenode.net). Freenode also offers a decent web-based IRC client.
You don’t have to be working on Imprudence to listen or participate in either the mailing list or IRC channel. Anyone who is interested in following Imprudence’s development is very welcome to join.
Also, as I mentioned last time, we’ll (probably) be setting up a weekly or biweekly in-world meetup to hang out and chat with other developers and people interested in following Imprudence’s development.
I’m planning to sit down tonight and try to find a time that will work best for the people who have expressed interest. Scheduling is difficult, though, especially for a global audience, so we’ll see how it works out. I’ll post about that soon.
