Saturday, June 11, 2011

Restrained Love v2.7.1

Hi !

Here is a new version of the RLV with a few bugfixes and enhancements (no new command this time), these are things I have been wanting to do for a long time.

During roleplay, a few times now I could still recognize a friend even when being unable to see names and despite her efforts to sound like a different person, simply because I knew nobody else bearing her "dummy name" ("An agent" in her case). I have stated years ago, when introducing the @shownames command, that every avatar had a dummy name that was calculated from their user name, and that this dummy name never changed. This is not true anymore because making it static like this would eventually ruin the very purpose of hiding names. One would go "Oh her name is 'this individual' ? That must be Jane again !" and blow the surprise that Jane was making.

Now the viewer will make a new deal of dummy names every few hours (but not during a session). This means that every few hours, Jane's dummy name will change to something else on the next relog. It doesn't change at every relog because sometimes the environment can get crashy, and you need to relog several times during your roleplay. Dealing new dummy names every time you log on would confuse you unnecessarily.

Second big enhancement, I have added a menu item called "Restart All Animations", in the "Me > Movement" menu. This item allows you to restart all the animations you are playing, as well as all the animations every avatar around is playing too, resulting in all the animations starting at the same time again. This is very handy when you're involved in couple animations with your partner, but both are out of sync because one needed more time to start than the other. With this menu item, animations will be perfectly in sync again.

Third big enhancement, this was kind of a popular request... I have long wanted to add a "@say" command to force the avatar to say something. While interesting at first glance, this command would open a big can of worms because of the amount of griefing it allows. Imagine for instance your RLV relay forcing you to insult someone on the chat in a public place that you visit often, resulting in you getting banned. This is why no such command has been added, despite many requests.

So I flipped the problem around, and made it so that when an object speaks, it would look like avatar chat to the RLV users around. Even if the wearer herself is not a RLV user. This is purely a cosmetic change, no new command to handle this, and can be controlled with a debug setting anyway. This makes it much safer while still allowing "fake avatar chat". The conditions for being able to make an object sound like an avatar are these :

- It must be attached (it won't work if it is on the ground).
- Its name must be equal to its wearer's user name, or dummy name, or first name or last name.
- People hearing it must have their "RestrainedLoveImitateAvatarSpeech" debug setting set to TRUE (this debug setting is introduced in this version), which is the default value.

Notice that this behavior occurs in the RLV of the users AROUND the object, not the RLV of the object's wearer themselves (if any). In other words, if the captor wants to make her gagged victim sound like she is talking gagspeak herself and not through green chat, they must use this RLV.

There is an important bugfix as well. When some folders are locked or specifically allowed, moving folders and items in or out of them would be problematic (if your top doesn't want you to wear this particular dress, there was a way to move the dress elsewhere and wear it anyway).

Now the behavior is simpler :

- You cannot rename a folder if it is locked and under #RLV.
- You cannot move a folder or an item if it is locked or the destination folder is locked.
- You can always move or rename a folder or an item if the source and destination folders are not under #RLV.

By "locked" I mean "allowed" or "denied", not exactly "locked on you". This refers to the recent feature of locking folders on, off, or adding exceptions to these locks.

There are a couple other bugfixes, such as a slowdown on the Nearby tab when prevented from seeing names, and refreshing the status bar on startup so that the sliders won't appear twice if your navigation bar is open.


So there, here it is :
http://www.erestraint.com/realrestraint

The MD5 hash for the windows installer is
aa392c0f8d92e6f691f8ae7653579131

And the full change list :

- added : "Me" > "Movement" > "Restart All" Animations menu item, to restart every animation you and other avatars are currently playing around you. This is local to the viewer only and has no consequence on the sim or other people. This is handy for synchronizing couple animations, especially when one takes a lot more time to download than the other.

- changed : When someone else's attachment speaks and its name matches its wearer's (user name, dummy name, first name or last name), the viewer will show it as if it were avatar chat instead of object chat. This makes gagspeak look more natural. This behavior can be turned on or off by the "RestrainedLoveImitateAvatarSpeech" debug setting.

- changed : "Dummy names" ("a person", "this individual"...) are now scrambled every few hours when unable to see names. This allows even a close friend whose dummy name is well known to still be able to surprise you during roleplay. They are not scrambled at every relog though, to avoid confusing the user under crashy conditions.

- fixed : Copy/pasting items from/to a locked folder (a folder to which a lock or an exception to a lock has been issued). Renaming folders and moving objects from an unshared folder to another one is ok though.

- fixed : A slowdown of the viewer when having the Nearby tab open and restricted from seeing names.

- fixed : Refresh the draw distance and avatar height offset sliders in the top status bar when starting.


Have fun !
Marine

PS : If you experienced weird errors about a notification called "HintView" in the RLV, spamming you with so many dialogs that it was unusable, please download again. This was a strange issue with non-English languages.