Coming Soon… a New Version of Second Life
Friday, December 8th, 2006 at 9:04 PM by: Jeska LindenWe are planning the release of Second Life version 1.13.1 on Wednesday, December 13, 2006 pending final verification of all issues. Second Life will be unavailable from 7am to 12pm PT/SLT for the update. New client software will be required to access 1.13.0.We encourage you to visit the 1.13.1 Beta Grid to check out the new functionality for yourself!
Second Life Beta viewers can be downloaded from the Preview page of our website: http://secondlife.com/community/preview.php
Read on for the Release Notes for the Preview.
Release Notes for Second Life 1.13.1(0) December 8, 2006
=====================================
Other changes:
* ‘Access from Mainland’ renamed to ‘Public Access’ in Estate Tools
* ‘Contact Support’ link added to Help menu pointing to Second Life Knowledge Base contact page
Bug fixes:
* Fixed duplicate IMs or IM-to-email being sent (repeatedly)
* Fixed objects disappearing if they were made flexible via script
* Fixed a cause of failed estate-to-estate teleports
* Generalized flexi implementation for attachments and non-attachments
* Fixed several integer fields being displayed as float values
* Fixed pie menu options for non-English languages
* Fixed group notice panel not accepting text
* Removed incorrect notice that friends could track each other on the map (they cannot)
* Fixed bug affecting color of scripted/resident chat
* Temp objects can enter full parcels
* Fixed client crash when closing tabbed gestures without saving
* Fixed boolean values in Debug Settings not remembering the correct values
* Fixed strange characters in popup messages in Preferences
* Fixed incorrect counts for simulator prim usage
* Fixed floating point drift (and prim drift) in llTargetOmega
* Fixed textures on HUDs not rezing until right-clicked
* Fixed friends list scrolling to the top after a change
* Fixed a crash caused by tearing off menus in the script editor
* Fixed ability to add yourself to your friends list
* Fixed offline notification that a resident left your group (should not send email)
* Fixed object contents ‘Copy to Inventory’ and ‘Copy and Wear’
December 8th, 2006 at 9:15 PM
* Fixed floating point drift (and prim drift) in llTargetOmega
I always thought prim drift was a server side effect. However, welcome any improvement!
December 8th, 2006 at 9:20 PM
Temp objects can enter full parcels. Yaaaaaaay.
Now, any chance on letting temp objects enter or pass through no-build parcels? This would be lovely..
December 8th, 2006 at 9:22 PM
Didnt notice if they fixed the missing water after TP issue guess i will be clicking estate at my ocean property from here on out
December 8th, 2006 at 9:31 PM
Good work, Lindens!
–”Fixed floating point drift (and prim drift) in llTargetOmega”
Will this make the UFO’s go away?
December 8th, 2006 at 9:42 PM
wait - can’t we have a break from the last one?
December 8th, 2006 at 9:52 PM
Making headway, thanks guys
December 8th, 2006 at 9:56 PM
Please guys,debug and load test this one.That said,,keep it up,you are takeing care of a whole lot of the bugs.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:07 PM
I’m encouraged that this release seems to be just about all bug fixes, and no new features to speak of. Most of the issues listed seem to be minor, but hey - I don’t mind
Stability first…
Slip
December 8th, 2006 at 10:13 PM
Looking great all! Thanks for your hard work - I am sure it cannot be easy to keep up with a grid that has the zillions of changes this one must go through in a day. I truly appreciate seeing problems addressed that have been reported as bugs in a timely fashion with these updates. It would be nice however, if the water on an Estate was there when a person rezzed, instead of having to click on Estate each time, as Brock Brickworks mentioned earlier
December 8th, 2006 at 10:20 PM
ROFLMAO…and this will do what…oh yes..make it worse
December 8th, 2006 at 10:26 PM
I see that on Wednesday we will no longer be informed if someone left our group if we are not logged in
* Fixed offline notification that a resident left your group (should not send email).
Then what is in place to let us know when someone leaves our groups?
December 8th, 2006 at 10:26 PM
Cool! Hopefully the focus beta will be updated shortly afterward?
Also what is the current eta (if there is one) for merging the focus beta changes into the main client, perhaps as an option which can be toggled off?
December 8th, 2006 at 10:47 PM
I agree with another poster…”WHAT? ANOTHER UPDATE SO SOON?” We’ve barely recovered from the last one.
Please don’t make our experience eternally one of “hang on we’re trying to fix it”. We could stand to wait a few weeks before another update is put into position.
Please?
M
December 8th, 2006 at 10:49 PM
I bet that notification will still go to the owner, just not everybody else in the group.
Sad to see there’s no fix for the Reference Ruler mode in there yet.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:49 PM
so far so good … so it looks in print .. hope it works in the grid when it’s open.
I have a question … why not put groups in our friends list, we can do it in our contacts, would make things easier if it were the same in the list … give it a thought LL please, i know i am not the only one that wishes something like this! Good luck with this upgrade, hope and prays *fingers and toes crossed* that it does!
December 8th, 2006 at 10:49 PM
Maybe next time they can do something about the uslessness of weapons testing because of the everyday attacks on the sim.
December 8th, 2006 at 10:58 PM
I never crashed until the most recent updates. Now my client crashes all the time.
I hope this new version will go back to the reliability I was used to a month ago!
December 8th, 2006 at 10:58 PM
What about fixing the friends list all together. Everytime I log on I don’t see any of my friends on. But if I relog on or TP to the mainland I can see them on. WHY?!?!?!?!?!? I have done 3 bug reports because no one is in LiveHelp to help. Oh fix that too
December 8th, 2006 at 10:59 PM
Well im glad i had one day of things working as they were supposed to work. Time for more aggrivation.
woot! i can hardly wait…..
ugh
December 8th, 2006 at 11:01 PM
Is anyone else getting those green graphics artifacts all over stuff or is it just me? Thought this might be the place to comment on it giving a pending update. It’s like my avatar and prims are all covered in green or pink blocks! I mean the green ones aint so bad but pink! Give me a break!
Keep those fixes coming LL.
thnx
December 8th, 2006 at 11:11 PM
The water problem still seems to affect some regions. I use Torley’s workaround here
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/01/workaround-if-you-have-a-missing-water-problem/
The above unfortunately does not stick thru restarts.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:15 PM
Give me a break …. i haven’t recovered from the last fiasco upgrade!@
December 8th, 2006 at 11:22 PM
Grid stability where there were no major changes for say 6 months would be nice.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:22 PM
Another update?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
God, gluttons for punishment.
I love the fixes, you should actually have named the last update 1.12.x, that way this one would be 1.13 and have a step up that appeared stable and an actual improvement of the system.
Good luck with this, god knows you people need it.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:35 PM
Hopefully everything doesn’t explode into a whole new kind of retarded when this update is done. They last one nearly made me quit.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:47 PM
Also FYI the above chris is a different chris not me (I am the chris that posted earlier)… I should probably adopt a less-generic name…
December 8th, 2006 at 11:50 PM
One of the biggest problems I’m having is during building. Prims just move around, lose their settings, suddenly remember them, lose them again, etc. Been working on a big build, things are stable. When I come back after logging, things are magically shifted out of alignment again.
Really makes it difficult to teach people, y’know?
December 8th, 2006 at 11:56 PM
I hate to say it; but, any versoion of software that has the number 13 in it has always been bad luck for me…and software vendors.
December 8th, 2006 at 11:56 PM
Thanks for the hard work, this sounds great.
December 9th, 2006 at 12:15 AM
> Will this make the UFO’s go away?
I realize it should be fixed and all — I kinda like the UFOs
December 9th, 2006 at 12:21 AM
You MUST be out of your minds. Please leave things alone! I am still missing important and irreplaceable content from my inventory. I sent a bug report over a week ago and nobody has contacted me yet. You need to get your act together!
December 9th, 2006 at 12:23 AM
Come on people! Try to be more positive.
THEY ARE DOING THIS FOR YOU!
I do ‘dislike’ the fact the grid being offline again for some time, precisly in the hours where I usually roam the grid. (Yup, Im addicted, cant sleep without my shot of SL…
Also I haven’t read anything about missing textures that still seem to be coming and going at their own free will…?
And I also agree that the number 13 should be avoided at all times!! Just as a precausion! ^_^’
Let’s just hope that this update works beter then the last. (I’m pretty sure it will!)
December 9th, 2006 at 12:24 AM
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see Lindens working on getting things fixed up, but it seems that once again there’s entirely too many things being updated at once. If something goes haywire, good luck tracking it down
I don’t know if this is realistic (I’m no programmer), but I would think that smaller, more frequent patches/updates would be easier for everyone, Lindens and Residents alike.
December 9th, 2006 at 12:27 AM
@Takat Su:
If you find a solution for this unstability while building, please post it. I have the same problem and it’s driving me nuts..
December 9th, 2006 at 12:34 AM
Can we sorta skip 13 and go to 14, perhaps chp this update list into half see how that goes then update again 2 weeks later?
I really don’t want to spend my Xmas holidays with crashing with no teleport, no search, no Sound, no flying & no inventory, at least during the last dramas I was forced to go to RL work to get away.
December 9th, 2006 at 12:42 AM
How do I make myself my friend before then?
That’s a really funny bug.
December 9th, 2006 at 1:00 AM
I would just like to be able to tp home without having to log off to get there. Can’t undrestand How I ca be denied entry to my own land.Nor being stripted of eveything once I do get there.I hope this can be resolved before the new update on the 13th. otherwise things are coming along.
December 9th, 2006 at 1:08 AM
All I want right now is for Linden Labs to fix the issue with Intel Core 2 Duo Macs and Second Life… I’ve been crashing every 30 minutes! It’s insane!
December 9th, 2006 at 1:13 AM
You’ve got round to fixing prim drift?………what next?…..discovering the meaning of life?
December 9th, 2006 at 1:29 AM
What about the client remembering whether you want clouds or not, its such a pain having to go into the client menu everytime you relog and having to turn them off!
December 9th, 2006 at 1:45 AM
A new update ?? Here’s my suggestion, would be VERY, VERY, VERY useful to buliders:
- Multiple level object linking. Means : you can link object A abd B together, then link the A-B bundle to the C-D-E bundle, and when you unlink than new A-to-E bundle, you still have
A and B linked, and C-D-E linked. PLEAAASE……
December 9th, 2006 at 2:05 AM
CEO LINDEN LAB …
. FIX… the MISSING IMAGE ,
..FIX… THE INTERACTION BETWEEN POSE BALLS
..FIX …LOST INVENTORY ITEMS….
Among other things fix the things that were suppose to be done months ago its time people start speaking up I cant do it alone LIVE HELP WONT ANSWER MY CALLS!!!!!!
does that sound loud and clear !!!!!!!
December 9th, 2006 at 2:12 AM
Does this mean that I wont have to be constantly relogging to fix stupid issues like animations that dont work properly, other peoples avtars looking wrong, dance balls not in sync?
Does this mean that the “Service Unavailable” message in search will finally be laid to rest?
I damn well hope so. That last upgrade broke more features that the new ones it was supposed to introduce.
PLEASE PLEASE BETA TEST THIS PROPERLY! For gods sake ensure your QA procedures cover everything from sandbox/ringfencing to Code version control and QA testing. Give yourselves time to ensure that you FULLY test this and that your core product is stable BEFORE more enhancements.
The last upgrade PROVES that the testing regime is lax. Guys if I did this with the business critical systems I run at work I’d be summarily sacked.
I seriously wish the guys at LL the best of luck with this and heres to everyone in SL having a Stable, bug free and above ALL a Merry and peaceful SL Christmas.
December 9th, 2006 at 2:21 AM
Here here BrightAngel
Had problems myself twice now with lost inventory - both times it’s been stuff I’ve taken back to inventory just before a service crassh/region reboot… (”Running slow, I’d better save these…”
Lost my house (working in Sandbox) - custom adaption of a standard house, lost purchases within the house and lost Christmas presents I’d purchased… Grr…
Oh well… Guess they are working hard to expand the team…. Me thinks they’ve been taken by surprise…?!?
December 9th, 2006 at 2:29 AM
You MUST be out of your minds. Please leave things alone! I am still missing important and irreplaceable content from my inventory. I sent a bug report over a week ago and nobody has contacted me yet. You need to get your act together!
Over a week ago? I went through all the steps as they were given me finally including uninstalling and reinstalling SL when everything else failed. After which I was told to contact so-and-so Linden and gave all the details of what was missing which I did. That was over 5 weeks ago and I haven’t heard one word from anyone. Even if they gave me a “oh well, Your Lose” would be welcome instead of ignoring me completely.
December 9th, 2006 at 3:02 AM
Let me add my name to the list of people who do NOT want a new version for several months or so. You do too many version changes and they are NEVER properly checked out before release.
PLEASE SPARE US THIS TORTURE.
December 9th, 2006 at 3:03 AM
I get the same problem with prims bouncing. I also have to immediately close the edit window without the mouse leaving it during texture adjustments or it snaps right back to the old setting.
Thanks for the list LL, I have my fingers crossed for you!
December 9th, 2006 at 3:07 AM
I’m STILL missing inventory…Pose balls don’t work…Scripting is broken, can’t teleport 80% of the time, no search…etc etc etc…And WHY CAN’T YOU ALTERNATE THE TIMINGS OF THE “UPDATES”?You always execute them at the same time….Your not giving some people any choice or alternative to the down-time needed for your “updates”…The same people are losing their game time EVERY time.
December 9th, 2006 at 3:14 AM
@Takat Su
Lolz, and i tougth it was my mouse or memory that was causing this issue (for a sec i even thougth it was a hacker lol)
(512Mb ram is a torture for the system with this game) saving for 2 gb now
and well guys/galls maybe this update is there because of al the troubles we already suffer from the previous update, and who knows it will fix a few known problems, so dont complain and just wait, because iam and alot of other users don’t like it the way it goes now, no search etc etc.
and for sure it is annoying to have a big update so soon after an eachother, but there will be a reasson for it.
for the lindens, thumbs up, take the time and actions u need to do, to improve this program, my thumb u got in any case
December 9th, 2006 at 3:23 AM
Another update? Are you Serious?? Its taken this long JUST to get Search back and theres still too many problems to mention and now you’re going to shut us down for another 5+ hours for another update when all the bugs from the last one havent been fixed? Game play expirience over the last 2 weeks has been horrid to say the least..maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of us.. a.k.a I think this is a bad idea - fix what was recently screwed up first
December 9th, 2006 at 3:33 AM
Any chance of being able to select which drive SL cache is put. At the moment it is on the c: drive and space is short.
Thanks
December 9th, 2006 at 3:34 AM
To Chris with the green graphics artifacts issue:
Hate to say it, but I think that might be a graphics card issue…meaning your graphics card is burned up. I started having the very same problem a year ago with my ATI (AIW) Radeon 9800 Pro and tried everything, from uninstalling and reinstalling games to doing the same with my video drivers and taking my computer completely apart to clean it, mostly to clean the video card. I sent my video card in to have it worked on and they said it was a hardware malfuction, replaced it, and haven’t had the problem since. Hope your graphics card is still under warranty =/
To BrightAngel Summers:
YES! We need to speak up about these issues. I personally haven’t had missing inventory, but some of my profile “Picks” have gone missing as I’ve also noticed two of the same thing happening to my friends. The Missing Image completely irritates the hell out of me, but at least its fixable with “Rebake Textures”, but yeah…shouldn’t have to do that right? The BIG thing that’s been bothering me that I hear no mention of fixing (or havint read any other than a workaround) are animations not showing up for both people using them, ie: poseballs. COME ON…I don’t wanna relog and have the person I’m on a poseball with have to relog too every so often to see the animations….LETS GET THIS FIXED TOO!
To Linden Lab:
I agree with a few people, what happened to pushing out smaller updates, fewer bug fixes at a time mean you could concentrate on each one more to make sure if you have any issues with them upon release…you could more readily fix them. Also, thier are several bugs and of course the word everyone loves (stability) to work on before introducing a HUGE amount of changes (features) within a single update. I mean…the friends list, cmon…why ya gotta make it like any (insert bad bad word here) IM service where your friends can hide themselves from you…if that’s the case, they’re not friends and should just be removed from your friends list…yeah, very unhappy about this when some people are estatic to have it im sure.
To everyone else:
This is a new version to fix bugs, yeah…perhaps way too many of them (which they’d have problems fixing again if things go so badly again) but don’t say “OMG Another update, we’re still recovering from the last!!” because this update is also an attempt to fix the last (in my opinion WORST) update.
So those are my thoughts…not really many there, but im tired yup Yup YUPS
December 9th, 2006 at 3:47 AM
21 bugs get fixed, and some don’t want a new version? I find this very, very odd
Throwing in my own comments, I would like not only to have more bugs fixed — the more, the merrier — but naturally more new features
And while I fully understand that people do not like new features and prefer bugs getting fixed… well… this is it, an almost-featureless patch with only bug fixes 
Why complain?
December 9th, 2006 at 3:52 AM
Help seems to work fine for me. Must be since I don’t pitch a fight over every step the Lindens take… sheesh.
OMG NEW UPDATE NOOO NEED A BREAK OMG SOMETHING IS WRONG FIXITFIXITFIXIT
I wouldn’t do what to do if I got a message like that.
December 9th, 2006 at 3:52 AM
*know sorry about that
December 9th, 2006 at 4:15 AM
Can’t you at least wait after Christmas for the new “promising” update? We all, well the most of us, had a really hard time to recover from the last one…why all this torture??? Because it seems that IT WILL be as usual, meaning the grid will be on at least 4 hours after schedule, and then problems with this and with that, and sorry we are working on it…and oh damn that is something that just appeared and we are here for you and we care a lot…please wait at least for a month!!!!! Bugs MUST be fixed and congrats for that and noone doubts the LL good intentions, but can’t we do it in a smoother way?????
December 9th, 2006 at 4:17 AM
Oh good. ANOTHER new version. At the rate of diminishing performanace with each upgrade, and the rate of increasing destruction of working things, what can we expect from 1.14 when it’s released?
Avatars spontaniously exploding on login? Entire sims permenantly and irrevokably deleted? Accounts inventory’s completely wiped and a $L balance that indicates we owe the bank money?
Seriously.. this is the single longest run I’ve witnessed where something was broken and REMAINED broken for so long without a patch. STOP RELEASING SOFTWARE UPDATES SO FAST WITHOUT THOROUGH TESTING!
I swear, Linden Labs must expect they can get away with more than you’re average WoW, EverQuest, City of Heroes, etc. because people actually make money off the game, so they figure we’ll put up with the garbage more than most before quitting. What choice do all of the merchants have after all?
It’s shameful how often they break things, how often we state the obvious about the lack of testing, and how completely ignored we are about it all.
Test more. Give incentives to actually spend time in the test grid and file bug reports. You lot let in every possible person with the whole “no credit card required” thing, make the test grid into a giant camping chair and give these people 20L an hour to actually play their game THERE. You’d get more stable releases, less embarassing results, and better customer service. Not like you can’t AFFORD it, you print the virtual money after all. Call it the Newbie Stipend.
December 9th, 2006 at 4:17 AM
what oh what are you thinking, the version 1.13 is still messed up i cant beleive it,
December 9th, 2006 at 4:42 AM
The every two weeks update might have worked in the early stages of SL. With approaching two million users, a less frequent schedule would be better all around. How about the second Wednesday of the month? That would give more time to test the new rollout and give us a longer period of relative stability.
December 9th, 2006 at 4:52 AM
People can be idiots.
This is a BUG FIX. NOT a semi-major release like the previous one. This is supposed to FIX the bugs caused by the last version. Notice there are no new features.
David
December 9th, 2006 at 5:08 AM
Linden Labs…you know exactly where you can stick this update! I think you need to put a moratorium on all updates until after the first of the year. You’ve already put us through nearly two weeks of hell while you try to figure out how to fix your own system, and now you want to put a new update out so close to the holidays? I don’t think so. Leave things alone, for the love of god! Go celebrate the holidays with your families, and just let the residents enjoy SL while it’s [mostly] working.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:13 AM
@Gwyneth… I think the point most people are making is that Linden Labs can’t seem to get any kind of upgrade out the door without foobaring the whole system. It doesn’t matter if it’s mostly updates or new features, they simply can’t get their QA process under control and deliver anything in the remote vicinity of stable. And compound the issue with the fact that they’re doing this so close to the holidays…a time that everyone will want to be with their families, not working…and that’s why you get all the complaints.
Linden Labs hasn’t delivered a stable update in months. They’re crazy to think they can do so now.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:15 AM
While the idea of you all so diligently working to make us a better Second Life… can we please can a small break?
The last update made everyone quite upset and it would be nice to have a little down time before we have to sit back and wait the alotted time, then download the update, then T R Y to load in while the rest of the world eagerly tries all at the same time, then dealing with the screwups and not having bug reports replied to…..
Just give us some time, please?
December 9th, 2006 at 5:18 AM
If anyone didn’t notice….this update is to FIX BUGS….i really do wish ppl read.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:22 AM
@miche… If you didn’t notice, when was the last time Linden Labs rolled an update that DIDN’T suck? April? May?
It doesn’t matter if it’s new features of bugfixes…they don’t do them properly either way. Give people some time to enjoy the system before you break it again.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:27 AM
the update before the last wasn’t too bad of bugfix update Melnitz…and this update fixes major issues, like estate to estate teleports and group notices. People complain about these things and say linden isn’t doing anything to try and fix them and then when they come out with a fix, people complain even more.
Why not at least give them a congrats for listening and trying to fix the problems before you throw down the gilotine?
December 9th, 2006 at 5:30 AM
you might want to wait until after wednesday before you congratulate them too much Miche.
I hope it goes well but the track record isnt very good. I think the last upgrade I can recall without problems was september which was also just bug fixes and before that late may/early june.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:36 AM
I’m not saying congradulate them for the update, but the work they’ve done.. What i’m saying is that this is a small build update off the version from last week, it’s needed to work the bugs out, and who knows, maybe it will fail, but maybe it won’t.
This is the proof that they are trying, people have been complaining about the bugs, complaining about LL not listening, and when they show it in the least a lot of ppl slap them in the face.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:50 AM
god rest ye merry gentlemen let nothing ye dismay… here’s a wish for all players and lindens alike: may the grid be good to us all!
December 9th, 2006 at 5:51 AM
To be fair, I just spent about 20 minutes on the beta test grid. Right off the bat, I can tell you these things:
- It runs like a dog. There’s practically no one in there and it works like there’s two million beta testers floating around.
- Draw rates are for crap. I have to spin in circles endlessly to wait for everything around me to show up.
- I’m having issues moving across regions. I keep on walking long after I stop, and then it snaps me back into place.
- Attachments are floating up…apparently still attached, but on different parts of my avatar.
I would have submitted these through the bug report system, but alas, that didn’t work either. Clicked it, but it never came up.
I do not see how the beta test grid is useful at all. It certainly hasn’t helped avoid problems with rollouts. Perhaps instead of trying to cram this latest update down our throats, Linden Labs could spend the next few weeks figuring out how to integrate the beta viewer with the live grid. That is the ONLY way they’re going to be able to get useful information from beta testers. People often talk about an “incentive” to beta test…the greatest incentive would be to simply integrate the two so people can use the beta viewer as regular users to conduct their everyday SL activities. As it is, there’s practically no one on the beta grid so there is no interaction. Nothing goes with you from Beta to Live, so there’s no incentive to do any business transactions. You’re basically doing Linden Labs’ job for them. As a result, practically no one goes there so the Lindens don’t get a real life feel for how the latest changes are going to impact the system. In effect, the REAL beta testing isn’t done until the update is already in the wild and all hell breaks loose.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:52 AM
I think mostly people are complaining about lack of testing and no place to get help or express their problems when they need to. Those things havent really changed but, I hope it goes well, we need a nice smooth upgrade once in a while.
December 9th, 2006 at 5:56 AM
Melnitz….those reports are dissapointing :/….but i love what you said about there not being enuff ppl on the beta grid….if u got a problem with version updates why not get a couple of ppl together and go on the beta grid, this is what a public beta is for….they have it there for you to try out and make sure everything is working, and if it’s not, then report it.
And i do agree….there should be a better way of testing, but for now, we should try out best to make sure all the bugs are ironed out.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:01 AM
Personally, I’m happy that they’re trying so hard to get things in order. Honestly, you’re all begging for fixes at the same time you’re telling them to hold off on the updates. Please make up your minds.
I’m not an expert on databases or servers or streaming or any of the obviously immense technical backworkings of SL. But one thing I’m sure of is that a LOT is happening and as such, a lot can go wrong. LL has botched a couple of updates and I think it’s time we give them a little credit for working so hard to fix them. I remember when “1.7″ temporarily became a verb, but nothing’s said about that anymore. For the record, naysayers: Enough of your negativity. If you understand completely what went wrong, where, and how, and know exactly how to fix it, go ahead and give a helping hand. If not, shut up and let the experts work on it. I certainly couldn’t give program counseling. So I’ll sit back and help the only way I can.
Lindens, I’m rooting for you!
December 9th, 2006 at 6:07 AM
I agree that we should wait before a new update is issued. There are alot of things needed to be fixed in the current version. I do understand wanting to get everyone happy. But you are losing valued customers and new ones when nothing you have made works correctly.
I am tired of needing to relog 10 times to take pictures on pose balls.
Even when my AV is working on the ball the other user is not then we need to somehow play for 30mins getting it all right on both screens. Its not fair to have to pay the prices some pay to not having working scripts, textures, poseballs, animations. Not to mention the people who work hard on the objects to lose buisiness cause no one can utilize the full amount of said creation.
Definitly need to fix
*missing images
*pose ball interaction
*teleport issues
December 9th, 2006 at 6:09 AM
Another update???…could we vote on this?…i vote nay since i am still having trouble from the last one!
December 9th, 2006 at 6:34 AM
Do we have to do this so often? Upgrade, update, yes—but as is it is a continuous disruption to everything we try to do in SL. Can’t commit to schedules because Update Day always brings chaos…
Good luck, guys. We need it.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:40 AM
Hehe I have to agree with Livinda way up there the “.13″ factor of this update worries me a little.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:40 AM
I don’t know if this is the right time/place/space to toss in this very desired feature suggestion, but here it goes:
Please make it an option, as a group member, to turn on/off the automatic inclusion in group IMing. There’s nothing more annoying to me than hearing the incoming IM tone and think I’ve got a friend IMing me only to discover its one of my groups chatting about nothing I’m interested in–but I can’t turn them off.
For most of the groups for which I’m a member, I want to receive the group alerts/notices, but not be included in the group IM chat.
There’s my $.02 for what’s worth.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:40 AM
Haven’t these folks ever heard of XProgramming, Agile, and writing tests before they write code?
There are good software writing methodologies out there, but LL seems to think the 1980s waterfall model is they way to go. This is hardly cutting edge software!
December 9th, 2006 at 6:41 AM
Has anyone done an analysis why LAST release looked good on test grid and failed in SL? Many of us would prefer stability over “fixes”. It seems you have hardly had any time for analysis into looking into procedures that would give us ALL confidence that a new release would both happen within time predicted and when UP, be unnoticeable except for “fixes” (no undesireable side-effects). It reminds me of that joke, “If Boeing made passenger planes the way Programmers made programs, the whole plane would fall apart with just one bad bolt!”.
PLEASE RE-EVALUATE YOUR PROCEDURES ON RELEASES.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:47 AM
I’m usually the happy cheery joking person in the blog. I’m gonna be straight this time.
LL, please implement a once daily update session. Firstly, for one hour a day, take the grid down and implement bug fixes. New features only once a month. This way, the bugs are easier to track, rollbacks, if necessary are easier to do, and the grid is down less overall. Many many many platforms do it this way, or at the very least do small bug fixes only 2 times a week, or even once a week, with all new updates rolling out every few months. I appreciate you are trying to stay ahead of those games that are soon going to be rivaling you, but it looks worse when you can’t handle yourself.
Secondly, this helps with server load, not only does the server refresh a bit, but it kicks all the zombies out for a little while, each day, helping server load.
Third, why not roll out the estate to estate tping now? This way, if it’s bugged, you can say, we need more work on it and if it’s not bugged, great! All our favorite private sims can be found!
BTW, from what I gather, most people on beta don’t get listened to, you find find tons of people saying they submitted the bugs in beta and they came right onto the SL grid and some STILL haven’t been fixed. Please listen to each and every beta’er, even if it’s one report of a bug… that should still be investigated before rolling it out live.
Small bites guys, please give us small bites instead of choking us.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:48 AM
P.S. That one hour a day, would be the same time everyday, so we all know exactly when it’s going to be down to plan events around.
December 9th, 2006 at 6:50 AM
Last week a friend of mine left SL to go back to WoW because she was frustrated by lindenbugs, crashes, lost objects, and a lack of prompt and useful technical support.
Her last words were “I don’t know how you all tolerate playing in what seems a perpetual beta-test - I love you all but this place is a waste of time”.
I’ll give LL the benefit of the doubt on this upcoming release. I hope LL’s learned its lesson over the last couple weeks and has this new release sparkling clean of ANY trouble. A final gold release.
Me? I stick around despite the instability. Why? Because of the people I’ve met here. But if LL doesn’t get its act together, the grid stays unstable and and I keep losing friends because of it, I may have to join the exodus - just to be with my pals.
Say yes to stability and bug fixes. Just say no to new features!
December 9th, 2006 at 7:00 AM
OK, so, you are at least going to try and repair some of the damage your last ‘updated’ did. Hopefully you’ll be able to fix what you are aiming to without making SL fall over - again. Mind you, it’s still on its knees, so take care.
Timing? Awful! Because of the Christmas break I conidently expect a barely usable SL for 2-3 weeks this time. Way to go LL!
However you seem to have missed something nasty I found yesterday. There is a huge memory leak caused by ipening your profile. Repro? Get task manager up, note SL memory usage, open your profile, watch memory usage soar in real time until the client crashes - you don’t have to wait too long!
December 9th, 2006 at 7:10 AM
Keep up the good work, many non techie folks do not appreciate the difference between what you are doing in SL and what all the other exploding heads game developers are doing:
Allowing the users to be the creative geniuses, and stay out of the way of the content. Just provide the infrastructure. All the others impose “plots” “characters” and “themes”.
Your work is crucial. I’ll do anything I can do to help! Keep it up!
December 9th, 2006 at 7:16 AM
Hmmm… the instructions for using the Linux beta viewer on the beta grid seem to be wrong. It doesn’t recognise the “–grid” option and just tries to connect to the main grid (and fails, since it’s the wrong version).
December 9th, 2006 at 7:30 AM
I agree with the Boss
What really needs to happen is the ability to use the beta client on the live grid. I’ve yet to even bother with the test grid, as it’d be rather useless to do anything but walk around. It might serve well as an alpha grid, where any sim-altering problems can be caught, but as a beta grid it appears to fail miserably.
New features should cause version changes (ie: the next batch of features should be put into 1.13.2). Restrict (patch levels) to being used for bug fixes. That way, simply fixing a bug doesn’t have to cause incompatibilities that _require_ we all download the latest client and deal with all of its new bugs. Some bugs annoy some people more than others, and if i can’t have a bug free client, i’d like to at least be able to choose my bugs.
Overall, i’m looking forward to all these fixes. But it’d be nice if they were already tested on a real grid FIRST, before being pushed out to us.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:35 AM
I too am one having problems with jumpy prims. They also go invisable when moved. Texturing is a real chore. Jewelry crafting while normally enjoyable, lately is a REAL chore.
Search functionality. What happened guys? This is beyond ridiculous.
I was told it was either - Ability to Search, or lost inventory that was inevitable to residents. Seems like both happened.
Can’t we focus on previous screwups before proceeding?
December 9th, 2006 at 7:35 AM
Again today a pair of expensive items vanished from my inventory. I have lost confidence that you will ever be able to deal with the problem. At this point, with so many of the current features broken, introducing new features is folly. You are only rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:43 AM
I’m a little confounded (nothing new for me), but if this is all bug fixes, why package them into a potentially disastrous upgrade? I think we’re all a little exhausted from the cataclystic upheavals every so many days. I’ve just lost a few more friends who went back to a more stable game that shuts down every day for an hour, one of them was my roomie.
I go regularly to the beta test grid. I am almost always the only one in any sandbox, no matter where I go. I think in the last three weeks I’ve seen maybe 4 people altogether in the test grid.
Btw, haven’t seen anything on the list about fixing missing items. I lost my own best clothes yesterday and literally had to remake them from my textures. Took off the clothes I made a week ago and they were nowhere in my inventory, did a search in both Recent and Inventory. Still gone today. Can anyone be spared to work on this for us? Please. How are we supposed to be able to sell things we make when what we make goes off to the great Nova in the sky, never to be seen again?
December 9th, 2006 at 7:53 AM
Gwyneth Llewelyn21 bugs get fixed, and some don’t want a new version? I find this very, very odd
Not odd at all - you would be surprised what the Screaming Wednesday Monkeys are capable of. LL’s mistake was calling this a new version. Had they called the exact same release a “bug fix” instead, the reactions would be totally different. There would still be complainers, but there are a handful of professional ones here, and they don’t want to lose their status.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:55 AM
Great! Another day and a half down.
I haven’t been playing SecondLife very long and I’m already tired of paying to be a beta tester. I thought MicroSoft was the only one doing that!
So let’s see, five hours every two weeks. That’s half an hour a day, weekends off.
Fix ONE bug at a time. Easier, faster, fewer problems, AND don’t piss off resis.
Finally, I want a completion clause. Not finished by noon, LL starts paying resis.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:56 AM
to: Kazuma Onizuka
Hiya matey. Thanks for your reply on the green graphics artifacts problem I have. At first thats what I thought it was! My brand new ATI Radeon x1900 XTX going down the crapper! Then just as I was about to set aside a Saturday afternoon to rip it out and send it back, I had more than several people in our group saying “hey whats that green crap all over you!”. I even had a Linden come over and he saw it too and told me to… wait for it! Clean out my cache and rebake my textures and turn off “Avatar Vertex” in prefs. Now I tried all that and also uninstalled and reinstalled SL. Still the same thing. Its funny that it doesn’t happen on anything else but SL.
thnx, and if anyone else is having this glitch let me know.
December 9th, 2006 at 7:57 AM
I would like to see an option allowing people to hide the restricted access fences if you do not want to see it. I had to build a wall to hide the restricted access that was shining through the walls of my house which has all my other neighbors behind me upset because I blocked their water views. I would take down the wall if I didnt have to see those ugly bright red fences.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:01 AM
Well, as far as big fixes, it looks like a pretty good list.
I have to agree with the general tone of comments, and say that we really do not need another update so close to the holidays, and that the update schedule should be extended to perhaps once every 4 weeks to give time for more extensive testing.
Furthermore, I haven’t noticed any private islands on the test grid. Where would those be hidden, in order to more fully simulate the main grid in order to validate some of the updates.
Also, the lack of Linden comments to this type of post is, as usual, very disturbing and gives credence to the feeling that we are generally being ignored.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:02 AM
I agree with the strange-ness of not wanting bug fixes. 0.o And then complaining that the bug fixes are getting in the way of the bug fixes. 0.o
December 9th, 2006 at 8:08 AM
Frankly, I thought this announcement was bigger news than this when I read the headline. Trumpeting “a new version” sounded as if you were finally announcing the advent of the Messiah — er, that is, SL 2.0 or something. You really shouldn’t try to be so melodramatic, Jeska.
I share the feelings of both those who are excited about the bug fixes in this upgrade and those who fear it. Many of the things that are promised sound good — but they ALWAYS sound good.
However, I can’t even begin to count the number of times an upgrade has arrived, only to discover that something else has seriously broken.
I’ll simply have to adopt a “wait and see” attitude.
P2
December 9th, 2006 at 8:10 AM
Lindens before you do this update…Would it be a possible solution to close down the main grid Do the upgrade on the beta grid only which would force more people to use the beta grid and they would,And get some true and real feedback thatway before you do anything as terrible as the last release was?Honestly in my opinion and alot of other peoples opinion I know fixing all the other issues we have before upgrading the game with new feautures that will probably be broken or cause problems to would be preffered .Its like your trying to place a bandage over a gaping wound.I for one can tell you i had huge issues with your update..I tried to get someone to point me in the right direction from live help which was useless as nobody answered me I even called L.L and i got someone telling me I need to ping my computer I did figure out my problem on my own that somehow the update changed my settings on my nvdia card. make sure please things are in working order and make sure you have the staff that knows what they are talking about and can help with issues before you throw a 1/2 worked update out there again….Sad to say as boring as TSO is it works you have to give them that much cant say the same about SL
December 9th, 2006 at 8:13 AM
I would like to add a suggestion or two:
When you close down main grid Wed for the patch/upgrade, the user rate will sore on the Beta Grid. Before you start rolling out this fix, have as many Lindens as possible go onto Beta and snoop around for an hour. Test the new features with the bigger load.
Last upgrade day, it was apparent by 8 a.m. on Beta that there were serious issues there, but by then it was too late.
Oh, and put a live Linden on the LH for Beta for discuissing issues when found. Not a “Help my hair is in my eyes” role, but a “Hey, all the water is gone and my boots are hanging off my eyeballs” kinda role. Huh????? Maybe???
I really have my fingers crossed on this one.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:15 AM
“Fixed objects disappearing if they were made flexible via script”
Thank You Thank You Thank You and Thank You oh and Thank You little one of Thank You too well just Thank Yous all around Love Love Love
December 9th, 2006 at 8:15 AM
O yea why not also fix a issue with loging on to the webpage IT DOESENT WORK FOR ME……!!!!!!!
December 9th, 2006 at 8:16 AM
YAAAAAAH!!! Please, please leave us in peace until after the holidays. Maybe I live a sheltered life, but other than a couple of difficult non-vital tp’s I haven’t seen one but that affected me. After the last experience it’s evident that LL is rolling stuff out too fast thereby creating more problems than they are solving. Now that you’ve (AT LAST!) got the search function going, leave us in peace for a while.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:17 AM
Well…after 3 days + and countless thousands of dollars lost in revenues to people selling merchandise, a cute..free 1 week classified ad seemed to be an appropriate gesture on LL part to satisfy these people who lost so much $$$ in sales.
Folks let’s face it..LL dosen’t care abut US..what they care about is tossing in new eye candy, grabbing new users and makeing even more money..these updates are destroying the game..hell i had more fun back in march..at least things SEEMED to work..now it is a job..checking to see if everything is in inventory, builds acting right…Let us STOP with these damn updates and start fixing what people are actually paying for…Oh…btw…you were to kind LL to forestall rate increases…means you made a lot more money in new land purchases before the deadline..295.00 US$ that is totaly absurd..what are you offering for 295.00? Bugs?
December 9th, 2006 at 8:31 AM
We need a search feature for our inventory!!!!
and i do wish that we weren’t upgrading quite so soon… unless u guys are REALLY sure you got the bugs out!
December 9th, 2006 at 8:32 AM
Question, how many of these fixes are in the Beta Grid Client now? Several of these probs are still very apparent there, such as the llTargetOmega bug.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:38 AM
Who else noticed they stopped calling them upgrades? There is no promise of making things better anymore. SL needs 12 steps.
I’m for anything that works, but the track record LL has developed says there are more bugs and more grid attacks on the horizon, and that tiny interface adjustments will justify the shoddy mess SL has become.
Why do children cower when thier father comes home? Because he drunken and abusive. Who is our father and why does he hurt us? Does he think slurred apologies make it okay?
It’s small consolation that he stopped promising to make it better.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:49 AM
Hmm, no live help on Main or Beta at the moment, 4 Lindens actually in world as Lindens. 14,000 residents online. Oh, right. It’s Saturday. Sorry.. LOL
December 9th, 2006 at 8:51 AM
Oh and Chris - per your Green Blocks issue - Remember, the image of you seen In-World is generated by your Viewer / Client, so if you card is hosed, we will see you screwed up as well. This is why you see ppl with the PurpleFace, their card is not working right and that effects the image seen In-World.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:55 AM
Let’s hope that the new upgrade’s aftermath will be less adventurous.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:57 AM
I’m a software developer myself and I’d like to add my voice to those here saying that this seems to be the wrong thing to do. I really feel for you guys, SL is a massivily complex and flexible piece of software and I know from experience how hard that can be to get that right when pushing enhancements up to a production environment even when everything appears to check out beta.
So in your position I would be going for more smaller incremental releases rather than this big bug fix approach. Fix fewer bugs at a time so you can monitor the effects more closely and if things do go wrong you have fewer variables to hunt down. With SL now pushing for mainstream acceptance STABILITY should be your prime consideration. I personally know of one RL friend who was persuaded to try SL a day before the update and has now given up because he was completely turned off by past the mess of the past week and now thinks I’m a raving lunatic for enthusing about it.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:59 AM
What? No freaking missing water fix? No fix for the biggest and stupidest bugs added to 1.13? I mean, come on! I’m tired of going to the estate menu to get my freaking water back. This will now be TWO releases since you broke that stuff.
BOOOOOOOOOOOO.
December 9th, 2006 at 8:59 AM
I agree with alot of the people on here Why a new update or whatever you want to call it now when you haven’t fixed the problems that exist from your last ‘update’ that gave a few new things to do but tons of headaches
nothing downloads right all the time
you can’t fly without getting messed up someway
teleports are shot over half the time
and new problems arise everyday
how about fix the problems we aready have in this version before rolling out more errors on us
I think its only fair you fix the problems before apologizing for more you create on your customers
December 9th, 2006 at 9:00 AM
It seems to me that, in the spirit of “A picture is worth a thousand words…”, this headline was just one more example of the need for internal vetting, at LL, of their own blog-posting, by a competent PR department, prior to “putting it out there in the spirit of openness.”
Once again, we see that “One badly-worded hasty blog” is worth a thousand replies.
There is one profound problem CLEARLY demonstrated, yet again, by the dynamic chaos-theory driven operational model of Linden Labs (lacking any degree of real top-down or bottom-up corporate organization generally necessary to be functionally efficient) demonstrates: when the work environment is so “dynamic,” autonomy leads to anarchy, open communication becomes lack of communication, and the essential cross-talk necessary to maintain any semblance of coordinated effort completely fails…and what you end up with is 200 people, all claiming to be the wisest, most-compassionate, and most relevant Linden…all 200 speaking at once, and all completely negating the best efforts of all the others to contribute to anything bearing a semblance of true progress toward any common goal benefitting either themselves or their clients.
December 9th, 2006 at 9:00 AM
I agree Miche. We hit the Lindens with poor quality when we should go on the Beta and try it out. I have seen a lot of slowness when I was there last time, though. Maybe Lindens should work on getting a stable Beta site so that it is more clear when there are performance problems. As it is, the beta site is so slow, it is almost expected to be slow and you can’t figure out if the new changes caused more problems or resolved them.
December 9th, 2006 at 9:03 AM
If I were responsible for SL in general, I would be reviewing job discriptions and reassigning people to where they can do a better job. While SL has a strong lead as the next browser and internet content provider, continuous poorly concieved intergration of content will allow potential competitors a golden opertunity to get a foothold in what appears to be the internet of the future.
December 9th, 2006 at 9:03 AM
once again I wish you guys good luck with making SL work
December 9th, 2006 at 9:04 AM
why do they bother doing updates its never an update its a downgrade from the horrid quality there currently producing why can’t we go back to like 1.9 when things may not have had a whole lot of features but at least it all worked i’m getting fed up with all this crappy ass quality and they saying its always an unforeseen problem. although, in there defence, i do believe its about time they started doing client betas on the main grid instead of on a test grid because at least now you will properly know whats going on. i don’t know about the rest of you bet i’m about ready to pack things in and call secondlife the end….has anyone looked at the hype around sl? its no longer secondlife its now refered to as sadville i wonder why…
December 9th, 2006 at 9:05 AM
I hope this is entirely bug fixes and not a feature upgrade because FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, you people need to fix your **** SERIOUSLY BORKED SYSTEM ****. After a week of places search not working (the only week I’ve been on, so I didn’t totally miss it, though I have a feeling my first week was seriously degraded) I created a new account and now NOTHING works. I can’t search ANYTHING anymore. Not classifieds, NOTHING. Not only that, but I can’t see myself. It gets pretty old being invisible, and it keeps telling me my body will be downloaded “in a minute” but that was quite a few minutes ago now.
Here’s a hint guys: if you keep developing software the way you’re doing it now, nothing is ever going to change. And if you don’t fix it soon, I’m outa here.
December 9th, 2006 at 9:06 AM
WTH! I logged out/in and I dont load and all my lindens are gone! Yaya its still there on my account page..but I want to use MY lindens!!!
*sigh*
Now I am FORCED to go do my exercise..when I could have been PLAYING!!! -.-
Thanks alot!
They better be there when I get back. This is fricken ridiculious!!
December 9th, 2006 at 9:08 AM
OMG not another update already….I am in agreement with some of the other posters. We havent recovered from the LAST update, we lost at least 3 days game time from and still nothing is really fixed. I get sick n tired of updates that leave us sitting waiting for hours at a time saying “Grid Offline” while your figuring out your *UPDATE* didnt work like it was supposed to. I am missing objects from my inventory or land that I reported and no one listened to. Every update we get something useless..Like timestamps in IM windows…*who cares*…and something important gets screwed up. While you have added some nice and useful features I am not sure they outweigh the garbage we are all having to struggle with. How bout…fix the little things one at a time, and then say after a few weeks or months of the grid being stable…THEN do an update. Would make more sense to me and a few others it seems from the posts. Give us weeks of stability and enjoyment before attacking us weekly with unstability and grief please. Just my two cents.