More than words – The Voice of There

Yesterday February 11, 2008, There held another beta, so we thought we would show you some of the new things that were tested for those of you who didn’t or couldn’t make it into beta. For a full list of everything tested yesterday please check forums under the Beta threads.

Postcards – with this feature you can take a picture of yourself or anything in There and mail a postcard to your friends.

Tell your friends that you're There!

Steps to test:
1) Log on to Beta 3dClient
2) Select your favorite pose
3) Navigate to There -> Therecam -> Create a postcard
4) SEND A POSTCARD page will show up with your picture on them
5) Enter all three fields & Click on Send it now
6) Click send it now Your postcard has been sent to:"email address your postcard send to will be displayed in this page"

Games – A new card game which has been asked for since spades came out - Hearts!.

I am really excited to announce that we have more Spades tables and have a brand new card game!

Both kinds of Game tables can be found here:
http://webapps.beta.there.com/catalog/product?category=1000000357

In addition to the Blue Swirl and Tiki themed tables, we also have Moroccan, Reno, Celtic and Goth themed tables for Hearts and Spades.

Since the Hearts are brand spankin' new we need to test them a lot! The rules for Spades differ greatly from Hearts (which anyone who was unlucky enough to be partnered with me when spades came out can testify to). If you are unfamiliar with how Hearts is played, please review this wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts

The short version:
- Pass 3 cards at the beginning of each hand
- Player with 2 of clubs leads
- You don't want to take any hearts if you can help it (they cost 1 point)
- You REALLY REALLY don't want to take the queen of spades (she costs 13 points)
- If you get all 13 hearts AND the queen of spades, everyone else loses (you can penalize everyone 26 points, or you can have 26 points removed from your score).

We have added a fifth setting to the Connection Speed menu.

Go to There -> Customize -> Connection
Select 'Unlimited'
Teleport to a new area in world that you haven't visited today

This stops the client from rate limiting the download of assets.

Miscellaneous fixes - Focus Thread

Eliminating SpaceFog
This is one of the requested fixes for the Katrina Releases. Until fairly recently, you could hang out in space with a lovely view of the islands below. Then, one day, without warning, There became a hazy blue marble, with no view of the islands.

We have cleared up the pollutants in the air, and restored the views of the islands.

What to test:
1. Travel into space
2. Look down
3. Can you see the islands?

In general, stars should now be on a nice black background instead of a soapy blue background, and the islands should visible through the clouds (at appropriate altitudes).

Fixed Nametag Rendering
Sometimes when you login to a heavily populated area, some of the nametags around you will see what looks like speckled blocks rather than the expected name tag. We believe that this issue is resolved.

The nametag also tends to render badly when you are in a chatgroup and 'Look At' another avatar. The nametags seem bolder than before, but that is a result of fixing the anti-aliasing setting. The font itself has not changed.

Please test, and if you see a badly rendered nametag, please post the information here, especially, what you did to cause the issue.

CC Metro Skydome Fix
The skydome in the CC Metro rotates with Coca Cola shaped clouds. The clouds in other locations do not rotate. We had a bug that once you visited CC Metro, all the clouds in the universe would rotate from then on, when they hadn't been rotating before your visit to CC Metro

What to test:
1. Wait for world to load, Verify that the clouds above you are not moving.
2. Teleport to the CC Metro area (link?)
3. Wait until the assets all load
4. Verify that the sky dome is rotating (Look for the Coca Cola clouds)
5. Use Undo Last Teleport to return to your previous location
6. Does the sky still have rotating clouds?

Please post your feedback here.

Volume Control Fix
Your client's volume control should no longer revert to weird settings every time you open it.

This was not tested yesterday but posted and I thought it was interesting. Emotes you can purchase. Why not, perhaps if this works out maybe we will see more emotes in the future that we have been asking for. Who knows but it’s a great start. Just sorry we could get a chance to see it and test it yesterday.

:( NOT Introducing: Video Emotes! ): - Focus Thread

There are 3 emotes:
'vash2
'teapot
'dancemac

They can be purchased here: ***Insert purchase location***

What we expect:
1) Only the owner of an emote can launch it
2) They should be givable and the owner permissions should transfer with the give/trade
3) Nothing should crash