A Few Words on the New Release…

This week in Twinity included a successful major release. If you haven’t taken visited lately, now is a great time to come back and see how much has changed. Here are the highlights:

Expanded Profile. We’ve added more information to the in-world Profile so you can tell others more about yourself and learn much more about the people you meet. You’ll now be able to see to what Groups they belong, and browse the Places they own or rent.

Groups. We’ve offered Groups on Twinity.com for quite awhile, but they’ve now been brought into the virtual world itself. Browse and join Groups in the new Community Directory, advertise your affiliations by setting an ‘Active’ Group and displaying a title above your avatar name, and expand your Group by inviting others to join.

Events. This is another feature that’s moved from the website into the virtual world. The Community Directory lists all Events happening today, tomorrow, and this week. To make it even better, we’ve finally added member-created Events; go to Twinity.com to schedule your Twinity Event!

One-Click. The most common interactions in Twinity are not just One-Click away. Moving your pointer over a chair will let you sit with just a click, moving over another Member opens their Profile with a click. Radios, Teleports, and more have been improved with One-Click actions.

Chat is Back. Members have been asking to have their chat history back, and the new version delivers. We’ve also rearranged the Chat and Friends functions to better manage your conversations.

COLLADA. Custom object upload has been a ‘quiet’ feature for some time, but it’s clear that many of you have discovered this powerful functionality. This release improves COLLADA support as we move closer to ‘official’ feature status.

Texture Size. A new slider lets you turn down the size of textures to allow speedier performance on older PCs.

Stability and Performance. More and more improvements designed to optimize the Twinity experience.

We had some troubles with out-dated search-index caches, which caused the release to take longer than expected, but by now everything seems to working smoothly and so far the new release seems to be reducing our crash — though it’s a bit early to say for sure.

Much bigger changes still lie ahead of us. We’re currently rewriting and replacing many parts of the Twinity software to further increase stability, performance and download speed. Right now this effort is about 60 percent done, but the early results are impressive and we hope to be able to make it available to you by early May. Between now and then we will continue to release several smaller updates. In the coming weeks look for better maps, navigation, and the debut of a brand-new female avatar.

[Operations] Twinity update Apr 7, 2009

Dear Twinizens,

Just a quick note to let you know about the update today. Twinity will be down from 11:30 until 12:15 CET and the patch will update your client when you attempt to login once again.

This patch includes the following:

– Display doorbell with mini-map on place exit
– Display groups in the client
– Events calender in the client
– Merging of friends list and chat window
– Some minor bug fixes

Thanks,

Craig

News from the Development Department

Last week we were fully focused on improving our crash rate, a new engine core version is currently in testing that will fix a number of crashes. We still do not understand the reason for all of the crashes and freezes, but we look at every single crash-dump you send us to get to the bottom of the problems.

Next week we plan a big release which will include the new engine core plus a number of new features around groups, events, member profile, chat and simplified interaction with objects in world. We’ll work hard to deliver a smooth release and will spend this week mostly on testing and bug-fixing.

In the next weeks we will finish an exiting new tool, that will allow you to build any floor-plan you like in Twinity. We would like to do a little closed beta test with it, before releasing it to everyone. If you like to help us test and improve the tool, please send a mail to support@twinity.com.

[Operations] Twinity update Mar 26, 2009

Dear Twinizens,

We just wanted to let you know that there will a small update today 14:00 to 15:00 CET. During this update, you may be disconnected for a brief time. Once the update is complete, the next time you start the client the patch will download and update your client.

This patch addresses the following issues:

– Fixes the sorting of most populated places
– Fixes freezes when Twinity splash screen shows and tasks are switched
– Some logging improvements to better identify causes of crashes

Thanks,

Craig

zitty Reader’s Lounge turns it up a notch – again!

This edition of the monthly zitty Reader’s Lounge will be packed with even more literary delight: On Thursday, 26 March there will be two featured authors! Both write about dealing with people they would love to leave behind:

Flix is a normal human being living in Berlin – which is kind of odd, since all the people around him try to act too cool! Flix is confused, wondering about a lot of things, and sometimes despairs that he is made of flesh and blood. “Der Swimmingpool des kleinen Mannes” (“The swimming pool of the Normal Joe”) is the second in his daily online series “Heldentage,” where he turns his everyday adventures into fun comic strips.

Mischa-Sarim Verollet lives in Bielefeld. This German town taught him an important lesson: “Das Leben ist keine Waldorfschule” (“Life is no Waldorf school”). So he became a traveling writer and won every important poetry slam in the German speaking world along the way.

The zitty Readers Lounge in the kantine@berghain is broadcast live to the zitty editorial office at Hackescher Markt, which means that all Twinizens can take an active part in the live literary debate.

Where: zitty Redaktion

Date: Thursday, 26 March 2009

Time: 20:00 Berlin // 2pm NYC // 03:00 Singapore

English-speaking Twinizens please note: This is a German-language event, but you’re still welcome to come along and enjoy the music by Motor FM after the reading and meet up with Twinity members from all around the world!

Visit the zitty Reader's Lounge in Twinity - monthly live broadcast!

Visit the zitty Reader's Lounge in Twinity - monthly live broadcast!

News from the Development Department

Spring is finally with us, and with the changing seasons come great changes in Twinity. There are more fun new features coming up in the next few weeks than the Easter bunny could carry in a single basket … unless we’re talking about some kind of super-strong, mutant rabbit, of course. Or maybe even a robot rabbit.

Before offering glowing descriptions of features that haven’t quite arrived, it seems appropriate to address the ups and downs of the current Twinity. And by up and down, I mean the ongoing struggle against the dreaded Crash Rate.

The crash rate is a simple measure of how many Twinity Members are having poor experiences using the Twinity software. A couple of weeks ago, we identified a major cause of crashes in the chat system, and by turning off some chat features quickly saw the crash rate cut in half. We then fixed these problems and turned the chat features back on … only to find that a bit of old code had slipped back in and pushed the crash rate right back up again. Chat is once again off, and the crash rate is back down. With our next release, we expect to end this up and down once and for all and have pushed all of our technical resources into lowering the crash rate permanently.

But onto the new! Regular Twinity visitors have already noticed any number of small improvement throughout Twinity — the most visible, probably, being the ability to teleport directly to many of the most famous places in the virtual city of Berlin. We’ll continue to enhance the tourist attractions.

Last week also saw the release of a completely rebuilt voice chat system. We know the new system is much more reliable than the old version, but we’ll likely need to make additional adjustments to maximize the quality of voice chat in Twinity. If you have never used voice chat, or haven’t used it awhile, please give it a try and let us know what you think. Your feedback will help get this feature right.

Looking forward, in the next few weeks you’ll start seeing some of the features Twinity Members have most requested; specifically, Member Groups in Twinity (and not just on the website) and an in-world Events Calendar. We think these will be great new tools to inspire our already amazing community, and we can’t wait to see how you’ll use them. You’ll also get a whole new look for the Chat and Friends window and expanded information in Member Profile. We’ve also reworked some of the ways in which Members interact with the virtual world to make it easier and more intuitive.

What’s coming after that? It’s too soon say too much, but expect to see many more ways in which you can bring your creativity into Twintiy!

Please vote in out latest poll!

Please vote in the latest poll “Are things improving in Twinity?”. It just takes a second – choose your answer and then click submit. The poll can be found to the right in the sidebar, or right here.
[poll=19] Thanks!