Hi there, as we are now back from vacation, we will give you all a few hints on what we will be working on within the next weeks and what we have planned.
One of the first changes: We will not indicate fixed release dates anymore. We will only refer to more dynamic terms like "early april" or "late march" to prevent unnecessary pressure on our side.
We plan to do status reports on a bi-weekly basis to indicate what we have been working and progressing on.
This status report mainly covers our upcoming plans for the next weeks and months. The next status reports will focus more on what was actually done and what the short-term goals are.
**Status Report WN09 2021**
> (1) Documentation [Mid March]
We are currently working on new documentation and expect the first articles to be out and available around mid to late march.
We will continuously work on extending and improving the documentation to ensure that we have all major features documented by the release of UI 2.0
> (2) Audio System Rework [Late March, Secondary Focus]
Audio on avatars, props and worlds was never as great as it could be, bigger rooms felt laggy audio-wise and crackling occured.
For late march or early april, we have those issues on our list and are planning to get first improvements in by then.
Our main goal is to allow proper audio on avatars, worlds, props and players without the strong audio crackling some users are experiencing right now.
> (3) User Interface 2.0 [April]
We have started with the implementation of the new Interfaces (quick menu for now) and expect to have first changes ready in early april.
We will push them to experimental early then and make a specific announcement showing off more parts of it in time.
For those, that did not see the new quick menu design preview yet, you can check it our here: https://twitter.com/AlphaBlendNET/status/1361317837118267394
This will also include the public release of the calls feature and other additions that are waiting for the UI rework.
> (4) Network availability / Connectivity [April, Primary Focus]
We have been working on improvements regarding network availability and stability - changes are mostly ready and will soon go into internal testing.
As this includes bigger changes, we will need some time for testing and hardening those changes.
The changes made will make it easier for us to scale and handle big player peaks in the future. It will also drastically improve the lags and delays when loading UI pages within the game.
We expect to have changes production-ready sometime in april.
In addition to the above mentioned points, we have further side tasks including performance optimizations and a more user friendly locomotion system planned.
We would love to hear what you have to say. Feel free to message us at [email protected] with your feedback, we will try to get back to you as soon as possible.