Release/page1

2009-01-02

Template:Release notes/start For your Whirledly enjoyment in this our 2009 Anno Domini:

• Send postcards of your room to friends! Use the Publish button in the room editor or the snapshot button in the room toolbar
• Speed improvements to the me and shop pages (one of which was removed in a follow up release)
• Tweaks to comments display (in games, shop and groups)
• Fixed trophy upload page to use the same ordering as the trophy display page
• Yet another fix for avatar memories failing, let's hope this is squashed for good!
• A healthy smattering of changes under ye olde hood

2008-12-30

Template:Release notes/start Being that most of us are on a hard-earned holiday break after a long and fruitful year of Whirled building, there are not a lot of changes for this update, but these are they:

• Support for linking your Whirled account to your Facebook account
• Fixes to volume settings when previewing audio and video media
• Pause in-room music when previewing audio and video media
• Highly rated comments get a special highlight
• Fix for avatars losing memories when entering a new room
• Some jiggery pokery under the old bonnet, cheerio!

Enjoy and Happy New Year from everyone at Three Rings!

Update to the update: The Facebook account linkage should now be working, many thanks to Mikeness!

To link your Whirled account to your Facebook account:

1. Log into Whirled
2. Go to the Me tab and select the "Account" link on the right in the blue bar
3. At the very bottom of the page, click the Facebook button. This will explain what's happening and I believe you will have to confirm the linkage.

Once you're linked, you can log into Whirled using your Facebook account. Just go to the logon page and click the Facebook button.

Anyone reading this is probably not a new user, but if you don't have a Whirled account yet, you can simply click the Facebook button on the logon page and create a Whirled account using your Facebook credentials. Template:Release notes/end

2008-12-19

Template:Release notes/start Here's what's new and exciting in this pre-holiday release:

• Added medal awards to the player's feed, profile.
• Click on an earned Passport Stamp or Group Medal to show it at the top of your profile.
• Nice "loading" animation while pages are loading (me, shop, etc)
• More work on some new, mysterious features. ;)

Enjoy! Template:Release notes/end

2008-12-17

Template:Release notes/start What better way to prepare for the winter break than to do daily releases? We fixed a few things that were broken yesterday and a few new things came along for the ride.

The snazzy shinies

• 10% of shop sales now go to charity
• buying a coin-listed item with bars will now give you change in coins

The little fixies

• Managers can now enter medals. Medals will show on profiles. Feed updates coming soon.
• Comments are not hidden until they get a score of -5.
• Fixed some bugs with the friends list.
• cleaned up the party board somewhat
• when editing your room, dragging furniture to the front should not cause the furniture to jump to the back when the mouse leaves the bottom of the room.

Enjoy. Template:Release notes/end

2008-12-16

Template:Release notes/start A few solid new bits for you this time:

• Group managers can now create and award Medals to their members, which then display on those members' Passport pages.
• You can can now rate comments: a hearty thumbs-up to the ones you think are lovely, and disapproving thumbs-down for the mediocre and redundant. Negatively comments are shuffled out of view.
• We've enabled a beta version of Parties: you can throw a party and wander the Whirled together. Parties will eventually be tightly integrated with games, and they still need work, but we want to test early and get your feedback, so have at it.
• Shortly we will also be enabling Charities, where 10% of everything you purchase goes to a charity of your choice.

No SDK this time. Enjoy! Be kind, rewind. Template:Release notes/end

2008-12-12

Template:Release notes/start Just a few bug fixes today:

• Fixed layout of the Whirled Tour.
• Fixed an issue where the bling pool awards were not distributing properly. Game creators should receive their missing awards at the normal time along with today's award.
• Fixed comboboxes, like the furni list in the room editor.

Whirled SDK (0.48):

• Minor fixes.

2008-12-10

Template:Release notes/start Hello Whirledlings, a few changes for your consumption:

• More friendly people in the friends box on /#me page
• Fix for occasional weirdness when changing rooms a lot (like the Whirled Tour suddenly stopping)
• No more "top tags" on the groups page. Instead a horizontal list of official category tags
• Introduction of official Whirled groups, now shown underneath "My Groups" where the "top tags" was
• Prevent a scroll bar from appearing on the shop page (due to items with a long URL)
• Game creators can now see all their "buckets" on the metrics tab
• Lots more embeddable graphics for sharing Whirled !
• Don't tell users they can visit newly-added friends that are offline
• Fixed remixing when using images from your inventory
• The music dialog pops up close to the control bar
• Whirled SDK 0.47

2008-12-04

Template:Release notes/start More contests for everybody:

• Design Your Whirled will be run again!
• Added a contests page with a list of all official Whirled contests past and present.

Bugs to fix and things to make pretty:

• Fixed display of game furnis in the shop
• Fixed bug with Easy-Image pets
• Speed enhancement on the News Feed for people trying to win the 1,000,000 friends badge
• Item and Avatar memories should be more reliable now
• Minor prettying on the Groups page
• Button cleanup on the mail conversations pages

2008-12-02

Template:Release notes/start We're back from the Thanksgiving holiday here in the States, and we brought some delicious, delicious features and fixes with us!

• New feature: friendly people page!
• We've fixed a bug with how scores and rankings were calculated for new games. Thank you for alerting us, for your bug reports - and patience! :)
• You can select whether the 3x3 Whirled Places window will be displayed when you enter Whirled (there's a new checkbox on the window itself)
• Fix for a bleeped avatar scaling bug
• Fix for how Unicode names appear in invitations
• More work on the remixer editor
• More UI fixes and server-side tweaks, as always.

Enjoy! Template:Release notes/end

2008-11-25

Template:Release notes/start Welcome to another batch of fun updates:

Upgraded item creation/editing ala Gyre

• A lovely progress bar will now show you how your media upload is, well, progressing.
• Image editing tools integrated right into the uploader.
• You can now use an image as the media for avatars and pets, and it'll be automatically wrapped up as remixable Flash.

General Whirled

• Don't always pop up the 'publish room' panel. There's new buttons at the bottom of the room editor. Woot.
• Added a new page to help you embed a pretty-looking affiliate link to Whirled in your blogs and on your websites. When players sign up through your link, you earn 30% of everything they spend in the shop! See the Wiki page for more information.

SDK

• Change the timing when we dispatch property events for entity arrival and departure.
• AVRGs can now enumerate entities in a room, and query them for entity properties.
• Entities now always have a controlling client. The requestControl() method has been abolished.
• Asking for PROP_MEMBER_ID on a pet will return the owner id

2008-11-21

Template:Release notes/start Without further ado, I give you... the release notes:

• Lots of niggly gnarls degnarled in an under-the-hood stylie
• Improved group page performance
• Fail gracefully during server restart on requests to start certain games
• Improved playback for youtube videos
• Better fallback for FLVs that have no duration metadata
• Estimate total mp3 duration during download
• A number of fixes and robustification for ths Invite Friends page; also, a new link to this from the Me page
• Improvements to the Whirled Tour dialog, including in-room rating
• Better TLC for new joiners
• Promo links on the Me page
• On whirled.com, logging in no longer clears the flash client
• Only a random selection of 10 Friendly People are now listed on the me page. Who knew so many were so friendly?
• SDK 0.45

2008-11-18

Template:Release notes/start Little bit of this, little bit of that in today's update:

• happier error messages when you need to refresh your browser after a release
• better handling of AVRGs on the home grid
• pets can now be muted
• more game info on the games page
• sorting on the groups page
• (possibly) a fix for the stoned tofu problem
• see what song is playing in a room

2008-11-15

Template:Release notes/start Howdy Whirlers,

Just a few small fixes for you today since we had to take down the Deviant Art contest links. Hope you all got your awesome entries in on time!

• Added a primitive audio player for previewing songs in the Shop.
• Changed the main Groups page to show new and popular groups. More fancy sorting options coming soon there.
• Fixed a problem with links to Groups' halls from the main Groups page.
• Changed the forums to display as many threads as will fit on your screen instead of just ten.
• Fixed a problem with buying remixes using Flash Player 10.

That's about the size of it. Template:Release notes/end

2008-11-13

Template:Release notes/start Happy 13th! I was a little hesitant to push out an update on such an ominously-numbered day, but what had to be done, had to be done. :)

In this update:

• New feature: Friendly People. Be a friend to new players!
  • Check out your profile options for details (under My Profile > Edit)
• Cool new video player UI
• Updated groups pages, now display more information about the group hall and discussion threads
• A number of aesthetic changes
• Fix for an occasional bug with awarding guests their coins after registration

Enjoy! Template:Release notes/end

2008-11-11

Template:Release notes/startHappy Tuesday, and welcome to another Whirled release. Main points:

SDK

• AVRGs can now send and receive room signals.

Whirled:

• Built-in Youtube support, v0.5! Go try the video uploader. Fancier UI in next release.
• Creators can now purchase copies from their own shop, for free.
• Player following robustified. Hapless followers should no longer be left behind by leaders who blaze from room to room.
• Fixed some checkboxes in the Remixer.
• Brought back rotation to the room editor, oops.
• Further work on making AVRGs behave well under the hood. No more losing progress when you close your browser/tab, is our hope.

Ever forward. Template:Release notes/end

2008-11-07

Template:Release notes/start This update features some improvements to the News feed on the Me page and fixes an issue using the Whirled SDK on Windows. Enjoy!

• "Whirleds" are now called "Groups".
• Fixed Disable Perspective checkbox.
• Decreased file size for the Whirled client download.
• Fixed a bug where removing furniture from a room would not remove it from the drop-down list of furniture in the room.
• Chat scrollbar is no longer included in snapshots.
• Changes to the news feed contents: display comments on your shop items, show snapshots of rooms in room creation and room comment items, show profile pictures on friendings, and only display the most recent 5 trophies/badges/etc when aggregating for each member.
• The default chat font size is larger. If you never adjusted your chat font size, you will get the new default. You may change your chat settings by clicking the button to the left of the chat entry box.

2008-11-04

Template:Release notes/start This update is neither the biggest nor the smallest... everything in moderation as the saying goes.

• Various bug fixes and minor changes
• Changes to the News Feed
• Many under the hood changes
• Game creators should now correctly automatically own premimum level packs instead of non-premium ones.
• Room names limited to 80 characters
• Lots of reliability improvements for AVR games and other games with server side code. A side effect is that games that experience certain errors on the server will terminate immediately instead of the previous behavior of becoming non-functional. Please be gentle :)
• SDK 0.42

It's a wonderful Whirled. Have fun! Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-31

Template:Release notes/start Hello again so soon! Mainly just a few bug fixes in this update:

• Fixed some problems going into games if you didn't already have the world client open.
• Subtitle chat is now rendered above in-Whirled games, so you should be able to read it even when you have the lantern on in Ghost Hunters.
• Room snapshots should now correctly include in-Whirled game graphics.
• Fixed some problems with game lobbies being split onto different servers and people not seeing one another's tables in split lobbies.
• Prettied up the account editing page a bit.
• Removed "Mail" from the Me subnavigation; you can always click on the Mail icon in the header now to get to your mail.
• Fixed the Whirled Tour.
• Fixed a problem with clicking on room preview images on the Whirleds page and the landing page.
• Increased the size of the profile photo image when editing your profile.
• Improved following: you can click anyone and choose to follow them, they will be notified that you are following them. Followees can remove all followers by clicking their own avatar or individual followers by clicking the follower's avatar. You can also prevent people from following you by changing your availability to Unavailable or Available to friends.

That's about the size of it. Happy Halloween, by the way. It's like Halloween every day here on Whirled! Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-30

Template:Release notes/start Quite a few new bits for you in today's release:

Rooms Page and Whirled Tour

• Rooms Page: this shows all of the active rooms in Whirled as well as recently updated and highly rated rooms
• When you update your room, you will now be presented with an option to Publish it. When you publish it, the room's snapshot is updated and your room is considered update for the New and Hot section of the Rooms page (note that only public rooms are shown on the Rooms page).
• Whirled Tour: if you feel like checking out some of the awesome rooms in Whirled and talking to other people about them, try the Whirled Tour. It takes you on a tour of highly rated rooms and tries to group people together as they move from room to room on the tour so that they can share and enjoy whatever experiences the rooms have to offer. Be sure to rate and comment on the rooms you see in the tour.
• Explorer Badge: as you move from room to room on the Whirled Tour, you'll level up the new Explorer Badge.
• Only when you Publish your room will it show up in your friends' feeds as having been updated.

My Whirled Places

• When you first arrive in Whirled and whenever you click the little Whirled icon in the control bar, we'll show you your Whirled Places which displays three rows of things to do and places to go. This includes rooms you frequently visit, games you frequently play, as well as other things we think you might find interesting.
• We'll be working on being smarter about what we show you in your Whirled Places display so that we can get you to the things you like quickly and easily as well as things we think you might like.

A Bevy of Other Bits

• We reorganized the Me page a bit, removing the Passport information (you can get to the Passport page by clicking the Star in the header or the Passport link at the top of the Me page).
• We improved the UI of the Share dialog for rooms and games.
• The Help page can now be accessed with the Help link to the right of the Logoff button in the header.
• We added a Buy Again button when you buy something in the shop, in case you want multiple copies.
• We fixed a bunch of bugs (and probably introduced a few new ones, just to keep things interesting).

Hope you like all the fun new stuff. Happy Whirling, Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-27

Template:Release notes/start Just a quick bug fix for some AVRG, server-side game and landing page issues introduced in Sunday's release. Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-26

Template:Release notes/start Howdy all! Just a few small fixes in today's update:

• Fixed a problem with switching from room to room when playing Ghosthunters
• Upped the limit of room occupants to 20, after which we start turning people into stone tofus
• Various behind the scenes bug fixes that on one will notice but will help me sleep better at night :)

Happy Whirling. Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-24

Template:Release notes/start Announcing the DeviantART Design Your Whirled contest! Go here to find out more and get started - good luck!

Also various bug fixes:

• Wonky long names in shop & stuff
• Everyone turning to "stoned" tofu over time in popular rooms: only people over the 10th (this includes pets) should have their avatars "stoned".
• Some IE 7 style fixes
• Snapshots work in Flash 10 now
• Multi-room AVRG issues

2008-10-22

Template:Release notes/start A bunch of minor updates today:

• When you return to Whirled you'll be sent to your room instead of the Me page
• Fixed an AVRG bug that occurred when leaving then returning to the room
• Added sub-links to Transactions and Buy Bars under the Shop tab
• Prevent delisting games with listed level packs or other sub-items
• Stuff and shop sidebars style updated
• Gift system cleanup - unopened gifts from 7+ months ago are bye bye
• Ability to save SWF stubs of rooms to your harddrive from the Embed <> menu. This is for putting your room on 3rd party sites that don't let you enter the embed code.
• Room comments appear on your feed (this was actually in the last release)

[edit]:

• Also, when 10 or more people are in a room avatars become a grey static tofu to reduce lag

2008-10-17

Template:Release notes/start A few small updates today:

• Fixed an issue when selecting a filter for items displayed in the Stuff page.
• The current bling worth is displayed on the Transactions page.
• New backdrop type: bird's eye view.
• Room snapshots can be downloaded directly to your computer.
• Remixing fixed in Flash Player 10.
• Snapshots still broken in Flash Player 10.
• Other tweaks and bug fixes.

Enjoy! Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-15

Template:Release notes/start Whirled has officially entered the Era Of Bars!

Today we launched the Whirled billing server, to allow you wonderful and dedicated fans to finally show your appreciation by trading in your hard earned real life money for marvelous Whirled Bars. These Bars can be used in place of Coins to purchase anything in the shop, at a ratio that will automatically adjust for inflation. Read more about it on the wiki, then get your Bars today!

For creators, you can now choose to list your creations in Bars instead of Coins in the shop. Players can pay in either currency, but if you list in Bars you will be rewarded with a percentage of each sale in magical Bling, our third currency. Bling can be exchanged for Bars at any time, and if you amass 500 or more Bling you can cash out for real USD. Click on the Bar icon at the top to see your sales and transactions history, then start making da monies!

To advise you on all these changes and goings-on, we have updated the Help page to include a larger FAQ, and a system for sending Support Requests to our agents which you can find under "Contact Us" on the Help tab.

And if that wasn't enough, we've finally released the AVRG API for game developers! You can now create your own in-room games like Bella Bingo and Pookah Rainbow. Go snatch the newest version of the Whirled SDK (0.40) and get started.

There are also a host of other changes:

• Backdrops now have a separate furniture scale factor
• Fixed a bug with SWF backdrop editing when you first create a backdrop
• Up/Down arrow keys scroll through chat history
• New looks for the Stuff, Upload and Edit pages with more information for creators
• Display whether items are in use in your Stuff even when not in a room
• Volume button now indicates current volume
• Fixed a bug when calculating the longest amount of time you can play a game and receive coins for
• Fixed bug on profile pages with ratings on delisted games

2008-10-09

• Galleries! Check 'em out on your and your friends' profile pages under "Pictues of me" or lower down in the galleries section.
• Searchable stuff page. Go on, don't be shy, horde up loads of stuff and find it easily.
• Fixes for a couple of bugs to do with listing and unlisting games
• A healthy smattering of other bug fixes
• Performance improvements to catalog searches

2008-10-03

Template:Release notes/start Just a quick update to fix some bugs (and introduce new ones, oops!):

• Fixed the problem with thumbnail images not being properly scaled.
• Fixed problems with live views of Whirleds
• Made the game editor disallow upload of invalid server code files
• Fixed broken images in the email you received when you receive a Whirled mail
• Changed around the way remixing before buying works; more prettification coming on that front
• Snuck out one new feature: the Friends page is no more and is replaced with a Stuff page which will in the near future evolve to be even more useful

I also broke item and level pack management which will be fixed in the next release. Right now when you edit a game with item or level packs, you won't see them in the tabs on the item detail page. Sorry!

In the meanwhile game developers can use these links to see all of their game metadata items:

• Level packs
• Item packs
• Trophy sources
• Prize sources

You can use this to edit your existing stuff but you can't upload new items using this interface. It won't work. You'll probably get a server error. :)

Zoom zip! Template:Release notes/end

2008-10-02

Template:Release notes/start Bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs:

• Fixed a bug that was causing static Backdrop and Furni images to be scaled down when uploaded. If you were affected, please re-upload your items now.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing your coin readout from being updated on the fly.
• Added an unsupported browser warning for Safari users because of a bug that causes tabs and links to become unresponsive. Sorry Safari, this one might be out of our hands for now...

2008-09-30

New features

• New backdrop editor! Check it out!
• Backdrops now have an extra scale parameter - make the people visiting your room HUGE by comparison, or make them itty-bitty critters.

Bugfixes

• Inviting friends should work once again.

2008-09-26

Template:Release notes/start We've got a few new goodies for you, but as usual most of the team is working hard on future goodies.

• The lobby / game creation interface has been revamped.
• When clicking on a game icon over someone's head, you'll join them at their table.
• Game categories have been reordered.
• Auto-generated icons for uploaded images should be nicer now.
• Bugfix: sometimes you'd be notified that you leveled-down!
• Bugfix: game occupant lists should always show up now.

See you next week! Template:Release notes/end

2008-09-23

• With today's release, we improved support (and some might say fixed some bugs) for games like Pookah Rainbow and Bella Bingo.
• We have polished up the game and room sharing. Broken links have been corrected and feedback improved.
• Various other small beautifications were made to the profile page and error dialogs. (Think of this as scraping the gum off of the sidewalks of the Whirled).
• We also made the usual menagerie of mysterious behind-the-scenes changes that will pave the way for other fabulous new features.

2008-09-18

Game shops

• Creators can now sell level packs and item packs to extend their games. These show up in the "Game Shop" page. Additionally, games in progress can redirect players to the shop and be notified when a player buys something. Mmmm, delicious. Of course no games are using it yet but we're looking forward to when they do.

Completely revamped chat

• In the process, fixed that pesky bug where room chat would eventually stop working. Besides the new code being fuzzy like an alpaca, you'll notice that room chat is no longer "sticky", e.g. it doesn't stay active when you start playing a game. Also, each Whirled has its own chat channel, so if you are a member then you will automatically get a new chat tab when a message is posted. Occupant lists for group chat channels have gone away too.

AVR Games

• More support for AVR games (games you play while in a room) (AVR = Alternate Virtual Reality, teehee). See Bella Bingo and Pookah Rainbow for examples. More to come.

2008-09-11

Template:Release notes/start Today's upgrade is a behind the scenes release, paving the way for a number of features that are in the works. Apologies for the longer than usual upgrade outage. This upgrade proved a little more delicate to get released than normal, but all systems should be go now. Template:Release notes/end

2008-09-09

• You can now delete conversations with unread messages if you like. We still let you know if you try to delete a conversation but a message has arrived since you refreshed your mail page.
• We cleaned up the UI of the item detail page a bit to organize the buttons better.
• We're starting to clean up the "My Stuff" UI a bit and the new stuff navigation bar is an experimental foray in that direction.
• There is now an "Avatars", "Toys", etc. link in the subnavigation when you are viewing an item in the Shop that you can use to easily get back to all listings in that category.
• We added an option to sort the catalog by how many times the listing was favorited.
• We switched to a new smart date formatting routine, so you'll see things like "Today" and "Yesterday" in places.
• We modified the "Top Rankings" list to filter out players who haven't played a ranked game in at least two weeks. If you want to stay on top, you have to stay on your game.
• We made the link to the discussions for a game more prominent on a game's detail page.
• We added some useful feedback to help developers debug if their game tries to award an invalid trophy or prize.
• We fixed a bunch of bugs, notably: using images from your inventory in remixes and clicking on links in your feed from IE.

2008-08-28

• Aside from the usual assortment of bugfixes and under-the-hood improvements, the big excitement in today's release is the addition of "Favorites." Clicking the "Favorite Heart" on a shop item's detail page will add that item to your Favorites list, which is visible on your Profile page. Let the Whirled know about your impeccable taste!
• Also, you can now view someone's rooms by click "View Rooms" on their profile! Exciting stuff.

2008-08-25

• The buttons on the control bar can slide up to show all if some are obscured.
• Fixed embedded clients so they have their special header again.
• Some menu improvements: friends are always in the chat menu, clicking a name in the room occupant list will bring up the same menu as clicking an avatar.

2008-08-21

Template:Release notes/start Inching ever closer to the New Whirled Order:

• Passports: Unlock and earn stamps on your Whirledly travels. Some stamps were able to be awarded from old data, you can collect the ones you already qualify for by visiting a room.
• Snapshots: Take pictures of your room to share and display them on your Whirled.
• Tons of UI changes: Shiny!
• Game-Whirled linking: Connect your game to a Whirled group, more to this soon.

For developers:

• SDK 0.35 contains bug fixes and API changes.

Enjoy! Please continue reporting any bugs to Bug Hunters. Template:Release notes/end

2008-08-15

• Avatars, pets, games and toys must now be flash SWF files (whoo! no more static images!)
• More visual love for the Flash interface (sexy ne?)
• Getting set up for some exciting new motivational functionality (coming soon!)
• And the usual miscellaneous bug fixes

2008-08-12

• There's a fancy new "What is Whirled" animation on the landing page: written, produced and directed by Brittney
• New game over dialog (prettification coming)
• Game invitation notifications are differently colored
• You can now boot people from tables that you create
• A bunch of UI prettification (and a bunch of uglification because some prettification is still in progress)
• Improvements to the header shown when a Whirled or Game is embedded on a web page
• Back button in upper left corner of client is fancy new back menu
• Various improvements in the Share popup:
  • You can share Games and Whirleds now, not just Whirleds
  • You can enter friends' email addresses and we'll mail them a link
  • We also just show you the link you can use to Share a Game or Whirled however you like
• Fixed the "full height" button
• And a whole heap of other bug fixes (and probably some new bugs introduced, no doubt)

2008-08-07

Template:Release notes/start As usual we are very busy. There are a lot of things going on "under the hood", but here are a few outwardly visible things of note. Enjoy and let us know what you think:

• SDK 0.34
• Chat panel is on the left during games
• Other smaller changes to chat
• Friends sorted alphabetically when sending mail
• Some small guest view improvements
• More web page load time improvements
• Added the creator field to the ones checked when searching the catalog

2008-08-05

• Fixed a bug where multiple notifications were being sent for a single location change.
• Fixed some issues with null guest names in games.
• Other behind-the-scenes improvements.

2008-08-01

• Single player games and other full game tables will now be now hidden in the game lobbies. This should make it easier to find open game tables. This also has the benefit of making the lobby window load faster.
• Fixed reboot broadcasts. Everyone in Whirled, including players in games, will receive a friendly warning message a few minutes before we do our next release.

2008-07-29

• Massive internal upheaval geared toward making new web page features easier (sadly this seems to have the side effect of breaking the tabs on the game detail page, which we are looking into)
• Improved web page download time by zipping JavaScript content (requires browser support)
• Many more not-yet-visible changes working toward support for server side code, AVRGs, snapshots and favorites

2008-07-24

Template:Release notes/start Nothing much, except for some behind-the-scenes goodness. Thank you, drive through. Template:Release notes/end

2008-07-22

• New button to maximize the room view inside the browser (in the upper right)
• Bug fix when uploading item images.
• UI tweaks
• More behind-the-scenes changes. Nobody will even notice them just yet. But they're there. :)

2008-07-18

• SDK 0.32
• Game pages now have a single "Play" button and will ask you single/multiplayer, as applicable, when you enter the lobby.
• Various graphical and usability tweaks to the friends list.
• Tweaked remixer image editor layout so that the buttons should be more visible on windows and linux.
• Some behind-the-scenes fixes.

2008-07-17

• New popup friends list! Check it out, with the big fat "friends" button in the lower right of the flash client.
• The headline in your profile has been changed to "status". That status gets shown in your friends list, and when you update it, your friends will see your new status. You can also edit your status from the friends list, by clicking on it at the bottom
• When you change your display name and your status, your friends will get notifications about the update
• Permanames are now required to be all lower case. We've gone in and lower-cased all of the current permanames. As a reminder: you can create a permaname (if you haven't done so already) on your account page.
• Fixed some layout issues that were making the web pages take up too much horizontal space.
• Fixed clicking on the floor in the front of the remixer viewer.

2008-07-11

• Remix before you buy
• Pretty back button
• Bug fix when purchasing an item whose price changed at the same time
• Viewer and UI improvements
• SDK fix for entities

2008-07-09

• Fixed overflow of room names in side panel
• Better reporting when a session is expired
• New colors for the room backdrops
• Improvements in studio viewer appearance and behavior
• Fixed some untranslated chat text
• Fixed incorrect score reporting in party games with one player
• Visual improvements to the "All Games" and game genre pages
• Minor changes to landing page
• Studio viewer is now also used for furniture and toys
• Minor change to "My Whirleds" page
• /afk is no longer modal, use /back to reverse it
• Search for empty string in catalog now clears filters
• Better usability of volume and zoom sliders
• Popup friends list (see reply)
• Removed notifications of friend logoffs
• Player notifications now link to profile page
• Fixed notification scroll bar
• Fixed intermittent problem with blank landing page
• SDK 0.30

2008-06-25

• There is a new viewer for viewing avatars, pets, and backdrops.
• New notifications were added when someone comments on your profile or anything you've made.
• Various small UI tweaks with the notification displayer.
• Game chat now appears against a black background.

2008-06-23

• Fixed feeds.
• Placement of the chat and notification popup menus has been fixed.

2008-06-20

• There's a new notification widget on the control bar, which displays just the last notification (instead of listing them all in the main display). You can click on it to see a notification history.
• Guests that earn coins will now correctly get them transfered when they register
• Upgraded our Javascript code, which should make pages load a little faster
• Some fixes for in-development games: better stat recalculation, and better handling of guest accounts
• Some more server-side changes, nothing really player-visible ;)

2008-06-18

• Discussions page improvements
• Whirleds page improvements
• My Whirleds page improvements
• Improved Kongregate integration
• Threads can now be ignored in "My Discussions"
• Remixer improvements and bug fixes (some issues remain)
• The coin award panel that is shown when a guest plays a game automatically dismisses
• Extended the cache time limit on media files
• Decors have been renamed backdrops
• Photos have been renamed images
• SDK 0.29

2008-06-12

• Fixed some big bugs with game scoring and coin awards
• Game award display improvements (should correct the issue with trophy panels getting stuck down)
• Whirled Detail page revamp
• Fixed the decor editor
• Fixed some issues with the remixer

2008-06-10

• Latest discussions now show up on main Whirled pages
• When remixing, photos may be selected from your inventory
• Uploading large files has been fixed on Macs and for anyone else that had a problem with it before
• Remixable avatars, decor, furniture, items and pets
• Chat messages emitted by games now show up in gray, to differentiate them from messages emitted by Whirled
• Other UI improvements
• SDK 0.28

2008-06-03

• New look for menus.
• Updated the SDK to version 0.27.
• All games now report coin awards by default. Old games that reported a custom message may now report twice, but this can be fixed by the game creator.
• Fixed some issues with embedded clients.
• Fixed the bug where chat history jumped to the top after switching tabs.

2008-05-27

Template:Release notes/start The team's been hard at work on many different things and some are ready to show:

• Fancy new front page for new users and when you're logged out.
• Room managers may boot people from their room.
• Room managers may send pets in their room to sleep.
• The room occupant list will highlight the corresponding avatar when a name is hovered.
• New look for scrollbars.
• Fixed a bug that let gifted items be listed by the recipient.
• Fixed chat scrollback so that you can read old chat without it jumping to the bottom.
• Fixed some issues with attaching trophies to games.
• Updated the SDK with a few new things.
• A lot of behind-the-scenes stuff.

Enjoy, and remember: you're the dream operator. Template:Release notes/end

2008-05-20

• The upper-left corner of the Whirled client now contains the back button, which brings up a list of recent rooms.
• Fixed a bug that prevented joining games from the lobby panel.
• Fixed the "add item" button on the room editor.
• The occupant list in rooms should now really not block mousing to room elements behind it.
• Fixed some issues with the new pet behavior. More is still coming.

2008-05-19

Template:Release notes/start We've got lots of fixes and behind the scene stuff this time, but there are a few notable features.

• Pets will now follow you around as their default behavior. You may then instruct them to stay in a room if you have permission in that room or send them home. Sending them to your own home does not work right now.
• The number of individual ratings that have gone into an item's star rating is now shown, along with handy tips as to what each level of rating means.
• New & Hot has been fixed to not filter, but rather take newness and rating both into account and sort all the items.
• Groups can now change their home room.
• In the shop's detail view for an item, you can now click a tag and search the catalog on that tag.
• Trophy uploading has been fixed.
• You can once again click on things in the upper-left if the occupant list is being shown.
• Fixed a bug that caused the client to needlessly reload sometimes.
• Fixed a bug that caused remixable items to incorrectly inform you that a new version was available. Remixables that were affected will continue to be for a bit, but new items will be fixed.
• Fixed a bunch of bugs related to embedding Whirled on other sites.
• Experimental feature: you can toggle your client into full-height mode.

Enjoy! Template:Release notes/end

2008-05-12

• Added a nice header to the client when embedded on another page.
• Fixed up some embedding issues.
• New SDK release fixes a small bug and adds Pet.getName().

2008-05-09

Template:Release notes/start Just a few small fixes following yesterday's excitement.

• When browsing the catalog for a creator's items, will default to sorting by rating, instead of by new & hot (which is actually a filter).
• Correctly show names in italics when people are still downloading game media.
• New help page.

2008-05-08

Template:Release notes/start Hello, it's time for another exciting update.

• Purchased items can now be renamed. The primary point of this is to rename pets, but you can also use it to differentiate between 5 copies of a remixed avatar, for example.
• The room occupant list has returned, with many improvements.
• A new page has been added where you can compare your trophies against another player's.
• Game icons are now full-sized over people's heads.
• Room entities (furni, toys, etc) can now use the getInstanceId() method to grab the memberId of the person viewing it. 0 means invalid memberId, greater than 0 are ids for permanent members, and ids less than 0 are guests.
• Decor is now a fully-fledged room entity.
• Little icons are shown by remixable items in the shop and your inventory.
• The shop now defaults to "New and Hot" as the filter/sort option.

2008-04-28

Template:Release notes/start Just a few small things:

• Fixed the erase bug inside the remixer.
• Now in the item detail view, the name of the room where an item is used is shown.
• Most item previews are now viewed inside a flash app.

2008-04-25

• Added support for remixable avatars.
• Now you can see which items are in use in other rooms from your inventory.
• Changed game payout calibration.
• Removed level 5 requirement for uploading certain item types.

2008-04-18

Template:Release notes/start Mostly just bug fixes this time, but there are a couple of notes to report:

• We created the Whirled Announcements (name will probably change) discussion group which is where official announcements will now go instead of Brave New Whirled. Announcements posted here go to everyone's feed without them having to have joined the Whirled because we want everyone to hear about announcements. Also only we can start threads in this group but anyone can reply to them. You can put this group in your blog reader (click the little button at the top of the threads page for the URL) and not worry about hearing anything except Whirled announcements.
• Friendships that result from the acceptance of a Whirled invitation will now properly show up in your feed.
• You now get 1000 coins for every friend that you invite to Whirled that signs up. Yay coins!
• We made the coin icon in the header shinier. Mmm... shiny!
• We added a "Browse Items" link to the profile page so that you can easily go to the catalog and see items created by that player (excuse the wacky icon, we'll make a better one soon).
• We added two My Stuff filters: "In use" and "Not in use" so that you can more easily see items that are in rooms or are not in rooms.
• Fixed some problems with the CAPTCHA stuff on the account creation page. Hopefully people who were having trouble signing up will be able to do so.

That's all for now. Happy Whirling! Template:Release notes/end

2008-04-16

• When importing addresses from your webmail accounts, we now let you know first which of your friends are already on Whirled (and let you add them as Whirled friends) and then allow you to choose who you want to invite after that.
• Various behind the scenes chat reworking to hopefully fix bugs and make our life easier when enhancing chat in the future. This means the room occupant list is temporarily disabled. It will be back soon (and will be new and improved).
• Added "About Me" section to the profile page where you can share your interests and favorite stuff with other players. Clicking on things in those lists will show you all other players who have the same things in their interests and searching for players will now search their interests as well as their name.
• Added a "Comment Wall" to the profile page so your friends can comment on your profile.
• Added a "Player News" section to the profile page that shows a mini-feed with things that player has been up to.
• Added a notification to your news feed when other players comment on your rooms (more comment-related notifications coming soon).
• Made the "View item info" menu in the world take you to the catalog page if an item is listed in the catalog so that you can buy the item yourself easily.
• Modified forums to allow fine-grained control over who can start threads and who can reply. Now you can configure those however you like for your Whirled.
• Improved friend searching, it should now find people even if you only type part of their name (not partial words, but you can just type one word of a multi-word name and they will show up).
• Added a link in "My Stuff" on the Item Detail Page to the room in which an item is used if the item is in use.
• We no longer close the "Shop" page or "My Stuff" when you wear an avatar or add an item to your room. This means you have to do it yourself, but it makes it a lot easier to add multiple things to your room at once.
• Various other bug fixes and small tweaks.

2008-04-09

Template:Release notes/start Mostly bug fixes in this here update:

• When reading discussions in a Whirled, the Whirled's name is now displayed in the page title so that you know where you are, particularly if you go to start a new thread.
• Added a way to register a complaint about a discussions post or an item/room/etc. comment.
• Reinstated real-email delivery when you receive a Whirled email (for those people that don't have it turned off in their account settings).
• Fixed feed link to items listed by your friends (the name worked the image was broken).
• Fixed problem with lobby layout not wrapping nicely.

2008-04-04

Template:Release notes/start Another wee update with a few bits and bobs:

• Added RSS feeds for Whirled discussions. Put your favorite Whirleds in your RSS reader. Note: currently we only provide first post feeds. Soon we'll add feeds that contain all posts for all threads.
• Added the ability to search Whirled discussions. Currently you can search a particular Whirled's discussions and you can search within a particular thread. We'll be improving this further in the future but the basic searching is working which is a big help.
• Your messages and new threads are now marked as read for you automatically instead of showing up in My Discussions as new.
• Fixed some problems with in-Whirled URL links. Links to Whirled URLs should work more nicely.
• Prettied up the "Invite Friends" page and improved the address book importing. It will now offer to send Whirled friend requests to people in your address book that already have Whirled accounts.
• You can also remove pending invitations for those cheeky friends that didn't take you up on your invitation.
• Added CAPTCHA to the account creation page to help stave off spammers.
• Added a popup menu to players' names in games. You can now start a private chat with them, send them a friend request, and complain about them if they are being naughty.
• Turned off transparency for chat bubbles in slide chat mode so that they stand out better against their black background.
• A few other bug fixes here and there, LOLcaptions should be working again. Yay!

2008-04-01

Template:Release notes/start A few niggling fixes following up on yesterday's release:

• Fixed mail text centering on IE
• Reinstated group invitations; go to the "Members" tab of a group and there's a button in the bottom left for inviting someone to join that group; like item gifts it is currently restricted to your friends, but soon that will be fixed to allow you to invite/gift to anyone
• Added ability for people to import their Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. address books on the invite friends. page; this will all become prettier and more usable soon
• Fixed kooky asdf,asdfa,sdf,asdfasdf names in party game lobbies
• Fixed problem with forums where they would not scroll to the top of the message list when moving from page to page
• Fixed problem with forums where they were a smidgen too wide and caused a horizontal scrollbar
• Modified the forums so that super wide messages have their own horizontal scrollbar instead of screwing up the whole page of messages
• Fixed a problem where the walking hotspot was shown over the black background of slide chat
• Added support for "ignoring" threads which makes them no longer show up in your "My Discussions" list even when they have new messages
• Fixed problem where guests who went straight into games had the name "null"
• Made furniture that links to URLs outside of Whirled open them in a new tab or window

2008-03-25

• Finally added an intro movie to the landing page (no more "coming soon").
• Changed the flow icon to something that looks like coins; we'll probably tweak this more later.
• Moved the avatar viewer controls to the bottom so that tall avatars don't block them.
• Added support for complaining about other players (along with a whole raft of customer support tools that hopefully no one will have to experience because their customer experience will be a shining example of awesomeness). We'll be adding more sophisticated ways to deal with annoying people in the future.
• Added a loading progress display when games are loading.
• Changed the chat keyboard shortcuts: F7/F8 switch tabs and F9 toggles history.
• Disabled "click anywhere in the client to go back to world." Now you have to click the close box to go back to the world, but you can move around and do things in the skinny little world while you're looking at the catalog or doing something else.
• Various other bug fixes and tiny tweaks that are too technical or minuscule to mention.

2008-03-19

• Prettied up the main Whirleds page
• Added various fine print to the bottom of the landing page
• Added a welcome page which is shown to users when they register
• Modified world client to not download MP3s at all if your Whirled volume is set to 0
• Nixed first item free policy, modified the tutorial to tell the user to go play games if they don't have the funds to continue
• Made the tutorial (yet) more robust in the face of users clicking the wrong thing, veering off the trodden path or otherwise coloring outside the lines
• A bunch of CSS and HTML fixes to hopefully make things work better on IE and Safari
• Fixed a problem with pet memories not being saved
• Added icons for the various forum message actions so that they don't take up oodles of horizontal space
• Added a fancy dialog shown to guests who earn flow suggesting that they register so that they can keep that flow
• Removed the "Featured Game" banner on IE since it cause more trouble than it's worth
• Added a percentage complete display to the decor loading indicator
• Changed the name of the currency: flow is now coins; welcome to the new Whirled order
• Pets should now remember where they've been let out and return there when the server reboots
• Broke the new "Type here to chat" display; I'll fix it again in an update later today

2008-03-06

Evening Entertainment Template:Release notes/start

• Updates to the Whirled SDK see the release notes on the Wiki for details
• My Stuff navigation is shown at the top of the Me page and the My Stuff pages
• The Whirled detail page is a work in progress, apologies for the temporarily missing functionality
• The main Shop page now shows featured items
• Added an "All Games" link in the Games section
• Redesigned the game lobbies as a set of popup windows
• Redesigned the item detail pages show in My Stuff and in the Catalog
• Added ability to specify the tooltip when making furniture into a web link
• Moved the chat controls to the lower left, put the preferences in that unified chat menu
• Added an issue tracking system (a work in progress, more on this in the next release)

2008-02-20

• Our graphic redesign is still in progress, so bear with us as things continue to evolve into their new form.
• Fixed problem with invitees not being able to create an account after following their invitation link.
• (Hopefully) fixed the problem where players were being denied entrance to their own rooms.
• Reinstated the "Remove friend" button, added an "Add friend" button when looking at other member's friends (please excuse the temporary icon, it will be changing).
• Fixed problem where page would not properly refresh if you logged off while on the Me page.
• Reinstated the ability to upload images directly when asked to choose an image from your photos.
• Implemented an access control policy for pets (which we meant to do all along, oops): you cannot put a pet in a room that you do not have editing privileges for (ie. you own the room or you are a manager of the Whirled that owns the room).
  • We will eventually add the ability to have your pet follow you around the Whirled. This will allow you to take pets into others' rooms, but the pets will leave when you leave.
• Added a count of people currently online in Whirleds. That is now used to select the Featured Whirled.
• Various other small fixes and usability tweaks.
• Added "My Rooms" page that shows you all of your rooms.
• Modified forum reply UI such that it only shows the post to which you are replying and the message authoring interface; it should also scroll that into view properly now.
• Fixed some layout issues on IE.
• Updated the Whirled SDK.
• A few other niggling bits here and there.

2007-12-02

• Fixed some bugs with Me -> My Discussions; new threads that you've never read before should now properly show up.
• Added support for Announcement Threads which, when posted, will result in a message being added to the feed of all member's of the group. Only group managers can post announcement threads.
• Note that only one announcement feed entry per group per day is allowed, so any announcements after the first in a single day will not result in an additional feed entry being added.
• Added support for following: click on someone's avatar and select Invite to follow and they'll be asked if they want to follow you. If they agree, then when you move to a new room, they'll automatically move to a new room as well. You can clear your followers by clicking on your avatar and selecting Clear followers and they can stop following by clicking on theirs and selecting Stop following.
• Added (primitve) support for changing the foreground and background colors of your game instructions.
• Removed the requirement that mail messages have a non-empty body.
• Various UI refinements and minor bug fixes.

2007-11-29

• Groups now have discussion forums, thereby transforming them from questionable statements of affiliation into useful social and communication tools
• Check out the Me -> My Discussions interface which shows you all unread threads in all groups of which you are a member
• Game lobby UI has been redesigned to make it easier to see what's going on
• The ability to invite your online friends to join you in a game has also been added to the lobby; we are looking into allowing you to invite your offline friends as well
• We're experimenting with not underlining our links; let us know if you find it more aesthetically pleasing or annoying that you don't know what you can click on
• We've added a bunch of stuff to the Whirled SDK
• Fixed problem where photos and other items did not have thumbnail images autogenerated when uploaded
• We now display a "Locating game..." panel when we're connecting to a game server to let you know that we're doing something after you clicked a button to open a game lobby or enter a game
• Added the ability to play unrated games which do not affect your ranking
• We now display buttons in all games that allow you to return to the Whirled or request a rematch
• Games now use profile photos instead of avatar headshots as the player's image
• Various bug fixes and behind the scene enhancements

2007-11-16

Take Your Best Shot Template:Release notes/start

• Various game detail page enhancements:
  • You can now post a screenshot for your game which is shown on the detail page
  • There are now three ways to get into a quick game:
    • play a single player game
    • play a multiplayer game against only your friends
    • play a multiplayer game against anyone
  • You can also choose to play a custom game which puts you in the game lobby and allows you to choose the game you want to join or to create a new game.
• The game creation interface is not shown by default unless there are no tables to join
  • The lobby is undergoing further redesign, so things will change a bit more in coming releases
• Reduced the size of the game icon in the Profile Rating section
• Enhanced item description entry; it now properly limits your description and tells you about it
• Further improved feed message aggregation
• Your new mail count is now displayed in the header next to the new mail indicator
  • The new mail indicator is properly cleared if you read mail when not also in a room
• Fixed handling of gifted items

2007-11-06

Big Fat Chat Revamp (and More) Template:Release notes/start

• Switched to the new new new chat world order wherein chat is all on the left hand side of the display and tabs overlay the room. They're not done yet though:
  • We're going to change the way history works
  • We're going to blink the tabs when they have new messages
• Finished and deployed the new tutorial system; yay for fancy tutorials!
• Enhanced the feeds
  • Certain messages are aggregated
  • When someone edits a room, we now tell you the name of the room
  • When a friend levels up, we let you know about it
• We've made some improvements to the sliding of the client from left to right when you open and close other parts of Whirled
• Changed room editing so that you can click and drag furniture immediately rather than having to click, release, then click again, then drag
• Added a preview picture to the profile editing UI
• Modified catalog searches to include tags
• Made the navigation menus at the top of the page behave like normal menus: if you click one to open it, you can slide the mouse over others and they'll automatically open it and you can click the menu again to close it
• Fixed various problems with IE6; still more to come no doubt
• Made the logon UI slide down from the header instead of being a popup
• Updated the Whirled SDK and added the ability for games to award prizes
• Modified photo and audio uploading to automatically configure the item name from the filename of the uploaded file

2007-10-29

Wee Bits Template:Release notes/start

• Added "Places -> Whirledwide" menu when logged on
• Added a "Metrics" display to the game detail page for game creators to show them their game's score distribution and allow it to be reset
• Modified the catalog ratings display to show your own rating in blue and the average rating in black; we don't like this and are going to change it again, but you can see what you think while it's up
• Fixed problem with trophy awarding (should now show up in friends' feeds when you earn a trophy)
• Made it possible to upload an image on the fly when selecting an image for your profile page or in the game instructions editor
• Fixed problem with games resizing wildly and weirdly (sort of)

2007-10-26

So Spiffy Template:Release notes/start

• Feeds! You now get a list of stuff that your friends have been up to on the My Whirled page.
• Game Instructions page has been added, with a nifty rich text editor.
• When going to a web page such as the Catalog, Inventory or My Whirled, the flash client is animated in a slide to the right
  • Click the vertical divider to slide it back, but preserve the page you were on.
  • When in the flash view, if the divider is there on the left, you can click it to bring back the page you were last on.
• Chat bubble work:
  • Bubbles now follow you around the room.
  • Say and Think bubble rendering is improved.
• Image chooser popup is improved. This is used in editing Game Instructions and for selecting your profile pic.
• Style improvements to the comments and trophy pages.
• Whirled SDK
  • WhirledGameControl.getStageBounds() is nixed in favor of EZGameControl.getSize(), with an added SizeChangedEvent so that games can resize themselves if the browser size changes.

2007-10-22

Some Spit and Polish Template:Release notes/start

• Improved the "About Me" section of the profile; fixed up layout, added "Level", "Member since" and (optional) "Age", "Sex" and "Location"
• Fancied up the comments UI which now displays profile pictures
• Improved readability on the game detail trophies tab
• Improved readability on the game detail rankings tabs and switch to showing the actual ranking instead of stars
• Added a player list to the sidebar for games; this will be improved and made prettier in the next release
• Standardized the game display to 700x500 at minimum, with the potential to be wider if a player has a wide browser, but never skinnier (if we can help it) nor taller
• Added total number of friends to profile page (See All N Friends)
• Made all thumbnails half thumbnail size and nixed the old full thumbnail size so that thumbnail images look better and we don't have to rely on browsers scaling
  • If you have items with images that seem to be too big, you can reupload the thumbnail image for those items and they will be properly scaled
• Made a whole bunch of progress on AVR Games and the new Tutorial, both of which are still not yet ready for prime time
• Fixed the problem with the world being tiny after shrinking and restoring it

2007-10-15

Getting Our Game On Template:Release notes/start

• Changed the way chat bubbles work; we'll be doing more experimentation with this so bear with us if our experiments go at times awry.
• Playing games from the Game Detail page has been streamlined:
  • Click "Play!" to go right into a game (creating a new game if necessary or joining an existing party game if it's a party game)
  • Click "Multiplayer" to go into the game lobby where you can browse, create and join tables
• The table display in the lobby has been consolidated into one list for forming and running tables
• Various Friend improvements:
  • There's now a full page list of all of a player's friends
  • When you look at your own full friends list you can remove friends (yay!)
  • Soon you'll be able to select which six friends show up on your profile page; they will be your "Featured Friends"
• There's now a close box in the upper right when you're in the World and in a Game
  • Clicking close in a Game will take you back to the World
  • Clicking close in the World will close the Flash client and take you to "My Whirled"
• Chat in games has been revamped; it now always appears in a tab on the right instead of drawing over the game and strangely disappearing sometimes
• The Game Detail page now displays "Top Rankings" and "My Rankings" lists which show the top-ranked players in the whole Whirled and among you and your friends respectively

2007-10-10

The Hits Just Keep On Comin' Template:Release notes/start

• Improved the game detail page; click "about" from a game's lobby or click "More information..." from a game in My Stuff or in the Catalog
  • All trophies awarded by a game are displayed on the game detail page along with information on which trophies you have earned
• A full Trophy Case page has been created that displays all trophies that a player has earned in all games; it is available from the "Trophies" section of a player's profile page (which is only visible if they've earned at least one trophy)
• Item creation has been streamlined; it's no longer necessary to select a file for upload and then click upload; we do that automatically for you now
• Mail reading has been fixed
• Profile searching has been fixed
• Friends are now sorted alphabetically in the People -> Places and Places -> Friend's Homes menus and if you're like Cleaver and have a jillion friends, we now break them up into submenus for easier navigation
• When updating a Catalog listing, the system now replaces all existing purchases with the updated version instead of requiring existing purchasers to buy a new copy
  • If you don't want to update existing items but want people to have to buy a new copy, you should create a new item with your updated content and list that new item in the catalog
  • Then go to the Catalog page for the old version of the item and click "Delist Item"
• Other tiny bugs were fixed and improvements were made; the wheels of progress are always rolling away here at OOO HQ

2007-10-09

Give That Man A Prize!

• Added Trophies which can be awarded by games; the SDK updates to go along with it are not published yet but we'll get that out in a day or two
• More work on level and item pages which are pretty much entirely working now
• Added a Game Detail page (which can only currently be accessed by clicking on a trophy on someone's profile, more links to it coming soon) which currently doesn't show much other than what's on a game's catalog page but will some day show more useful things
• My Stuff now shows original items (those that you made) in italics and purchased items in normal text
• Added support for furniture hotspots when creating the furniture item; this is in addition to FurnitureControl.setHotSpot() (which overrides the hotspot set in the furniture item); this means you can set a hotspot on simple image furniture which is very handy; we'll create a better UI for setting the hotspot in the future, but for now you have to enter the pixel offset from the upper left corner of the furniture image
• Made a whole heap of progress on AVR Games which we'll eventually document and provide samples
• Bug Fixes:
  • Sounds in the Featured Place view are now muted
  • Featured Places: the most populous places are now shown first.
  • Flow and Level numbers in the upper right are no longer reset when Whirledwide is viewed.

2007-09-28

When The Cat's Away Template:Release notes/start

• Revamped catalog pricing; creators set the price for their items by hand and then have the following choices:
  • manual - the price is never automatically adjusted
  • escalate - the creator sets a sales target (say 100 items) and then the price is increased 25% when it hits that target, and 25% again when it hits it a second time, and so on
  • limited edition - the creator sets a sales target and when it is met, the listing is hidden
• In all cases, the creator can adjust the current price any time they like.
• The beginnings of support for game level and item packs are in place. More details forthcoming when the feature is completely done.
• Further progress on "Whirledwide" and fixes to "My Whirled" (clicking on your friend's name in the games section will now take you to their pending table or into their game if possible).
• Updates to the game development SDK

2007-09-21

We Are The Whirled Template:Release notes/start

• Brought the new My Whirled/Whirledwide dichotomy to the fore. Whirledwide is currently in progress. Both pages should be more informative than the previous green landscape that they replaced. If you simply cannot be without your green-pasturey goodness, you can still visit that page at http://first.whirled.com/#world-p.
• Catalog searches are now case-insensitive, and will do a better job at partial matches.
• Catalog detail pages now show the total number of purchases for that item.
• A new Catalog sorting option has been added: Sort by number of purchases.
• Catalog Item Commenting! There is now a comment area at the bottom of every catalog item, hopefully lending some context to the item's rating.
• Distinguished single and multi-player game ratings.
• Fixed leveling up/down weirdness.

2007-08-23

TBD Template:Release notes/start

• TBD

2007-06-21

Usability++

• We've gotten the new room editing to the point where we now know that we want the new new room editing; but this time it's going to be awesome, we promise
• More progress on the game development SDK; we're making it easier for Flash Authoring Tool users to create games without ever having to touch a smelly command line
• Cleaned up the catalog and inventory pages a bit; more work coming on the inventory
• Added profile searching and the ability to specify your real name (which we never show to anyone) so that your friends can find you when they show up in Whirled
• Added the ability to start a private chat with another player by clicking on their avatar and selecting "Start private chat..."
• Fancied up the "Friends" display on the Profile; more improvements to come on that front, it's a bit wonky still
• Stuffed the wiki and forums into an iframe so that you don't have to leave the Whirled when you use them
• Fixed a problem with classifying the size of thumbnail images; if you have an image in your inventory that is too big and not scaling properly, reupload the thumbnail image and it should fix itself
• Doors now highlight green rather than red; we think that's a better color
• Various other behind the scenes improvements, bug fixes, and progress on cool new stuff that we'll release as soon as it's ready

2007-06-01

Room Editing: The Various and the Sundry'

• Yet more progress on the new room editing interface
• A bunch of progress on the Flash (and Java) game development SDK
• Made Java games work (GG developers, you can upload your games to Whirled, look for a post on the GG forums with more details soon)
• Avatars are now chosen by opening your inventory and clicking the avatar you want to wear and clicking a "Use this avatar" button
• Room decor is configured in the same way; and new furniture is added to a room in the same way; this interface will be improved upon in coming releases
• We are debuting our invitation system whereby players can invite their friends into the Whirled; we are starting with a single invitation for everyone just to test the system but soon we'll be giving out more invites

2007-05-16

Room Editing: Fixy fixy Template:Release notes/start

• More progress on the new room editing interface
• Various and sundry bug fixes which were the main motivation for this release

2007-05-11

Room Editing: remixed Template:Release notes/start

• The new room editor is fully in use. There are still a few rough edges, but overall we're much happier with it. Try it and let us know what you think on the forums.
• Items are now sorted by most-recently used.
• Zzz's are shown over people who are idle.
• /state and /action commands can be used to alter your avatar from the chat box.
• Updates to Dance Battle.

2007-04-30

A Shift in Perspective Template:Release notes/start

• Revamped the way we map logical coordinates to screen coordinates to be properly perspective correct; this unfortunately means that for deep rooms objects will have moved around again and you will have to adjust their Z-coordinate to get them back to where they used to be
• Further progress on the new room editing interface, much more to be done; also the old room interface is somewhat broken and we'll endeavor to fix that and/or make the new interface more usable ASAP
• The room view is shrunk to a small size when moved to the sidebar
• More Swiftly progress; some UI rearranging, fixed some broken bits
• We're all deep in the bowels of various backend bits, so not a lot of other visible changes

2007-04-24

Bugimus Fixem

• Made chat channel UI look a little better; it now reports who is in the channel when you enter and when someone enters or leaves a chat channel
• Fixed the Neighborhood display
• Broke Friend to Friend chat channels, they'll be fixed in the next release
• A tiny bit more progress on room editing; still much more to come
• Started versioning the Whirled SDK, the first version is 0.2, such a lovely number; we also have release notes for the SDK on its fancy new download page: Whirled SDK
• Fixed Swiftly building, though there are some upload problems with it right now; also started rearranging its UI a bit

2007-04-23

Beware of Flying Pets

• We're halfway through revamping the way you layout your rooms. The old interface still exists (you get it by clicking on the hammer) but the new interface is also available by right clicking on objects in your room. This is still in progress and you can't do things like add new items to your room from the new interface yet, but let us know if anything seriously bakes your noodle.
• We've added chat channels and person to person chat, which you can access by clicking on the little head on the right of the control bar. Right now you can chat to your friends and you can chat with members of your groups. We'll also be adding private chat channels that you can invite other people into and we'll be improving the UI in various ways (telling you who's in a chat channel and when people enter and leave).
• We've added an icon over someone's head when they're in a pending table in a game lobby; you can click on the icon to enter the same lobby
• We've added "browse by creator" to the catalog, right now you can only access it from an item detail page (click an item in the catalog then click the creator's name on the item detail view) but eventually you'll be able to access it from the preview section and from that person's profile page
• We've added the ability to scale your avatar when you select it; you can be teeny or huuuge
• We've added the ability to fly! Move your mouse to where you would stand, hold down the shift key and raise your mouse and watch the pretty wings; click there and you'll levitate up to that position; avatars can detect whether or not they are flying by looking at their y value (>0 means you're flying) and they can do a flying animation when that is the case
• We added the ability for entities (avatars and pets) to move the location of their name label rather than having it always default to the top of their bounding box
• We've done some more work on pets, but unless you're working on a pet, you probably won't notice
• We've fixed various bugs and no doubt introduced some new ones

Note

We fixed the bug introduced in the previous release that caused some furniture to render in the wrong position. This means that if you "fixed" your furniture after the last release, it might look wrong again. Feel free to move it again and we'll do everything in our power to avoid breaking it again. Template:Release notes/end