Here is the official documentation that a version 3.4 Beta Tester accumulated over the course of that version's development. This month we'll feature World Owners' additions and enhancements. Thanks so much, TechnoZeus, for your hard work in keeping all of us "little guys" up-to-date and informed during the long journey of version 3.4! : )

New World Options:

Cybernetworlds 3.4 offers many new features for world owners. In fact, the number of available world options has more than doubled from what it was in 3.3. World owners should upgrade to the latest world server as soon as possible in order to take advantage of this new functionality. The new world options are:

• Two world options have been added to regulate gravity in the world, "Gravity" and "Underwater Gravity". A value of 1.0 will use standard "Earth" gravity. Note that with the default setting of 1.0 you will sink in water. Use a negative value for underwater gravity to cause avatars to float to the surface.
  
• Three new options have been added to control specific sounds in the world. The "Water Enter" sound plays when the user enters the water and begins swimming (when the mid-point of the avatar drops below water level) and the "Water Exit" sound plays when the user emerges from the water. The "Footstep" sound plays twice every time the user walks the distance of their own height. For example, for a 2-meter tall avatar, the sound would play once for every meter they walked. This distance is doubled when running. The footstep sound works very well when combined with the "autowalk" feature (see below) to produce footsteps that match pace with the avatar's movement. All three of these sounds can be found under the new "Sound" group in the World Options dialog.
  
• A new world option has been added to allow the world's caretaker to disable tourist building.
  
• A new "Enable Browser Referrer" world option has been added. Clearing the checkbox for this option will prevent the browser from sending the new referrer string (explained under "Browser Features" below).
  
• A new world option, Water, is now available. Water can be used to fill the world with an endless rolling ocean. Note that avatars will "float" when underwater (gravity will be lower, and reversed).
  
• New in 3.4 is the Layered Clouds feature. This new world option allows world owners to create up to three layers of moving clouds in their world.
  
• Also new is the Gradient Sky feature. This allows world owners to specify separate colors for areas of the sky and have them blend into each other. This, along with the new "fog color" option replace the original "backdrop color" feature.
  
• World owners may now apply a new texture to the world light source. This makes it possible to have a sun, moon, or corona type texture attached to the world directional light source, which will change position as the light moves.
  
• Fog color can now be controlled independently of the sky colors. Note that pre-3.4 users will see the sky colored with the fog color, and will not see the gradient sky.
  
• Terrain has been enhancedso that the world owner can now control the surface lighting.
  
• In order to better manage the increasing number of world options, the old World Options and Lights & Fog dialogs have been merged into anew, branching dialog..
  
• A new world option has been added to show all avatar names. Normally, you do not see a user's name until they speak unless you have "Eject" rights or "Caretaker" status. This option allows everyone to see all names, regardless of rights. This is intended to be used in game worlds where the owner might not want people to be anonymous, or in a world where users would not otherwise see each others' chat.
  
• A world option has been added to hide all chat in the world. If this is checked, users with speaking rights will still be able to type messages, but the messages will not be sent to other users. Only a bot with caretaker rights will see the chat. This is useful if you have a bot monitoring the incoming chat and relaying it to everyone via the console command. In this way, a bot can be used to color chat messages, control the distribution of chat, and filter text.
  
• A world option has been introduced to block citizens from whispering to one another. This is intended to be used with a bot, just like the "hide chat" option listed above.
  
• Increased maximum fog distance (which also controls the maximum view distance) from 400 to 1200. Note that this does not affect the visibility of property-based objects (which is still limited to 200 meters) but only applies to world-based geometry, such as ground objects and terrain. While this can be used to create striking vistas, it should be noted that this will also greatly increase the number of terrain polygons in view and lower the accuracy of the z-buffer. The net effect of this is that your world may be slower, and may be more prone to suffer from annoying z-buffer "bleeding".
  
• Added new world option "Avatar Updates per second". This can be used to control how often avatar updates are sent to the client. Setting this value above the default value of 1 can smooth avatar movement, at a significant cost to bandwidth.
  
• Added new world option "Disable avatar list", which will cause the avatar list to be unselectable. This is intended to be used in conjunction with new SDK settings that will allow world owners to control what avatar each visitor is wearing.
  
• The browser will now allow the world server to set the user's avatar and gesture, via a bot. This goes along with the changes in build 428 that allowed the world owner to disable the avatar list. Now a bot can be used to regulate the gestures and avatar use in the world.

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Here are some of my observations of things you can tweak and adjust in 3.4:

CNW 3.4 TIPS:

I hadn't had enough experience at the new version 3.4 for me to provide much in tips by our last Newsletter deadline but it's now been over two months and I have enough to post for this Newsletter. CNW version 3.4 has most new features in the browser and world levels. As far as I know, other than a change in how movement looks to users that may cause minor relearning in how to position oneself for building, the majority of new 3.4 features involve world owner display settings for their world and several added user browser features (no new building options). First and foremost, you should heed these tips for optimum video performance in CNW version 3.4:

1. Make ABSOLUTELY sure that you have the very LATEST video and sound drivers
installed on your PC! Thinking that you just bought your PC in the last year or
so and the drivers should be fine is NOT sufficient! Virtually every single
video and sound card maker has had to output recent drivers in the last 6 to 12
months. Please read this webpage (it's rather old but still 100% relevant):

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Here are some, mostly random, tips that I have accumulated over the last several weeks using CNW version 3.4:

- If you're experiencing slower than normal lag in areas where you moved better before, change your Options/Settings/Video tab box to enable (checkmark) the hardware T&L feature...then click Apply and then OK. You will have to reload all files as if you dumped your cache folder, in fact, once you are sure the hardware T&L option works for you (frame rate should go up), it would be a good idea to logout and actually dump your entire CNW cache folder to avoid bad overwrites that cause cache errors. If your CNW browser has you set for "Software Renderer" video mode, this option is grayed out and not available to you.

- When ever you first enter a world, it's always a good idea to click on "Visibility" at the top of the browser (between "Avatar" and "Web") and change it from "Float" to "40 meters" (or whatever the minimum is in that world). That will give your 3D card more time to adjust to the initial download and video rendering. Once the download is complete and the frame rate is acceptable, try upping the visibility settings until you're satisfied with the distance/lag time adjustment. You can even go back to the "Float" setting to see how that is once the download ends for you.

- Make sure that the checkbox for Ignore pitch while swimming/flying is checked in the Options/Settings because if you are under the water and standing on something and use page up/down to look up and down, otherwise you will start sliding.

- To adjust zoom in 3rd person, go to Options/Configure Controls and scroll down that list till you see "Camera zoom in" and "Camera zoom out" and you will have to assign keys to those controls in order to do that in 3rd person view. I used the / and * keys over in the far right number keypad area on my keyboard for that.

- I noticed when you use a bump teleport to go somewhere and then when you click your teleport back button to return, you now appear right in the middle of the bump object that sent you there and of course it's bumped so you go right back where you came from lol. Builders will either have to change all "bump" teleports to "activate" teleports so the "Teleport Back" button works or they will have to place "Return to Teleports" click activate teleport signs at the exits of all of their bump teleports to return the user to the start.

- If you're having trouble lining up for a precise view, as in building or reading signs up close, go to Options/Settings/General Tab then enable the "Precise Movement" option with a checkmark then click Apply and then OK. Now you will stop moving the instant you release the arrow keys.

- If you have changed video modes a few times, you may have some files in your cache folder that are corrupted and those cause errors when you come within view of them. You should probably delete the entire cache folder in your CNW folder to start with fresh files under your current video mode.

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Avatars.dat Files for 3.4 Worlds

Here's an explanation of how avatars.dat files are done for worlds for 3.4 versons of CNW. I cheated a bit and pasted over Mauz's tutorial on avatars from her help webpage, however, English is not her native language (she's in central or eastern Europe from what I've heard) so I did some extensive re-writing of a lot of this to make it more understandable for native English speakers lol. NOTE: Anything listed in italics or with a (3.4) next to it indicates new features added for the current CNW 3.4 version.

The avatar menu for your world is in the file avatars.dat. It must be in plain text (.txt) format. Zip it and put it into your world's avatars folder.

At the very top of the file there must be this line:

version 3

After that is each avatar defined in this format:

avatar
 name=Gray
 geometry=gray.rwx
 autowalk
 beginimp
  walk=gray01
  wait=gray02
  idle=gray02
  endwait=gray07
  endwave=gray06
  warp=gray01
 endimp
 beginexp
  happy=gray03
  angry=gray04
  wave=gray05
 endexp
endavatar

• All of each avatar's data goes between the "avatar" and "endavatar" lines.
• The "name=_____" line gives the name of the avatar that will be seen on the world avatar menu. Spaces and special characters aren't allowed, but dashes (-) and underscores (_) are allowed. The name can't be just a single digit, but it can be just one letter, and as long as fits the screen (just remember that long avatar names will limit the overall amount of avatars that can be seen on the avatars menu).
• The "geometry=_____" line defines the name of the avatar zip file, but ending with ".rwx" or ".cob" instead of ".zip".
• (Optional) "autowalk" (3.4) lets the browser handle the timing of the walk and run sequences automatically. The walk sequence plays once every time you walk the distance of the height of your avatar, doubled when running. Recommended for humanoid avatars only.
• (Optional) Between the "beginimp" and the "endimp" lines are the actions that the avatar makes automatically. The names to the right of the "=" character must match names of zip files found in your world's seqs folder.
• (Optional) "idle=_____" (3.4) is used when an avatar is not moving. After 30 seconds they perform the wait sequence.
• There was no explanation in her website about what the "warp=_____" (3.4) is for but I'm guessing it defines what seq your avatar does when it's being warped, like in a ride.
• (Optional) Between the "beginexp" and the "endexp" lines are the gestures that show up on the toolbar that you have to press to execute. The name before "=" is what's shown on the button, and you can make it anything you want. And again, the part after "=" must be a name of a seq file from your world's seqs folder.
• (3.4) Implicit seqs (the auto-ones between "beginimp" and endimp") are fly, run, swim, jump, and fall. After avatar stops moving it starts the idle sequence, and then after 30 seconds the wait sequence. Avatar performs the hover sequence when flying or float when swimming.

You can just copy and paste avatar definitions (each paragraph between "avatar" and "endavatar" including those words) from existing avatars.dat files and put them into any order you want. There can be a maximum of 251 avatars in the list, plus 5 special avatars, however after about 125 are on it, the menu starts to become too big to view with most video resolution settings. The length of avatar names will also expand the menu box out more if they are long, thereby reducing the amount of avatars you can list on the menu before it goes off the edge of the screen. If you have any kind of typos in your avatars.dat file, then the avatar where the typo is and maybe even all avatars after that won't show up in the list.

Public Speakers (ppl with bold chat rights) have five extra avatars at the end of their avatar list, called special avatars. You don't put them in the avatars.dat file, but instead you name the files containing the avatars as special1.zip, special2.zip etc, and put them in your avatars directory. Special avatars can have sp1wait, sp1end and sp1walk seqs; replace 1 with 2, 3, 4, or 5 for the other special avatars. Name them sp1act1.zip, sp2act1.zip etc, and put them in the seqs directory.

~Ewasx~