In the months ahead ... 01 3月 2012 by Muvizu_Admin in News Since we released our first public alpha of Muvizu in 2009, we've merrily punted out iteration after iteration that lumped bug fixes to the previous release with newly developed features ... which, of course, needed their own fixes. We are now going to do something different.Muvizu has evolved into such a complex beastie that we haven't a hope in hell of testing it in-house to cover all the punishment meted out to it in the wild by users; not all users, just the usual suspects - and you know who you are. Flexible though we've tried to make our software, some of you out there are tying it in knots and wringing from it abilities and performances that we'd never envisaged. Furthermore, whereas we run a battery of tests against every release candidate, it's no substitute for using Muvizu creatively and trying, as many of you do, always to push the envelope further.Given all this, we have decided that we want to make available an official, stable release for newcomers or "gentlefolk" users who make charming little clips, perhaps while sipping tea. In parallel, we will make available innocent embryonic releases to be tortured mercilessly by our sparrow-mumbling, obviously raving-mad, hard-core users (who are probably PCP- or MDA-fuelled psychos to boot).Our hope is that by harnessing the worst excesses of this deranged breed we'll be able to fix most bugs before releasing versions to nice people and also bring real-life feedback into the dev process at an earlier stage.We'll give you a heads-up with respect to the expected timing of releases, stable and dangerous, as soon as we've thrashed out a few more details. In the meantime, though, anyone with a sufficient number of screws loose who'd like to register their interest in playing with fire should leave a comment below. We intend to create a forum area for you, a download section for you and, quite probably, an indemnity/psychiatric release form.Another big change on the horizon reflects work we've put in steadily over the last year or so to realise an ambition to separate as much as possible the art from the technology in Muvizu. There are many good reasons for this, the main ones being to reduce the download size of Muvizu software and to decouple the art and dev release cycles. We intend, probably some time in May, to have trimmed Muvizu down to a package containing a few characters with basic objects/environments and then to make available all the other art-side materials in asset packages to download as and when you fancy. This will allow us to publish new art assets without having to re-release the core software.This is likely to cause some upheaval but, assuming that our pack of wild testers come through for us, we expect to be able to guide all existing users through problems with backwards compatibility, especially with old sets. It is also likely that we'll still provide a full-fat Muvizu version containing absolutely everything, for those who don't mind huge downloads or who are just plain greedy.This brings us neatly to the mystery image at the top of the page. It's a superhero figure, one of a bunch of characters endowed with special powers who even now are being developed for Muvizu. We intend for these, together with a bunch of evil characters, to form the basis for the first, all-new separately downloadable art asset pack - heroes and villains. Yes, you'll have to wait a couple of months for this, but we think it'll be worth it.Best regards,The Muvizu team.PS: See you soon ...
01 3月 2012 by Muvizu_Admin in News Since we released our first public alpha of Muvizu in 2009, we've merrily punted out iteration after iteration that lumped bug fixes to the previous release with newly developed features ... which, of course, needed their own fixes. We are now going to do something different.Muvizu has evolved into such a complex beastie that we haven't a hope in hell of testing it in-house to cover all the punishment meted out to it in the wild by users; not all users, just the usual suspects - and you know who you are. Flexible though we've tried to make our software, some of you out there are tying it in knots and wringing from it abilities and performances that we'd never envisaged. Furthermore, whereas we run a battery of tests against every release candidate, it's no substitute for using Muvizu creatively and trying, as many of you do, always to push the envelope further.Given all this, we have decided that we want to make available an official, stable release for newcomers or "gentlefolk" users who make charming little clips, perhaps while sipping tea. In parallel, we will make available innocent embryonic releases to be tortured mercilessly by our sparrow-mumbling, obviously raving-mad, hard-core users (who are probably PCP- or MDA-fuelled psychos to boot).Our hope is that by harnessing the worst excesses of this deranged breed we'll be able to fix most bugs before releasing versions to nice people and also bring real-life feedback into the dev process at an earlier stage.We'll give you a heads-up with respect to the expected timing of releases, stable and dangerous, as soon as we've thrashed out a few more details. In the meantime, though, anyone with a sufficient number of screws loose who'd like to register their interest in playing with fire should leave a comment below. We intend to create a forum area for you, a download section for you and, quite probably, an indemnity/psychiatric release form.Another big change on the horizon reflects work we've put in steadily over the last year or so to realise an ambition to separate as much as possible the art from the technology in Muvizu. There are many good reasons for this, the main ones being to reduce the download size of Muvizu software and to decouple the art and dev release cycles. We intend, probably some time in May, to have trimmed Muvizu down to a package containing a few characters with basic objects/environments and then to make available all the other art-side materials in asset packages to download as and when you fancy. This will allow us to publish new art assets without having to re-release the core software.This is likely to cause some upheaval but, assuming that our pack of wild testers come through for us, we expect to be able to guide all existing users through problems with backwards compatibility, especially with old sets. It is also likely that we'll still provide a full-fat Muvizu version containing absolutely everything, for those who don't mind huge downloads or who are just plain greedy.This brings us neatly to the mystery image at the top of the page. It's a superhero figure, one of a bunch of characters endowed with special powers who even now are being developed for Muvizu. We intend for these, together with a bunch of evil characters, to form the basis for the first, all-new separately downloadable art asset pack - heroes and villains. Yes, you'll have to wait a couple of months for this, but we think it'll be worth it.Best regards,The Muvizu team.PS: See you soon ...
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