Version 0.2 (released 12/16/02)

For best performance, close other applications before running Second Life in order to free up your computer?s memory. If the computer runs out of memory, Second Life has a tendency to become unresponsive and you will move through the world in 10 second halting steps.

Feature Changes and Additions

Startup & Login

Login names and passwords are now case sensitive. For example, if you registered as "John Starseeker" with password "Doggy" you previously would have been able to log-in with "john" or "doggy, "DOGGY," "dOgGy," etc. Now you need to enter "John," "Starseeker" and "Doggy" as registered.
New fancy startup screen (okay, so it?s purely cosmetic, but it looks great).
Daily Message delivered during startup gives tips, news and other info.

Help & Crash Reporting

Help menu has a link to the latest official map of the world.
Automated Crash Reporter: If the Second Life viewer crashes, a crash reporter application will ask if you wish to send information about the crash to Linden Lab. The report contains information about your processor, video card, memory, last login session, and the Microsoft Windows "Dr. Watson" crash report. Please send the report ? the more information we have, the quicker we can solve crash bugs.
Updated and expanded online help content.

Improved World Performance

Objects come in faster when you are flying.
On Startup Preferences -> Display, added "Avatar Composite Limit." Currently, when other avatars are changing their appearance via the customization option, the Second Life software attempts to keep their appearance updated in real-time. If you lower the Avatar Composite limit you will see increased system performance as the Second Life software updates a smaller number of appearances. Avatars in the process of customizing themselves will not update until they are complete or, sometimes, will appear gray during customization. This only impacts avatars currently customizing themselves.

Avatar Enhancements

Avatar make-up can be applied during customization.
Underwear automatically removed when you swap outfits so no more unsightly incidences of cotton briefs peeking out from beneath your clothes.
Avatar appearance sliders and sub-categories reorganized into a more logical sequence.
Avatar heads follow camera focus so you can see where other residents are looking.
Tab key automatically shifts focus to the last person who chatted.
Visual improvements to avatar clothing (shadowing).
More reliable sitting behaviors.
When holding Alt key and moving camera, you can more easily zoom in on objects without losing focus on the object ? it?s magic!

Feature Enhancements

JPEG files can be imported for use as textures.
Two inventory windows can be open concurrently. To open, click on the inventory button as usual, and then select File -> New Window from the pull down menu on the inventory window. Clicking on the inventory button at the bottom of the screen makes both disappear.

Scripting Enhancements

When scripted objects reach the edge of the world, they disappear and are placed in a "Lost & Found" inventory folder.
Scripted objects can block the ability of users to grab them.
Scripted objects can choose to die at the edge of the world (useful for bullets).
Added scripting detection for agents that are flying, have attachments, and have scripted attachments.
Spinning things! You can make anything spin easily and smoothly now. Try adding llTargetOmega(<1,0,0>, 1.0, 1.0); to just about anything. Spice us that boring sign and make it a moving monument to your creative powers.
Collision noises and collision sprites can be overridden via the scripting language. If you want to make a basketball with a perfect dribble sample and a little burst of flying sweat whenever it hits the ground - well you can now do it: llCollisionSound(), llCollisionSprite().
Attached Sound Queuing, with new LSL calls:

      llAdjustSoundVolume(float gain)
      gain value [0..1] adjusts the gain of the currently playing 
      attached sound (if any).
      
      llSetSoundQueueing(integer toggle)
      toggle [TRUE,FALSE] sets whether successive calls to llPlaySound.
      
      llLoopSound etc. interrupt the playing sound 
      (FALSE, the default historic behavior) or wait until the current 
      playing sound reaches its end.
      
      The queue is only one level deep, so you can't stack things very far.

llPreloadSound() no longer actually plays the sounds at near-zero volume, just prefetches them.

In-World Enhancements

New trees and grass! Five new species of trees and five new grass types, plus the existing trees have nicer textures. Remember, fauna can be copied into your inventory so feel free to take clippings from species you find particularly attractive. Plants don't need light and can be removed from their indigenous area (for now!), so add a few to decorate your building. Some SL Residents have made great ornamental pots for their plants. Can a botanical garden be far behind?
Property lines visible all the time. You can toggle this on and off using the View menu.
Color schema to display property ownership has changed. Other peoples' land is now light green while your land is dark green.
Hover the cursor over a piece of land to see who owns it and permissions.
Double-click on a sound in inventory to play in-world. Right-click "open" opens the preview pane with "play," "audition" and the description text.
New UI sounds. Also many extra UI clicks removed.
Money change sound is now triggered at or above the threshold (was above).
Snapshot sound.

Bug Fixes

Server deep-think on object delink: Deselecting an object with a very large number (>100) of primitives no longer causes the simulator to become unresponsive.
Server deep-think on complex objects: Interpenetrating complex static objects no longer cause the simulator to become unresponsive.
No more walking through tables. Nada Epoch wrote a script for an attachment that called llSetStatus() and caused his avatar to exhibit strange "drunken" walk behavior and would sometimes appear to be able to walk through tables. This has been fixed.
Objects vanish without warning after being edited: Sometimes you would add a cut or hollow to a very complicated object only to have it vanish with no warning when it was deselected. The simulator was correctly deleting an object with impossible physical properties, however now users will see a warning about what happened (and will be properly refunded).
Avatar now constrained to sim grid (cannot fly beyond the border).
Eliminated duplicate or missing entries in the find people dialog.
Sound preview dialog's "Play" and "Audition" now both generate sound at the avatar's position (not the camera).
Loss of audio except for wind fixed.
llStopSound for a looping attached sound still being fetched now stops the sound.

Known Issues

These following bugs are known to exist in Second Life version 0.2. In some cases, workarounds have been provided and in all cases, we are working on eliminating these from future releases.

ATi Radeon 9700 graphics card users will experience small visual glitches. Specifically, menu items, close boxes, and other user interface elements will occasionally flash yellow. Additionally, the haze on distant objects may randomly disappear and reappear. Finally, your avatar will have small gaps at the shoulders, waist and elbows. These are harmless, and not a sign of an impending crash.
Creating an object on top of grass or near large trees may result in the object being placed in an odd location. To work around, create the object on a patch of bare ground and then move it to the desired position.
Health indicator sometimes turns on in regions where you cannot take damage.
Occasionally, the avatar's head will look in a strange direction, or shake rapidly.
Small lights might not light up nearby objects. If this occurs, try repositioning the light which will sometimes solve the issue.

0.2.1 patch, release 12/18/2002

This version fixes several major crash bugs, as well as improving several other behaviors.

Crash where a gesture made by another avatar could crash everyone who could see that avatar. This caused most of the viewer crashes people have had near the start area in the last two days.
Crash while scrolling or clicking in the chat history window.
OpenGL crash related to drawing complex avatars.
OpenGL crash related to problems starting hardware accelerated 3D graphics.
Crash upon emptying the trash when the trash was already empty.
Crash reporter is more reliable.
Attachments are no longer lost if you are in a simulator that crashes.
Shift-drag on arrows to duplicate objects works more reliably, with less shifting of the copied object.
Landmarks, textures, and calling cards in lists are now sorted alphabetically.
Texture "Save As..." to disk now works more reliably.
The names that appear over the avatar heads are drop shadowed, making them easier to read.
Opening a profile by double-clicking a name in the leaderboard shows the right name.
You can send an IM message to an object's owner by clicking on the "Profile" button in the object info panel.
Land claim dates are now correctly displayed.

New Feature

Simulator names are displayed in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, along with a "simulator rating". Simulators rated "mature" are appropriate for foul language, sex, nudity, violence, etc. up to the limits in our terms of service. Simulators rated PG are not appropriate for such behaviors. A community standards document discussing these issues will be released soon.

0.2.2 patch, release 12/19/2002

This version fixes our most common cause of viewer crashes, usually experienced near the start area. It seems our last patch didn't quite fix it (drat!).
More debugging information added for our second most common crash, occurring when your avatar moves quickly from one server to another.
Crashes on ATI graphics cards may be due to use of unsupported cards (we support ATI Radeon 8500 and above), or out of date drivers. If you are using an ATI card, be sure to install the ATI Catalyst 2.5 or later drivers, available at http://www.ati.com/
Occasionally you will see objects that have no textures, or the default "smoke" texture. The textures are still there, just not visible. We are working on our server system to correct the problem.

0.2.3 patch, release 12/19/2002

Faster display of the texture picker for people with long texture lists.
Correct display of avatar composite number in preferences at login time.
Debugging information added for other crashes.

0.2.4 patch, release 12/20/2002

Fixed crash on startup if you had more than 150 calling cards.
Fixed problems with identifying who is online if you have more than 75 calling cards.

0.2.5 patch, release 12/27/2002

Forced update to ensure all users have the fix for gesture crashes.
Debugging information added for our most common crash, related to hand-off problems between servers.
Multiple back-end changes that fix server crashes caused by scripts, grabbing physical objects, etc.
Back-end changes to improve reliability of reputation system, specifically cases.

Second Life in 2002/Release Notes

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