The notes below pertain to the Early Access Release, 3.1.6136

Latest client downloads can be accessed at http://www.tangle.app/download

In This Update:

• What's new?
• What's coming Next
• Known Issues
• Here’s where you can find Tangle support moving forward

What's new?

• Avatar Customization UI & Networked Display

  • Avatar Customization is, finally, available to all users as of EA1. This allows you to customize your Avatar on the Server Select screen and everyone else on your server will see your beautiful creation.
  • This feature will ship with more than 300 customization options across more than 20 categories. We expect this number to keep growing!
  • Our next major focus will be on bringing life back to Avatars by restoring things like additive animations (Eye blinks) and adding major new features like Avatar Reactions & Statuses. More on that when EA1 releases.

  • You will need to hit "Save" to lock in your changes!

  • And send us your Avatar creations! We love to see everything from the mundane to the magical!

• Knocking Flow

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  • Knocking Flow has gotten a major overhaul. If you’re inside of a closed room and someone knocks on your door you’ll get a pop-up notification asking if you’d like to Allow/Deny entry to the room along with info about who’s knocking.
  • On the other side, the user who knocked will see a pop-up with a countdown on it. If that timer reaches 0 the countdown “times out” and they can try again.
  • This gives both users involved in the knock more clarity & control on the state of the process

• New sound effects (knocking sound is less scary now!!) 

  • This is definitely a WIP, but we've got all new audio for everything
  • That's right, no more terrifying door knocks. 
  • Definitely let us know how you feel about these!

• Hotkeys

  • Hotkeys got additional updates. In particular, the highly requested "H" (which will zip you back to your Homeroom) and "F" (Which will focus the view either at Zoom or on your Room) are both returned. 
  • See the full list in our Keyboard Shortcuts help center article.

• Performance Updates

  • We continue to work on making Tangle run better and this build contains two significant fixes to advance this goal.
  • Both should be pretty invisible- One of the largest performance costs in Tangle is decoding video. We’ve implemented some fixes to down-res video when at high zoom levels and to stop decoding video that’s outside of your view. Neither of these should affect the functionality of Tangle, but it should make a significant change in the moment-to-moment cost of keeping Tangle open, especially if folks are in Avatar mode or if they’re out of view.

• UI Fixes

  • There were many small fixes to the Login Flow and toolbars in Tangle to help clarify their use, hover states etc.
  • This should also help with Retina & Widescreen displays having major UI issues. Please let us know if your display is still showing overlapping/anooying/unusable UI issues. 

• Updated MacOS Installer

  • It's placeholder, but we're finally all grow'ed up!
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Major Bug Fixes

We fixed over 40 issues in this release, many of them small, but we know a few had been on y'alls radar. Here are the big ones:

• Doors
  • In Tangle 2 doors give a little wiggle when closing or opening. This allows clients to handshake and deliver 100% assurance that a door is closed and a conversation is private. The wiggle length is dependent on network speed, lag etc.
  • In EA 0, there was a bug where the door animator would sometimes become stuck in a wiggle and not display the current door state, especially when using the “D” shortcut key. We believe this is fixed, but please let us know if you continue to see it.
• SFX
  • SFX no longer play for everyone, all time time. 

What's coming in November

Rather than hit y'all with a wall of text, we'd like to introduce our Roadmap Portal. This is an easy way to see what's coming up next, read about new features in-depth and provide feedback directly to the absurd:joy team!

Our next update is planned for November 22nd. 

In the meanwhile, here's a preview of what we're working on now:

• Bringing major features (Rooms & User Panels) up to their intended UI spec
• Bringing life & animation to Avatars
  • This will unfold over a few Releases and encompasses a few major features. In EA2 we hope to have the "Wiggler" and the eye blinks back in place. 
• Overall stability & performance
• Better Trackpad Navigation
• UI Tooltips
• Zoom Level Detail to increase the legibility of Tangle at higher zoom levels
• URL Embedding
  • This one is exciting! This will be a 4th object type that will allow you to embed URLs directly into your Tangle space for easier link, document + media sharing
• Context Menu
  • This will restore the ability to create objects from a right-click menu as well as lay the groundwork for some new upcoming features. 
• User List
  • In the upper right hand corner of the screen you'll see a little "People" icon. Clicking on this will unfold the User List.
  • The User List allows you to see a list of all the People & Rooms in your Tangle. 
  • Clicking on a person will center your view on their User Panel. Clicking on a room will center your view on a Room. In both cases you'll still need to click on a door to enter the room. 

Known Issues

• Avatar Customization UI
  • On Retina displays the Avatar Customization window is zoomed tightly on the Avatar's Face.
• Settings Panel
  • The settings panel is currently a debug menu with lots of programmer art. We're working to get this shiny and usable, but all the options should work as described. 
• Zoom Levels
  • At the farthest zoom level a Tangle can be difficult to parse. We have a whole suite of fixes for these issues that we're hoping to deploy in our next release. 
• Screenshare Issues
  • Screenshare on MacOS does not work at all right now. Many of us are Mac users, so we feel your pain and are working on a fix.
  • Screenshare UI right now is a debug menu. 
  • Sharing a monitor other than your main display may create an error.
    • A workaround here is to share a Window in your second display as opposed to the whole monitor
  • Sharing a minimized window will cause the display to render incorrectly. 
  • Screensharing is on our radar to be fixed. We have a test implementation functioning on both PC + Mac but it will require extensive QA. There's no ETA on delivery for that update yet, but we'll let you know as soon as we have that info! See our Slack update for more info. 
• Images
  • There's currently no User-facing error handling for images. If you upload an image that's too large (10mb cap) or an unsupported format, it simply won't appear.
• Control Bar
  • On rare occasions it sometimes takes more than one click to activate Mute or Video Mute when using the UI. 

Here’s where you can find Tangle support moving forward:

• Tangle Help Center - We’re migrating our Tangle guide from Notion over to here (Zendesk) where you can more easily search documentation and submit tickets–all in one place!
• Tangle Slack- We’re moving Tangle live support from Discord to Slack! Join the Slack here.
• Tangle Calendly- For 1:1 voice or video calls with a Tangle team member
• If you prefer email, you can reach us directly at shout@absurdjoy.com.

Whether you’ve been using Tangle for a year or a month, your feedback has been SO important to us as we continue to experiment and iterate to make sure Tangle meets all your needs and wishes. We’d love to keep hearing what you think. You know where to find us!

Happy Tangling,

-the Absurdists