*It's release time!*

All the rex devs have been working hard on the 2.1 release. The most
important thing you'll need to know that the scene manager/sync code has
changed to support multiple scenes in one "simulator" aka Tundra server
process. This is big enough change that it will break
backwards compatibility. But dont get alarmed, this only means <=2.0 <-->
>=2.1 network interactions will not work. You .txml scenes are
still compatible, you dont need to remake any scene stuff, just update the
server and load the old .txml/.tbin as before. If you connect to a 2.1
server with 2.0 client you'll see alot of errors and warnings in the
console, this means its time to update your Tundra if you want to join that
server. All the login.realxtend.org servers have been updated that we host
at Adminotech Ltd.

There is also a new mechanism that can send messages back from the server to
the client why your connection was refused. Eg. the server can deny your
connection if you have a old client and say "Hey pls update your Tundra to
get to this server". This is tricky though now as the scene sync broke
between old and new versions. So we cannot instantiate the EC_Script that
will actually validate and send back the error reply :) So it will be
working nicely after you have 2.1 and the next releases come.

Other important stuff is bug fixes, a lot of them. If you are interested you
can read the github issues page
<https://github.com/realXtend/naali/issues>or start checking the full
commit 
log<https://github.com/realXtend/naali/compare/tundra2.0.0...tundra2.1.0>what
has been fixed. Total of 429 commits has been done between 2.0 and
2.1.
Please do use the new github issue tracker now to report your bugs for 2.1,
apply the "Tundra 2.1 release" tag to your issue if it happened with the
installer. The rex devs are looking into stabilizing Tundra and for bug
hunting we of course need testing help! Remember the etiquette for reporting
bugs, give us the needed info to resolve the issue. This would include your
operating system, Tundra version, start command line params/config (if issue
related to these), what are the steps to reproduce the bug, what was you
expected outcome and what was the outcome you got.

For the next release we are going to work on porting and adding more example
scenes/demos to the SDK. Currently the nicely working ones are avatar and
physics, you can either way take a peek at <install-dir>/scenes for other
scripting examples as well. We will also work on the documentation to make
it easier to read and get started with Tundra scripting etc.

I also dived once again to the dependencies mess we have. OpenAL and C++
dist 2008 should now auto install silently if you dont have them, they wont
pop up anything. For directx I tried one more approach, just plain DLL
checking as the register version check seemed to always fail. This should
now make it not bother you with dx setup if you already have the 9.0c but
pops up a dialog to install it if you don't. Hopefully it will make the
experience a bit nicer. I didnt make dx install in silent mode as it seemed
to have Bing search bar and stuff as default, I really dont want everyone
getting this it should be your choice to do it. I surely dont want a bing
search bar installed automatically when Tundra installs so why should I
enforce it on you. Dx is anyways a bigger desicion for the user so lets
leave it like this.

*About updating from 2.0*
*
*
There was a small error I made in the 2.0 installer that it wont auto update
from the client. I did include the UpdateModule in the build, but none of
the startup xml configs load it on startup :) This has been fixed in 2.1 now
and you will get notified of upcoming releases automatically and the File ->
Check updates will works. To upgrade 2.0 into 2.1 you can 1) download the
new installer by hand 2) Windows start menu -> realXtend Tundra -> Check
Updates and follow the usual steps with the ui.

*Changes for scripting*
*
*
Scripting API has changed a little bit but nothing too big. Eg. raycasting
has been moved to scene.ogre.RayCast(..) from renderer.Raycast(..) and some
other functions have been possibly moved/renamed. This will be mostly
trivial search and replace checking for your scripts. If you are not doing
anything too advanced then there is a high possibility you dont even need to
youch your scripts and they will run as is on Tundra 2.1. Youll find out
running them on the new version and checking the console for errors :) If
you need help porting scripts be in touch via the dev mailing list or IRC
#realxtend-dev @ freenode.

*About linux and mac*
*
*
Tundra on mac is doing very well now that Cvetan has done some works on it,
well be going public with 2.1 for mac installers. We know there are lots of
people on macs that wanna give it a go! So the mac installer is coming soon
from us at Adminotech, we'll send a email about it and it will be up on
google code hosting (same place as win installers). Linux deb/rpm installers
are done by CIE so I hope theyll do that or someone else that has the time
and the experience. But I would think they are coming soon as well.

*Known Issues*

   - TundraProcolModule::Server::IsAboutToStart() does not tell the truth,
   don't trust it. This slipped in the release but has now been fixed in head.
   This is really only relevant to startup scripts. If you are running a script
   in a Script component, you should be using server.IsRunning() instad of
   server.IsAboutToStart(). If you do need to check if server is starting up
   (before it has been started, this again only is needed on startup scripts
   that load before the server has been started) use the following
   framework.HasCommandLineParameter("--server"), true meaning server is about
   to start, false otherwise.



*Links*

   - Installer
   http://realxtend-naali.googlecode.com/files/realXtend-Tundra-2.1.0.msi
   - Debug pdb files for devs
   http://realxtend-naali.googlecode.com/files/realxtend-Tundra-2.1.0-pdb.7z
   - Login portal: http://login.realxtend.org/



Best regards,
Jonne Nauha
Adminotech developer

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