Jibe 1.3 Released

Jibe 1.3 is now available! This release includes many new features and improvements, and you can see a demo of a simple Jibe 1.3 environment on our website, if you click on the Cityscape link, or you can view it directly here. Changes in 1.3 are pretty extensive, including:

• Jibe avatars can now fly! this has resulted in significant changes to avatar model files, animation and movement scripts, and scripts that interact with avatars. While you are not chatting, press e to fly up, c to descend
  
  
• Non-Jibe avatars can be used in a single-scene configuration (Jibe customers see the video tutorial for details on http://jibemix.com/jibedownloads) - this has resulted in changes to animation and movement scripts, and scripts that interact with avatars.
  
  
• New menu option to simplify Jibe configuration if you head to Window - Jibe - Welcome
  
  
• Chat history can be saved to a web-based database (available to Jibe owners with their own server)
  
  
• Cursor now shows as regular arrow on web player builds (and editor builds), with hover helpers for sit and chat. This should fix the problem of Jibe windows swallowing mouse cursor while browsing different sites in other browser tabs (and where buttons in editor are sometimes hard to click when pointer is hidden). Old style icons are still available and can be re-enabled with a checkbox on the Cursor object in JibeGUI
  
  
• PlayerCamera has been changed - previously this lived in the PlayerCharacter prefab, now it lives in the live scene in the Jibe object. This enables scene-specific camera settings, giving users options to change draw distance, camera effects, on a scene-by-scene basis, rather than per project.
  
  
• PlayerCharacter prefab has been deprecated and is no longer used. Players are now spawned from their respective Character Prefabs (Avatars - Prefabs - Characters) and components like map icon, blob shadow, etc. added automatically.
  
  
• User ID fetched on startup (if hosting web page provides it) and stored in a preference file for use in tracker scripts.
  
  
• Loader scene now only offers avatar choices on startup if the user has never logged in before - the Dressing Room is offered on login, or proceed straight to main scene. These options are configurable in the Loader scene's Init object.
  
  
• Jibe iTween functionality added to easily network an iTween event so all players see an event happen at the same time. To enable this, to the object with iTween scripts attached, add a JibeiTweenClick script and enter the event to synchronize. In the JibeiTweenClick.cs script, you need to uncomment line 43 - only do this after adding iTween scripts to your project or you will have errors that prevent building your application.
  
  
• Jibe Animation code has been loosened significantly to facilitate non-jibe avatars. There is no more JibeAnimation enum defining animations, but you need to ensure that all models in use in a Jibe build share the same animations for animation synchronization to work correctly without errors. All Jibe avatars (or avatars with the same animation states), all dragons, etc.
  
  
• Old animation code (ThirdPersonAnimation.js) has been removed, and replaced with C# code - this has enabled the PlayerMovement.cs script to be moved in with the rest of the Jibe scripts, keeping the project more tidy, and making future code more simple.
  
  
• Jibe avatar skins have been refreshed and updated.

Note that the Cityscape scene is now available for free for all new Jibe customers, and is a simple scene that we hope will help get folks who are new to Unity and Jibe up and running more speedily, though the plain kit is still available for those with their own builds.

Stay tuned for a link to a demo space in the very near future to see dragon avatars in action!

Anyone with questions about the upgrade, please contact us via http://metaverseheroes.com and we'll be ready to help!

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Chris Hart, CTO ReactionGrid Inc.