As mentioned in a previous post, I've been working on a bunch of enhancements to the Mesmerizer, which I hope to have completed soon after Thanksgiving, ready for a December release. These include "bound poses", that will work with LockGuard-compatible collars and cuffs to draw chains where appropriate, for both binding and leashing, as well as scripts, which allow sequences of Mesmerizer commands to be stored either dynamically or in notecards and played back by a single command.
In addition, I've been working on some enhancements to the Communications Hub. These include both minor usability features, like allowing the user registry to be stored in a notecard for safety, and significant new features, the most important of which is web access. This allows the Hub's owner, as well as users they authorize, to connect to the Hub from the Internet via a web browser, and take part in Mesmerizer chat, or issue Mesmerizer commands to in-world users. Like the communications mechanism itself, all processing is done in the Hubs, which means that there is no dependency on any external database or web service for any of the Mesmerizer features. I was originally intending Web Access to be an add-on product, but I have now decided that it should be a standard Hub feature. If you want it, all you have to do is turn it on in your Hub.
I also have a brand new CHAOS product under development, that I'm provisionally calling The Enforcer. This is a monitoring device for one or more hubs, that will allow for the automatic playback of commands in response to Hub events, such as a user logging on, or moving to a different sim. In effect it provides centralized event processing for multiple Mesmerizers. You can use it for anything from displaying a message of the day (or image of the day) to your Mesmerizer users on login (or at random times), to centrally enforcing sim or other restrictions. Another useful ability is that it can be set to send notification emails when a connected Hub changes its http address, which will happen whenever the Hub's sim is restarted.
Finally, I have been contemplating an "Owner's HUD", that would simplify the use of the Mesmerizer command interface. There are two "levels of integration" at which such a HUD could be implemented. The first would be simply as an alternative to issuing Mesmerizer commands directly, so that the HUD would mostly serve to avoid having to learn the different commands and their parameters. Any communication back from the Mesmerizer would still come to the owner, rather than the HUD. Allowing the HUD to receive and process responses would be the second level of integration, and would require enhancements to the communications protocol (and therefore both the Mesmerizer and the Hub). I'm still weighing up the pros and cons of each approach, although it doesn't have to be an either-or decision - I could release an Owner's HUD that initially only transmits commands, and then add the communications enhancements to support a response channel in an update.
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