Mesmerizer 0.99e

I was expecting the next release of the Mesmerizer to be focused on the new RLVa features, but a nasty bug cropped up, for which I want to get a fix out as soon as possible.  The bug is in the Mesmerizer initialization, and the vast majority of people never encounter it.  However, a small number of users have found that their brand new Mesmerizer issues an error message during initialization and then refuses to work.  I have had three reports of this, and it turns out to be a timing bug. 0.99e contains a fix for it.  Now, the Mesmerizer initializes itself the very first time its worn, and usually has no reason to re-initialize, so if your Mesmerizer is working, then you've avoided this bug.

There is one piece of new functionality in 0.99e.  In a post in January of this year, I introduced the textcolor command, which allows you to specify the color that the text command will use for on-screen text.  I added this command because my testing found that some colors are more readable than others, but which colors are best varies tremendously from person to person.  So allowing you to set your preferred color was my first stab at improving readability.  However, whatever color you pick is going to be hard to read against a similar colored background.  So 0.99e has made a slight enhancement to the textcolor command - as an alternative to specifying a color (either by name or as an RGB vector) you can now specify the keyword cycle, which will make the text rapidly cycle through a number of colors, which should make it stand out against any relatively static background.  Along with the color cycling, the text command has been enhanced to allow for multi-line text, with line-breaks indicated by a "\n" character sequence (backslash followed by "n").  While this may seem a minor tweak, the use of vertical spacing can be quite effective in trances.  With the new ability to "stack" text vertically, I have also significantly extended the time for which displayed text remains on-screen.  If you want it to disappear earlier, just use either use the text command again with an empty string as a parameter: text "", or you can use the clear command, which will also remove any images that are being displayed.

This work actually came out of another product I have under development, the Focus Couch, which I'll describe in a post in the near future.  Mesmerizer 0.99e should be in vendors and on Marketplace tomorrow, and going out to previous purchasers at the same time.

12/23 Edit to the above - Mesmerizer 0.99e is in the vendors and up on Marketplace, but I've decided not to push it out to previous purchasers.  The bugfix, while important, only affects initialization, and I've already given replacements for anyone who ran into that.  The new functionality around the text command, while nice, isn't worth bothering everyone with an update.  If you have an earlier version and want to upgrade to 0.99e, just send me an IM or notecard and I'll get a replacement out to you, otherwise wait until the next update, which should be much more significant.