I've focused a lot on the Mesmerizer over the last year, which makes sense as it's the core product in the CHAOS range. However, the other CHAOS products need some attention too. So while I have a plan for Mesmerizer 1.4, I think I'll focus on updates to the supporting products for a while.
Most in need of an update are the Communications Hubs. I've made a number of reliability enhancements to my own Hubs, and publication of those enhancements is long overdue. As I did with the release version of the Mesmerizer, I will be changing the Communications Hubs from being transferable to being copiable. This both protects against SL eating your Hub, and makes updates pretty trivial - you just get a redelivery, and then transfer your Users database from your old Hub to your new one. Your users will have to re-connect to the new Hub after this, to actually move to the new Hub, but you can leave the original Hub running until they have all migrated. As an alternative, I intend to support in-place upgrades, which will avoid the need for users to migrate - you'll simply shut down your existing Hub, update it, and then restart it. Which method is easiest really depends on how many users are registered with the Hub - for a small user community, the straight replacement method is simple enough; if you have a large number of users, the requirement that they must all re-connect to a new Hub might argue for doing an in-place update.
I expect I will implement the change in protection using the same method as I used with the Mesmerizer: I'll give purchasers of the pre-release Hub a transferable gift card for the (copiable) product version of the Hub. So if you bought a hub and gave it to someone else, you can give the gift card to that same person to let them update to the full product version. Or if you prefer you can use the gift-card to buy your own Hub (but then whoever you gave your original Hub to will have to buy again if they want an update).
As part of this update, I will also be combining the low-prim and the regular version of the Hubs into a single product. So whichever flavor of Hub you originally bought, the update will give you both flavors. The low-prim and regular Hubs are functionally equivalent, the only differences are cosmetic (and of course that the low-prim version is only 1 LI).
I have made some reliability enhancements to The Enforcer too. There are a few minor functional enhancements as well, but the main change is to do with better memory utilization. I've been using The Enforcer quite a bit, and the current version is much more efficient and better able to handle multiple simultaneous subscribers that the original beta version could. Again, I need to get these enhancements out as a proper release product.
Incidentally, if anyone has been experiencing reliability issues with their Communications Hubs or Enforcers, I will happily give you the latest pre-release version to see if that solves whatever issues you're seeing.
Finally, the HoloTrainer and MesmerX need to become copiable too. I haven't made any functional changes to these products, but something I do want to do is to unify the scripting languages that are used in these devices with the Mesmerizer's own scripting. Ideally you should be able to take a script from, say, a MesmerX, and just install it into a Mesmerizer (after renaming the notecard according to the Mesmerizer's convention). Today, that won't work at all, but it's a worthy goal to aim for.
So that's my goal for the remainder of 2019: to bring these beta-level products up to full release level. I may find diversions along the way, but if I do, I hope that this blog post will help to ensure that they don't take me too far off course.
