AW 5.2 Released Today

Hey everyone!  Activeworlds 5.2 was released today and comes with a few new, very noticable features.

The toolbars now exist as a HUD on the display. 

• Several toolbars are now transparent and have moved to new locations in the browser.
• Global chat has been integrated to the browser!  Each world has 5 channels.  Most public worlds currently have local and global enabled.
• Gaming commands are now a preset as specified in Options > Configure Controls
• CAV updates; existing cavs have been wiped and will need to be remade.
• Bots will not need to be recompiled but their aw.dll files should be brought up to the latest SDK build.
• View a full list of changes on the ActiveWiki

Overall I'm pretty content with many of the changes made... and there are, of course, bugs to be worked out on patch day.  As usual, though, my biggest complaint is that they haven't gone quite far enough.  Perhaps the most embarrassing example of this is the half-implementation of the browser HUDs. Though the toolbars are installed (as you can see in the screencap), the chat, tabs, and web windows are still in their familiar blocky formats.  I wouldn't disgrace your vision with a screenshot of those up together... it reminds me of a poorly formatted, 90's website.

It can't be helped, I guess.  As a bit of an aside, 5.2 has been completed by Chrispeg for about 6-7 weeks, and he's already begun work on 5.3.  Word of getting some more of these transparencies up is spreading.  An Ogre AW Viewer was also mentioned in a town hall meeting a few weeks ago... we'll see about that. :)  That would certainly be an exciting time, as I think Renderware has about had it.

Anyway, more later.  I've got finals stuff to be working on.