• Various changes to optimize for dancing and to try to reduce lag bubble moments.
• Made a small change that allows you to choose a Dance while in Dance or Random mode, without popping you out of those modes. Choosing a macro or animation while in Sit Anywhere mode, pops you out of Sit Anywhere mode.
• Playing a macro or animation pops you out of Sit Anywhere mode. By the way, in case you haven’t noticed the new Sit Anywhere button, it’s on the AO buttons, lower right. It looks like arrow pointing down.
  
• Whitespace at the beginning of an emote should no longer be stripped.
• Sit Anywhere animation changes when you select a new one via the menu.
• Fixed a number of small problems when Hugs are not accepted.

After some more internal testing, I hope to set out a new Release Candidate by tomorrow.

• You will be able to give your avatar a boost when hugging someone else. By first saying /99boost X, where X is a number between 0 and 10. For instance, saying /99boost 2, will mean that when you hug someone else, your avatar will be lifted off the ground by 0.2 meters for the hug. That boost value will be remembered. You can turn the boost on and off and change the height whenever you want. Here are the commands to use the hug boost:
  • /99boost X – changes the boost height. X must be a number between 0 and 10. The boost height will be equal to X/10, so /99boost 5, will give your avatar a boost of 0.5 meters when you hug someone else. This command also turns on the hug boost.
  • /99boost off – turns hug boost off
  • /99boost on – turns hug boost on
• The EZAD remembers the last person you hugged. If you attempt to hug them again, it will not ask permission from that avatar again. The hug will just start. The person being hugged can stop a hug by saying /99stop. If the person says /99stop during or after a hug, permission to hug them is relinquished. The EZAD only remembers the last person, so if you hug someone new, the previous avatar’s permission is relinquished.

Again these changes will be in the next version coming out soon.

The first big improvement is that now you can set the distance between the avatars for a hug. The closest my avatars seem to get to each other is about 0.4 meters, so that will be the new minimum distance. But you can set it to be 0.5 meter, 1 meter, even 50 meters (the maximum). This should help people adjust their hugs to best fit the size of their avatar and the particulars of the animations they are using. Also, the 50 meter setting could be fun to use, making your avatar run away from the person who just accepted a hug from you. I might include a sample macro to demonstrate this.

The next change is that now you can stop an hug, once it has begun. So if you hug someone and realize that the hug is a little long and uncomfortable, you can end it early by hitting the stop button. Also, you can make a hug be really long, even an hour or more and end when you want. This means that you could set up a couples dance with the HUD, set it for 10 minutes or an hour and then just let the animations run until you decide to hit the stop button. It will often be better to use a set of poseballs for couples dances, but this might make a nice compromise when none are available.

Oh! Another change that I’m sure people will love is that in addition to using someone’s full name in a hug emote (by putting [TARGET] in the emote), you can now use just their first name or just their last name. Your name remains your full name for now, although I’m thinking of ways to change that. Also, the [TARGET] command in general is now fixed. I messed it up with the last update.

Best of all, it should work fine with all your existing EZAD hug macros. If there is anyone out there who uses hugs a lot with their EZAD and want to test it early, please send me an instant message. I’d be happy to give you an early release to test it.