Developer Notes 7

Manufacturing Returns and Success Rates
Several participants have recently expressed concern over manufacturing success rates in support cases and on various community forums. Our design team has investigated these issues and has determined that the manufacturing system is functioning as intended. Please keep in mind that many aspects of the Entropia Universe system are dynamic and that drawing conclusions about "success rates" or "TT return" based on relatively small sample sizes collected over short time periods can be very misleading or unnecessarily alarming.

Once again, we would like to assure all participants that the manufacturing system is functioning properly and as designed.

Sneak Peek - New Social Interface
Since before the summer, members of MindArk's development team have been hard at work creating a completely new Social UI which is expected to be released later this year. The new Social UI will include a boatload of new and improved features, here are some of the highlights:

• Offline Messaging
• Custom chat channels with optional passwords, data feeds
• Tabbed chat interface with the ability to arrange or dock/undock individual tabs
• User-defined thresholds for global loot messages
• Completely redesigned Contacts List with custom user status settings (Away/Do Not Disturb/Invisible/etc.), user notes, and much more.
• Completely redesigned Society interface with new features such as message of the day (MOTD), Society alerts
• Looking for Group (LFG) functionality to facilitate the creation of teams.
• Custom Avatar thumbnail images that appear in other participants' Contacts Lists and chat channels
• Integration with Entropia Universe Auction in the form of detailed alerts relating to offers and orders.
• Calendar displaying upcoming events, EU system notifications, etc.
• Much, much more!!

Below is a screenshot of a current prototype of the new unified Message Center:

Notice the various types of information in the feed: auction alerts, private chat, personal notes. Also note the filter buttons along the top which allow quick filtering of various types of messages.

Our design and development teams are working hard to make sure that the new Social UI will provide Entropians with a vastly more effective and user-friendly platform to communicate and connect with friends, society mates and other Entropia Universe participants.

More preview screenshots will be shared as the exciting new Social UI approaches release.

Infrastructure Upgrades
The infrastructure upgrades discussed in the previous Developer Notes #6 continue moving forward, though several unforeseen issues have resulted in the 14.3 Version Update being delayed by several weeks. As our engineers and devs resolve those issues and a more firm date for VU14.3 becomes clear, we will update the community here on the Entropia Universe Buzz.

Thanks for your patience!