A NEW version of the Vulcan Portal is now available! Version 236, for those of you new to 'upgrading' see below on what to do....

Summary of Version 236

01) How To Upgrade Your Portal
02) Community Decks
03) Download All New Or Changed Skins
04) Community Persona Information
05) New Persona Model With Long Hair
06) Revamped Default Persona Skins 2D And 3D
07) Graphical Enhancements
08) 3dVoiceChat
09) 3dVoiceChat Wallpaper
10) 3dVoiceChat Language & Passwords
11) 3dVoiceChat Lighting The Speaker
12) New SkinBadge
13) Need Assistance?

(1) How To Upgrade Your Portal

- So much has changed in this version that you should only upgrade your Portal when you know you will be on-line for a good 15 minutes. Obviously if you've got broad band then oh aren't you lucky!.

For newcomers, first make sure you have disabled any download assistance programs such as DAP or GetRight as they mess up the Portals Upgrading function.

(a) Run your existing Vulcan Portal
(b) Open the Upgrade Applications Panel
(c) Click the Upgrade Vulcan Portal button

..sit back, relax and let the Portal do it's thing.

(2) Community Decks

- This version now deletes obsolete personas from the community decks, when those decks are upgraded. This might not be noticeable to new comers to the Portal as they already download 'up to date' personas from the community, but for those of you who have been in the Portal for years, you should see allot of old personas being removed when a deck is upgraded.

(3) Download All New Or Changed Skins

- Due to popular request, this version offers a new button from within the Deck List Panel, previously (and still) you can download all 'new or changed' personas for all decks, now you can also download any 'new or changed' Skins for all decks.

This function will be great for new arrivals to the Portal as it means they can get up to date with the community very easily, and see how we all look. Although downloading the current 200+ Skins may take a few minutes, I'm sure it will be welcomed. For regulars to the Portal it simply means another option to get the latest skins prior to reading the updated persona messages.

(4) Community Persona Information

- This version offers an extra bit of information about personas that have been uploaded to the community decks. When viewing a personas welcome message you will now be able to tell the last version of the Portal they owned, prior to them uploading their persona. This will really only kick in, if they have version 236 and higher, and will simply say 0 if they have a version older than 236. For this reason once you have this new Portal version you should upload your persona to the Vulcan Orbiter straight away.

(5) New Persona Model With Long Hair

- This version offers a new persona model to choose from, which has long hair, well more like shoulder length hair. We did call it female-large as we also widened this models face, but on testing we found it also works for males, so this can be used generically.

(6) Revamped Default Persona Skins 2D And 3D

- We have also revamped all of the persona default skins so they now work with this new long haired model and also revamped all of the guides, newsreaders and lizardian skins. Because of this we also changed the 2D skins for those of you who don't have the correct hardware to enable Mother3D.

(7) Graphical Enhancements

- This version has had allot of graphical enhancements here and there, the ones being more noticeable than others will be in your Persona Settings Panel and the Mail Tray Panels. They have also got some text based buttons to help new comers find their way around the panels more easily.

(8) 3dVoiceChat

- This version has had allot of work done on 3dVoiceChat, firstly we have now fixed the bug that garbled persona names in the 'what is being said' panel and now your guide announces 'arrivals and departures' to your chat session. This is handy if you are looking away, as you can now hear who has arrived in your cell and also know their names before they start to speak.

(9) 3dVoiceChat Wallpaper

- This version has implemented a new feature especially for Princess Soosan on deck 24. It is a selection of wallpaper that you can choose for your cell when launching a chat session, giving you that personal touch. At present the wallpaper selection is pretty rubbish, but these will change over the coming days and we will try to add more.

(10) 3dVoiceChat Language & Passwords

- This version now displays the language of the personas cell who opened it for a chat session. This is handy as we recently had a spanish speaking persona enter an english speaking cell and it was utter chaos. Also you may see in the list of personas with cell doors open, a space for a padlock symbol. This is the start of the password system that will be implemented in full in the next Portal version.

(11) 3dVoiceChat Lighting The Speaker

- This version has a test new feature, we are not 100% sure about it yet, but it changes the lighting of the persona who is currently speaking. We would love some feedback on this, as we are still not sure if this is a good thing or not.

(12) New SkinBadge

- And finally this version offers the image for the Eternal Knights SkinBadge

(13) Need Assistance?

- As usual, any problems, simply reply to this email, and you'll get a personal response.