A little update on the upcoming updates:

Now that I know what workload to expect from my daytime job during the next weeks I am afraid I won't be able to include all the missing items this month. I would love to... but work comes first since I already took a lot of time off for the SP-Studio relaunch. Two important and time consuming website projects have started and I cannot let my clients wait. So the SP-Studio roadmap looks like this (this is just the current plan):

• During January and February my ygoal is to have one update every Sunday until all old items are back.
• Every update will focus on one incomplete category.
• You will spot one or two new surprise items in each of these updates to make them more interesting.

Initially my plan was to only focus on the old items until they are complete, but it might bore you to see week after week with just old items. So I will add a small amount of new items to spice things up a bit.

The updates on features which require complex coding (improved loading times, button to turn off shading,...) depend on Lars and might come in between my content updates or later.

Yes, there's supposed to be an update with all the missing hats this weekend.

It's okay, but you can still help to improve the loading times by providing more information about your problem. So if you have time can you please tell me how many seconds the SP-Studio needs to load on your different devices? And can you use the link I posted to check your internet (download) speed for each of them?

DavidSchwarz thank you

By the way, these are the numbers for my own setup:

• Windwos PC, Edge or Firefox browser: 2 seconds (8 seconds after update)
  internet download speed: 46,2 mbit/s
• Galaxy A5 smartphone, Samsung browser: 14 seconds
  internet download speed: 28,9 mbit/s

Perhaps everybody could post their own data so I can compare it?

They count, as long as your description makes clear how it is connected to 2020.

And I think they can get many votes as long as the picture is created in a creative way. So go ahead.

I am always listening to criticism, but maybe it is a little harsh to say "because it’s not being fun to play SP-Studio with this constant slow loading."? The initial reason for the loading times in the beginning are to avoid constant loading issues and freezing while building your character. By loading everything in the beginning the experience should get smooth after this. So I am little bit confused now. Are you only experiencing long loading in the beginning when reloading the SP-Studio - or are you having constant loading problems while using the SP-Studio? Because this would be new.

That said, I got reports about long loading times in the beginning when visiting the website for the first time and after an update. So this is a known iussue we hope to improve in the near future (Lars has to do this, because it involves complicated coding). It has a high priority. But so far this only seemed to be a problem for these certain moments. When you revisit the website the loading times usually go back to normal. Updates won't come as often after the old items are all included, so I think it's okay to have a longer loading time maybe once in two weeks. Is this really ruining the fun? I mean... it's not a regular website, it's more like a videogame that has to load a lot of assets.

If you experience very long loading times in the beginning everytime you visit the website please test how many seconds it needs so I can compare it to what should be normal:

• How long does the loading take exactly?
• Do you see the loading animation in the upper left corner?
• What's your download speed (you can easily check it here: https://www.google.com/search?q=internet+speed+test )
• Is it different on a desktop computer (seconds & download speed)?

The internet connection is very important, so this is why I ask for the results of the speed test.

(there were server issues around new year's eve, so the big freezing problems back then were a special issue)

The contests are back! And as it is tradition we will start with a look back at the year 2020.

Create a SP-Studio picture about an event from last year. I guess there's plenty to choose from. We saw exciting new movies and tv shows, cried about dead celebrities, had fun with the launch of Disney+ and the relaunch of the SP-Studio. And a little pandemic was happening as well.

The rules are as always:

1. CREATE a SP-Studio picture about the topic of the month
   
2. UPLOAD your unedited picture until the 20th
   
3. VOTING will start on the 21st on the contest page
   
4. THE WINNERS will be announced at the start of next month

Rules for pictures:

You are only allowed to use the SP-Studio (the old one or the new one), so do not edit with additional software. No cutting, drawing or filters. You are allowed to resize your picture, but make sure it's at least 300x300 px big. The original size is best. Of course it must be your own creation. Please add a fitting title / description to show how it is related to the topic.

Update: new skin & old places

After the successful relaunch and your positive feedback I am super motivated to include more items. So let’s start with this huge update:

• 24 NEW skin related items (more freckles, beauty marks, wounds, scars, body hair, tears…)
• 31 places from the old SP-Studio are back, so this category is now complete
• labels for the buttons to recolor items were added by Lars to avoid confusion

The skin items are a special gift to my Patreon supporters. They can be found in the “wounds” and “more skin related items” categories and are marked with yellow stars. Soon you can expect more updates to bring back items from the old SP-Studio – and a new contest will start in less than an hour. I just wanted to get the update online first.

Technical difficulties. The preparations for the update were finished hours ago, but suddenly the saving button does not work anymore. So I cannot upload the update until we (most likely Lars) found the reason for this error.

The first one will be online in a couple of hours

Time zones can be confusing, so here is a little reminder for everybody who wants to join: The livestream will start in about 1 hour and 30 minutes.

What a nice surprise, welcome back, Dana!

We have been following each other on Instagram, so it feels like I am at least a little bit up to date. But it would be great to chat more in the forum as well. Everybody is welcome to revive old topics or to start new ones.

By the way: I am very sorry for the missing accounts. No posts are missing (that#s the good news), but it looks like some of the old accounts which were not very active in the new forum got changed into guest accounts atomatically. I have been using this forum software for my German South Park forum since 2002 and nothing like this ever happened over there. Unfortunately it looks like there is no way to convert the guest back to a regular user account.

This looks amazing, I love it!

I did some animation in the past so I know how difficult it is and how much work you must have put into this. This looks way more professional than anything I ever did.

May I share a link to the video on the SP-Studio Twitter / Facebook accounts?

Indeed this is no longer possible because the coding works this way. Every item has a unique ID and when you change its color or position this is saved. So unfortunately dupliactes won't work because there's just this single ID they'd have to share.

In Flash it was only possible because I included the same item three times (= three IDs) for the "freestyle collection". So it wasn't even clever coding, it was just three items that looked the same and some boring extra work for me. The new "lock" system brings more possibilities because it works for all 1500 objects (soon 2000) and not just for 65 shirts. So I don't really think it's less fun this way, because instead of combining two bikini tops you can choose from a wider variety of tops. But who knows - perhaps it will be possible in the future to have duplicates? I would not completely deny it yet.

Regarding a "shapes" category: I remember discussing this sveral years ago and we came to the conclusion that it would be strange to have an abstract category only a small amount ot people asked for. And as far as I remember some of you told me the fun for them in building creative pictures was to use regular objects in a different way, so extra shapes would be boring. This is why I never included it. But there already are some shapes in the shirt motifes category and I see no reason why not to include more there.

The button to turn off shadows should make a huge difference though, because I makesure more items than before will react to it. This will make it possible to use big items without shadows as shapes - not just hair.

Hello, welcome to our little forum.

And thank you very much for the kind feedback.

I'm back from my little break and will continue to include all items from the old SP-Studio and fix some minor bugs. The plan is to release an update this weekend, but I will have to see how busy my first week of work will be.

@ former betatesters: Since I am still using the same test server the former beta testers might be able to see what I am working on if I test it online - but your job is officially over, so you can avoid looking if you don't want to spoil anything to yourself. If you want to have a look feel free to do so and of course you can still report bugs to the bug report. But please don't spoil anything for others by writing about it in public.

I now noticed that around December 31st / January 1st my server had some problems, so this was very likely caused by this.

It's difficult to tell right now what might be the reason... the loading times seem to vary a lot. I'll report it to Lars, but we will have to dig deeper into what exactly causes this.

DavidSchwarz Did you experience the loading problems on your smartphone or PC? Or on both?

Happy new year everybody!

I am planning to return to the SP-Studio livestreams next week:

https://www.twitch.tv/zwergimbikini
Friday, 8.1.2021 at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET) - about 1 hour long

This one will be about preparing the next updates.

On Saturday the 9th another German "movie talk" will follow with a look back at the movies of 2020.

This is the first report of this kind, so I cannot tell what might have caused it. Is anybody else experiencing these problems?

Have you tried to clear the browser cache in the Chrome settings?