The Dogwaffler of the Moment newsletter - Issue #54

Hello again.

Here's another update from Project Dogwaffle.

New Product: Dan's Royalty-free Soundtrack Music collection #1
Coming soon: PD Pro 8.2d (!)
Videos: A look at what's changed since the old free version
Mid-April promo: 15% off PD Howler 8 and 7

As usual, you can also find the html version here:

http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/newsletter

New Product: Royalty-free Soundtrack Music collection #1

Do you create animations, videos, multimedia productions? Do you wish you could add some epic background music, soundtracks to acoustically enhance the visuals of your battle scenes, of a space flight or an midnight chase? Could your corporate presentations benefit from a little "umpf"?

Dan Ritchie, the author of Project Dogwaffle, has released a first collection of soundtracks for royalty-free use. These affordably priced musical bits are released with broadcast license, so you can use them in videos you post on the web, and many other ways. But they're also great just to listen to.

The new soundtrack collection features over an hour of high quality royalty free music for your production, film or video. Contact the author if you have questions regarding other usage needs, such as inside your games and apps. Broadcast licenses are $24.99. The new collection can be found at http://www.squirreldome.com

Volume 1 features:

Alien Visitation
Dinosaur danger
Space and mech battles
General science fiction
Cartoon and furry animal

General music for production

For sample previews you can also see and listen here: http://www.thebest3d.com/music/dr where you'll also see examples where the music was used in a video, such as at the start and end of a tutorial video.

Welcome to waffling and howling, and now also.... to listening!

Free samples/Previews here ====>

Coming soon: PD Pro 8.2d

As mentioned in recent newsletters, PD Pro 8.2b and 8.2c was released for PD Artist edition only, whereas PD Pro 8.2 was released for Howler. We have continued to make more improvements, additions and bug fixes, and are preparing a release that will probably be known as 8.2d (perhaps 8.3), but either way, we're hanging on to our beloved Egret, to Skyock's Egret that is.

If you already have 8.0/8.1/8.2, this will be a free update for you when it is released. At this time, we expect this to be released sometime mid-late April. If you still use an earlier version from before v8, this is a good time to upgrade. Contact us if you need your upgrade discount coupon. Remember that you'll get a full installer with your order of an upgrade, so you don't have to have the old version functioning anymore, in case for example you have since bought a new computer, or the hard driver crashed and you lost the old version.

Also remember that if you're a student, you can get 70% discount off the full price.

What's new in 8.2d?

Rewritten and improved tablet support (including Monoprice tablets)
Running under UAC (Windows User Account Control) with limited rights
New gradient grabbing tool
New cosmetic options
Several areas of speed improvements
Fixed black icon bug that showed up on certain systems
Error console helps when submitting bug reports
New ruler feature

Rewritten and improved tablet support

Our tablet code is rewritten from the ground up to be more robust and easier to use. If a device is plugged in, you can now enable pressure while the program is still running. We also found that there was a problem with Monoprice drivers when the program was running at a different elevation level than the drivers. This has been addressed, and the program now defaults to running without administrator elevation. In the past, turning off the UAC would solve the problem, but we found that UAC cannot be fully disabled under Windows 8, and it is not a good practice to require users to disable an OS component. That's fully up to them.

Running under UAC with limited rights

Formerly, we ran with administrator rights elevation, but this has been changed so that we no longer require running as administrator. It is still optional as part of our installer. This should open up the program to more users, such as schools and organizations that don't allow users administrator rights. (Administration is required for install only)

New gradient grabbing tool

There is a new tool under the FX tools to pick up the colors in a line on screen to make a new gradient.

New cosmetic options

There is a new “flat look” option that makes sidebar tabs appear with a flat style. Icons have received a moderate makeover, fixing minor pixel level problems and making them sharper and more consistent.

Several areas of speed improvement

We found that the shift function was very sluggish with large images, and that has been spead up by several orders of magnitude. There may be some other areas of speed improvement as well.

Fixed black icon bug that showed up on certain systems

A bug that has haunted us for a long time has been addressed. A blitting error that occasionally manifested as black icons on certain machines has been fixed.

Error console helps when submitting bug reports

We now feature an error console under the Window/other menu that displays information that can be useful when diagnosing problems or submitting bug reports.

New ruler feature

The ruler now displays tick marks that are useful to line up the pointer with the ruler. The ruler is now formatted for various zoom levels. This is an addition to changes made to the ruler in version 8.2.

Videos: A look at what's changed since the old free version

If you use the freeware Project Dogwaffle 1.2, available at download.com and presented here ( http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/free ), this is for you.

You may be wondering: what's changed? What's New? What am I missing?

Well, in almost 10 years, a lot has changed.

For one, you could get a more recent version for free, if you're buying something else anyway. For example, when renewing an antivirus subscription, or signing up with Netflicks, sending flowers to mom for Mother's Day, or just about almost anything else you could want to buy or subscribe to, you're very likely able to get it through TrialPay. And when you do, you can get a free copy of some of the Project Dogwaffle releases. This includes PD Particles, PD 2, all the way up to PD Pro 5 and now also PD Pro 6 Artist! For more info, see here:

http://www.thebest3d.com/trialpay

We also have posted two videos in our Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/pdhowler) that show Dan Ritchie discussing and presenting some of the key advanced, such as the foliage brushes to draw a full tree in a single brush stroke, or using Multi-threading, the GPU and other acceleration and optimization techniques. Have a look here:

Part 1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39DtwpKHHq4&feature=share&list=UUhhWiBVGa-zLq52myfi-UlA

Part 2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axcSyOuudjI&feature=share&list=UUhhWiBVGa-zLq52myfi-UlA

Mid-April promo: 15% off PD Howler 8 and 7

Need a little help to get into PD Pro Howler 8 or 7?

PD Howler is on sale through the end of April. We are offering a 15% automatic discount on PD Pro Howler 7 and Howler 8. No discount coupon needed.

PD Pro 8 Howler: regular price $99 sale price: $84.15

PD Pro 7 Howler: regular price $69 sale price: $58.65

Final price shown in the BMTmicro order form.

Order here and choose Howler 8 or Howler 7:
http://www.thebest3d.com/dogwaffle/sales/#Howler

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