Are you on fire?

Not so much.  If it weren't for the developers of other altcoins, a lot of these changes and additions would have needed to have been written from scratch.  I am glad for the work they have done, and their decision to release their work under an open source license as well.  I don't believe coin vs coin will get us anywhere.  In the end, we are all working toward common goals.

Not at all.  Demand for features essentially implies both confidence in our ability to deliver as well as conveys demand for LTCD as a whole.  That said, and this was a perfect example of it, but fixes are generally more important than features which is why the original difficulty shield update (feature) was so important.  We needed a module that would be useful for making us multipool resistant at the time, and shield did its job nicely.  Once again we tried a traditional hard fork, and it failed due to a combination of heavy-handed pool operators that were not able (or not willing) to update in time and what could be seen as a bug in bitcoin proper.  Shield provided us with a nice workaround for the issue by making possible the capability of writing a tiny (~8-10 lines of code) module for the shield engine that once again reinforces the benefit we could gain by moving as much of LTCD out of core as possible.

^ This.  That said, my vote was not one in favor of quite such a drastic drop, but more of a gradual reduction.  That said, I am only one person, and just because I'm the guy that writes the code does not put me in charge of the decisions that are made.  That responsibility lies with the community, and the community voted for a drastic reward reduction.  This type of community-governed change is exactly why I support LTCD and will continue to implement features, updates, fixes, and complete the work laid out in the roadmap without question or hesitation.

My opinion is that this is what open source is all about.  I will continue to deliver the changes requested by the community to the best of my ability.

Looks like we made the transition smoothly, and Difficulty Shield's modular design played a big part in this one.  A stub difficulty engine was built and made effective at block 59999 which essentially makes "all blocks" zero difficulty.  At block 60000, control of network difficulty was once again passed to the KGW-based module which has a maximum upward adjustment which allowed us to ease back into a proper block schedule.

Essentially, what we've just done was modularly swap difficulty algorithms on the fly using shield's OO architecture not once, but twice within just a few blocks.

This is what all the delay was for.

Best of luck to you all.  I already have several changes planned for the next update.

Yes.  Code has been written.  Quite a bit, actually. 

I'll let you know as soon as I get my Mac fixed.

Updated links:

Windows 32-bit Wallet: https://github.com/TrollByFire/litecoindark-staging/releases/download/v1.2.2/LitecoinDark-v1.2.2-win32.zip
Linux 64-bit Wallet: https://github.com/TrollByFire/litecoindark-staging/releases/download/v1.2.2/litecoindark-v1.2.2-linux-x86_64.zip

Apologies if this causes any confusion, I needed to separate the OS/architecture in the filenames on the github.  I've contacted Xircom via email and asked him to update the links in the announcement post accordingly.

Don't worry about deleting the blockchain unless you have some weird sync issue.
Thanks.

The announcement isn't even out yet, lol.  It won't do much good for me to try to do tech support for it's "officially" released and not just "discovered".

One with actual info.   Patience.

Wow.  You guys are fast.  I'm not even 100% convinced the wallet had time to finish uploading by the time you had noticed it. 

Announcement will come very soon.

Ok, after informing the team of my status and waiting an additional 24 hours, I've got a slight status update to release to you all re: 1.2.2 update / hard fork.  

After running numerous tests, we basically have 3 options to make this fork happen that have succeeded in every single test run I've done.  I have 3 separate builds of the wallet with which I've been testing, all of which are release-ready as of about 3 hours ago, each one implementing a different technique for making this reward drop a reality.  I've also been brainstorming some additional ideas with which to extend the longevity of the mining period and after this fork is complete I'll be speaking with the team about it and we will likely hold another poll to see how the community feels about these changes.

We are slightly (a couple of days) behind schedule now due to some unforeseen issues that came up during the testing/debugging period, but I'm happy to report that we're back on track, and as soon as I have had the chance to meet with the rest of the team, we're ready to release the 1.2.2 wallet.

This wallet will be a mandatory update in any case as it will implement a new hard fork of the blockchain (this was unavoidable), however, which method we're planning to use to deploy said update is still up for team discussion.  This prevents me from releasing any information on the specifics for the time being.

Also, I've been looking at a target block window of ~96 hours (still a bit short for my tastes) for the hard fork block target.  I'd like to get some community input before I set a hard target block.  How long do you all feel is a sufficient period to allow for exchanges and pools to update?

Let me know either here or via PM, and I'll discuss your feedback with the rest of the team ASAP.

Apologies for taking so long, I just needed to be 100% ready before deploying such an important update.

Full changelog will be included with the wallet for anyone who "has to know" what's new immediately.

All of that said, it is currently 4:58 am here in US/Eastern, and I'm exhausted.  This release will happen some time after I've had a bit of rest to prepare for the chaos that is sure to ensue.

I'm not a market guru, just a lowly developer, but generally speaking at a halving increased coin supply diminishes with respect to demand pushing the price upward.

This is also why 1.2.2 isn't out yet.  I'm waiting on blocks, the same as everyone else.  Thanks for helping to clarify this.

This confusion has got to stop.  I'm not sure where the fault lies, but I can clearly state this, as I have already stated.

LitecoinDark v1.1.2 (released Wednesday) DOES NOT contain hard fork code.  Has not, and will never.  This means until I push the next update, there will be no reward drop.
LitecoinDark v1.2.2 (to be released tonight hopefully unless something dire happens) DOES contain hard fork code and will cause the block reward to drop.

I have not stated anywhere a target block or when the drop will occur. - This information will be outlined clearly when 1.2.2 is released.

Forgive my frustration, but I have absolutely no idea where or why anyone has given any information stating that the fork would happen before 1.2.2 is released.  Everything I've been reading has been wild speculation.    1.2.2 is functionally finished and ready, but before I release anything I run tests, both unit tests, as well as functional tests.  I run various simulations with various sets of hashing power and cannot verify my test results until blocks are mined on a private main and testnet (different genesis block as I am not able to test effectively on LTCD's blockchain).  This is how I'm able to ensure that something runs smoothly before an update is released.

That said, running said simulations takes time.  The coin's parameters don't change just because I'm running a contained test.  To ensure my test results are valid, I have to test at specific difficulties with my own limited hashing capabilities.  I've had to rent hashrate multiple times in order to test and deploy these changes, and have spent over 0.5BTC in total out of pocket trying to make this happen.

If everyone could please calm down.  I'll get it out when I can get it out.

A big thanks to those of you who have been reading and try to help those who have not or have not understood what they've read.

Whoa! Miscommunication there, the "secret" is out that an update is coming tonight.  There is no hard fork in 1.1.2, ease up, keep your pants on, lol.  I'm still working.  Release as soon as possible with more details.

I wasn't wrong about the wild speculation thing, apparently, lol.

Actually I was referring to a fixed, better planned, better deployed rollout of the 1.2 update with a few changes and additions.  I guess with some of the rumors and confusion that have been flying around, people are getting understandably confused.  We'll clarify when the update is released.  Changelog will be available.  

Naturally wild speculation will probably happen shortly after I post this.  Everyone please, keep your pants on.

Actually getting an x86-64 build for windows is already high on my priority list.  I've been working on getting the build system redone a bit and getting the compile going via visual studio to speed up the testing cycle a bit, and easily changing a flag and recompiling for 64-bit is one of the perks of such a setup.  I'm still working on today's update, so I haven't had time to get that build finished (actually it compiles fine as is, but I'm having some minor linker issues that I'll have sorted out soon after today's release, I'm sure) but progress is being made.

Well... That was certainly... something.

Back to work, I guess.

Double check your version number on the about page.  Should say 1.1.2-dev if you're on the right wallet.  The block number you posted suggests you're using the 1.2 wallet which is now defunct due to the failed fork.