AlphaMapper Progress Continues

Hey everyone!  I'm still on break through the end of this week, but I'd like to share a couple of things so it's not totally dead around here...

AlphaMapper Progress Continues


Byte has returned to work on the AlphaMapper and it's gettin ever-closer to being able to produce maps.  I understand the long wait-time may be frustrating to some Alphaworld builders, but I've been keeping up with Byte through the whole process and I can vouch that he's really taking the long, arduous road -- making all of the components himself -- so that when the product is finally done, the new AlphaMapper can be much more versatile than a simple mapper.  I think a lot of his recent promo videos and screenshots can attest to that.  One such video is below, where we see that he's got avatars and masks up and running.



Byte keeps a blog about AlphaMapper progress, which you can find in our 'What's new in AW?' sidebar links.  If anything new hits, you'll be sure to find it there!

Town Hall Meeting


This week's Town Hall Meeting will be today in AWSchool (Click to Teleport) at 6pm VRT.  From the looks of things there are a lot of big ideas floating around that need some dedicated volunteers.  If you've got the time and are up to it, feel free to step out and lend a hand.  :)


Annnnd that's it for me.  I'll try to get a new poll up this week, but I'm heading into finals so there's no guarantee.  Later!

Weekly Poll 1 Results

Sorry for the delay on this, everyone.  Here are the results from our first "Weekly" Poll:

• Question: What should the status of V4 Rights be in Alphaworld?
• Total Votes: 15 
  
• V4 Rights should be available to all users -- citizens and tourists.
• 2 Votes
• ~13% of the vote 
• V4 Rights should be available to all citizens.
• 13 Votes
• ~86% of the vote
• V4 Rights should be available to users that have earned rights.
• 0 Votes
• V4 Rights should not be available in Alphaworld.
• 0 Votes

Analysis
As you can see from the poll, our readership here at AWBuilder was very much in support of V4 Rights being extended. There were NO votes in support of the existing arrangement.  At the time, V4 rights were restricted to citizens who had earned them in building competitions.  Earlier this month, however, AWI released the rights to all users in the world -- including tourists.  I personally feel this was the more prudent solution for AWI, since the existing arrangement had been broken due to a bot problem, and was estimated to have takenat least a month to repair. This also frees them from the responsibility of having to maintenance the bot (and the rights list).

The addition of tourists V4 rights was a surprise, and there still seems to be some debate on that.  The argument against tourist V4s generally follows that if anyone was to abuse it, it would be an anonymous user under a Tourist account.  There is some precedent for this, and I suppose if it does become a problem tourist rights could be restricted in the future.  For the time being, at least, allowing tourists to play with this powerful feature could be a boon for retaining new users.

AD&DRPG - Dragon Coins

Some good news came out for AW games last week as DM Mercury introduced a new element of gameplay to AD&DRPG -- Dragon Coins.

"Some elder dragons have started distributing a new form of currency in the Mid-Rift to their lesser minions in order to gain their support for an uprising.  This currency is quite magical and in the hands of a player can be quite powerful giving players extra abilities that they would not have otherwise had.

You can acquire dragon coins by killing monsters once you are level 10 and fighting monsters who are at least level 10.  Not all monsters will have Dragon Coins.  If you receive a Dragon Coin it will be added to your character automatically, and you will receive a pretty pink message after the kill.

You can view your current Dragon Coins on the /stats command."

So in essence, a special currency was introduced to the game that allows players to perform special commands when they acquire enough of it. The commands that have currently been implemented are as follows:

• /dragon heal
• Cost: 1 coin
• Heals both HP and MP to full
• /dragon gold
• Cost: 1 coin
• Gives you 200gp
• /dragon teleport list 
• Cost: 0 coins
• Lists teleports you have and how many times you can teleport there.
• /dragon bind (n) 
• Cost: 25 dragon coins for 50 teleports
• Sets your current location to teleport (n).  The value of (n) must be 1,2, or 3.  Warning this will override any previous teleport and reset the number of teleports you have to 50.  
• Example usage: /dragon bind 2
• /dragon teleport (n) 
• Cost: 1 teleport
• Teleports you to a previously defined teleport via /dragon bind (n).  Teleports are specific to a Teleport (n), where n is the value 1,2, or 3 that you set your teleport to.  
• Example usage: /dragon teleport 1
•  /dragon refresh (n) 
• Cost: 5 dragon coins for 10 teleports
• This allows you to add 10 more teleports to a bind location you have already set.  
• Example usage: /dragon refresh 3

The big feature here seems to be personalized teleportation... which is great in a game like AD&DRPG where the player is always on the move, and doesn't necessarily have to have a 'home.'  This feature is still in development and DM Mercury is looking for suggestions, so if you have any feedback feel free to visit the forum thread concerning Dragon Coins.

BTW I'm on Break

In case you hadn't figured it out from the lack of activity here. ;)  School is very busy and there looks to be a whole heap of drama in AW at the moment, so I don't expect that I'm missing out on a whole lot.

While I've been away, Byte has released the latest version of the ActiveWorlds SDK .NET Wrapper on the forums. I'd like to dabble with this a bit once my summer classes have come to an end in early August, and if I make any progress I'll be sure to post it up here on the blog. :)

Another note... v4s were enabled for everyone in Alphaworld a couple of weeks ago.  Good news, right? :D

Town Hall Meeting going on NOW in AWesome World

AWesome World has reopened and is the setting of this week's Town Hall Meeting, which will be going on for the next two hours.

If you recall, the world was to be an inspired setting for younger users and their friends/family, but it fell into disrepair and neglect as many projects tend to do. RMConstruction is the current world caretaker and is looking for a new purpose for AWesome World, but that hasn't yet been decided by AWI.

Schedule of Topics: Click Here for AWForums Thread

Google+ Invites

I was able to get in yesterday after an invite from two separate individuals was delayed by nearly a day.  Despite the long wait-time, the system is fairly intuitive to use and seemed to hold up well when I dumped a 200-photo album of the BuildCity project onto the network.  Google+ had all of my info and uploads from other Google products I use (Blogger and Gmail primarily) ready to access as soon as I logged on, so I was able to pick up a profile picture from Blogger right away.  The integration is nice, and the features that I've discovered so far are straightforward and simple to figure out.

Anyway... who wants an invite?  Let me know by posting a comment here with your contact info and I'll drop you a line.  Just a small thanks for my readers. ;)

Noticeboard: AWExpo Cancelled, Texpo Announced

A bit of ruckus was caused earlier this week when GSK announced that in a joint decision with AWI, the 2011 AWExpo will be cancelled.  The AWExpo had a rough start out of the gate, and despite general community support the struggles came to a climax last week when a vandal took advantage of a Caretaker's privilege password to damage the world.  The Expo world closed in the following days and GSK looked to step down -- even making plans for a successor so that the expo could continue... but AWI did not accept the proposal, and thus the event will be ending.

Builders who have already made a booth have until Monday to save their progress before the world OP is closed.

In light of this decision, citizen Xandrah (Xandrake on the forums) has offered their private, P-100 sized world (RF3D world) up for a community expo that AWI won't be hosting.  The premise of this new event is essentially the same as the AWExpo, with the only difference being that the event dates have been bumped to mid-July and the attendance will likely be lower since AWI has pulled support from an Expo this year.

ActiveWorlds Technology Expo Dates

• June 30th - July 10th
• Registration is open; telegram Xandrah in-world
• Booth Building is Open
• Building Guidelines:
• If you have a plot please only build within your plot space.
• Please make sure your booth is to do with Active Worlds.
• If your booth is not about Active Worlds it will be deleted.
• July 11th
• Texpo Begins
• July 16th
• Texpo Ends

I am not sure yet if AWBuilder will be participating in the Texpo as I have a rather full schedule leading up to the event, but if I do I'll announce it here.  Hoping to see some good things come of it, and we wish it well. :)