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!
Showing posts with label AWSchool. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AWSchool. Show all posts
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Tours - YOU are the Key to Retaining Newcomers
College has me busy busy these days, but in my downtime I've been able to read an excellent narrative by Urbane Chaos that detailed an encounter he had with a new user. Unless you've been in some sort of cave or bomb-shelter, you've heard by now of the really great effort that Urbane Chaos and others have been putting into renovating AWTours; that effort has paid off as AWTours became the setting for U.C. and his tourist acquaintance, and the infrastructure for that tourist to become familiar with the Active Worlds technology as well as its community.
By the end of the post we as readers had been challenged to "go the extra mile" for new tourists, many of whom may still be having difficulty achieving flight or leaving AWGate. The whole story was great and is the sort of hands-on experience that new users need to make any sort of word-of-mouth advertising successful. It especially had me beaming by the end because this story read so much like a similar encounter I had a couple of years ago. The circumstances were different -- I ended up spending an evening building with a tourist -- but the experience the same. Read on, as we turn back the clock to the far-distant year... 2009.
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| An informative location in the recently renovated AWTours world |
By the end of the post we as readers had been challenged to "go the extra mile" for new tourists, many of whom may still be having difficulty achieving flight or leaving AWGate. The whole story was great and is the sort of hands-on experience that new users need to make any sort of word-of-mouth advertising successful. It especially had me beaming by the end because this story read so much like a similar encounter I had a couple of years ago. The circumstances were different -- I ended up spending an evening building with a tourist -- but the experience the same. Read on, as we turn back the clock to the far-distant year... 2009.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Weekend - Events for the Weekend of 3/25/11
Hey everyone! There will be a lot of events in Activeworlds this weekend, so I'd like to throw up some links for you guys to keep track of everything! I think I'll start doing this on busy weekends to help 'direct traffic' in regards to events. :)
Note: If you're looking for events or looking to advertise your event, I recommend that you register with AWPortals, because you will have access to view and create events on the AWPortals Events Calendar and you will also receive a weekend newsletter.
Events for the Weekend of 3/25/11
Events are listed by order of occurrence. VRT time is GMT (-2)
Please leave a comment if you know of events that have not been posted, and I will add them!
Note: If you're looking for events or looking to advertise your event, I recommend that you register with AWPortals, because you will have access to view and create events on the AWPortals Events Calendar and you will also receive a weekend newsletter.
Events for the Weekend of 3/25/11
Events are listed by order of occurrence. VRT time is GMT (-2)
Please leave a comment if you know of events that have not been posted, and I will add them!
- Ongoing
- Extreme Builder Talent Show 4
- Ongoing until April 5
- Participants can win v4 rights for public worlds in this contest!
- Friday, March 25, 2011
- Futuristic Creations Building Contest ENDS
- Prizes: Citizenship Extensions
- 1:00 a.m. VRT - Contest ends!!
- AWTeen 29.024s 3243.996w 1.3a 84
- Millionaire - Season 3 Premiere
- 7:00 p.m. VRT - 9:00 p.m. VRT
- Flagg03 World - ^jump wwtbam
- AWForums: Link
- Saturday, March 26, 2011
- AlphaMapper Facebook/Twitter Contest
- AWBingo7
- Prizes: 1-month citizenship, p-10 worlds, +1 bot limit increases
- 4:30 p.m. VRT - (Sunday) 2:00 a.m. VRT
- AWBingo7 World
- AWSchool Spring Fashion Show
- Designs by Mace and Ridley
- 10:00 p.m. VRT - (Sunday) 3:00 a.m. VRT
- AWSchool 71N 140W 1.0a 0
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Interactive Building Class: 5pm VRT on Saturday
Hey guys! I just wanted to check in and say that, if all goes well, I'll be able to host an Interactive Building class this Saturday at 5pm VRT!
I also wanted to make a correction... that Byte's class will be taking place next weekend, not this one. I'll try to get a full post up later... had a bomb of a paper due today. :(
Later!
I also wanted to make a correction... that Byte's class will be taking place next weekend, not this one. I'll try to get a full post up later... had a bomb of a paper due today. :(
Later!
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Decided on a class topic for Saturday
I'll be teaching a class in AWSchool on Saturday as part of the new AWUniversity effort, and the topic will be Interactive Building. This continues in the vein where Byte began last weekend while covering timers, but I think I'll be moving in a different direction with it. My feel of it as of today is that I won't be going over a specific command, but rather showing some examples of how to use multiple commands in tandem and encouraging creative uses of commands to achieve an interactive scene.
So for example, picture a scene where a man greets you upon entering a room and tells you that the door to the room beyond is locked. You can open it, but he's lost the key! If you can find the key, you can use it on the door and open it to continue forward. This is an easy interactive scene to set up, and in its simplest incarnation only requires the use of the say and visible commands to set up. You would, of course, want to use other commands to enhance the quality of the scene, but in general the creative combination of commands can provide a vivid experience in the virtual environment.
Ideally I would get to teach the class after Byte's shear/skew class, with some time for intermission. I'd like to set up some interactive examples perhaps half an hour before the class starts and let people play with them, and then we could get right into it. If you have any examples of things you would like to see just let me know, and I'll try to have that set up as well.
If I have some time to get into Active Worlds this week, I'll take some video of some existing examples of cutscenes and interactive games that I've worked on and post them up here. Stay tuned!
So for example, picture a scene where a man greets you upon entering a room and tells you that the door to the room beyond is locked. You can open it, but he's lost the key! If you can find the key, you can use it on the door and open it to continue forward. This is an easy interactive scene to set up, and in its simplest incarnation only requires the use of the say and visible commands to set up. You would, of course, want to use other commands to enhance the quality of the scene, but in general the creative combination of commands can provide a vivid experience in the virtual environment.
Ideally I would get to teach the class after Byte's shear/skew class, with some time for intermission. I'd like to set up some interactive examples perhaps half an hour before the class starts and let people play with them, and then we could get right into it. If you have any examples of things you would like to see just let me know, and I'll try to have that set up as well.
If I have some time to get into Active Worlds this week, I'll take some video of some existing examples of cutscenes and interactive games that I've worked on and post them up here. Stay tuned!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Building - Byte's Interactive Building Class, detailing the At trigger and Timer command
For anyone who missed it, Byte taught an excellent class detailing AT trigger and Timer command today. This topic was of particular interest to me, because I love building games and characters you can interact with. Virtual buildings and cities are great, but what's the point if they're lifeless?
Both of these new features exist to make interactive building a bit easier, and they expand upon what we could do originally with astart scripting. For those of you who are lost, here's a rundown:
AT trigger - The at trigger will activate commands after a set amount of time, or at a scheduled time in VRT.
Both of these new features exist to make interactive building a bit easier, and they expand upon what we could do originally with astart scripting. For those of you who are lost, here's a rundown:
AT trigger - The at trigger will activate commands after a set amount of time, or at a scheduled time in VRT.
Byte: The at trigger has two uses. It is used to either trigger a set of commands at a certain point during a timer, or to trigger a set of commands in sync with the VRT clock.TIMER command - The timer command creates a timer in memory that allows a user to activate events after a set amount of time.
Byte: First off the timer command can be used with any trigger, even the at trigger, to create, reset, or stop a timer with a given name.
Byte: Every timer has a duration, which is the number of milliseconds the timer will last for.
Byte: An example of a timer called ABC with a duration of 1 second would be: create timer ABC 1000
Byte: Timers have multiple parameters, though. They take the form: <trigger> timer tmName duration [loop=1] [stop | reset] [global]
Friday, February 25, 2011
Help me pick a topic!
Hey guys! I've been asked to teach a class for the new AWUniversity project in AWSchool, and I'd be happy to... but I don't know what to teach! I threw up a poll on the AWForums with a few things that I feel comfortable talking about, so head over there and pick what you're interested in. Hopefully from the feedback I'll be able to structure a class, perhaps for next weekend. :)
Link: http://forums.activeworlds.com/showthread.php?t=14950
Link: http://forums.activeworlds.com/showthread.php?t=14950
Sunday, February 20, 2011
From 3D to 2D: How do you express a 3D product in a 2D browser?
How do you express a 3D product in a 2D browser? I raised this concern during the flamefest regarding the update to activeworlds.com a while back, and I don't think the question has ever been resolved.
Supposing that the best place to begin is experience, perhaps we can look to how we learned in the browser. We all know what Active Worlds is; how to use it, where to go to find people... its various nuances that we like or dislike. Learning about that took some time -- even though I was hooked on my first day. Building certainly took a while to understand, even if my first attempts were pretty awful. (BTW, I know those coordinates in my memory even after all these years!) Despite a rough beginning, I did manage to learn about correctly spacing objects and I had a great time doing it! From my first build I went on to create my first town, and as I began interacting and collaborating with other users, very early on I understood that we all had a different level of competency with the technology, and looking back on that now perhaps that has to do with how we came to experience Active Worlds and virtual technology in general. One guy came in right from AWGate. I came to build after getting some help in AWNewbie. A few days later I brought in a friend from class and taught him myself! Back in 2002, there were plenty of ways for new users to learn and understand Active Worlds.
Today, this is still true. Perhaps not to the magnitude, but AWGate is much more educational than it has been in the past, and AWSchool is more active than I've ever known it to be. AWNewbie has seen better days, but the framework is still there and generally, if a new user wants to learn, well, they'll have plenty of options. This is all well and good for the ones who have made it as far as AWGate, but I think our focus needs to move even further out. Out beyond our universe -- to the 2D web browsers that are the bread and butter of the typical internet user's experience. What does Active Worlds look like... to them?
Supposing that the best place to begin is experience, perhaps we can look to how we learned in the browser. We all know what Active Worlds is; how to use it, where to go to find people... its various nuances that we like or dislike. Learning about that took some time -- even though I was hooked on my first day. Building certainly took a while to understand, even if my first attempts were pretty awful. (BTW, I know those coordinates in my memory even after all these years!) Despite a rough beginning, I did manage to learn about correctly spacing objects and I had a great time doing it! From my first build I went on to create my first town, and as I began interacting and collaborating with other users, very early on I understood that we all had a different level of competency with the technology, and looking back on that now perhaps that has to do with how we came to experience Active Worlds and virtual technology in general. One guy came in right from AWGate. I came to build after getting some help in AWNewbie. A few days later I brought in a friend from class and taught him myself! Back in 2002, there were plenty of ways for new users to learn and understand Active Worlds.Today, this is still true. Perhaps not to the magnitude, but AWGate is much more educational than it has been in the past, and AWSchool is more active than I've ever known it to be. AWNewbie has seen better days, but the framework is still there and generally, if a new user wants to learn, well, they'll have plenty of options. This is all well and good for the ones who have made it as far as AWGate, but I think our focus needs to move even further out. Out beyond our universe -- to the 2D web browsers that are the bread and butter of the typical internet user's experience. What does Active Worlds look like... to them?
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