Activeworlds 16th Birthday Week Schedule

Hey everyone!  Bach Zhaa has posted the schedule of events for AW's 16th birthday next week, and I'm reposting it here to help get the word out.

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 Activeworlds 16 Birthday

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!

• Saturday, June 25, 2011
• Community Photograph
• AWGate World
• 6:00 p.m. VRT (Party Begins)
• Simply show up and follow the crowd to be part of the AW Community photograph!
• Forum Thread
• Facebook Event 
• Teleport to AWGate

• Sunday, June 26, 2011
• PKToons Celebrates AW Birthday
• AWMix07 World
  
• Noon Sunday through Monday 
• PKToons Events Announcement
• Teleport to AWMix07

• Tuesday, June 28, 2011
• Festival Under the Winter Stars
• Winter World
  
• Starting Midnight VRT
• "As in the past, We gather at the Picturesque Frozen Mountian Lake under the Aurora Lit Sky, for a Full Day & Night of Activities, Great Virlands RiChMeDiA Music & Endless Dancing."
• Forums Announcement Announcement here in the forums
• Teleport to Winter

• Wednesday, June 29, 2011
• Cypress Hollow Parade
• The Parade will be in AWTeen, in the city of Cypress Hollow
• Float Building Site:  ^jump float building

Happy Birthday to AW, and have a good week!

Images For Old Friends at Sonic HQ

A blast from the past found its way to me through MSN Messenger tonight, as Vector -- an old friend of mine from the Mobius Forums at Sonic HQ -- sent me a message out of the blue!  We got to catching up and he told me that the Mobius Forums were moving tomorrow, and invited me over to look around.  I've been taking a long trip down memory lane tonight, and as other forumers have been sharing memories from the past... I've been touching up an old location in AWTeen where our community at the Mobius Forums met the community here in Activeworlds.

The Sonic HQ Building Ground Zero - AWTeen 2500s 500e

The Sonic HQ Building was built by myself in 2003 as a virtual representation of our website and our community.  Located on some prime real-estate at AWTeen 2500s 500e, the building is as large as a P-10 world and the surrounding builds and additions over the years make it even larger than that. Upon arrival in the building's central room, the familiar theme of Tidal Tempest begins in the background.  The Sonic HQ Logo greets you from all directions, flanked by several now-outdated coronas that shine under the glass ceiling.

The Sonic HQ Building Hotel.  Some familiar names may be seen.

The building featured a room for every major sub-page, with signs that linked to the site acting as a visual directory. Many of these links are now dead, although you can still navigate to them via archive.sonic-hq.net. In-jokes (scootered daisy-heads) dot the halls between the informative rooms.  There were many rec-rooms, an intricate monorail system, and also a hotel for visitors from the forums to leave their mark in the world.  Some went further and made builds out in AWTeen.

Below are some more pictures of the building and neighboring builds.  I'll also list all of the names of hotel guests and builders... hopefully some are familiar! :)

Dr Penguin's hotel room

Takinshoto
CJTails
RonPrower
Srol
Crystaltoad
Gale
Nuchtos
Duo MP
Archonn

A cave system built by forumers

Acrio teh Phox
Rico
Gray the Kitsune
James Crownfur
Saber Mage
Marty SkyWaLker
Dr Penguin
Sonicolas
Sonikorasu
...and more.  I remember other builds, but I wasn't able to locate them.

A secret tent-city in the cave system pictured above.  Several forumers worked together to build an intricate cave system with a number of secret rooms and passages.

A secret scene hidden behind the waterfall.  One of the builders left a note for anyone who wanted to come along and finish the project!

In-jokes and references abound.  The caption there on the left says "FexusFan Empire of Scootering DaisyHeads," and I think I'll just leave that without any commentary. :)

The Download Gallery.  Each sign in these rooms was clickable, and would take you to the associated subpage on the Sonic HQ site.  Each sub-section of the site had a room like this.

One of the less-believable scenes from the Monorail.  I was 12-13 when I created the Sonic HQ building, and I suppose only the mind of a young teenager could justify a monorail running through a glass tube in a lava room. :P  The monorail was fully automated via the warp command and took visitors across the entire building site.

Enough people wanted to build to justify a home-brewed tutorial room.  Notice the lava floor again... not sure how I thought that fit at all, but can you blame a wee tot for that sort of thing? ;)

This has been an enjoyable trip back for me.  I've cleaned up the entry point and fixed some broken images (the original Sonic HQ domain is down so all of the original links in the building are broken).  If you're from the forums and would like to stop by and visit, just take a quick trip over to Activeworlds and navigate to AWTeen 2500s 500e (the teleport window can be accessed from the top menu bar in the AW browser) and enjoy!

AWG Download - Wooden Park Bench

Wooden Park Bench (1 AWG)

• Wooden Park Bench
• Custom bench design as displayed in New Arklay City Park
• One AWG facing North
• Available only for AWTeen OP

DOWNLOAD: Click here to download parkbench-north.zip

SEED OBJECT: Centered on AWG

COORDS: AWTeen 2819.733s 1801.53e 0.0a 176

Just save the .zip file to your Activeworlds > Presets folder and you'll be good to use the AWG in Activeworlds.  Good luck!

A Retrospective Look at the Public Building Worlds - COFMeta

It recently came to my attention that many of the dozens of articles I submitted to AWNews still exist thanks to Gmail, and I've been thumbing through them because I'd like to find some of the good ones and repost them here. The first of these articles is a topical series -- A Retrospective Look at the Public Building Worlds -- where I visited and built in several of the big public building worlds towards the end of 2005.

To give this some context, my interest in writing this series was because every public building world except for Alphaworld and AWTeen had become derelict and neglected.  Community interaction with AWI was practically non-existent (Flagg was still away during this period) and the biggest developments on the public building front were happening in AWTeen.  AWTeen had been experiencing a cities boom, and I wanted to open the door to other worlds and see what sort of potential they had for builders.

I will post an article from the series each day in their entirety (including original images), with minor corrections for grammar.  After the article I will write an addendum paragraph that compares the worlds then to the worlds now! 

Today we will begin the series in COFMeta world.  Enjoy!

---------------

COFMeta article written on November 19, 2005 and published to AWNews.org on November 20, 2005.

COFMeta GZ, circa. 2005.  Or 2011, for what it's worth.

COFMeta
Size:P-1000 (1000 coordinates in the four cardinal directions from gz)

Tourist-Enabled: Yes

Tourist-Building: No

Based off of Snow Crash, the popular cyberpunk novel by Neil Stephenson, COFMeta world is a themed, public building world that is set as a metropolis. In fact, it had been nicknamed 'metatropolis' by the people who once built there.  Compared to Alphaworld, COFMeta operates on a very limited object set that features modular building pieces.

One of the more recent and innovative communities of COFMeta is Cyberville (61n 301e) which was built by Cybernome in 2001.  A vast town for a world of the size, Cyberville is a fully industrialized city that takes advantage of object innovation, the color command, and a flowing imagination to compensate for the lack of objects and textures in the world.  One of the common themes around this city is the snocrash.rwx object, which is used in conjuntion with textures to form a variety of 'avatars' wandering around the city.

An intersection in Cyberville, COFMeta

Feeling the need to examine the objects here further and see why I've heard so many bad comments about the worlds object path, I found some empty land and built a ground zero area for a new town.  This new ground zero included two buildings made completely out of objects that were as similar to Alphaworld objects as I could find (flat tiles, panes and various columns) and a third building that used a modular javacade design.  At first, the world indeed seemed like a horrible place to build.  A foreign object path with few textures and low world lights?  Who would want that?!

Me, apparently.  Soon after I threw out the hopes of using textures to my advantage, I switched over to colors.  The building process took off after that, and by using colors in conjunction with windows... a stylish information building was built.  A similar style was used for a monorail station across the street, but the real (hidden) gem was working with the modular object.

Colony Zeta Ground Zero (950s 200e) Javacade is on the left.

If you have never worked with a premade building object before, it completely changes the dynamics of making detailed builds.  Instead of making an exterior that the interior can be based off of, the exterior of a modular building exclusively compliments the details of the interior.  Anyone can spam javacade objects, but to make the building truly unique, it has to be detailed.  With this in mind, an empty javacade building was transformed into a thriving arcade/club in about 15 minutes!  In other public worlds we don't have many modular buildings to use, and it was very enjoyable to have the opportunity in such a difficult building environment!

COFMeta Today

So that was then, and this is now; welcome to 2011!  What has changed in COFMeta? Truthfully... not much.  This article from 2005 is very much applicable today; builders in COFMeta will face the shame challenges I did all those years ago.

An effort towards renewal was spearheaded by Ferruccio and Tauntaun a couple of years ago to build a new ground zero on the edge of the world, but the project was never completed.  The bounds of the world were expanded a bit for this, though, so if you're looking to build in COFMeta the best place for new land would be near the old boundary at the 1000th coordinate in any direction!

From an era gone by...

Rest Area - AWTeen 2557.556s 1160.247e 0.4a 269

As a caretaker in AWTeen world, I spent a good chunk of my time in 2006 designing and holding events to keep the world population entertained.  It was fun work and with a steady -- though small -- stream of new users coming into the world it was usually satisfying as well.  One handy device I quickly learned of after taking the helm with events was that older builds can be great fun to explore, and ended up making that my focus for a while.

At about the same time, pcnate of historicbridges.org was still active in AWTeen world.  In AWTeen, pcnate is infamous for his AWTeen Interway -- a massive undertaking that criss-crossed AWTeen with very well designed roadways.  The network focuses around controlled-access freeways that exit onto smaller roads as they approach points of interest.  The Interway was invaluable for builders during the cities boom in the mid-2000's, as it was a literal networking of our cities.  Back then, you hadn't really 'made it' until a roadway connected your town to the rest of the world.

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?