Earlier this month, Activeworlds abandoned the subscription model in their main universe for a "Free to Play" model, where citizenships would be free and additional features would be sold in an online store.
I've been a longtime proponent of this sort of model for AW, so I've returned to the universe and may even resume regular posting on this blog. I've been updating the Southern Highlands in SW City over the past few days... adding some new SWI Content to the 'Emerald Strand' region of the highlands.
The "Farm Kit" is a downloadable set of AWGs that allow SWI players to farm and cook in the world.
I'll probably be doing some more projects like these as I get time. It's nice to be back, I've missed being able to build, but the 70 dollar price-point of citizenships just wasn't worth it anymore.
Hey everyone! I've spent the past couple of days in AD&DRPG helping to get the world's half-decade old builds back up-to-date. If you've never been to visit, AD&DRPG is a fantasy-themed role-playing game that uses Dungeons & Dragons gameplay mechanics for character stats, skills, and progression. If you're a follower of the blog, you'll remember back in March when we reported that AD&DRPG would be open permanently. Since they're around to stay, I wanted to contribute some of my time to help address the biggest gripe world visitors have had since it returned: the aging visuals.
In addition to the visuals I've also been addressing some navigation issues by making new NPCs that address players via the say command, but overall the chief concern has been to update areas with zones and particle effects, replace really low-res textures, get sequences to avatar objects... things like that. Anything to help with interaction and immersion is being addressed, and it is really starting to show.
I would like to share all of my progress here on the blog (since this is a building blog, after all) and I think I'll do so in small snippets, to be released while I'm away next week. I'll set them to be posted at various intervals through the week, so be checking for new posts!
Today, we'll be looking at the new world title screen. The title screen appears when players drop into Merinel -- the ground zero town -- and is triggered by a simple bump trigger. You can view it below.
As you can see from the video, there are a few things going on here. Perhaps most noticeable is the camera switch -- this isn't native third person mode. The user is forced into this camera position when they hit the bump trigger, and the camera itself is set to a pole object that moves and rotates back and forward. In the actual view, you see the AD&DRPG logo, a large dragon, and several buttons. The dragon is simple, and is stationary except for an appropriate flying sequence that has been set to loop. The two buttons on the left link to webpages, and the button on the right sets the camera location to the user -- effectively terminating the title sequence.
Used to begin and end the title sequence. The 'location' parameter was first set to a named object (the pole) for the title camera, and then set to the user to terminate the title sequence.
Used for objects that needed to be changed by bump or activate triggers. In our case, everything that was meant for the title screen had a name assigned to it because when the player clicked 'PLAY,' all of the title screen objects needed to disappear. 'Activate visible <name> no' achieves this.
URL is pretty standard for accessing web-links from Active Worlds. It is typically accessed via an activate command, and this is true in our example as it is used for interactive signage.
Anyway I don't want to go into a detailed explanation of how exactly to make a title screen like the one here, but this should get you started. There are a lot of ways to go about it; be creative and see what you can do! :)
Hey all, I've had some people contact me recently letting me know that they were interested in playing Builder's Challenge, and the game has been inactive for some time... so the other day I cleaned off the cobwebs in BuildCity world and have opened it in a setting that I'm tentatively calling the 'off-season.'
During the off-season:
The chief end of the off-season session is to allow players to practice for times of competition.
The world is not in active competition. The scoreboard will continue being maintained, but prizes will not be rewarded.
Building lots will still be judged as normal, with a score and comments given to the builder.
The global bot is not guaranteed to be online 24/7.
Requests will be processed slower than usual. Expect turn-around times of up to 2 days during the off-season.
Area restrictions are DISABLED -- this means that higher tier areas do not have to be unlocked like they normally do to be built in. However, the player still does have to lock them individually -- they must begin with a plot in Verdant Valley and progress to higher tiers on an individual basis. The only difference now is that they won't have to be held up by other players.
The global bot's online time will be sporadic until I have completed the semester and returned home. This period will last for about another week, and then the bot should be up 24/7.
The off-season will end when we're ready to hold another session of Builder's Challenge, at which time existing builds in the world will be wiped. There is no time-table at present for this, as I wish to automate much of the registration and judging process before I hold another session.
I'll post further updates concerning the off-season to this thread in the AW forums. In the meantime, here are a couple of images from the first plot of the off-season: A Cattle Ranch by Conqueror
Overview of the Ranch
Front-view with completed comment card for the builder.
I'll have some more updates on this after I complete my finals. In the meantime, give the world a tour. It's a P-50 world and for the most part it's completely filled out (except for builder plots!)
Hey everyone! The weekend is here and I'm one week closer to being out of school for about a month! :P Let's take a look at the events for this weekend.
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 4/29/11
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!
Do you know where this place is? If so, email newsletter@activeworlds.com with the name of the world and the coordinates to win! If you are a citizen, include your information in the e-mail.
A nice feature of Blogger is the ability to see where my viewers are from; apparently I have them from all over the world. :) Since that's the case, I figure that some of you may be able to help us out in AWTours... Urbane Chaos is looking for some help to translate helpful signs in AWTours to other languages so as to serve as many viewers as possible. It's not a big job and would probably be nothing at all for someone who is fluent. :)
Full text of the request below:
In AWTours, I've been working on a non-english speaking help area. I'm looking for people who could help translate two signs into different languages. We have a few languages covered already, but in order to best serve the community, I'd like to have as many translations as possible.
Personally, I don't trust the translation programs for what I'm doing, as I've seen them make several mistakes in the past.
If anyone can help, that would be great!
The signs read as follows:
The header sign:
__________ Speaking Visitors (Example, "German Speaking Visitors")
The information sign:
Welcome to AWTours!
This world is dedicated to showcasing the best of Active Worlds.
If you need help in your language, either use the translator here or teleport to AWGate and ask a GateKeeper for assistance.
If anyone can stop by and lend a hand, I'm sure UC would appreciate it. :)
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.
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!
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.
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.
Hey everyone, happy April Fools! Hopefully you haven't been trolled too hard... it seems that Activeworlds has managed to dodge a bullet as far as that's concerned! Well, unless you could the AlphaMopper. :)
I came across an interesting post today while combing through some Second Life blogs about someone who visited AW very briefly, but was immediately turned off by the camera controls and never made it out of AWGate because of that. If you use any other 3D programs besides Activeworlds you have probably noted the frustration of AW's camera control system, as compared with 3d modeling programs, games, or even other virtual worlds like Second Life.
Anyway, you can read that post here. I'm interested in doing a write-up on this soon, but I don't have the time for it tonight. In it's stead, I'll leave you all with a question: What do you think about AW's camera controls?
So long as I'm blogging, I may as well contribute my articles to our monthly newsletter! I'd like to try to submit two each month for as long as I'm keeping AWBuilder up and running -- one commentary and one tutorial. Right now, I'm leaning towards "From an era gone by..." as the commentary and "Tutorial - Navigating the ActiveWiki" as the tutorial. I think those are both pretty solid articles and would be good for the context of the newsletter.
If you guys have any suggestions or other articles you'd like to see go up, let me know! Otherwise, it'll probably be these two. :)
AirSpeed debuted during AWReunion 2010 last year to tremendous reception and has since... well, what exactly happened to it, anyway? Nobody talks about it anymore. The same goes for the GameFest games... even the hit Weir City from the GameFest doesn't garner much traffic, and it won a Cy Award!
I'm not sure what it is about games in Activeworlds that causes them to meet relative obscurity, but I'd like to do my part here to at least tell you all about AirSpeed! AirSpeed is a wonderful presentation that uses v4 objects to maximum effect, lifting the player off their feet and into a high-flying obstacle course! Players sail through the sky dodging objects and collecting bonuses that can remove obstacles further ahead. The game has been masterfully divided into three 'stages' that become increasingly more difficult. Because of the game's design, the backdrop can provide as much of a challenge to deal with as the obstacles directly in front of you -- I want to catch all of the action!! :)
Anyway, upon completing AirSpeed SW City Interactive players can receive a small reward for their troubles. The game is a fun distraction and certainly worth sharing with others. Give it a try!
I did a bit of idle building tonight, and I'm working on a project now that I'd like to share my progress on. I don't think that I can actually say too much about it yet, but I can show you what I've built. :)
For this project, I wanted to set up two buildings that oppose each other across a street. My conceptual goal is to use the structural frame of the building to imply that the buildings are actually two halves of a whole, and that they've been pulled apart.
"The Right Building"
"The Left Building"
I don't think you can see the beginnings of that concept so well in this picture, but it's there. There's also some work I'd like to do with the ground, but this is where I'm at for tonight.
The whole shebang
This is the overview shot from above. I think the far walls do a better job conceptually than the forward walls, but I wanted to get a draft done for the project tonight because I'm not sure that I'd have time to continue working on it with everything else that I'm doing these days.
Anyway, I just wanted to share. :) Catch you all later!
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!
Over at the ActiveWiki we get a lot of questions from folks who aren't used to wiki software, and consequently have difficulties both navigating and editing the Wiki. I've offered to teach a class on the subject before and have even taught individuals directly. As a followup to that, I feel that a quick tutorial may help ease a lot of the confusion in getting around.
Vintage Logo
Before I begin with the details, you should think of the wiki as an outline. The navigation throughout the entire wiki is formatted as an outline, where important or general topics link to sub-topics that are elaborated on. You won't find pages on the ActiveWiki that are titled "How to Build," but you will find very detailed lists of the building commands and very intricate examples of how each one works. The key to successfully navigating the ActiveWiki -- or any wiki, really -- is to know what you're looking for, and then to pursue that as a topic.
Clear out your schedule for this upcoming Saturday, because you'll need the free time for a new contest coming to the AlphaMapper Facebook Page!
Sometime after 12:01 VRT on Saturday, an image will be posted on that Facebook page. The image will be a screen capture from AlphaMapper itself... and once it is up, the game is on! It will be up to fans of the page to scramble to find exactly what part of Alphaworld that the image came from! If you're unfamiliar with AlphaMapper, it is a great utility that you can use to see 'satellite images' of Alphaworld. The utility allows you to find coordinates in the world and save a web link that you can use to visit the location again on the map! These web links will be used in the contest -- when you find the correct coordinates, just navigate to the top of AlphaMapper and click 'Link to Location.' A link will appear, and you can submit that link to win the contest!
The winner of this contest will recieve a one month citizenship.
You have to be a fan of the AlphaMapper Facebook Page to participate in the contest, so get to it! Byte keeps the page updated often, and he's made some really exciting progress towards the next update of the AlphaMapper! So as I said, get to it, and good luck everyone! :)
UPDATE: You no longer have to be a fan of the Facebook page to participate, and Byte has added Twitter to the mix as well! This forum thread has all of the details -- submission will be handled by e-mail now, and the content will only be posted to the Facebook or Twitter pages.
While growing up I had the great fortune to be given the (now classic) JumpStart game series. The games occupied a good deal of my time when I was younger... I think I played them out of order but I really enjoyed them. Anyway, through this series I was introduced to KnowledgeLand -- an early online game that incorporated many of the JumpStart properties into a virtual world where you could interact with other players and collect trading cards to upgrade your 'character' -- or avatar. Here's an image of the back of the cover:
Windows 95!? Get lost, we don't serve your kind here.
Quite the throwback, isn't it!? To my great dismay, I lost the KnowledgeLand disc when my family moved when I was 10 and I never recovered it. A few years after I had discovered Active Worlds a few people I spoke with remembered the program, and I wanted to find it again. A quick google search reveals that details about KnowledgeLand on the internet are pretty scarce -- as of this writing, it doesn't even have a Wikipedia article!
Frustrated, I gave up the search until very recently, when I found a lone YouTube video from another nostalgic user who -- by chance -- still had a copy of the game. I've included it below: it's a 10-minute long demo of some of the game's basic functions. Mostly character creation, dealing with the trading cards, and some areas that I have very vivid memories of.
As far as I can tell, KnowledgeLand was released in 1996 and I was playing it when I was still in elementary school... which is about at that same time. You may also note that this is contemporary with the early years of Active Worlds. KnowledgeLand was quite different from Active Worlds -- or perhaps AlphaWorld if we're going back in time far enough. There was no built environment, and the game is quite obviously marketed towards children, though I'm sure there was a fair mix of interested adults as well.
Though I was still a very young child, this was my first experience into the virtual world and I'm sure some of you may have had similar experiences in other such worlds. As far as I can tell, the internet was wide open for these sorts of developments in the late 90's -- there's quite a comprehensive list in the book Avatars!, by Bruce Damer, which features Active Worlds and Alphaworld. Some names that I recognize include WorldsChat and The Palace.
So I'll leave you all with a question: what was your first experience into virtual worlds, or maybe just online game environments in general? Was it Active Worlds, or another virtual reality environment? Was it an MMORPG? Let me know by leaving a comment! :)
Hey everyone! Bach Zhaa will be hosting a meeting to get volunteers together for a new effort in AWTours world today @ 6pm VRT.
Alternatively, if you cannot make this meeting, you can post your opinions in this forum thread. I myself cannot make the meeting, so that's what I will be doing. :) I'll probably CC those thoughts over here as well later tonight, that will all depend on how much free time I have before my next class.
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.
Hey everyone! Got busy towards the end of the week so I've not been posting, but I'd like to share an excellent new site by Urbane Chaos. AWPromotions is a wiki-styled website that comprehensively displays sights to see in our Universe. The front page offers an explanation of what the Active Worlds software is, and then -- in a clear style -- the sidebar offers a tour through our universe from the comfort of the 2D browser.
There are also some informative pages that will certainly be helpful for new users and should be distributed.
For anyone with some spare time and interest in learning about our virtual space, this would be a great place to direct them! I encourage everyone else to check it out as well. :)
Hey guys, I've done some more building in Arklay world and I'll be posting photos up here each day that I make progress. We're working in Arklay world to build up a map to test Droog's upcoming paintball bot. In addition to this, Droog is working on the paintball bot tonight and I'm eager to hear of his progress.
The empty interior of a warehouse in the southern part of the world.
A yard of shipping crates in the northern part of the world.
Along with these locations I've built, I've also worked some secret paths through the surrounding cliffs and across the rooftops. Ideally, I would like players to have access to many areas of the world and use their environment to their advantage. Hopefully I'll have some more done tomorrow!
Sometime after 12:01 VRT on Saturday, an image will be posted on that Facebook page. The image will be a screen capture from AlphaMapper itself... and once it is up, the game is on! It will be up to fans of the page to scramble to find exactly what part of Alphaworld that the image came from! If you're unfamiliar with AlphaMapper, it is a great utility that you can use to see 'satellite images' of Alphaworld. The utility allows you to find coordinates in the world and save a web link that you can use to visit the location again on the map! These web links will be used in the contest -- when you find the correct coordinates, just navigate to the top of AlphaMapper and click 'Link to Location.' A link will appear, and you can submit that link to win the contest!
