Activeworlds 16th Birthday - Community Photograph Part 1

Happy Saturday everyone!  Activeworlds turns 16 on June 28, and we've opened up a week full of festivities with an annual event... the community photograph!  Over 115 users were in AWGate Saturday for the photo.  I was able to take a ton of screenshots before and after the arrival time, and I'm just gonna dump them all into a few posts.  Each post will only contain 10 shots so the loading time for the page isn't miserable.

Activeworlds 16 Birthday Photograph (Part 1)

These photos were taken before the stated arrival time and before I disabled usernames.  Some avatars may not have loaded in some photos because I had the settings reduced when I first arrived.  Click on each image to zoom-in to a wide format (1600 px) image.

AD&DRPG Visual Renovations - Traloria and Traloria Sewers

Hey everyone... my work continues in AD&DRPG world and has focused on the large town of Traloria.  I had started on Traloria as of the last photo blog, but really underestimated how long it would take to work on.  I'm still not quite done there, but I've completed several areas, including the popular sewer dungeon.  Take a look:

This isn't actually Traloria, but an unrelated dungeon.  Mostly untouched, I've made simple changes for lighting and effects.

The main square in Traloria has been completely redone.  A fire-lit path leads past interactive characters and shops.

A market now exists in the main square, where players can purchase items and join the Traloria Army.

A chamber within the Traloria Sewers where the various tunnels flow out.  Look out for that dragon!

A safe-haven within the sewers, where players can heal and purchase special equipment.  There are various helpful characters around as well.

Many familiar areas have received mostly cosmetic changes.  I really wanted to eliminate all paper-thin walls.

Some areas, such as this stream next to the path, exist purely for detailing to make the dungeon more interesting.

AD&DRPG Visual Renovations - Photo Blog

I don't really want to go into another in-depth explanation of things while I'm away on honeymoon, so I've decided to post a photoblog of my progress so far. :)  The visual renovations span over several areas, and I'm trying to work in the order which places the player would generally experience.

A redesigned town fountain in the entry town of Meriel.  The benches surrounding the fountain are movers that allow the player to lay down and relax, or perhaps take a nice AFK. ;)

The Magic Users guild.  The area in the middle of the room is an anti-gravity zone that lifts players to the next floor, and the cloths in the doorway are cloth objects.  All avatars in the building have sequences applied.

Some new landscaping in the southern part of Merinel.  The knight in the foreground is actually an enemy NPC spawn-point, and I thought it fitting to position them in what seems like an ambush.

A dense scene in Turkel forest that leads players to an important location nearby.  Since players can't fly, the felled trees make a nice transitional barrier from one area to another.

Gro Lahr mansion.  The mansion is plagued by a dark fog, and surrounded by a dying forest.  There has been extensive work on increasing area of this atmosphere outside the immediate area of the mansion, and the trees from Turkel forest now continue into this area.  A sharp gradient occurs where the trees begin to die off.

Turkel forest has been graced with a new mist, low-gravity zones (for good jumping!) and numerous firefly particles.  The low gravity zone makes jumping from trees very enjoyable!

The new appearance of the entrance to Traloria.  Notice the lowered terrain from the original entry as well as the new procession into the city proper.  A lot of detail work has been done in Traloria, though I'm trying to keep with the original vision of the build as much as possible.

A handy newsboard at the ground zero area.  If you click on the postings, they are elaborated upon via the say command in the user's chat.

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!