Touring Fort Masen with SW Chris and Syntax

While we're on the topic of not completing builds...

SW Chris visited ActiveWorlds last month to tour sites in SW City as part of a video series called "Before There Was Minecraft." This video series celebrates Chris hitting 1,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel by revisiting his roots in ActiveWorlds. Syntax and I joined him for a couple of hours to explore various sites in the city, including one that I spent a lot of time working on: Fort Masen and an incomplete dungeon underneath that was designed for SW City Interactive.

Some background:  Fort Masen was initially built by SW Comit and is built in the style of a historical fort, complete with an old wooden ship and cannons.  Some time after I became involved with SW City Interactive, I set my attention on Fort Masen as a potential site for a series of archaeology quests and digsites.  Over the years, I've added a number of quests there and began an undertaking to build a cave/dungeon adventure under the fort.  It is partially completed: there is a lengthy quest chain available to SWI players that actually gives you access to the dungeon, but after another sidequest it abruptly ends and doesn't let you progress further.

That would be the end of the story... except for SW Chris' video series.  Chris, Syn, and I explored on past the end of the current game, and we did a complete video commentary on incomplete areas (including a partially-complete interactive boss!) and some puzzles further in the dungeon.

The commentary is split over two videos, #6 and #7 in the series. Fair warning for SWI players, there are tons and tons of spoilers in these videos:

So there you have it, some insight into one of my many unfinished projects!  I might actually finish this one day, I'm a sucker for coming back to work on SWI stuff. :)

If you're interested in more video commentary, visit SW Chris's Youtube Channel! He's done a couple of series now on ActiveWorlds that you guys might find interesting.

From my Teleports List: AirSpeed

Alphaworld - SW City - AirSpeed

Builder: SW Chris

Teleport: AW 2417.74S 3444.94E 22.70a 263

Jump Point: ^jump AirSpeed

How to Play: http://www.swcity.net/users/chris/airspeed/index.html

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!

Busy Day! In the meantime...

Hey everyone!  I won't be able to get a full-fledged post up for tonight but I do have enough time to drop a small blurb in and offer you some thoughts about tomorrow's post!  I want to start discussing how to really do justice to a 3D project in a 2D presentation environment (i.e. Active Worlds on a web page).  How do you do that!?   I've got a few ideas, but as far as presentation mediums go, I think people have found a very good start in utilizing video.  Below you'll see a great example: SW Chris' Active Worlds Exploration Demo.

If you don't know Chris very well he's really great with video and puts a lot of consideration into his projects; I think his video is a good case study for the "do's and dont's" of discussing the Active Worlds Browser in this medium and we'll talk a bit more about that tomorrow.

In the meantime... what do you think?  Does video do AW justice outside of our little universe, and do you know of any other good examples where it does?  Feel free to share! :)