GSK: "Suspension of AWTex Service"

GSK reported on the Activeworlds Forums today that his remote texture-hosting service AWTex would be suspending service until further notice.  He did not cite a reason, but did explain that a plan was in place for such an event that would allow existing content to remain available while suspending new further input from users.

As of this announcement, existing AWTex uploads should continue working properly and should not cause problems in-world.

Link: http://forums.activeworlds.com/blog.php?b=1246

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!

AWI: Alphaworld Maintenance Wednesday

From Flagg:

AlphaWorld (AW) will be offline for maintenance on Wednesday March 2nd from 12pm to 2pm VRT (9am to 11am EST).

Just helping to get the word out here.  Doubt this will effect too many people, but if it does you should check out some of the other building worlds in the meantime.  Yellow is doing really well these days. :)

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!