Progress in Arklay World

Hey everyone! Thanks on all of the comments for the new utility! I'll update it again tonight with your feedback. :)

Droog began in-world testing for his new paintball bot in Arklay World last night. If you'll recall from the forums, Droog posted a thread about creating a new bot and people were overwhelmingly interested in Paintball. After some discussion I saved the current world -- the Besieged Map -- as a propdump and wiped the world clean, and now I'm in the process of building a desert-themed map suited to paintball. The map is based in a gorge, and will have two bases -- one on some cliffs and one on the opposing side in some caves. In between this will be a valley that features some rundown industrial buildings. I used to build paintball maps in AWTeen and the work for the Beseiged Map gave me a lot of ideas for building insular areas.

Building - Object Properties Box Tutorial

Hey everyone! Below is a flash tutorial I made this weekend for users interested in learning more about the object properties tutorial box. I might add more to it later, but for now... I like where it's at.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! All you have to do to use it is hover over the different parts of the box, and it'll highlight it and tell you how it all works! :)

Spring Break is here!

Hey everyone, and welcome to Anthony's Spring Break 2011! ;)

I don't really have any personal plans for this upcoming week, so I guess that means that we'll be seeing a more active period here on the blog.  There are a few goals here and in the universe as well that I'd like to accomplish, and I'll list them off here:

• Arklay World:  I'm working on a game project in Arklay world, and although the game part of it may be a while yet coming, I'd like to finish the world environment for visitors.  I'll post updates of my progress as I complete it, because the world makes for a really great game map!
• Instructional Videos: I've been talking about these for a couple of weeks now, and I would have plenty of time to get this started.  I'm not quite sure how I'll get this started yet because the AW video tool only captures the 3d screen, but I'm sure I'll figure something out. :)
• Toolbar: I'd like to set up widget along the top of this blog that links directly to helpful or interesting articles I've written here.  The only reason I haven't done this yet is because I don't feel like I've written enough content to justify it yet.
• The Black Sun: I've got some prime real estate in EBTS4 world that I'd like to work on sometime soon.  The Black Sun is a virtual bar/club that is a setting in Snow Crash, and I'd like to bring a true representation of it into the virtual space.  The Black Sun as described in Snow Crash isn't very visually interesting, so I'm going to focus on very visual scenes and interactions with the user to make the build engaging and interesting.  It's an awkward project, and hopefully I can get it done. :D

That's whats up at my end.  I'll post again tomorrow, probably continuing in my line of thought regarding architecture.  If you ever want me to discuss a specific topic, feel free to leave a comment on a post or on the chat box in our side bar.

Later!

Noticeboard: Feb-March Yellow Gazette Published

The Yellow Gazette for Feb-March is online at http://activeworlds.com/newsletter/yellow/

Projects like the Gazette are one of the marks of a healthy community; where projects can be found in the hands and influence of dedicated world users who take it upon themselves to make their community a little better.  It's nice when the world leadership doesn't have to do all of the work! :)

It is the tendency of a community to only lament on the loss of a project after it's contributors have moved on to other interests, so if you like the Yellow Gazette be sure to let them know and show your support!

In-world offices of the Yellow Gazette (Teleport there now!)

For me in particular, the Build of the Month section featured a couple of interesting locations that detail some methods on game-making and environments that may be of interest to readers here.  Another article of interest explains the numbering system for primitive objects.  The prim objects were numbered in such a way to be intuitive and easier to remember after a simple introduction to the numbering system, so if you have a hard time with prims this may be helpful!

If you do follow-up and visit the Gazette, I'd like to know if any of the articles that I didn't mention caught your eye.  I'd like to see how our interests compare/contrast.  You can let me know by just leaving a comment below! :)