Noticeboard: AlphaMapper Facebook Contest!

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.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/AlphaMapper/159877450713342
Twitter: http://twitter.com/AlphaMapper

KnowledgeLand - My First Experience in Virtual Reality

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! :)

Noticeboard: AWTours Meeting TODAY at 6pm VRT

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.

Later!

From an era gone by...

Rest Area - AWTeen 2557.556s 1160.247e 0.4a 269

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.