I've heard there are a lot of chickens in Key West, so I'll be on the lookout as I've been known in my time to be somewhat of a Chicken Chaser...
The plan afterward is to the return to the boat and head on to Nassau. Hopefully it'll be a good time!
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Docked in Key West
Hey everyone! If I've scheduled this post correctly, we should be arriving in Key West right about now and I'll be in range of communications again. If I have some time I'll see if I can post some images from my phone, as I'll surely be itching to get back in touch with the world after getting off the cruise boat. :P
I've heard there are a lot of chickens in Key West, so I'll be on the lookout as I've been known in my time to be somewhat of a Chicken Chaser...
The plan afterward is to the return to the boat and head on to Nassau. Hopefully it'll be a good time!
I've heard there are a lot of chickens in Key West, so I'll be on the lookout as I've been known in my time to be somewhat of a Chicken Chaser...
The plan afterward is to the return to the boat and head on to Nassau. Hopefully it'll be a good time!
Monday, May 23, 2011
Interactive Building - Nougat Cave Hunt and the Key/Door Example
Last Thursday I spent a couple of hours overnight setting up a very simple (as far as game mechanics go) game in the SW City Airpark Pavilion. The game, called Nougat Cave Hunt, is a simple seek-and-find where the player is prompted to collect and return 10 items (nougats, a creature of the SW City lore) within 120 seconds.
The mechanics for keeping count of the items and the time elapsed was done with SW City Interactive, but similar applications can developed in Active Worlds using only action commands. There are certainly some limitations, but creative design can usually overcome them.
The Simple Hunt
When designing a game in AW, my experience has been that its best to think about the game mechanics first, and then work from there. This is because there are a lot of things that object scripting leaves to be desired, and sometimes you have to tweak your concept a bit to get everything to line up. In this example, we'll run with the concept of a hunt for an item, but since AW doesn't really do counting instances very well we will switch things up a bit.
This is a simple game concept that has been executed in Activeworlds many times, but it is a good place to start because it gets builders thinking and creative and multiple uses of building commands. With this in mind, lets introduce our objects.
So now we have our two objects. See? Simple. Basically, what happens here is that the activate trigger applied to the key causes it to disappear from the scene (visible no, solid no) and it also causes the gate to rise 4 meters because the move command has a name parameter that is applied to the gate (name=gate, create name gate).
It isn't difficult to expand on the complexity of this interaction and make it into a challenging mini-game. For example, you could set more keys and more doors, and require the player to pass through the gates before the wait parameter expires. You could also set a hard time limit using a timer command.
There are many possibilities for hide-and-seek style gaming with object scripting, and if you'd like to share any examples... feel free to post them in the comment section!
 |
| Pesky little critters them. |
The mechanics for keeping count of the items and the time elapsed was done with SW City Interactive, but similar applications can developed in Active Worlds using only action commands. There are certainly some limitations, but creative design can usually overcome them.
The Simple Hunt
When designing a game in AW, my experience has been that its best to think about the game mechanics first, and then work from there. This is because there are a lot of things that object scripting leaves to be desired, and sometimes you have to tweak your concept a bit to get everything to line up. In this example, we'll run with the concept of a hunt for an item, but since AW doesn't really do counting instances very well we will switch things up a bit.
CONCEPT: Player has find a hidden key, and click it to open a barred gate.
This is a simple game concept that has been executed in Activeworlds many times, but it is a good place to start because it gets builders thinking and creative and multiple uses of building commands. With this in mind, lets introduce our objects.
KEY OBJECT ACTION LINE: activate visible no, solid no, move 0 4 0 time=3 wait=10 smooth name=gate
GATE OBJECT ACTION LINE: create name gate
So now we have our two objects. See? Simple. Basically, what happens here is that the activate trigger applied to the key causes it to disappear from the scene (visible no, solid no) and it also causes the gate to rise 4 meters because the move command has a name parameter that is applied to the gate (name=gate, create name gate).
It isn't difficult to expand on the complexity of this interaction and make it into a challenging mini-game. For example, you could set more keys and more doors, and require the player to pass through the gates before the wait parameter expires. You could also set a hard time limit using a timer command.
There are many possibilities for hide-and-seek style gaming with object scripting, and if you'd like to share any examples... feel free to post them in the comment section!
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wedding Day
Hey everyone, today's the big day. This is the first of several automatic posts I should have fired up for the week, and if I scheduled it right then I should be gettin' hitched sometime around when this gets posted. ;) Anyway, these posts won't be anything too big, just some new content to keep the site alive while I'm away.
I want to thank everyone for supporting Crystal and I... all of the well-wishes have been wonderful. There was even a nice forum thread started for it. :) (Finally something that won't cause a flame-war on the forums, amirite!?) Check out this cool announcement Sidris made up for us:
Thanks guys. :)
We'll finish out the ceremonies today and then head off on honeymoon for a week, down to Florida and the Bahamas. Hope everyone has a good week!
I want to thank everyone for supporting Crystal and I... all of the well-wishes have been wonderful. There was even a nice forum thread started for it. :) (Finally something that won't cause a flame-war on the forums, amirite!?) Check out this cool announcement Sidris made up for us:
Thanks guys. :)
We'll finish out the ceremonies today and then head off on honeymoon for a week, down to Florida and the Bahamas. Hope everyone has a good week!
Friday, May 20, 2011
Out of time!
No more new content after this post :) I'm making final preparations for my wedding tomorrow, so I'll be out of here. I won't be around until next Saturday, but I've gotten a few things together and will try to have blogger set up automatic posts on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday concerning some of my projects from this week.
See ya everyone!
See ya everyone!
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