Southern Highlands Progress for Week of June 8, 2015

Working on a new low-rise construction across the road from the last building I featured on the blog.  It is still a work in progress

I like the folding wood structure, as well as the glass. I'm not happy with how the roofing has ended up or with how bulky some of the brick sections of the building are, so I may revamp those later.

The folding wood structure was created with primitives -- p1rec0200b.rwx for the flat horizontal sections, and p1rec0100g.rwx for the vertical sections.  These were scaled to make them look thicker and deeper.

I'm particularly unhappy with the middle open space that you can see very well in the fourth screenshot.  I wanted to make some apartment sorts of areas here, but it's really just coming out bulky and nasty. I'm also hitting a lot of cell space issues trying to accomodate it. That's probably going to be changed -- maybe extending the glass and just having three "floors". 

More later.

Edit: Color helped! Recolored the black windows as cyan. Also removed one of the parts of the middle floor.  May still remove the other...

Workaround for bug introduced in Build 1430 with timer triggers that fire in the same instant

Update 3: Build 1432 has resolved all issues related to timers and things seem back to normal.

Update 2: Users are reporting that some of the issues have been fixed, but not all.  Specifically still seeing issues with timers where the total duration is less than a second.

Update: Build 1431 was just announced to revert changes related to timer limitations. A swift and appropriate response.

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ActiveWorlds 6.2 Build 1430 was released today and introduced the following change:

• Timers now have a minimum duration of 1 second and timer-triggers have a minimum interval of 100 ms applied strictly. An attempt to help users and builders not running into heavy lag bombs in worlds.

Which introduced the following bugs:

• Existing timers that complete under a duration of 1 second are broken -- any lower value is forced by AW to 1 second.
• Existing looping timers triggers with a total duration of less than 100ms are broken.
• Triggers scheduled for the same time on the same timer are explicitly ignored. (The workaround below specifically addresses this problem)
• Remote texturing is broken in many circumstances.

Whoops! These are some really awful bugs and this whole change probably needs to be reverted. The third problem has a pretty simple workaround... simply offset one of the timer triggers.  Note that this only addresses one of the issues introduced today; these bugs have manifested in various ways and this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution to all of the problems created with 1430. This workaround specifically addresses two or more timer triggers that were set to fire at the same instant.

Take two example timers that I found broken today at Fort Masen:

at tm GK 18500, visible reg3 on, visible reg2 off

at tm GK 18500, say "Regina:    Zek'riah!"

I'm not sure how AW determines which trigger gets fired first, but the visible on/visible off one was ignored when I activated the timer to test.  I was able to work around  this very easily, by changing one of the timers to '18510':

at tm GK 18510, visible reg3 on, visible reg2 off

at tm GK 18500, say "Regina:    Zek'riah!"

This is a very small time difference. For timers, 1000 units = 1 second, or 1000 milliseconds.  So 10 units is 10 milliseconds, or 1/100 of a second.  This is probably acceptable for general animations, but I'd still prefer to see this change reverted for more precise timer sequences that need extremely granular triggers.

Interested in hearing further comments from AWI about exactly how this changed timer behavior. More interested in build 1431 reverting these changes. :)

Southern Highlands Progress for Week of April 20, 2015

So I don't have a creative name for these photo blogs/progress reports of Elkins Beach and the Southern Highlands, but the least I can do is group them by date.

Here's an update on what I've been working on this week:

• Created a transitional badlands area in the narrow, empty stretch following gutz highway (named for a user that built the highway in 2000, gutz).  This area was previously flat and empty except for groundcover and the highway.  
• On the side closest to the Southern Highlands raised terrain features, I've added some towering, rocky terrain reminiscent of the work I did at Razorspine Bluff.
• On the side closest to Elkins Beach, I've added low forests with smaller rocky features and SWI archaeology nodes.
• In Elkins Beach itself, I've added some rocky terrain features in empty lots to give the impression that the rocky terrain doesn't just abruptly and cleanly end as you enter the town.
• Capped off some incomplete areas in Rising Glen Retreat. In particular, a house I started in 2008.  It isn't completed inside, but the outside at least doesn't have any floating panels anymore.

Photos:

Facades - Designing Facades with a Minimal Number of Objects

I've been working to fill in some of the geometry placeholders for skyscrapers in Elkins Beach and would like to share a technique I've been using to quickly place believable facades.  I do it because I'm lazy and would like to get these buildings done ASAP, but it may also be useful for conserving cell space.

Designing facades with a minimal number of objects generally follows this pattern:

• Find an orthogonal object with some depth to it. If you want your facade to have windows, make sure it also has some empty space in the middle.  Door frames, windows frames, primitives, and some furniture sets are good candidates.  
• Scale this piece so that it is very wide and very tall, but also very thin.  
• Layer other pieces into or onto your largest piece to give the image of building forms: Beams, posts, frames, etc.

For an example, we can start with a building I completed yesterday in Elkins Beach.  I started by selecting some objects I would like to play with.

 
For my main building frame piece, I selected Unit04.rwx as it is a cube with some depth.  For some thinner detailing that could make a believable 'wall' and window ceil, I chose wframe01.rwx.  For further detailing, I chose p1rec0100g.rwx for some simple beams in my facade. 

With these objects selected, we can begin scaling them to be very wide, very tall, and very thin, and then attempt to assemble them into a believable facade.  I scaled the Unit04.rwx to match a 10x10 meter space and scaled the wframe01.rwx to fit within that space.  Once I had this scale set, we can begin to see the facade take form:

Done! With these final objects:

# Object         Purpose           Action

2 unit04.rwx     large frames      create scale 5 5 1

2 wframe01.rwx   detail frames     create scale 4.39 3.53 4

3 p1rec0100g.rwx horizontal beams  create scale 0.5 1.85 1

All it needs is some texturing and a window panel... and we can slap it onto a building! I chose a texture theme of topgrey for the panel and ctable2 for the window frames.  There is a building near SW City Town Square Park that features these textures and I really like the colors that come out of it.

Here's an example of it in action.  Not counting windows and other detailing, this is only 7 objects for a 20x10 meter frame! 

 And the completed tower:

Designing facades with a minimal number of objects is all about experimentation.  Some things may work well, others won't. I've found that as long as the object sets I'm attempting to use have some depth, I can usually exploit them by means of scale or shear to look like believable buildings.

For example, I'm not a huge fan of the tan-colored building next to this skyscraper. The tan building uses quite a few flat pieces, which robs it of depth in some critical areas and really makes it look unsatisfying.  In this project I'm going for completion, so I don't mind these imperfections in some filler buildings -- the more important thing is the process and the learning gained for some of the more prominent buildings in the area I would like to work on.

Sculpture, landscaping, and working around pre-existing content in Elkins Beach

Work in Elkins Beach continues with a lot of landscaping and detailing.  I left this project unfinished years ago, and that was very visible before I started again a few weeks ago.  For example, ground panels were incomplete and floating in the air at various points, there were empty fields alongside busy 4-lane highways, and artificial canals butted up against thin air.

I've spent much of this week 'capping off' the landcover by connecting varying planes, by filling in fields that I didn't intend to build on with trees and rocks, and by placing geometries for buildings that I do intend to complete.

There was one build that I did manage to at least complete initially: a sculpture that I've named "Monolith Rise".  It consists of a grouping of glossy monoliths that increase in height and alternate in texture. The base of the sculpture is lit with a flickering gold light to better distinguish the sculpture from the ambient lighting of the surrounding world. The entire sculpture is surrounded by sheared sidewalk in a park scene:

Note that Monolith Rise is immediately next to the sheared truss bridge that was featured in my last blog about Elkins Beach.  You can find it in-world at "aw" 2680.24S 4071.27E 0.22a 314.

The sculpture sits on a lot that formerly held plans for a cathedral.  I felt that this lot was too narrow so I've scrapped that idea.  Behind the lot was also originally a curved extension of a river that cuts out to the sea.  I've expanded this into a small harbor and removed the curved concrete panels to increase the surface area of the water:

The rest of the work I did was primarily detailing.  A lot of geometries for planned building and some landscaping.  You can see that below:

There was one final area of interest -- I did some detailing around an older build (circa 2005) that was in the area before I was -- a military base built by Jaguar Hahn.  Fun trivia fact: Jaguar Hahn was building a city with me in AWTeen around this time called New Arklay City, but I don't recall him ever sharing many builds in Alphaworld.  Not this one, at least.

I've tried to help integrate into this cityscape that was built up around it by making sure it kept good road access and by trying to respect the airspace near a very short airstrip on the property.  There's an unfortunate concrete fence that may be doing more harm than I am, though. 

 

Some points about detailing around pre-existing builds:

• Respect how this build fit into the existing area.  For example, this base connected to an existing road in the area.  When I took the road over, I made sure the base still connected to it well and made sense in the overall scene.

• Contextual additions make it feel like it fits in better.  One helpful addition I made was to add metal towers with reflectors leading into the airstrip. There are also no trees leading up to the airstrip.  I think this complements the build by demonstrating that it has effects on the surrounding content.

• Don't be afraid to hide parts of a build when necessary.  The backside of the base is closed off by a fence, so I can't add a road to it or really complement it in any way.  I think the best thing to do here was to add some flora and rocks to obstruct its view from a nearby road that doesn't access it.

I'll probably post another update about Elkins Beach again next week.

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.

Capping Off Content in Elkins Beach

Since I've come back, I've been slowly working to cap off old builds that I left incomplete.  It is really jarring just how much I left unfinished. This weekend, I've been working on the oceanside area of Elkins Beach, a medium-density town area in the Southern Highlands.

The bridge in the image above was fun to slap together. It is reminiscent of another project (that I actually completed!), Legacy Bridge in Cypress Hollow, AWTeen.  That bridge was quite a lot better, this is just a small bridge over an outlet.  

This entire bridge is sheared by z2 = -0.5 because the road in this area is sheared to connect two areas of the town that are offset by a few coordinates. Since I've gotten comfortable with the shear command, I much prefer it to manually rotating long-pathing object groups like roads because there is a lot of power in being able to maintain the length along one axis while manipulating another.  This can especially be seen in the beach-side road in the images below, where shear helped me to cleanly extend this weird, windy road down the length of my beach.

My priority has been on getting the roads and landwork capped off first, and I've started to set placeholders for the geometries in the area.  There's an area set aside for a cathedral I had planned... but will probably scrap because the landwork around it would make it pretty stumpy in length.

Another embarrassing build that is unfinished in this area is where my Cy Award for the ActiveWiki rests:

I intended for this to be a skyscraper that featured ActiveWiki content, but never got around to completing or even really starting it.  Whoops!

Hopefully I'll get some of this capped off before I leave again.

Extreme Builder Talent Show 6 Entry - "Razorspine Bluff"

I participated in the EBTS 6 throughout February and March, and would like to share my work with the blog.  The build is called "Razorspine Bluff", and features jagged terrain with spikes protruding from walls and exaggerated flora.  My goal was to fill the space with large and unique scenes while keeping detailing pretty minimal. This led to large objects in the scene, such as large trees and roots. This also had an unexpected benefit of keeping the framerate very acceptable, compared to other nature scenes I've completed in the past.

I may do another entry on a technique I used for detailing here, if there is interest.  This involved "layering" on the landscaping details.  Very roughly, I:

• Placed flat wall panels around the cliffside
• Added complex geometries with rock objects of a separate texture
• Added vegetation
• Added depth to nearby ground and flat surfaces by using different textures on slightly offset objects.

Maybe more on that later.

For now, some details on the actual build:

Important Locations:

Entrance 
"aw" 7619.03S 450.13E 0.60a 270

Waterfall
"aw" 7627.76S 470.77E 0.53a 61

Base of Main Tree 
"aw" 7621.04S 462.83E 4.70a 4

Photos:

At the base of the tree that towers over the bluff.

Waterfall on the backside of the bluff.

A shot of the waterfall on the backside of the bluff.

A shot of the large tree that towers over the bluff.

A view inside the cave.  I used water and steam effects
here, and also used some of the same tricks for the
 terrain spikes to create thin roots protruding into the
 cave.

A view of the many terrain spikes in this build.

An experiment with creating a mudpit with particle,
lighting, and sound effects.

I experimented with large roots using scale and
shear/skew in this build.  I think they turned out well.  I
 made a rule to only connect them to different spots of
 grass/terrain, which led to interesting connections
 between different terrain levels.

An experimental area in the caves, with various lighting
 and flora effects.

Some equipment in the mines.

Closer to the main entrance into the mines.

Overview from the front of the build.

 I enjoyed building this, and hope to maybe work on some similar concepts back in the Southern Highlands sometime in the future!  I especially like the spiky terrain and giant roots.

Keybindings - Using WASD in ActiveWorlds

I've been gaming quite a bit in my time away from ActiveWorlds, and on my return I found movement with the directional arrows rather unsatisfying.  Thanks to some help from GC and The Alphaworldian, I've got a new setup that I would like to share in case anyone has a similar problem.

You can access the "Keyboard Controls" window from the top menu bar.  Select Options > Configure Controls.  Here's mine, with WASD movement setup in the rightmost column:

Some notes:

• "Move left/right" and "Sidestep" seem to do the same thing.
• "Look up/down" are bound to middle mouse scroll up/down.  Toggle move mode is bound to middle mouse click.
• You can bind two keys to the same action, so I've got old arrow movement and WASD movement both in place. My WASD movement is defined in the right column in the image above. 
• With WASD movement, the "Quick chat message" button becomes more useful. I believe tab is the default binding for this -- you can use it to quickly set "focus" to the chat window after you've bound letters to other actions. 
• I haven't had any luck binding the "Escape" key.  The Keyboard Controls dialog uses it to cancel actions, so it doesn't seem that it can be defined from here.

The only thing I'm really missing still is free camera movement with the right mouse click, reminiscent of World of Warcraft.  Using the middle mouse to look up/down has been the closest approximation I've found so far.

Activeworlds goes "Free To Play"

Earlier this month, Activeworlds abandoned the subscription model in their main universe for a "Free to Play" model, where citizenships would be free and additional features would be sold in an online store.

I've been a longtime proponent of this sort of model for AW, so I've returned to the universe and may even resume regular posting on this blog.  I've been updating the Southern Highlands in SW City over the past few days... adding some new SWI Content to the 'Emerald Strand' region of the highlands.

The "Farm Kit" is a downloadable set of AWGs that allow SWI players to farm and cook in the world.

I'll probably be doing some more projects like these as I get time.  It's nice to be back, I've missed being able to build, but the 70 dollar price-point of citizenships just wasn't worth it anymore.

Noticeboard: Susan3D.com now a free resource -- models, avatars and textures formatted for Activeworlds

Hey everyone.  Coming out of the woodwork to share a link that has come across my radar.

Cy Award-winning artist Susan 3D (formerly Lady Murasaki) has made her online resource -- http://www.susan3d.com -- free to use.  She has designed many objects, textures, avatars, and other resources such as tutorials during her time in AW and I expect that opening the site up to everyone will be very valuable to the remaining private world owners.

In addition to this, she will continue to post resources to the site.  See this AWForum Thread today for the most recent updates.

AWBuilder Turns One Year Old

One year ago today, on Feburary 2, I set up a humble blog on Tumblr in the hopes of creating a new web resource for ActiveWorlds users.  I had envisioned a place to chronicle my projects, as well as a place for tutorials and for my comments on how AW was doing.  For many months, through high times and lows, I put time and effort into this place, and I think it paid off.  Here we are, a year later, and AWBuilder is host to over 100 posts -- tutorials, downloads, commentary, even the occasional shoutout to other people's projects.  I'm pretty happy with the blog, and from the analytics I see that the AW community is as well, as this page has maintained decent traffic even while I'm not making frequent updates.

AWBuilder had some really great momentum in Spring and even through Summer, but in Fall we hit a change of pace.  I began hinting at some projects I was working on outside of AW (/r/virtualreality) and my foray into other virtual world software.  On the forums and here on the blog I had become increasingly vocal with my displeasure of AW's direction, and for the past few months things have just seemed so... stale, moreso than ever.  Coupling this with the trouble on the forums and the "all is well" attitude that you'll see from AWI and die-hard fans, I found myself in an uncomfortable place.  My citizenship expired in January, and I've taken the opportunity to dive into the great ether that is the Internet to see what else is going on in the world of virtual worlds.

Looking back on my month away, I have to say... the outlook for virtual reality in the future is VERY EXCITING.  I mentioned /r/virtualreality... I try to post a news article there once a day to keep the conversation going, and I've found some incredible things.  Research on all areas of peripherals, from contact lenses that display HUDs to pop-up books.  Worlds designed as therapies for burn victims.  The creativity of research into virtual and augmented reality projects seems unlimited.

Back here in the present, outside of the protection of academia... the outlook for the present isn't so awesome.  In my conversations, I've found that many people consider Second Life to be "yesterday's virtual world."  We seem to be at an intermediary period, where the concept of a general virtual world is accepted and fairly well-known, but it isn't big.  It isn't "the 3D internet."  Not yet -- something is still missing.  With all of this research into hardware, I'm inclined to believe that the answer will be found in a world that takes advantage of immersive technology.

As an addendum to that last though... if Second Life is yesterday's virtual world, what does that make ActiveWorlds?  Some food for thought.

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So what's next for AWBuilder?  I'm not sure, to be honest.  As a resource, it is completely functional just the way it is, and I expect that it could continue to be for many years, even if I never updated it again.  I expect that I will occasionally... I really have enjoyed working on this blog, and I'm very proud of the content here.  If ActiveWorlds can find a way out of the rut it is in right now, I may even return to regular posting.

Hey, a guy can dream, right?

Anyway, if you want to continue following my projects, I spend most of my time these days working on http://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/.  I've been moderating this reddit since August, and it has grown into a nice discussion forum.  We're starting to get at least one post a day and I'm even starting to recognize regular commentors. :p  My goal for the reddit is to be a good measure of where VR is heading, and to be a good place to discuss virtual worlds old and new.  My friends from ActiveWorlds are more than welcome to join in. :)

Merry Christmas, Everyone

Do Ut Des

Merry Christmas, everyone.  I hope the day has found you well and in good health.  I'm taking the time to rest up... currently a bit under the weather.

I should have some posts up in the following days. 

Finals Week

...ugh.

;)

Southern Highlands - Photo Blog

Did some work in the Southern Highlands tonight with Cactus Jack... also toggled on my visibility to 500m, so I decided to take some screenshots.  Some areas are new, some are old... check it out. :D

Teleport: Teleport to Southern Highlands

Overview of our work tonight. A new bridge spans a valley
to allow access to Cactus Jack's train that runs all through SW City
and the surrounding towns.

A close-up of the bridge.

A rocky outcrop.

A waterfall into Highridge Fjord, which outlets into the Irenic Ocean.

Ferruccio's Mobius House overlooks much of Rising Glen Retreat

The same area from a different perspective, this time looking
up to the high cliffs overlooking Rising Glen Retreat.

The Emerald Strand -- the area nearest to the Irenic Ocean.

Further to the right.

Overlooking the peninsula north of Obsidian Cove.
  Very secluded, almost entirely woodland.