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Jul 13, 2002, 2:20am

Robbie, what are you doing in TS 4.2 to make portions of your models
transluscent or opaque so that you can see background behind them? I'm
using 5.2 and, no matter what seems to work in trueSpace, in AW, anything
transluscent turns out solid. Can you help me out?

Thanks,

Syn

Jul 14, 2002, 4:50am

Thanks, you guys. I'll give those programs a shot. (I'm not versed enough
in 3D to change opacity by hand...)


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Jul 13, 2002, 7:30am

.....Apparently sold out to Gardner (on paper). Gardner has agreed to put
(the non-profitable company) AW up for sale. Should the transaction with
Gardner not go through, (if he doesn't pay up..) McCormick & Noll retain
their former ownership and salaries at AW.

They're not gone yet, folks.

Jul 13, 2002, 8:25am

It may not be coincidence that the German subsidiary of blaxxun Inc.,
maintainers of "Cybertown," a virtual (and very cool) online commuity, have
themselves filed for insolvency as of April. Members' petitions and
donations have apparently kept the site from going under by initiating a
move from German to US servers. How long the site will continue in its
present incarnation is up for grabs. But, while Cybertown's membership was
free to its citizens, Aw's membership certainly is not; we have far more to
lose besides community should AW dissolve. I'd like to initiate a
discussion over ways to keep AW (as well as our personal investments in it)
alive during its present crisis. I'm sure I speak for a lot of you by
saying that I've put in far too much time, effort and money for the whole
system to simply "go away" in front of my nose. Any ideas?

Synapticon

Jul 14, 2002, 4:54am

I can't get your URLs to work, Wendel...


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Jul 15, 2002, 3:34am

Have you guys ckecked out NeverWinter Nights? Not only can you "play the
game," you can competely rewrite the "official" scenario, and write your
own scenario. IE, build your own 3D world, add your own characters,
storyline, your own modeled items, avatars, just about *everything* you can
do in AW, and a whole lot more, in a scripting API based on C. Windows and
Linux servers are free for the download.

*Children* are building worlds and running their own servers for the $69.00
US cost of buying the game. And *thousands* are logging on....

I'm not trying to "down" AW, but.... We need to get on the ball here. Eep
is correct. Back in the mid-90s, 3d for its own sake was new and cool and
worth participating in. Now, it's old hat and taken for granted, and if AW
doesn't keep up with what's possible here in 2002, (*WHAT* 3D environment
doesn't offer chat???) our investments in AW will all be shot to hell,
because what's been "saved" by the owners is nothing but the old, go-nowhere
scenario. In other words, I don't want to have to rename my world,
"Crisis3D_cum_hep_me". Change my cit name to "IN-capacitated."

What can we, as paying users, do to get the folks in charge to CATCH A
CLUE??? There's so much better value out there and it's so frustrating
because I want to take us all on *THAT* merry-go-round.... I just hate
feeling like I've put a ton of effort into something that's inevitably going
to be left in the dust... Aren't you all building worlds to have people
visit your creation, to acknowledge that you've done an awesome job in
giving them an experience that's special and meaningful and surprising that
they can't get anywhere else??

Or am I just crazy here???

Jul 18, 2002, 10:06am

Hey Eep,

Actually, other than the fact that there's no first-person view, your
objections aren't grounded. New objects *can* be created with your favorite
modeling program, and terrain height *can* be changed with just a mouse
click in the Toolset. But foremost, in my view anyway, NWN gives you
something to *do* inside all the stuff you can create. Granted, AW off the
bat lets you build with a more "low-level" set of objects (walls rather than
complete *buildings*), however, should you choose to model your own walls
and build from that more fundamental level, you can certainly do so with
NWN. But it's the scripting part that, frankly, blows me away. As far as
I'm concerned, the scripting makes AW's SDK look paltry by comparison.

And ultimately, when I look at what worlds are more often than not at the
top of the AW list, I see Gor worlds; worlds where the cits are already
heavily into roleplaying as it is. NWN is a natural for creating and more
fully realizing that kind of thing.

My point is, if AW gave us an easier way to create something to *do* in and
with our worlds besides just sit there, host them, and stare at them, hoping
somebody comes by, AW would be further along, and I think that's the
direction the company needs to take. After all, AW *was* the ultimate
"level_editor" back when it began because it uniquely offered the ability to
build. But, at this point, it's turning into a little bit of a dinosaur
(and the stock price is obviously reflecting that...).


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Jul 19, 2002, 7:05am

NWN already *is* competing with AW, though in a different way. Multi-user
building is cool, but obviously not cool enough. Here's how it looks to me:
NWN as it stands won't hold a candle to what's going to be possible six,
seven years from now. AW, still trying to capitalize on the features that
made it successful six, seven years *ago*, is, now, close to biting the
dust.

I'm not suggesting that NWN can or will take over what AW provides. (I
doubt if BioWare is even remotely interested in doing that.) I'm just
saying, "Hey, look at this 3D implementation here; it's drawing far more of
a crowd and far more market share. Can we learn from what it has to offer
so that we can make *our* 3D implementation more viable?" I think that we
can. NWN is not the end-all, be-all of virtual environments. And you're
right, most gamers won't want to deal with the programming, any more than
most AW-ers want to deal with the SDK. But the point is, that wealth of
programming opportunity is there for those folks who want to take advantage
of it, and it provides far more possibility.

And (while I'm on it..) another thing I think we can learn from? I really
like the way NWN's building blocks come in digestible sets--or the way
clicking on an object attaches a ghost of the object's apprearance to your
mouse when you're in the Toolset. This business of "object yards" is
incredibly unwieldy and hard to work with--remembering cryptic object names
and their appearances out of a collection of thousands just doesn't cut it,
nor does having to visit the "object yard" every time I want to use
something I've seen, but can't remember the name of.

In any event, these are just a few ideas which I believe would help bring AW
back into the running. It costs a lot to have and host these worlds: we
need to start getting our money's worth in relation to the other
opportunities out there.

Syn <---Steps down off of soap box now.


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