mauz // User Search

mauz // User Search

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first "citizen union" objective: telegram muting!

Aug 6, 2001, 2:10pm
[View Quote] Top 10 Annoying Telegrams
from people that I've never even heard of

1. hi / hello / hey
(I just know this could be the start of a beautiful relationship...)

2. hello? Are you there??? Why are you ignoring my telegrams?
What did I ever do to you... etc etc

3. Can I ask you a question?
(You just did, pal.)

4. can I join you ?
(Like #3: why not just state your business in the first tele?)

5. I'm cleaning up my contact list, reply if you like to stay on

6. WHO ARE YOU??? / Why are you on my contacts?

7. Hey will u build in my town? / can i build in ur world???????

8. i am a hacker could you please send me your hacked aw browser

9. Happy Thanksgiving / Happy Mothers Day /
whatever that doesn't really concern me

10. Anything with "Please pass this on".

--
Mauz
http://mauz.tnlc.com/

3.2 and Peeps

Sep 28, 2001, 6:57pm
[View Quote] Errr I deleted my card page, because they have all that info up at AW site now.
And no they didn't rip me off, Facter asked my permission first, back then ;)

Hmm I wonder if the current webmaster (whoever s/he is but seems
they're not recruiting for a new one right now either) could finally fix
that wrong email address they have for me on that certain page...
But naaaah, I've only been asking that since, gee, 1998.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.tnlc.com/

From 2.2 to 3.2

Sep 29, 2001, 8:03am
Best thing about AW 3.2 is that it works even without a 3D card and on Windows NT,
so those users can finally get all the features that have been added since 1999:
- light, rotate, move and examine commands
- building with mouse, duplicating with Ctrl, precise object placement
with Ctrl and Shift, seeing cell grid
- sharper sign texts and realistic textures with bilinear filtering,
mipmapping and greyscale masks
- prelit objects, world lights, fog
- multiple simultaneous sounds, support for MP3 files
- automatic URL detection and right click menu in chat window
- F7 and F9 to hide or open web and tab windows, show web button
- getting to AW from behind firewall
- download progress bar
- 200 m visibility
- etc.

Some concerns raised:

* Blurriness
- Criterion's software mode for RenderWare is still lacking,
like the maximum texture size is only 256x256 pixels.
Backdrops scaled down to that and then stretched look just awful.
But you can make a skybox, e.g. a cylinder with 6 sides, each with its own
256x256 texture. And you can even add a ceiling and floor to it, to hide
the previous seam between the backdrop picture and background color.
- Bilinear texture filturing makes textures look smoother instead of
"comic book style" sharp they were in 2.2
- Mipmapping makes textures blurrier in the distance, so that
they are faster to render, and also look a bit more realistic.
You can take that option off from the settings if it bothers you.

* Slowness
- Software rendering of graphics needs power from the processor;
that is why there is 3D cards, to take care of those calculations.
Especially avatars, light and move commands make the scene slow.
AW 3.2 supports the fast T&L light rendering system in 3D cards like GeForce,
but even they take only 7 lights, more than that are shown with slow software mode.
- Visibility is floating by default, so it rises as the frame rate rises.
Set it at some fixed value from the Visibility menu.
You can set the minimum limit down to 30 meters from the performance settings.
- Some slowness may be caused by fragmented file system.
It is good to clean the cache completely and let 3.2 create it again.
- If you have a 3D card and want to use the Direct3D mode, run (Start - Run) dxdiag
and make sure that all the DirectX features under Display tab are enabled.

* MIDIs
- AW 3.1 started using Microsoft's DirectSound, which plays MIDIs
using a software synthesizer. But it caused many crash bugs,
so MIDIs are now played by Windows Media Player, like MP3 files.
Good thing is that people with a wavetable card like SoundBlaster Live
can use their custom sound font banks (digital samples of instruments).
But systems with old or cheap sound cards sounded better with DirectMusic.
Maybe they can put software synthesizing back as an option when it is more stable.

* No jpgs and bmps in cache
- RenderWare needs textures to be in .ras format, an uncompressed pixel raster
that the 3D card can use directly, so the textures load faster on the fly.
- I suppose some worldowners are pleased that people can't "steal"
their custom textures straight from the cache anymore.
- Downside is the increased disk space usage. FAT32 file system (available
in W95 OSR/2 and higher) can pack small files tighter than FAT16 though.

There are also many other features - not bugs since they were intentional
for some reason or other - that us 3.x users have needed to get used to, like
- some textured or animated models show a different color or texture
- some models look darker because specular lighting is not supported anymore
- transparent texture animations need a mask argument to get rid of the black box
- masked textures show a row of pixels across the top edge of some models
- transparent textures tile wrong on some models, like tree textures on tree0x.rwx's
- overlapping transparent models may have parts clipped out or sorted wrong
- sprites are solid
- etc.

But the complaints about not knowing that AW would be upgraded to 3.2
when clicking OK... Errr do you open unknown email attachments too? ;)
I always click Cancel to those and make backups first.

For me, 3.2 works better than 3.1 because the MIDI crashes are gone,
it supports the fast T&L in my GeForce 3D card, and I can use it
on my other system with NT behind a firewall that couldn't run 3.x before.
200 m visibility is a nice plus for screenshots and immersion.

If you can't get 3.2 to work at all, keep bugging support about it so that
they fix it before 2.2 and 3.1 get disabled from the universe completely.
There will be patches released to 3.2 even after this first version.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.tnlc.com/

3.2 - the version from hell

Oct 1, 2001, 3:42pm
[View Quote] AW is directing MIDIs to Windows Media Player, so if they don't
sound good in WMP, they won't sound good in AW either.
I think soundcards can use MS software synthesizer with a WDM driver
(instead of VxD), but I only have W95 so I can't test it.
Luckily I don't need software emulation though, since I can load
big hardware sound font banks into my SoundBlaster Live.

> 2. Every 20-30 minutes AW would cause my computer to just stop, and reboot

Make sure your processor or graphics card isn't overheating (does the card
have a cooling fan?) and that the power supply gives at least 250 watts.

> 3. Lighting. This is just an opinion, but I don't like the lighting.
> White light at brightness 10 makes 1 side of my avatar completely white.

I think it's nice that you don't have to use big brightness values anymore
to get a decently lit area. BUT the hardware lights in Direct3D and OpenGL
can now override the color of the object, forcing the colors of non-textures
polygons to the color of the light, almost like specular lighting - pretty unrealistic.
Roland doesn't like it either, so it is not just your opinion.
Maybe it will change (once again...) in some future version of RenderWare.
The software lights work more like the 3.1 lights, not changing the objects color.

> 5. Recache bug(?)

Did you delete cache for 3.2? I got something like this even with earlier versions
if I tried to go somewhere but couldn't get there ("Looking for.."),
like when uniserver was down, and then teleported back.
It could even mess up the avatar lists between the two worlds.

> 6. Texture tags. If you texture a door object in 3.1, it would all be

Do you mean like the white rims in the pw/pd wall series? That is an old problem
with models that have vertices without texturemapping information,
but that people use texture commands on anyhow. Putting a texture
on such models produces "inconsistent results" in RenderWare,
meaning, they look different in every version of AW.

Some such models that I noticed besides those doors were chess piece set,
drinkf1, firehy1, mailbox1 top, rail1t00, tvstnd base. The only way to fix it
once and for all would be to add specific UV values in the rwx file.
If there is a certain model that you want looking the same as in 3.1,
there is now a randomuvs RWX command.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.tnlc.com/

Please stop

Oct 2, 2001, 4:40pm
[View Quote] There is only minimum visibility setting in the options, but you can sort of
limit maximum visibility too by setting the desired frame rate high.

Visibility menu will reset to Float every time you change worlds or close AW.
That's because if some newb... people set their visibility at 200 m and
then their computer grinds to a halt, that they could get it reset somehow.

The minimum visibility in a world can be restricted in the World options.
In many worlds it is still 40 m, so 30 m is greyed out in the Visibility menu
(in early beta, the minimum visibility available was 40 m.)

--
Mauz
http://mauz.tnlc.com/

Re: AW back up

Nov 9, 2001, 2:19pm
[View Quote] This would be a great opportunity to use that new universe welcome message feature...

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Unfair Voting Procedure for Avatars 2001

Dec 5, 2001, 4:43pm
[View Quote] I didn't crash once - shouldn't a faulty object crash everybody?
However, there were lots of high-polygon avatars there, which grinded
the frame rate down to halt; especially when minimum visibility
had been set as high as 60 m in some worlds. Maybe they should only
allow 3 entries per artist to keep the avatar list length reasonable?
And I couldn't resize my window larger, because there were hundreds of
textures and pictures there, some pretty big, filling up the video card's memory
(my card is GeForce2 GTS 32 MB). But the votebot never answered me :/

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Frohes neues Jahr

Dec 31, 2001, 1:23pm
[View Quote] Hauskaa uuden vuoden juhlintaa
sekä onnellista ja rauhallista uutta vuotta
kaikille teille, ystävillenne ja perheillenne :)

P.S. My screenshots from 2001 now at http://mauz.info/awpics2001.html

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Question

Jan 2, 2002, 8:41pm
[View Quote] Hehe I will have to rephrase that: there are over 50,000 accounts
in the citizen database, but many of them are expired,
or then expiring soon like the 3D Homepage ones.
And there is no way for a bot run by ordinary user to find out
which is which; that is, how many active, paying citizens there really are.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info
- An unofficial user site not affiliated with Activeworlds Corp. ;) -

Alright...

Jan 3, 2002, 3:09pm
[View Quote] Let's hope so. Before, they used to rely on influx of ignorant newbies
who only had to be tricked into paying once and could then be forgotten.
Now they have to actually try to keep the users happy
and willing to pay month after month.

I suppose the registration fee was bound to rise one day,
it has been the same since 1997. They expanded adventurously
and then lost their corporate customers because of the world economy.
I for one can afford throwing a bit more money away just for fun hehe.

But I don't like losing the tourists. If we can build "astounding and inspiring"
worlds with the new features, we want to show them to everybody too.
Could there least be a free demo mode without speaking or building rights?
Without new blood AW will become an inbred, closed club that will
stagnate and slowly wither away.

They have to make pretty tempting advertisements to get people
interested enough to pay for something that they haven't even seen yet.
Only a fraction of the interested will want to battle with CC/Paypal,
only a fraction of them will register, only a fraction of them will
continue paying for months. People usually only flash their credit card
for sex and games - are those what AWC is aiming at?

Maybe some of the workers, no matter how valuable and dedicated they are,
could draw their own conclusions about whether they would do more good for AW
by resigning and giving money to AW as ordinary citizens instead.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Latest AWC Press release casts a bit of light on it's latest moves

Jan 13, 2002, 8:48am
[View Quote] I had never heard of NetBroadcaster before, so I went to their site,
read some fascinating celebrity gossips and registered (for free!)
to see a nice old sci-fi movie online. Other than that it was more like
a glorified link list, but then that's what portals are.
They get revenue from advertisers and referring people to join
their newsletters/advertisement e-mails when they register.
They claim to have pay-per-view content too but I didn't find it.

I did find the original stories that their press releases refer to:
http://www.streamingmedia.com/newsletter/062601.html
- I like the idea of "viral marketing" there - and
http://www.digitalcoastweekly.com/issues/dcw02072001.html#Headline3604

Apparently their balance sheet "has been in the black for nine months".
Admirable, but so was AWC's before. Either they have started losing advertisers now,
or then I really wonder why AWC is buying them and not the other way round.
I guess they are still smaller than AWC or without such capital.
Unless it is because of AWC's status in Nasdaq?

This was an interesting page too:
http://www.lukeford.com/subjects/content/babenet.htm
However, even though its writer claims that he can link
NetBroadcaster to Internet porn business - or even worse, spam! -
I couldn't find that kind of evidence there; just that their hosting service
may have such connections, but maybe NetBroadcaster
only chose them because of their streaming media services.

Now, will NetBroadcaster start promoting AW on its website
(pay-per-view or credit card needed??) or will there be
streaming media in AW - with popups...?

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Latest AWC Press release casts a bit of light on it's latest moves

Jan 13, 2002, 9:49am
[View Quote] Somebody had been on vacation for the first days of the year and
wondered why she hadn't been informed about the price raise by e-mail.
Yes, why not, like they managed to send this month's newsletter.
Is there anything about the new prices in the newsletter?
Is there anything on their front page? Did they post about it in the newsgroups?
All we got was a link in the universe welcome message and sign at AW GZ,
to a letter that was posted one day before the new price plan
(that also included disabling version 2.2, of interest to some citizens);
a letter that to my disappointment did not even contain words like "sorry".

A big part of the community uses these newsgroups, but AWC never posts here.
Some say it is because of possible attacks. However, the Community newsgroup
is now moderated isn't it, and the rowdiest ones have been banned completely.
Even if they did get some sour notes then, well, if you can't take the heat
then stay out of the customer service business ;) Now all the anger
was directed to Gatekeepers, Peacekeepers and other innocent citizens.

Maybe they do not want to post comments that might cause them
legal or financial trouble? But if they had posted even that one letter,
or cut wings from some false rumours that were flying around here -
without having to reveal corporate secrets of course - then maybe
most of us would _understand_ and unite. Now they just have once again
managed to alienate lots of former loyal, happy citizens.
Don't they even want to keep their current users, but are targetting
some other group in the future?

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

New Pricing

Feb 7, 2002, 4:08pm
[View Quote] After the Pricing Plan build 1, I was really confused about
what on earth they ever wanted to achieve by killing tourists -
unless they wanted to kill AW also, plunder ruins and sail away.

But somehow I feel more optimistic after this new plan.
Apparently JP simply just computed it in his cold, calculating
Financial Officer's brain hehe that forced payment would generate more revenue.
So he was actually doing it to benefit AW, and no sinister plots there.
(Well, except the one for world domination, but that's another story.)

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

good bye <NAC> and expired property

Feb 8, 2002, 6:48pm
[View Quote] Unfortunately yes, Cryonics said that the procedure explained at
http://www.activeworlds.com/products/cancel.asp
applies even to current citizens, as of Jan 3:
if they let their citizenship expire, then their buildings may be deleted
from the AWC public building worlds within 60 days.
However, it does not concern NACs (for reasons Lara stated) nor private worlds.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

More proof (follow up to last posts)

Mar 21, 2002, 8:08pm
[View Quote] Cryonics said that the deletion rule "only applies to existing and new users",
whereas the citizenships that have expired before this year wouldn't be affected,
because they couldn't have known that their buildings could be lost if they left AW
(pretty considerate from their part I think).

However, that was back in February, so since E N Z O now said otherwise,
I thought that they had reconsidered.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

WARNING: IMPORTANT

Apr 1, 2002, 4:59pm
[View Quote] Heh, must be an old list: Hole does not even use object password anymore,
ever since a hacker convinced us that they cannot be protected in AW anyway
(he wasn't using a zip password cracker).

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

when do we get 3.3?

May 19, 2002, 9:11am
[View Quote] Roland himself said to me, in a world where are others were present too, that
"May 31 is my last day" and "that's why I said 3.3 is gonna be out before then :)".

3.3 seems pretty ready to me, but if/when there are bugs found after the final release,
then I bet that MrGrimm, HamFon & co can fix them with service patches even later on.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Sequences in 3.3

Jun 2, 2002, 7:45am
[View Quote] Jump and women's Happy gestures in AlphaWorld still go up (qjump.seq, shappy.seq).
But yes I've seen one custom sequence not to fly up anymore.
Maybe it's simply a bug, or can be circumvented in the code?

Some problems during beta were caused by mis-tagged avatars,
like IntelBunny's head scooted up to the sky because both the head
and neck clumps are tagged #3, so Roland fixed that one in the code.
When Ling's left foot was missing because it was tagged 17 (right ankle)
instead of 21, the avatar itself was fixed.

I think the new animation system works surprisingly well,
considering it's completely new. I like how the gestures look smoother;
maybe that's because of the higher frame rate in Direct3D 8 mode?

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

CYs OK so who won?

Oct 27, 2002, 4:39pm
[View Quote] Totally unofficial list by an innocent bystander:

Architecture/Urban Planning/Design: SW Comit - Praxton Oil Rig AW 2636S 3656E 3.4a 180
Technical Enhancements: XelaG - Xelagot (X1) bot
Community Groups/Activities and Events: AWBingo - Flagg, King Tex and others
Community or Town: SW City AW 2217.4S 3609.8E - Syntax, SW Comit and others
Community Leadership/Participation: VernA V - GorVernA
Object Design/Texture Application: ShadowKnight LE - DsEden
Innovative Design: Posh (+ JohnnyB) - Y2000
Avatar Development: Lady Murasaki - Jade
Spirit of Cy Award: Andras
Lifetime Achievement Award: AlphaBit Phalpha
AW Web Site: Ananas - http://oct31.de/aw/
Environment Design in a Public Building World: Seiya Faye - Starbuilds Factory AW 17777s 17777e
Environment Design in a Greater Universe World: ShadowKnight LE - DsEden
Virtual Art Project: dreamer2 - Olympic Park in Yeti City AW 8882.6N 7091.7E 3.8a
Write in Category: AWTeen and its citizens
Fibbles Award: justine - Amitie

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

World Server.... or not?

Jan 14, 2003, 1:59pm
[View Quote] What kind of firewall, program or box? Is it really completely disabled (how)?
Windows XP also has its own firewall, in Advanced tab of the network connection.
Does your Internet Service Provider allow running servers, so hasn't blocked
any ports on their side? Do you need to define proxy server in IE?
Have you been able to run world server before, or is this your first try?
Have you tried installing server to another folder?

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Gate Censorship Totally Unnescessary

Mar 14, 2003, 7:03pm
[View Quote] Immigration Officer: Welcome to Active Worlds! The Gateway to the largest Cybercommunity on the Web!
[Customs Aide]: Welcome, Mauz. For the Conduct Guidelines please say World Rules or see
http://www.activeworlds.com/community/conduct.asp
....
Please submit any complaints or queries regarding these rules to info at activeworlds.com.

:)

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Missing Telegrams?

Apr 6, 2003, 1:12pm
[View Quote] And you did not log in under some other citizenship,
or click Sent column title to sort telegrams differently?

Some people complain that their telegram database gets corrupted,
dunno about that, but you could save all your telegrams into a text file
with Andras's Telegram Reader http://andras.net/tools.html#tgreader
then delete the old telegram.dat and telegram.idx files, and start over.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Unable to log on with build 479

Apr 16, 2003, 5:04pm
[View Quote] So just a hardware firewall, and no ZoneAlarm or similar program
(that has often caused problems like this with upgrades)?

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Unable to log on with build 479

Apr 17, 2003, 2:19pm
[View Quote] So you did run ZoneAlarm before? How long ago? Did you uninstall it completely,
deleted the whole directory from hard disk, no TrueVector (Vsmon.exe) and
Minilog services in registry anymore? Can you still start it up and then shut it down?
Hmm I wonder if it helped to install 3.4 to another folder, or rename the exe.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Get Wells, Birthdays Problem

Apr 27, 2003, 10:09am
[View Quote] Duh, it was already happening before 3.4: either people change or delete their web sites
themselves, or then the web site provider changes name, puts restrictions to linking
like when trying to include a picture in a web forum message, cuts downloads when
"this member's web site has exceeded its maximum bandwidth limit", or closes down.
I think pictures are way overused in card sites anyway, making them too flashy for my taste.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

What Citizens Want

May 2, 2003, 8:01pm
[View Quote] Mmm I remember four years ago when The Lady went on (first ever?)
avatar hunger strike on top of a skyscraper in Metatropolis,
"for better communication between AWLD and the citizens" :)
http://mauz.info/awpics1999/COFmeta-19990210.jpg

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Someone REALLY lost the plot

May 3, 2003, 7:39am
[View Quote] Umm it says from the _registration_ window, you know,
when you want to register _citizenship_ with a credit card.
Then you get one week free before they start charging
for they joys of citizenship. Tourists do not need to register.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

AW Build 483

May 3, 2003, 7:46am
[View Quote] When you choose Options - Citizen, does it say "You are on the beta program"?
Closed beta testers still get the new beta versions automatically.
They are also the only ones who can post in the beta newsgroup.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Object makers please reframe from using caps!!

Jul 14, 2003, 1:12pm
[View Quote] You can save property and lowercase the propdump file. Many ways for that,
for instance in my PFE editor it is Edit - Text - Lowercase Selection.
Problem is, it would lowercase all the Description fields too, like sign texts :/

Trailing spaces are trickier, because you have to change the field length also (the 7th number).
That can be done manually from propdump file too, if you're in a masochist mood.
If some utility could parse the propdump into fields and calculate with them,
it could solve both trailing space and uppercase problems without messing descriptions...

(Maybe I should direct this to Worldbuilders)

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Object

Jul 21, 2003, 1:38pm
[View Quote] There was one back in 1999, when Kubrick died :/
http://mauz.info/awpics1999/AW-19990309.jpg

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

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