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Aug 6, 2003, 12:47am

To anyone in AWI who's listening - are you adding the flight sequences to
Alphaworld or what? Looks like you got it half done (can see people tilting
in the air).

Just wondering, thanks
- Comit

PS - what happened to our sun?! =P

Aug 6, 2003, 4:14pm

Seeing the tilt wasn't available untill a couple weeks after 3.4 launched.
I dunno, it looks pretty silly without the seqs. I look like a hotep
missile =P


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Aug 10, 2003, 5:41am

Reasoning is futile with The Lady. Many have tried...many deaths X_X

I think I'll show up though. I bet it'll make for some great chat logs ^_^


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Aug 14, 2003, 2:01am

....lard? =D

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Aug 14, 2003, 1:52am

You mean Syntax? He's read it, in Canada, and has no computer as of now =D

Actually quite a few people have read that book. I even saw some girl
reading it in a restaurant once. I mentioned AW to her on my way out =P


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Aug 14, 2003, 5:50pm

Actually it's pretty deluxe. It can pick up a whisper from across the room
(seriously) =P
Unfortunately, that's the problem. It's too sensitive, and picked up
everything including some feedback =\

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Aug 15, 2003, 12:57am

Huh? I'm Sam. Who did you think I was then lol =P

I had my mic's volume as low as it could without being off. I don't think
it pays much attention to that though. It's a USB microphone so it doesn't
have conventional volume control X_X

It's a work in process. It'll be better next month as Chris said =)

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Aug 20, 2003, 6:20pm

I'll pitch in $40 for an even $100 ;D

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Sep 8, 2003, 7:04am

> So will the TV stations once people were to take on the task of running
> them. And like I said before, I hope to run one of 'em myself someday
> (right now I don't have the resources, so I'm just building the
transmitter
> towers and stiudios and such). :-)

AW's community is at a all time low for people who will actaully run
organizations succesfully. I remember back in the days when this wasn't
true, and we had lotsa busy organizations running like UTN, awnews,
AWcomreg, AWEC, CYs (gone for this year I guess?), AW Info squares, and
more; not to mention big active cities/communities, which I can only think
of about 3 or 4 now.

Point is is that we shouldn't thin out the few people resources we got right
now. Pool it together for a kickin' station. And unlike some advertisement
based organization, TV stations can support quite a large number of people
who want to get involved, hint hint...

>
> Obviously you've not been in VWTV world, have you?? (query)


Brocks been nice to me, as well as other SW'ians. He even runs the SW City
store voluntary ^_^

Sep 25, 2003, 5:08pm

> Ciena, Commie and
> Tengel are the Caretakers.


O_O at Commie. Someone's using my nickname? =D

On an unrelated note, I just wanna compliment you on America. I built a
tourist town there back in 1998. The first thing I did when I got on AW the
first time was go to America cause I heard so much about it =)

Oct 21, 2003, 4:07am

Great show guys. What happened to the email bag segment though? ;_;


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Oct 22, 2003, 3:04am

Cheap? Aww come on those sound effects are grade A material 8)

lol


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Oct 23, 2003, 4:41pm

One question....Live365? Must be a Denver thing =P

Oct 23, 2003, 5:06pm

Aww nevermind, I see what it is now. Yes...AW should advertise there indeed.

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Oct 24, 2003, 11:00pm

Goodnight, don't let the Bowen bugs bite =D

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Oct 26, 2003, 10:12pm

Perhaps micro waste. 1 GB could hold like, what, a million posts? Not much
to worry about =P


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Oct 31, 2003, 9:54pm

Well when the browser crashes it corrupts the Index files which tell the
browser what you've downloaded. I wish AW would just set an automatic index
backup to avoid this. Right now I do it manually by coping them
periodically. They are:

activeworlds/cache/ - copy of the whole properties folder, and the two world
files
art/the world you want/ - and then all those .dat and .idx files (none of
the folders)
art/misc/and the .dat and .idx file there

And then you just restore them when you crash.

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Nov 1, 2003, 10:30pm

6 gigabytes? Where'd you get that from, they aren't talking about
Alphaworld O_o

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Nov 1, 2003, 10:39pm

Hmm wait a sec, I thought we were talking about client-side cache that you
download from the server (even your own server). If that's the case you
can't damage anything. Backing up your world, on the server-side, on the
other hand, I don't know anything about...

But, regarding your first statement, AW *is* designed for seperate cache
components. You have your world index cache, your misc files cache, and
your model, avatar, sound, texture and seq index caches (for each world).
They can be backed up and restored seperately without problem. I do this
quite often being on as being on dial up, redownloading is a pain X_X. As
in, for example, once I have all the avatars downloaded I don't need to
periodically backup the avatar.idx and .dat files anymore. Backing up the
whole cache folder would be quite costly lol. You only need the .idx and
..dat files.


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Nov 2, 2003, 8:14pm

But the index files contain all the folder's information. The function is
in the name - it serves as an index of what you have and all that
information. The folder's contents don't corrupt (through AW crashing at
least, any file can be corrupted of course), just the index and data files
in the root directory of the folders, which is why you don't need to backup
the folders. When AW crashes you'll notice that only the .idx and .dat
files start over from scratch, where the folder contents stay the same.
Even though you have the contents of the world, the index files don't know
that and tell AW to download it again, which is waste of time and bandwidth
really.

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Nov 2, 2003, 8:25pm

It's not so much a bug; it's just that the rendering engine is terribly
inefficient. With high end computers you can sorta use brute force to get
through the inefficiency. I guess that it's so laggy because it has to
render so many individual objects, whereas in games, objects are streamlined
for performance (eg a box object is better than 6 panes). Not to mention
that AW's engine lacks portal rendering as Eep once mentioned, so it renders
objects you can't even see X_X

AW uses a semi-modern version of Renderware's engine, the same engine that
powers GTA games, so it's not really that simplistic, TZ.


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Nov 5, 2003, 5:58am

Well this was built up in the SW City Forums, edited for the newsgroups. If
you don't care about Alphaworld then there's no need to read this.
---
I've brought up Alphaworld topics countless times in my years here in the
newsgroups. Only a couple times has AWI commented, in which case it would
appear they barely even read what I had to say. Because of SW City, I'm
totally bound to Alphaworld, which means we're ultimately under the control
of AWI, and I gotta say I really don't like that. Many of you say
Alphaworld is dead, move on, but that's simply not the case. Primarily, no
one in town wants to abandon ship, and second that there's no where for us
to go anyway. So, what's so great about Alphaworld? It's an overlooked
potential for us and AWI. In AW, you got your world owners userbase, and
your commoner userbase. AWI has been focused on the world owners for many
versions and years now. Yes, worlds is where the money's at, but this
indirectly hurts the community. As Goober King has stated, AW is shifting
from a community to a solo universe. At this rate, we're going to be just a
bunch of nice looking worlds with 0 to 3 people in it. That's not a
community, and a community is what keeps a program going for a long time.
The commoners form most of your community, and they've always been mostly
attracted to the big worlds, which are the public worlds basically. The
public worlds offer vast space, security and state-of-mind that the world
isn't going to be cleared like so many private worlds do. Well, the
community is dieing I don't need to tell you that. AWI can only do so much
to help the community, and that's basically just working for it a little, in
terms of public features, objects, or official events. This is sorta like
the fertilizer of community health, and the community can help itself for
everything else....so this is where Alphaworld comes in.

AWI can't seem to get it through their heads that Alphaworld is about the
only place that allows people to start a town of their own, at least one
that could reach good size. That's Alphaworld's selling point. It also
appears to be *painfully obvious* that AWI is not taking advantage of
Alphaworld's popularity. The popularity is already there, why bother trying
to start a new one with NewAW? Alphaworld has the rich history, world
record setting size and development, and a good sized userbase compared to
the rest of AW, and they want to let it rot and die instead of continue to
grow? That's not smart business. All worlds have their caretakers to look
over world improvements. AWteen's government acts as an organized caretaker
system basically, and coupled with it's size it's quite popular. But,
public worlds have AWI as their caretaker, and frankly they're pretty lousy
at this.

And then there's business potential...they musta spent thousands of dollars
worth of paid labor building NewAW, where they coulda spent next to nothing
fixing up AW. By nothing, I mean that AWI owns countless objects that
aren't in use, from other worlds of theres. They could do official events.
Bring the community together. There are still plenty of features to unlock.
Some features may cause problems, but they all have work arounds and AWI is
either blind at seeing them or doesn't want to admit they're there. I can
think of many workarounds as I type this. Doing these cheap things is like
instant benefits for us and their business when they really needed it; not
years down the road putting all your hope in some new flagship world that
may or may not work, where the was no community input on if we would even be
interested in it (I don't for one), and having blind faith that the
community will even be around by the time its done. And if change does
cause problems? Are you so scared at fixing it? I'm sure you can do that a
lot faster than the time it took to make NewAW.

Ontop of neglecting Alphaworld, they lie to us about it. They said 3 times
in the newsgroups that there would be a community vote on whether or not we
wanted new features in AW. Did we ever get one? No, they just threw in 3d
axis without input. There was also suppose to be an object submission
program. It was supervised by Factor, and the program died before it built
up speed because he left. Seems like that gave AWI an excuse to disband the
whole idea. Shortly before the price hikes, there were plans with Mountain
Myst and Duskbat and his crew to revamp AW GZ. But after the price hikes,
AWI sort of let themselves forget all about this. I've mentioned stuff like
this before, and they always make these ridiculous statements that they can
never backup about how people "rioted" when features were added before, like
when they added the new avatars when only CY existed; And when they gave us
some insane 15 minute environment rotating scheme that made 0 sense and was
just awful, and of course people complained about it, including me, and they
for some reason think we don't want *any* change at all to the environment,
which isn't true. They don't even do a winter theme anymore which they did
every year. AWI is overly sensitive towards AW conservatives, or what I
like to call AW Amish (I know a few, don't take it personal if your reading
this). I don't mean to offend anyone but I notice many of these people are
older in r/l, and it's basically a fact that as you get older your less
likely to like change. I personally believe them protesting change (for the
better) is selfish, them holding onto the past and not seeing great things
happening in the future. They need to get their priorities straight on what
is best for the future of AW.

And, the worst part of it all is that since the price hikes, despite AWI
claiming they could offer us more with the new revenue, Alphaworld has seen
much much less attention than beforehand. That's what really angers
me...thanks for reading, and here's hoping for a change in case this gets
read by management; and if you are happening to read this Mr. Noll, if you
guys aren't going to take care of these public world's futures, let someone
else do it. Form an official panel. There *are* functional official groups
after all, like PKs, GKs and GET. So it can be done.

- SW Comit, representing the people of SW City

Nov 5, 2003, 5:42pm

[View Quote] Because if you want to host your own community, you only have a few options.
One being a pretty small one in a private world, one in AWTeen which isn't a
public world, or the public worlds like AW. That's just an example there
are other things like large scale projects.


> b. What is the 15 minute scheme rotation?

This was discussed in an earlier NG thread. Every 15 to 30 minutes to
environment would change. Stuff like changing the fog (to the point where
it's hard to build), and lighting (also making it hard to build). While
some of the evironmential changes were nice, a lot were not, and we don't
want them that frequent O_o

> c. Why when a vote was taken was there only about 30 votes?

When was this? Surely someone from the SW City community would have
informed us if they saw it. If there really was one, why wasn't the url
simply put in the world message?

> d. Why do you insist there is some correlation between AW and NewAW? NewAW
> is an entirely different project (in some ways a prototype) and one from
> which most developement of 3.4 and 3.5 came from. Many of the ideas
started
> in NewAW were things which have been on the wishlist for YEARS and have
now
> been incorporated in the client!

Chris and Bowen covered that well...

> e. Are you sure there was a plan to revamp AWGZ?

Very sure. Did you ask Moutian Myst? It was before the price hikes so no
suprise if she forgot. Basically Duskbat was working with MM to revamp the
GZ, and I just so happened to be talking to Duskbat one night about GZ and
he brought this up and invited me to help him out.

> f. You don't remember that people were upset when the new avatars got
> added? This was not when "only Cy" existed but was years later.

Well those old avatars *did* need to be updated, I mean look at them now
lol. As I said, a few people can get quite attached, but let me ask you
this. How many were there? Compare that to the userbase at the time, and
do a percentage check. Hmmm. A few angry people can make a lot of noise.

> g. What are the features still to be unlocked? It was my understanding
that
> tourists are allowed and 3Axis rotation is also. What would you like?

This isn't for me to answer, this is what a [well advertised] feature vote
is for. Some ideas of what you could include on it: special commands, sky
box, seasonal theme changes, cell space, avatars. Those are just features
though. Then there are objects. For this, either use more objects that AWI
owns or set up an object submission program that Factor was planning. All
you need is a few people to check for encroachment issues and quality
control, and access to the OP of course. Personally I'd really like to see
some simple shape objects. I mean it's 2003 and we don't even have a simple
small sphere objects. The only spheres we got are attached to poles and
stuff.
It would also be nice to lessen the strain required to host events. Like in
SW City, we have to struggle with so much advertising to get a half-way
desent crowd for events. We need an advertisement organization that has
control of the world message. The a new GZ would benefit from easily
viewable events center. Sure you can already advertise on those billboards
at GZ, but I don't think most people know how to go about doing this and its
a slow progress anyway.
And there's nothing stoppping AWI from hosting their own events. You guys
are sure to draw a big crowd. Things like this helps keep the community
going.
As for the tourists, you were giving us back half of an old feature, so I
don't count that as relevant.

> h. You feel that a rate hike was done and a promise was made that
AlphaWorld
> was then going to be improved?

Being as how AW is an ever going chat room it's very hard to dig up this
information let alone prove it happened. I do remember talking to Flagg for
quite a long time the day of the hikes, and he kinda shut me up when he said
how Alphaworld could benefit from the revenues. If it weren't for SW City,
I would have left AW because for the cost, there's better stuff out there.
This wouldn't be the case if there was something to look forward to. Right
now I know Alphaworld is going to be the same day after day and there
probably won't be any change to it made for a year, which is exactly what
happens...two years now, and only 2 things have happened. The mass object
submission and 3d axis. If the world lived up to the browser's name, Active
Worlds, and was active, I wouldn't feel the same about it.

On the business side of things, my rant does not pertain to getting new
users to AW, that's a whole different ballpark. My rant is about *keeping*
your current userbase, which is what you need to do before trying to attract
new ones. Right now I see AWI doing whatever they can think of to attract
new users which is great and all but useless if you can't keep your current
users interested for very long.

Nov 5, 2003, 6:04pm

> c. the UNIVERSE message was pointed at the vote page for a couple weeks

Enzo you keep saying that. You may have requested it, but are you so sure
that it happened? Surely someone here can verify if this happened since it
was a universe message.

Nov 5, 2003, 8:32pm

> I'm one of those who really cares about the preservation of Alpha
World.
> Adding new objects and texteures is fine, doing a winter theme, if it was
a
> tradition, is also fine, but changing things like the GZ, the ground, the
> skybox... to me this is not really acceptable. AW was the first virtual
> online world. The building that were built back in 1995 should look
exactly
> the same as they were in 1995. What I mean is that you can ADD things but
> you cannot REMOVE things from Alphaworld. Changing the sky is REMOVING the
> old one so you change the way the things looked like. Though, things
adding
> 3D axis rotation is OK to me, because you can CHOOSE if you want to change
> YOUR objects, and you can still keep the old ones exactly like before :
the
> change is not obligatory for everyone.

What is your opinion on putting these changes to a community vote, Weizer?

Nov 5, 2003, 10:06pm

Yes please do not change the lights at all, because all color matching using
the create color command gets thrown off.

I have an idea though. Why not use a sky box that looks identical to the
mountains now? One reason is because they're less error prone. Similar to
Ryan, those backdrops don't display right for ATI r200 chipset graphic
cards. It would also allow for periodic temporary weather changes like a
cloudy day, which would pretty fun.

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Nov 5, 2003, 10:17pm

Why not? AW use to benefit from periodic environment change. They would
occasionally change the background, make it night, stuff like that, but not
for very long and it'd go back to normal. I don't recall any angry mobs
lol, but just a pleasant change for awhile. A cloudy day would be no
different. Since the price hikes they haven't done any of that anymore, not
even the traditional winter theme =(


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Nov 5, 2003, 10:19pm

AW Uni has a whole would benefit better by editting the browser so people
could safetly use a terrain, instead of using bots...


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Nov 6, 2003, 5:27am

That'd be quite expensive I think...according to AW Mapper, the database
when uncompressed is 174 GB. It compresses to about 2 GB. I'm not sure
what the server use, compressed or uncompressed...


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Nov 6, 2003, 7:46pm

Remember these are not ordinary comsumer hard drives though. They're used
in Sun Servers =O
Regardless, your right, it's a capital investment that all businesses have
to make every now and then.

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