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Dec 5, 2002, 12:10pm

I'm pleased to announce the public release of the Demeter terrain editor.
Demeter is an improved version of the terrain bot that has been running in
AWTeen since June 29, and allows world owners to provide safe and
encroachment-checking terrain editing capabilities to all visitors, even if
they don't have Caretaker rights. Everyone is welcome to download the
application and use it in their worlds.

Demeter was designed with three main goals:

-Ease of use: Enter your privilege password and get started right away
-Stability: Beta testing has been ongoing for some time, and seven beta
builds were released before this release
(http://www.shoemakervillage.org/beta.html)
-Universiality: Demeter works similarly anywhere it's placed, so someone who
has used Demeter in the past can easily visit a new world and continue
building with terrain without having to relearn.

The program is available for download at
http://www.shoemakervillage.org/programs.html. Everyone is free to use it
in any world they choose, whether it be public building worlds or private
RPG-type worlds (Demeter is invisible to non-build users). I would suggest,
however, that those who would like to put help on their world's websites
link directly to http://www.shoemakervillage.org/help - if you copy the
documentation to your site, then it would be imposible to notify everyone
when it's updated. A features list is at the site - go check it out
yourself :)

Feel free to post comments if you decide to enable Demeter in your world so
I can go check it out :)

-Brant

Dec 11, 2002, 10:57am

Don't look toward me - I didn't program the world server, lol. You'll have
to ask Calpentera about this one :)

[View Quote]

Dec 14, 2002, 4:53pm

Ultimate Paintball 4.02 is now available as a non-beta release for those who
are interested. Ultimate Paintball is an application that allows users to
host network paintball games between worlds (and now universes) with a
variety of different twists.

I'm not going to post the release notes here as they would waste too much
bandwidth, but go check them out yourself at
http://www.shoemakervillage.org/help/pbwhatsnew.html. The application can
be downloaded at http://www.shoemakervillage.org/programs.html.

Comments are welcome.

-Brant

Dec 28, 2002, 12:07pm

Right now, I'm looking for some more people who are interested in beta
testing the Demeter terrain editor. Several new versions have been put out
in the past few days, so additional help would be great in helping to work
out the bugs. For the past month, I had kept this beta program low-key, but
there aren't enough posts to eliminate all the bugs from the release
programs, since there isn't a wide enough range of world configurations
available to the current testers.

If you're interested, please visit http://www.shoemakervillage.org/beta.html
for more details. There's a newsgroup (news://andras.net/AW.VillageBeta)
for posting bug reports, as well as links to download all of the beta
software being tested (including Demeter).

I'd really like to continue making these program better, so please consider
testing!

-Brant

Jan 10, 2003, 10:14pm

I'm privileged to announce the final release of Demeter 1.18. This version
builds upon Demeter's first release a month ago by adding key features such
as:

-The ability to log in automatically
-A command to delete terrain within a certain area
-Improved eminent domain features for vandalism control
-Logging of all terrain-related activities within your world, including
privilege password and action for all events, to crack down on vandalism and
theft
-Updated statistics tracking
-Several features to optimize Demeter based on your available bandwidth
-Windows localization settings compliance
-Commands that send help to the user

A full list of what's new along with updated documentation is available at
http://www.shoemakervillage.org/help/dwhatsnew118.html, while detailed
technical information is available at
http://www.shoemakervillage.org/release.html.

Go check out and download Demeter today, and join worlds like AWTeen, A!!CT,
pata, Gulakon, Lugia, and others that allow builders to take their creations
to the next level!

Jan 11, 2003, 3:42pm

This post is one of the most ridiculous things I've read in a while, and
these newsgroups do have a lot of ridiculous posts. All of the programs
featured on that site have used the auto-update feature for over three
years, since Ultimate Paintball was first released in 2000. In all that
time, there have been no hackings, privilege password thefts, citizenship
disappearances, or any other illegal activity of ANY sort. I told Andras
that I would be looking into what can be done about this after this release,
and I'm sticking to my word. The simple reason for that is that I wanted to
get this release out before I go back to school and work on Monday, when I'm
worried about the kind of time I'll have.

There are a variety of factors that don't make this a quick fix. First, the
splash screen is used across many programs, so whatever changes were made
would need to be spread across four different applications as well as others
still in development. It would also take time to change the synchronous
behavior of the screen to asynchronous mode, so that the application
wouldn't freeze while "skipping" the update. Finally, I would have to talk
to Poseidon and Chanty to work out an amendment to the deal I made with them
to release Demeter to the public in exchange for it displaying a
200-character message for a few seconds at startup when AWTeen is organizing
a huge event. Had Andras bothered to wait until I explained all of these
factors more fully, then maybe this post wouldn't be necessary.

My policy states that no information is sent to the server, and that's what
happens. I would be much more worried about the programs that DON'T admit
to what's going on. Suppose someone wrote a ChatRelayBot like Tony M's that
console messaged people the Caretaker privilege password when they entered
the world? Suppose that phone bot written by that new programmer sends an
E-Mail with your social security number in it? There are NO programs you
can be absolutely sure about, no matter what they do, period.

Demeter is not spyware. It might be classified as adware, but I think
anyone would feel that using a program like Demeter or Ultimate Paintball or
the Activeworlds Utility in exchange for a five-second message advertising
AWTeen for Chanty once a month or so is a fair exchange. I might even
remove that requirement in the next release, as I promised Andras I would
investigate. People are going to post flames that it's not explicitly
stated that such messages are possible, and I apologize for that - anyone
who's used the Activeworlds Utility knew that it was possible, but in this
turmoil it slipped my mind.

Had I wanted to cause damage to Activeworlds, I could have written a bot at
any time to send an aw_delete_all_objects() call to AWTeen. Or maybe to
Gulakon, Antares, Georgia, WAR, NewYork... how many more worlds do I have to
list? Should I have deleted the terrain and world attributes in those
worlds too? Maybe I should have deleted AWTeen's object path and website
again, or kept the world password for the all the worlds we gave as prizes.
Who are you to question my integrity, Andras, after spending much of two
years of my life trying to recover from disaster after disaster from idiots
who are bent on nothing but destruction? After all the help you've given me
in testing and even before that with AWTeen, you turn around and make a post
like this.

If, after hearing all of this, you feel that Demeter is still spyware, then
it's your choice not to download the program - I can accept that. But I'm
NOT going to stand by while Andras makes posts like these that hint I would
think of destroying others' hard work, after all I've done to the contrary.

-Brant

[View Quote]

Feb 24, 2003, 8:00pm

Well, I remember that the world !Friends used to use a bingobot - when that
was, I don't remember.

The reason nobody's interested in programming bingobots is because it's been
done before, many times over. Myself, I'd rather create an entirely new
game than reproduce one that's already been done.

-Brnat

[View Quote]

Jun 6, 2003, 6:13pm

*Makes note to spend a few hours this weekend doing some research into 3.4
features*

-Brant

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Jun 8, 2003, 8:27pm

Well, that program wasn't designed to be used in AlphaWorld. By the time
the bots reach the area the person is at, he or she would already have moved
on to somewhere else, perhaps where the bots have already registered nobody
being.

If you have a lot of disk space and months to search, you can create a
propdump of the world and look for his property, then place a bot there and
see if he shows up. If you had his E-Mail address, it would be much simpler
:)

[View Quote]

Jun 9, 2003, 9:29am

Keep in mind that you might be able to find him, but he could have you
"muted on sight." If that's the case, then you'll never be able to contact
him.

-Brant

[View Quote]

Jun 21, 2003, 3:22pm

My E-Mail address is listed on my site at www.shoemakervillage.org, or just
use the address in this post :)

-Brant

[View Quote]

Jun 21, 2003, 3:23pm

Version 1.24 of Demeter, a beta version, allows world owners to clear
vandalism easily and quickly by applying "show," "hide," and "delete"
commands to all objects owned by a certain citizen number. Visit
www.shoemakervillage.org/beta.html for more information.

-Brant

Jul 13, 2003, 6:51pm

Hi all,

Until I move at the end of August, I plan to spend a great deal of time
making some sort of contribution to the AW community. My original idea was
to program a new weather simulator that would update a world in real-time
(unlike the original Thor, which was limited by static backdrops). But
several other ideas have been requested. I don't want to waste a lot of
time working on something that nobody would use or attend, so I'm interested
in opinions of the community that would support these projects.

Here are the three suggestions:

1. Continue to improve the stability of Ultimate Paintball and Demeter,
adding new features and game modes as well as making them more crash-proof

2. Go ahead with the weather simulator idea proposed above, adding features
that would make it configurable enough to be usable in all worlds

3. Organize a huge community-building event like the failed AW Community
Retreat originally scheduled for January 12, 2002 (that event was canceled
because the price increase occurred several days before) where everyone
would have fun, make new friends, and discuss important AW issues. For
those who were unaware of the original plans, the half-finished document is
located at http://www.shoemakervillage.org/retreat.html.

I have to put in a disclaimer, though:

-BEGIN DISCLAIMER-

This message is NOT a promise that I will accomplish the most popular
suggestion finished by a certain date, because circumstances can change (and
bugs can crop up) that make a set date hard to put out. I make no promises
that things will be accomplished in a timely fashion, or even that they will
get done at all. In other words, no whining please.

-END DISCLAIMER-

That said, thanks for the input,

-Brant

Jul 13, 2003, 11:52pm

Well, becuase those votes can be easily rigged by people like M a t t who
live to do nothing but ruin others' lives :)

It's easy enough to post here, and polls can't take into consideration
verbal suggestions.

[View Quote]

Jul 14, 2003, 5:26pm

Well, but even if Mutation has one, that doesn't mean that I shouldn't make
one, since Mutation's isn't publicly available. I wouldn't consider myself
a champion of the open source movement, but I do think that the AW community
benefits most when everyone has the opportunity to use a bot.

But then again, I respect the decision of the owners of Mutation - money
speaks, after all :)

[View Quote]

Jul 15, 2003, 10:09pm

Well, that problem with the attributes has bugged me ever since I modified
XelaG's WorldSchedule script in 1999. The original Thor got around the
problem by setting every single attribute every minute, and I think that's
how an updated version could work.

The difference between the original Thor and Thor 2 would be that the
original Thor was limited by the number of backdrops it had. Even though
Beardo made 30 backdrops, it's not enough to make a realistic weather cycle.
Thor 1 changed the sky colors every minute but could only change the
backdrops every 40 in order to create its 26-hour cycle.

The idea here would be to change the sky colors and the sun position every
minute in addition to the directional and ambient lights and fog. The
terrain ambient and diffuse settings can also be changed. If the
AWSdkOcx6.ocx control is released soon, then it should be relatively simple
to upgrade the original Thor to the new version.

But AW's weather system is still far from complete. It's still not possible
to create dynamic clouds, because now instead of 30 backdrops, we need 30
cloud layers. And we need 10 sun and 10 or so moon textures.

Maybe this is best left until 3.5, hoping that ENZO will program some
automatic-cloud generation code in, add dynamic rain and snow, and allow the
light source to be tinted or shrunk regarldless of the size of the texture -
unless someone else has a better idea to get around the huge numbers of
textures problem?

-Brant

[View Quote]

Aug 22, 2003, 4:13pm

Ah, what a nice way to end a vacation. Yesterday, I was sitting beside a
huge waterfall in Yellowstone, and today I return to mass chaos.

This could have been much easier handled through a simple E-Mail, you know.
But Windows Installer is weird when the following occurs:

1. Your computer is set up with multiple users. Sometimes, Windows can be
set to "unconfigure" things when you log off on purpose or by accident (i.e.
don't remember your settings) and when you log on again or after restarting
your computer, everything has to be reconfigured. This behavior can be
changed with a registry setting, but I don't recall the correct one
(regedit.com should help).

2. If you're installing VB.NET, I've encountered no problems, but if you're
using VB 6, you need to install Service Pack 5 before using it, or else the
installer will keep trying to install the updated files itself.

Try this and let me know if it works.

-Brant

[View Quote]

Feb 7, 2004, 9:41pm

While I'd like to fix that bot, unfortunately it's become obsolete as a
result of MrGrimm changing the format of his VB wrapper from OCX to COM. It
would be nearly impossible to change every command that it sent to the SDK.
I might be able to fix specific errors without adding any functionality
beyond AW 3.2 if you send me a telgram.

Perhaps in the future, I'll start over from scratch in VB.net of C++.net.

Sorry,

-Brant

[View Quote]

Feb 18, 2004, 5:47pm

Hey Strike,

I think that this would take significantly longer than five days. First of
all, how many hours did you work in those days?

True, it isn't as difficult as it might sound to change attribute settings
like AW_LOGIN_APPLICATION over to the new format. But it still takes time,
and with as many lines as the paintball application has, it will take hours.
But far more difficult is the changed way that multiple instances are
handled in the COM DLL.

The old OCX simply allowed the programmer to create an array of AWSdkOcx5
objects, each representing one bot. When an avatar click was received, the
Index was received by the application, and it was relatively easy to reply.
But with the new DLL, I would have to add hundreds of instance change
statements, and would have to make sure that the correct instance is being
referred to at any given location in the code. Most likely, I'll forget to
change to the correct instance at one point and it will cause some obscure
bug I'll never find.

No matter how you put it, this multiple instances problem, combined with the
obsolescence of Visual Basic 6, makes it more feasible to start from scratch
in Visual Basic, Visual C++, or Visual C#.NET in the future.

-Brant

[View Quote]

Jan 6, 2004, 4:38pm

Ah, the first rule of computers: back up everything. I have 4 DVD's full
of backup files and haven't lost a single file since 1996.

It only takes a few minutes a month. I use NTI Backup Now! at
www.ntibackupnow.com.

-Brant

[View Quote]

Feb 7, 2004, 9:28pm

Hey,

This is great. I myself am planning to GPL newer versions of the old
classes I wrote for VB 6 that is now obsolete. It's great that so many
people are moving in an open source direction.

Does this bot comply with the interoperability standards at
http://homeunix.uni.cc/aw/relay/interoperability.htm? If not, then it
shouldn't be difficult for me or someone else to add this feature to the
bot. It would allow people to switch between several chat bots depending on
which fits their needs best.

-Brant

[View Quote]

Apr 10, 2004, 6:45pm

Hi,

Demeter 1.30 beta is now available at www.shoemakervillage.org/release.html.
This version adds multiple language support for those worlds that requested
it.

Go check it out, but remember that this is a beta version.

-Brant

Jan 4, 2005, 12:53am

Hi,

Since many of my bots are becoming outdated, I have decided to release
the entire codebase for everything that's listed on shoemakervillage.org
(and for some things that aren't). The following bots will now be under
the GPL:

-Ultimate Paintball
-Demeter
-Vote Bot
-Activeworlds Utility
-AWTeen Inauguration Day slideshow producer
-Thor
-Thor 2 (sun position calculator and time of day portion)
-AW SDK Functions 2.bas and bot classes

Some of the more minor projects will also be made available eventually.

Tony M is handling the conversion and is in the process of setting up a
code management system, so direct any questions to him. Hopefully some
bot programmers will jump onboard and help to improve these projects.

Keep watching here for an announcement once Tony M makes the code available!

-Brant

May 18, 2001, 6:48pm

I feel that this feature is the most important addition that could be made
to the AW browser at the current time. Managing a large world with many
PPW's, it is important to be able to track users using these PPW's to make
sure there is no abuse. In addition, some method must be implemented to
allow a PPW owner to remove a PPW user from a PPW in the case of such abuse.

Oct 17, 2001, 11:45am

Actually, I did that in AWTeen during the Cy Awards party. There were 105
people in the world at the time gathered in one place, and instead of making
Roland appear to join everyone, I made AW say:

Immigration Officer: Eep would like to join you. Type 'y' to accept this
request, or 'n' to reject it.

There were so many 'n' s that I couldn't count them all!

LOL,

-Brant

[View Quote]

Mar 31, 2002, 4:01pm

Quite frankly, Mod, I don't believe you. Until I personally see this list
of passwords, I'm not taking action in any of my worlds, nor would I suggest
that anyone else waste their time either.

Second, if you actually have, as some claim, downloaded and de-encrypted
files to your hard drive that do not belong to you, then you are in
violation of international copyright law. All it would take would be for
one owner of any of these 53 worlds to file a lawsuit, and you (or your
parents, depending on your age) could be out thousands of dollars, not to
mention spending some time in jail.

I seriously doubt the legitimacy of this claim. Until I see proof, I'm not
going to panic.

[View Quote]

Mar 31, 2002, 4:02pm

Why can't you reveal who's on the list? That, coupled with the capital
letters all over your message and subject lines, spells "HOAX" to me.

[View Quote]

May 10, 2002, 10:49am

Well, I'm sure that ENZO researched the CARP issue well before acquiring
netbroadcaster.com and knew that the final terms would have to be decided
upon by two Mondays from now. What he couldn't have known was the February
decision that put the Internet rates so ridiculously high that most radio
stations (including netbroadcaster.com) will probably be forced out of
business should it pass because AW probably now inherits all of
netbroadcaster's retroactive royalty fees. Thus, unless there's something I
don't know about or a clause in the contract to the contrary, AW will
probably lose a heck of a lot of money that could have gone to 3D
development in this deal.

I can't fault ENZO for this one, like everyone else most likely in their
flames in reply to this post. It's just a case of poor timing and bad luck,
both of which have brought down many businesses in the past :)

[View Quote]

Jul 25, 2002, 7:47pm

What Derek is referring to is that the terrain is affected by the
directional light too much, and the ambient light is ignored, unlike in real
life. Thus, if both the directional light and ambient light were bright
white, but the angle of the sun was, say, 3 degrees above the horizon, the
terrain would be pitch black.

[View Quote]

Nov 25, 2002, 10:58am

I agree with what you're saying - it wasn't a good idea in the first place
to release a new version every month or so. But my problem is that you have
to draw the line SOMEWHERE, lol - and management keeps telling Young Shamus
to add more and more features. I'd bet after the next beta build is
released, there'll be several more features that are added, and it will
actually take six weeks until the release, if not more.

Adding features is great, and I agree that it should be a few months between
releases, but from what I hear the development team almost had 3.4 stable
enough to be released. Unfortunately, then it went completely back to the
drawing board with features that, while interesting and great, should have
been held for the next version.

Isn't this an example of just what you're saying AW should avoid? AW
released a "final beta" twice, and both times kept adding new features. The
amount of time wasted in premature "releases" probably will cost AW
thousands of dollars - exactly what you said AW should stay clear of.

-Brant

[View Quote]

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