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technozeus // User SearchFog AreasFeb 25, 2003, 3:49pm
That could work. If you could set a specific location to a specific level of fog, the actual fog level displayed could be based on a weighted average between what is set in the world options and what's set for that area, based on your visability range and how close the exact location is to you, such that if the exact fog setting location is at or beyond your visibility range the fog would be set as in the world settings, and d% of the way to your visibility range would be d% of the world's fog settings + (100-d)% of the local fog settings. If multiple objects with attached local fog settings were within visibility range at the same time, they would each be weighted in accordingly, such that for n objects, each object's distance (d) from your visability range would contribute (d/n)% of the world's fog setting and ((100-d)/n)% of that object's local fog setting. Of course, there should be controls for the world owner to disallow adding fog to an area and/or disallow removing fog from an area in this way, if they don't want that to be possible in their world.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Re: New - Open Beta Build number in Universe SettingsFeb 26, 2003, 7:41am
Again, if you look at my post, you will see that I was asking for something to be added... and even if I wasn't, I don't think it's fair for any one of us to try to define what it's okay for the rest of us to wish for. I appreciate your input, but enough about that one tiny aspect of my post already... wouldn't want to detract too much from the actual reason I made the post in favor of drawing all of the attention to something that we both agree is unimportant.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Old feature made new (Ground in worlds)Feb 26, 2003, 8:39pm
Better yet, how about instead of just repeat or no repeat, two variables could be set to control how often the ground repeats and what distance from ground zero it would not repeat beyond? If either of these was set to 0, it would be a non-repeating ground. If the distance beyond which it will not repeat was set to it's maximum, then the ground would repeat endlessly.
It also would be nice to have a "secondary ground" available, with it's own separate repeat settings and ground object. There are many ways that the combination of two such ground objects could be used for some great effects. TechnoZeus [View Quote] Old feature made new (Ground in worlds)Feb 26, 2003, 8:56pm
Actually, you can do multiple "ground" levels currently... but only combined as a single object. I've used this ability quite effectively in the past. It would, however, be nice to eventually have more advanced capabilities, like being able to set upside down mountains in the sky and rightside up ones below... similar to what you might expect to see in a huge cave.
There is of course, the fact that AW's vertical limits are much more restrictive than it's horizontal limits, plus the fact that building cells are not split in any way vertically. Such things complicate multi-level worlds. For example, someone may select all objects in a cell and delete them, not realizing that they are deleting much more than they had intended. I've always thought it would be good to have the ability to layer the parts of a world more... more ground layers, more cloud layers, etc. The clouds in AW 3.4 are nice, but I do wish they would make layer 3 in-scene with an altitude setting, rather than alway above the scene like layers #1 and #2 are, and give layer 3 back it's faded edges... or at least have that as an option for layer 3, or an optional layer 4. This would allow effects such as high clouds moving unchanged over the mountains while lower clouds apear to disperse rather than pass behind the terrain. I've made such multi-layer cloud effects in AW in the past, which were quite realistic looking, but I had to use a combination of a backdrop with a specially designed multi-layer skybox. It's good to see that such effects are getting less complicated to produce, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. TechnoZeus [View Quote] Object SelectionFeb 26, 2003, 9:02pm
I think such an option should be added, so that world owners could choose how and if to use it in their world. Also, if the SDK could either be given the ability to tell a specific browser to set a specific object (or objects) as selected, or to screen attempts at object selection and selectively aprove or disaprove them, then bots could be made to allow a person to select only objects that are near their own property, or only objects that either belong to them or have no commands, etc.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Global ChatFeb 26, 2003, 11:12pm
I know what you mean.. I've been asking for some sort of "chat range" setting for years now... prefferably a world setting, and then the ability for individuals to set their chat range to a percentage of the world's or something like that. This would allow a world owner to set how far they want chat to carry in their world, so global chat would just be a "world sized" chat range setting. Perhaps now that we've got a new development team it may actually happen. :)
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Global ChatFeb 27, 2003, 5:43am
There's another way. If an idea in the wishlist is good enough that people get talking about it a lot, eventually they will hear about it from many people... and a third way... someone could mention a specific Wishlist post directly to one of the developers.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Global ChatFeb 27, 2003, 6:25am
Try doing that without a programming language now. That's what most people are dealing with, since not everyone knows "any" programming language, the SDK doesn't support "all" programming languages, and not everyone who knows a language that it does work with can afford to set their computer up as a development system for that language.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Global ChatFeb 27, 2003, 9:10am
Yep... some bot designers were nice enough to make bots for people who don't program. Still though, it would be nice to have such a feature built into the browser... the chat range is one of the features that really gives AW a 3D feel, so a little more direct control over it would be a valuable addition.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Global ChatFeb 27, 2003, 10:23pm
Yep... it's a bit like talking through a repeater. Nobody actually recieves your chat (with the hide chat feature enabled) but they see something that looks a lot like recieving your chat.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Free to seeFeb 27, 2003, 6:35am
This was one of the many things addressed by my October 16 wishlist post entitled "Command enhancements" and unfortunately the only thing addressed on it that actually seemed to get noticed by 9 9 9 when I showed it to him. He said that they have plans to add something which would make that unnecessary. (Not an exact quote... ask him directly if you want his own words.)
Anyway, the "shared=" parameter is what I had suggested for this purpose. For example, the color command would be enhanced as follows... color color [name=name] [mask=mask] [size=size] [tag=tag] [shared=flag] The "mask=" parameter would allow a specified mask be used in blanking out the underlying texture before the color is applied, rather than simply blanking out the whole thing. This would not cause transparency, but rather selective coloring. The "size=" parameter would specify a magnification factor for the mask, if used. The "tag=" parameter would allow only specific tagged surfaces to be effected by the color command. Specifying a negative tag number would mean all surfaces without that tag. For example, tag=-100 to not color the sign surface of a sign object. The "shared=" parameter would allow the effects of this command to optionally be shared with other people within chat range. The default would be "shared=no". By the way, I noticed in looking at that old post, I have a paragraph under the color command about the loop and noloop parameters, which apears to have been left there as an editing error... so if you go to read that post, please ignore that paragraph. TechnoZeus [View Quote] Free to seeFeb 27, 2003, 10:28pm
Actually, that's probably something that you wouldn't want it to do... first, because if the browser can't distinguish between a real click and a passed on click, it could send the forwarded click back to the world server, causing an endless loop. Second, because not all clicks on objects by one person do things that other people would want to also have done on their end. For example, if I click an object with an Activate URL command on it, you may not want your web browser to open the associated web page.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] Free to seeMar 1, 2003, 6:47am
Yep... I had thought about that... but it would still not solve the problem of how to tell the difference between clicks that you would want to have passed on to your AW browser and clicks that you would want not to have passed on. Also, it would only allow click events to be shared. That's why I proposed something different, that would allow the person placing a command to choose whether that command would be shared or not. I also did not suggest adding the "shared=" parameter to the URL command, specifically because that is one command which most people would not want envoked without their direct action.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] LinuxMar 1, 2003, 6:50am
Well, if you write a litter to Criterion Software, asking them to make a Linux version of RenderWare, perhaps that wish may eventually become a reality. :)
TechnoZeus [View Quote] add web controll..........Mar 1, 2003, 6:54am
I would like that, but I would like it even better if they went one step further and added an option to have all web pages opened by Active Worlds when you explicitly click on something go to the 3D window by default. I think I would just leave my Web frame closed "all the time" instead of most of the time like I do now, and have it open only links that I explicitly select... except, if there was a way to have the world's home webpage open in the 3D window when entering the world, I would opt for that... which would be nice, because I could read it while the world loads.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] add web controll..........Mar 1, 2003, 9:03pm
Have you tested that recently? Some of the changes they made a while back should have changed that behavior.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] add web controll..........Mar 2, 2003, 6:52pm
Have you reported this? Sounds like a bug. Also... do you get any kind of error message?
TechnoZeus [View Quote] add web controll..........Mar 3, 2003, 5:21pm
Ah, okay... different universe. What uniserver, world, and borwser build numbers?
TechnoZeus [View Quote] undo buttonMar 2, 2003, 7:41am
The objects are stored locally durring the time you have them selected. Perhaps when a person does a delete, the selected objects could be placed in local temporary storage, to make an undelete possible. Perhaps, a Build Menu could be added to the main AW menu bar, with Edit, Move and Rotate flyouts, to replace those menus in the Object Properties dialog box, and allow access to Undo while no objects are selected.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] undo buttonMar 2, 2003, 8:42am
I think a verification every time would annoy most builders, but perhaps an option to have a warning enabled would be nice for some people.
TZ [View Quote] undo buttonMar 2, 2003, 8:46am
Well, I don't think moving the menus from the Object Properties dialog to fly-outs in a Build menu would really cause any problems or get in anyone's way while they're building. In fact, it could potentially allow the Object Properties dialog box to take up a little less space, which several people have asked for.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 3, 2003, 5:24pm
There would be a huge disadvantage to that, actually... AW currently lets you use either one without specifying an extension in most cases, but it would no longer be able to do that because it would need to know what extension to look for when attempting to download the files. This would break a lot of old builds, and cause a lot of failed download attempts.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 3, 2003, 10:46pm
On the contrary... Since some animations use very small frames, a single pixel can litterally make a "big" difference.
There is something that could be done though, to make it possible to force any texture to be or not to be treated as a filmstrip. I've been tossing this around in my head for years, and have sent in some simple suggestions based on it a long time ago, but nothing recently or in as much detail as I have worked it out. All that needs to be done, is to add optional "hframes=" and "vframes=" parameters to the animate, texture, and picture commands, which would force the texture to be treated as a filmstrip with the secified number of frames in the horizontal or vertical directions. Frames would display in order from left to right, and top to bottom. A negative number could be used to reverse the order in that direction. For example, hframes=1 vframes=-3 would divide the texture into 9 textures vertically, and display them in order from bottom to top. An "hframes=" or "vframes=" value of 0 could represent "automatic" so that for example, hframes=0 vframes=1 would treat it as a horizontal filmstrip "if" the horizontal size was an exact multiple of the vertical size, where-as hframes=1 vframes=0 would treate it as a vertical filmstrip if the vertival size was an exact multiple of the horizontal size, and hframes=0 vframes=0 would check first to see if it should be treated automatically as a vertical filmstrip and if not then it would check to see if the texture qualified as a horizontal filmstrip. An additional "framerate=" parameter could specify the maximum frames per second, such as framerate=0.1 for a single frame change every 10 seconds. This actually should be added whether the hframes and vframes parameters are added or not, and there should also be a world setting for maximum filmstrip framerate, which would over-ride this command. TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 5, 2003, 7:35am
You're right that you can't color code a single pixel in JPEG format, because it uses lossy compression and like you said... doesn't leave you with much control over the exact color of any specific pixel.
To answer your question about how the ActiveWorlds browser knows how many frames are in one animation, it divides the height of the image by it's width. If the result is an exact integer, that's the number of frames. If not, the texture isn't treated as a texture. As I was saying though, it would be "possible" to add extensions to existing commands that would allow the number of frames and the maximum frame rate to be specified directly. Since any texture is stretched to fit the surfaces it's applied to, there is really no disadvantage to the filmstrip method in 3D under most circumstances except for the lack of control over frame rate, which could be corrected with the addition of a simple command extension, and/or a maximum filmstrip framerate setting. TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 5, 2003, 5:13pm
Actually, zipped bmp files used to be supported by Active Worlds. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was looking for them "first" and looking for the jpg files only if the zip file wasn't found. The problem with this, is it caused a lot of failed downloads because there was no way for the Active Worlds browser to actually know which file format to look for.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 5, 2003, 5:19pm
GIF may not compress as well as PNG, but it's really not such a bad format if you actually take advantage of it's capabilities. I think it would be nice to have support for a format that allows compression, animation, individual frame delays, optional looping, and transparency, all built in without loss of image quality.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 5, 2003, 5:24pm
I don't know the answer to that. Personally, I wouldn't recommend doing it, but I guess is I was going to try to implement such a thing I would probably consider comparing that one pixel with the rest of the entire image to see if it is at least as close to pure red as any other pixel, and at least a little closer to pure red than some of them. Then, go back to dividing the images height by it's width, since there isn't much other way to encode the number of frames into a jpg file. That's, I think, about the best you could do with such a method.
TechnoZeus [View Quote] differentiation between animations and normal texturesMar 5, 2003, 5:27pm
Yep... that was a typing error. Thanks. I had meant to say, that if it's heaght divided by it's width is not an integer, then "the texture isn't treated as a filmstrip animation."
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