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Nov 29, 2003, 7:36pm

I wish you could attach a name to some objects, and then using
a new command, set all of the named objects center position for
visibility calculations to the location of some other object.

For example.... let's say you built a gigantic cave that you enter
from one end, and that has a bunch of large objects at the far end.

You may not see those far objects until you are well into the cave
because of the visibility mechansim, even though you have built the
cave so that people cannot ever go beyond the objects on the back
wall.

If you could name all of the back objects, and then position another
object near the door (invisible perhaps), and then tell AW to
dynamically 'move' the center axis of all the named objects to coincide
with the object using the command, then it would be much easier to
construct builds that never need to worry about the popping in and
out that occurs because of the visibility thing.

Using the name command like that would automatically prevent the
command from affecting other objects that are extremely far away
since the name command also only affects objects within a certain
range.

Something like:

create vis_center name=back_wall_objects

assuming

create name back_wall_objects

had been put on all of the objects you need to be visible from the
entry would ensure that you can see those objects from the entry.

Nov 29, 2003, 7:38pm

I should mention that you can actually do this now by manually editing
the objects in question and moving their axis off center 'toward the
door', but it would be easy for the browser to move the center position
of objects with an object command so that builders had more control
over the visibility mechanism.

[View Quote] <SNIP>

Dec 1, 2003, 3:34am

Commands that can be used to vandalize should be reserved for CT..
it would be a special command for sure.

And people can already use the move command to vandalzie other
peoples builds anyway, and in what is probably a worse way. What
I am talking about would not move where you perceive the object,
only the point that the visibility algorithms consider to be the object
center.

There are many kinds of builds that are very hard to pull off because
of the visibility popping effect, and it's difficult to think of a mechanism
that could be added relatively easily to provide a method of addressing
it.

But moving the object axes definitely can be used to control the
visibility mechanism, and adding a command that allows you to
displace the axis of an object (just the axis.. not the object) seems
like it would be very little work on the part of AWI to add compared
to other possible mechanisms.

They might even just wedge it into the move command as an
extra parameter like axis=on or what have you.

Now I am actually wondering if the same thing could be done
by using the inverse idea. Place the object where you want it's
visibility center, and then use the transltate command to move
the object and maybe it's visibilit center would stay where you
placed the object.

I'll have to try that :-)


[View Quote]

Dec 1, 2003, 3:53am

It does work.

If you use 'move' to displace an object, the objects vis center stays
where you originally placed the object.

It's a good way to make mirages in the desert :-)

[View Quote]

Dec 5, 2003, 2:57pm

I wish this function were official and documented in the SDK,
and that it's use was not discouraged.

Using this function, I am able to upload a complete 128x128 cell
terrain in under 30 seconds, and also push the terrain outside of
this area well below the waterline (so the ugly terrain 'shelf' is
gone) very easily and efficiently.

Using the 'approved' method takes over 15 minutes since you can
only use it to upload 'runs' that have the same texture.

Dec 5, 2003, 6:13pm

Not really.. aside from this issue here it's working like a champ.

[View Quote]

Dec 5, 2003, 6:13pm

[View Quote] ... by 'this issue' I meant the complex texturing thing I posted about.

Dec 5, 2003, 3:09pm

Has anyone run into an issue where complex terrain texturing
causes the terrain in AW to exhibit missing, broken and mangled
polygons?

When I say complex, I mean terrain that has a lot of adjacent
changes in the textures. It's difficult to create such a terrain using
any of the standard bots, but if you use dem2rwx and you put
in many many zones that are spaced very close in altitude you
can create one.

If you contrive a terrain that is very rough so it has a lot of
closely spaced altitude changes, it is also easier to cause a lot
of texture transitions using dem2rwx.

If you create a very simple terrain that is perfectly flat, but it
changes the texture so no two adjacent cells use the same one...
kaboom!

If you create a very complex terrain with regard to the altitudes,
but keep the number of texture transitions down, then everything
works fine.

Dec 5, 2003, 3:29pm

Copy of email sent to AW support:

It is possible to break the AW terrain by creating a terrain with a very
irregular texturing pattern that contains no large areas of solid patterns.

The size of the terrain doesn't make much difference.

The number of textures also does not make much difference. I can break
the terrain by using just two textures and a perfectly flat heightfield if I
simply alternate the textures so that there are never two of the same
texture adjacent.

Quick experimentation shows that it is possible to texture roughly
two thirds of a given terrain 'page' like this as long as about one
third of the page is textured with the same value in each 'node'.

The method of uploading the terrain does not matter.

After producing a terrain that is broken, if I then upload a simple terrain
with no complex texturing into an area of the terrain that was OK, the
area of the map that was broken will then display correctly. I believe
this illustrates that your servers are storing the terrain properly, and
that the problem is in the browser.

[View Quote]

Dec 23, 2003, 7:01pm

Further to this issue, I've managed (by accident) to create terrains
that actually crash the browser.

If anyone else has had trouble crashing the browser when creating
complex terrains, please let me know how you were creating the
terrain.

[View Quote]

Dec 23, 2003, 11:16pm

Yes... I'm avoiding those ones hopefully. I will put in some more
checks though.

[View Quote]

Dec 9, 2003, 1:22pm

I'd like to see an overhaul of the triggers and commands. They essentially
*are* the scripting language for the browser already.

e.g. some of us have asked for a console command so we can print console
messages. That's pretty much browser scripting.

The URL command replaces your 3D with a webpage.. browser scripting.

Teleports and warps... browser scripting just like links on a webpage that
take you to another part of the page.

Using the name command on an object and changing it's properties from
another object using the name= extension is like having code in one frame
on your website change the information in another frame.

If you think about it.. the entire trigger and command system is the browser
scripting language. It's the HTML or the Javascript if you will that lets
you make your world behave the way you want.

So imagine where standard web browsers would be if all the websites out
there still used the original version of HTML.

The browser is as lame as the scripting language that drives it.

Update the commands and triggers please....

[View Quote]

Dec 10, 2003, 5:47am

How about a newsgroup reader built into the browser?

:-)

Dec 12, 2003, 6:46am

A flag in the world options to randomly rotate
textures that appear in large blocks to break up
any patterns might be handy.

You would only check this if you had a good set
of textures that could tile even with random rotations,
but that is certainly doable.

The terrain system is already based on a scheme
where large blocks of a given pattern are stored as
very efficient 'chunks', and in general such chunks
would not be composed of any edge or transition
textures (if you have an entire 8x8 page composed
entirely of edges they are not exactly edges are
they?).

So the browser could randomly 'jitter' the textures
in such large areas without requiring any extra room
in the current data structures, without increasing the
download bandwidth or drawing speed, and without
breaking any existing worlds texturing if it were an
option in the world features.

Dec 12, 2003, 6:48am

Forgot to mention that they wouldn't have to fix the ugly
bug that occurs if you try to do this the normal way :-)

[View Quote] <SNIP>

> A flag in the world options to randomly rotate
> textures that appear in large blocks to break up
> any patterns might be handy.

Dec 17, 2003, 2:12am

Wow.. Bowen... didn't realize you wanted the Ideajuice that
bad hehehe

<hands Bowen some Ideajuice>

[View Quote]

Dec 18, 2003, 12:24am

Cool!

> - Mark R
> PS: For those of you that are interested... Im making a rail gun for my
> physics project (and calling it 'magnetic momentum'.. just so they let me
do
> it) and I just fired a 200g mass out of the end of it using a meager 20
> volts... at 30 miles per hour... and the powerpack goes up to 5Kv

Dec 18, 2003, 1:26pm

People call the round packaged food items served up by McDonalds
hamburgers.

It's not reality, but common useage that counts in language....

[View Quote]

Dec 20, 2003, 1:23am

You're missing the point by so much, you must be aiming that
way intentionally :-)

To the people in these newsgroups, Strikes description of a railgun
was perfectly acceptable.

I don't know and don't really care if the strict technical definition
of a railgun has something to do with the speed of light or not.

I knew what he meant, and so did probably everyone else on here
other than you, and that's what counts, and that's what my analogy
to hamburgers was about. It was only a non-sequitor to someone
who failed to grasp it's essential connection to the subject.

Unless you were prefacing your comment.. marking it as a non
sequitor. If that's what you meant.. then....

As far as what goes into the food goes, you don't need to educate
me about it. My father was a butcher and I used to visit the various
places he worked as a kid, and I have had the pleasure of touring
slaughterhouses, meat packing plants, 'rendering' plants and other
such places.

I just decided when I was that age I would never eat anything without
cooking the hell out of it.

[View Quote]

Dec 20, 2003, 2:12am

Bowen.. take your damn medication!!!

Please!!

> LEGO's. I would've also accepted legos and LEGOs as the correct term.
> The correct term is LEGO Bricks for the plural form, therefore, using a
> proper contraction as defined in the British dialogue of English, LEGO's
> is as close as possible to the original plural verb. Even LEGO would've
> been more correct.

Dec 20, 2003, 2:15am

I was thinking today that English is missing some pronouns that
various English cultures have filled in with common usage.

In Canada, we say 'youse' as in 'What are youse people doing?'
because there is no plural for 'you' when adressing a group.

In America, people in many states say "y'all" to mean the same
thing.

I wonder if the Brits have a similar term... Strike?

Dec 21, 2003, 10:20am

No.

Accellerating a leather spheroid will not get you off the
hook. You would still be a nitpicker :-)

And if marketing weenies can steal the word 'networking'
from computer jargon and use it to mean having lunch
with other marketing weenies, then why is 'railgun' sacred?

Language is mutable. People are adaptable. The tree that
bends does not break (unless you bend it too far).

[View Quote]

Dec 21, 2003, 10:25am

You're correct in stating the formal 'rules', but I'm pointing
out that people are not happy with the 'rules' to the point
that they have made up words because they are in fact missing.

Why is you both the plural and the non plural? It's confusing
and non-orthogonal.

People have taken it upon themselves to provide an ad-hoc
plural form because they have noticed that sometimes it is
not clear when adressing a group wether they want to adress
the group or an individual within it.

So we say "are you all going to the movies" . The language
is deficient.

[View Quote]

Dec 26, 2003, 3:05pm

It would be useful to be able to specify an 'ambient' noise
in the World Settings dialog that is played whenever
there is no other sound or noise in effect.

This would be useful for example in a 'desert' world
to provide the sound of wind, particularly if the user
goes outside the limits of the build.

Another good use for this would be in an ocean
world that is completely underwater.

In general, any given world could probably benefit
from the ability to specify an 'ambient' noise file.

Dec 27, 2003, 4:48pm

Sounds good to me... or rather.. it would *probably* sound
good...

[View Quote]

Dec 28, 2003, 6:40pm

I don't see how you can have the world server try to detect or
prevent cracked browsers from bypassing a form of security
that is implemented in the browser itself. To do that, they would
need to actually do the same thing the browsers were doing
anyway, and there would be no point in having the browser
do it at all.

But I also don't see why the browser couldn't filter all incoming
chat according to a file that is retreived from the object path
that has the filtering rules in effect in that world.

The browser could also merge a local filter file that a parent
could set up to provide more filtering than the world servers
rules dictate.

People who don't want any filtering could disable it. People who
want more filtering could have stronger filters.

If you think about it, it's up to each individual what is
objectionable language or not, and that is the issue at the
heart of all of the arguments about language, ejections, GK's
etc.

I have already been given a personal 'mute' button.

If language filtering is added to any part of AW, it should
be completely under the control of the individual user.

There are also valid technical reasons to have filtering done
in the recipients browser.

For one thing, I would not like to see the world servers I
lease from AWI slow down because people who also lease
them start using them to perform a lot of complex filtering
on every word of every chat line in every world.

For another thing, the changes neccessary to have the world
server maintain a list of banned words of arbitrary length for
each world, and to load this list, and compare each word of
chat text with each word in the list before sending it would
be a very significant change to it's current behaviour.

In contrast, having the world server transmit a filename to
the browser that represents a file with banned words to load
from the object path is not much of a change in the world
server itself.

Getting the browser to load this list and use it to filter the
incoming chat would be no harder certainly than what you
proposed, and would certainly be less risky than the kinds
of changes needed for the world servers to do it.

[View Quote]

Dec 28, 2003, 6:47pm

If the referrer string contained the users rating level,
OP path servers could provide content appropriate to
the rating level the user has selected.

This would allow for example a museum world with
a G rating, but which could display nudes by a given
artist if the users level were PG or higher, and a more
mundane work by that artist if the visitors rating level
was G

Although this can be done using cookies, using cookies
or sessions precludes *all* content coming from your
OP path from being cached.

Anything of this nature (i.e. the users language settings,
the users prefferred gender, the users cit #) that can be
placed in the referrer string allows an OP path to deliver
content dynamically that can still be cached.

Dec 31, 2003, 9:06pm

The referrer string can be disabled in the world options dialog.

You can buy a book that will teach you the basics of parsing strings
if you find it so complicated or don't know how to write code that
just ignores them.

And I'm afraid I missed the post where the *uncomplicated* way to
accomplish delivering dynamic content to people with different
languages and ratings settings was described.

What is this *simple* method of doing so that you speak of?

Business opportunites galore abound if this simple problem that
any lame 2D webpage can handle could just be solved.

[View Quote]

Jan 1, 2004, 11:45am

Break *what* into an array?

> What's so hard, break it up into an array and search the array for
keywords.

Jan 1, 2004, 4:04pm

[View Quote] > oh come on... it's not like they're going to add 100 new lines. I think
> it's a great idea.
>
> Does that Referer line actually exist right now? O_O

Yes.. referrer is a standard HTTP header

The current AW (added in 3.4) referrer string contains

aw://{AUTH_IP}:{PORT}/{WORLDNAME}

So it can currently be used by the OP path server to determine
which universe and which world within that universe requests
for content such as models, sounds, textures, avatars and .seq
are coming from.

Although some people will try their hardest to convince you
otherwise, if your OP path uses a script or other means to
confirm that your content is actually going to someone who is
visiting your world, this feature can prevent other world owners
from simply putting your OP path into their world and taking
a free ride on your object path bandwidth (i.e. 'leeching')

Although it does not prevent a truly determined thief from
getting at your content, most content is probably not stolen
by truly determined thieves anyway, and protecting your OP
path by checking the referrer string means that a thief will
at least have to put your stuff on their own server and use
their own bandwidth to make use of it.

As you can see.. appending the users rating level and language
settings would add only a few bytes onto this string, and would
make it no harder to parse than it is now. I would gladly volunteer
to help any less experienced programmers fix their parsing code
if adding any of my suggestions breaks it.

As I posted in another wish, the language settings could and
should be provided in another standard HTTP header anyway,
which would allow the OP path server to deliver textures
with writing in different languages on them, .wav files with
spoken content in other languages, models appropriate to a
given culture such as a French gendarme vs. an English bobby,
and other very cool (and business critical) new things. Perhaps
flipping someone in Malaysia the bird has a totally different
meaning than it does to us.

Combine that with the ability to deliver content appropriate to
the users rating level and world owners would not have to choose
to cater to one group or culture. They could construct worlds
that adjusted themselves to the people visiting them.

*all without AWI having to do anything but tack ten bytes
onto the packet that should be there somewhere anyway *

If you have ever seen any worlds that try to even deal with the
language issue, it is quite obvious that putting a bunch of signs,
objects, sounds and what have you into your world for each
language you want to 'support' is going to use up far more
bandwidth, time and hassle than just having your OP path give
them the one version of everything appropriate to their language.

Imagine if webpages had every language they supported all on
the same page and you had to look for the text you could read
amongst the other fifty you couldn't, and then imagine every
world in AW with 50 different signs at GZ.

--
Imaginez si les pages Web avaient chaque langue qu'elles ont
soutenu tous à la même page et vous a dû rechercher le texte
vous pourriez lire parmi les autres cinquante vous ne pourriez
pas, et puis imaginer chaque monde dans l'aw avec 50 signes
différents à GZ.
--
Sich vorstellen Sie, wenn Webseiten jede Sprache hatten,
die sie alle auf der gleichen Seite stützten und Sie mußte
nach dem Text suchen Sie unter den anderen fünfzig lesen
konnten Sie nicht konnten, und jede Welt in Aw mit 50
unterschiedlichen Zeichen an GZ dann sich vorstellen.
--
Immagini se i Web pagi avessero ogni lingua che hanno sostenuto
tutti alla stessa pagina e voi ha dovuto cercare il testo
potreste leggere fra gli altri cinquanta non potreste ed
allora immaginare ogni mondo in aw con 50 segni differenti
a GZ.
--
Imagine se os Web pages tiverem cada língua que suportaram
tudo na mesma página e você teve que procurar o texto voc
poderia ler amongst os outros cinqüênta você não poderia,
e então imaginar cada mundo no AW com 50 sinais diferentes
em GZ.
--
Imagínese si los Web pages tenían cada lengua que apoyaron
todos en la misma página y usted tuvo que buscar el texto
usted podría leer entre los otros cincuenta usted no podría,
y después imaginar cada mundo en el AW con 50 diversas
muestras en GZ.
--
....
--
....
--
....
--
....
--
....
--
.............

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