1  2  3  4  5  6  ...  13  |   Order by default

Aug 17, 2003, 3:54am

Damn proportional font no frreaking column number readout stupid modern text
editing abominations....

Aug 17, 2003, 4:00am

If the idea of personally identifying browsers in the referer is
objectionable,
then an alternative would be to at least classify the access type into:

tourist
citizen
caretaker
owner

Any other categories that make sense within the rights framework would
be fine.

Aug 17, 2003, 5:27am

Well I assume someday they are going to implement a cache flushing
mechanism for the object servers :-)

Using the old time saving argument again, if every world owner
changes their avatars.dat file every two months, and spends one
minute telling ten people each time to flush their caches, there's
an hour per world owner per year in time saved if there is a way
to flush the cache automatically.

Touching a file on the world server is a pretty easy way to signal
a cache flush, and it doesn't need a PHP enabled server to work,
although such a file could easily be managed by a server side
scripting system if you wanted to.

[View Quote]

Aug 17, 2003, 5:29am

I meant the object server...

[View Quote]

Aug 17, 2003, 3:03pm

If I implement subdirectories on my OP path, and use a texture like so:

create texture cw/texture

It works fine. The server gets a request for "/textures/cw/texture.jpg"

If I ask it to use a mask like so:

create texture cw/texture mask=cw/texturem

The server gets requests for both "/textures/cw/texture.jpg" and for
"/textures/cw/texturem.zip", but the mask is never applied and the
browser doesn't report an error. The root texture is not applied either
in that case.

If I manually create a subdirectory in the cache folder under the

\cache\art\{op-path-here}-\textures

directory by the name of 'cw' however, it becomes magically
populated with all of the images and masks, and the masks work
perfectly the way you would expect.

It would be nice if that worked the way you would expect
automatically. Seems all it would take would be to have the cache
management routines create subdirectories in my cache folder as
appropriate.. like whenever there are slashes in the name.

If you do look at this, it would be nice if create picture worked with
filenames that have slashes in them as well. It's likely to be a very
similar problem. I can see the request coming into the server and
being honored, but the images don't show up in the AW browser.

Aug 17, 2003, 4:52pm

Let's say I could set my object path to:

whatever.com/something.php?%C&%W&

and that the browser substituted the citizen number for %C
and the world name for %W in the HTTP query.

This would be another way to allow for more flexible scripted
behaviours on path servers.

It shouldn't conflict much with the browser cache either. Changing
cits would give you a new cache for a given world, and changing
worlds would give you a new cache even if the OP path is shared
between the two (allowing the two to have different avatars.dat and
terrain sets).

Aug 26, 2003, 1:17pm

I wish the sky colors in the Sky section of the world features
dialog were pinnned to the position of the 'sun' instead of to
the cardinal directions of the compass.

So instead of Top, North, East, South, West, Bottom -
it was Sun, Sun+1/4 day, Sun + 1/2 day, Sun+3/4 day,
Sun+Norhtern Hemisphere and Sun+Southern Hemisphere.

The current gradient colors for the sky work great, but
it's hard to make something look realistic with them that
matches the position of the sun in your world unless you put
the sun right at the eastern or western horizon, and when you
do that there is not enough directional light to play with in the
world.

Assuming there is a generic skybox being generated on the fly,
tilting it so that the 'west' face of it is perpendicular to the directional
light vector would do the trick. One checkbox would make this
optional.

Aug 28, 2003, 11:43pm

It's just another model.

assume the trigger is always create

assume the command is always rotate

three numeric fields for the skybox rotation a la
the 'create rotate' construct.

assume the rotate is always 'sync'ed

--

Given the above.. pinning the directional light source to
the skybox would be useful.

Sep 18, 2003, 3:39pm

You mean like the transparent color in a .gif file

Too bad you can't use .gif's huh?

> when makign a texture we shoudl have it so when you use a certain rgb hex
> code it will delete that when applied in aw so that it is not there, and
cut
> out, it would allow for nice textures, or pictures w/o the use of mask.

Sep 19, 2003, 10:53am

> Tell me how GIF does not suck

I can write a GIF decoder in 50 lines of C code. This will create about 2K
of object code.

In order to decode a .jpg or a .png file requires many thousands of lines of
C code, and the object code needed will be on the order of 50 or 60 K.

If all I need to do is display a 16 color overlay with holes poked through
it
where it is meant to be transparent, GIF is the format of choice. JPG and
PNG suck.

You can't globally declare that a format sucks. It depends on what you need
it for. All of your arguments about .gif being limited to eight bits are
missing
the point. A limited number of colors is an extreme advantage if that is all
you need, and there are many applications for such images inside virtual
reality environments.

Another disadvantage of .gif (that it is not 'updated' often) you cite is
actually
a benefit. GIF decoders don't 'break' all the time precisely because the
format
does not change. If AW added this code, they would never have to fiddle with
it again.

There are many times in AW that I have really wished for .gif support. Often
all you need to do is make a two or three color texture with a hole in it.
Making a seperate mask, zipping it up and uploading it, and then adding
a create mask command to the object are a pain in the ass.

And for making simple animations quickly, .gif is also a really good format.
There are lots of great tools for making .gif animations, but very few tools
for making AW filmstrips. Making a masked AW filmstrip is a big pain
in the ass... think of the content you would have available if it were
easier
to create.

Anything AW can do to make building easier for people should be done.

Sep 19, 2003, 3:09pm

end

Hi Kah.. good to debate you again.

This should be looked at purely from a point of view of making the
product better for the customers.

Dismissing all other arguments related to coding up a loader, as a paying
customer I would like .gif support including the transparent color and
animation purely because I can easily obtain tools that support that format
and it will save me a lot of hassles when I am trying to use the product.

In the same vein, support for PNG and other formats would also be
great, but no other format has the range of tools available (or already
created content) as animated .gifs

Where are the *official* filmstrip making utilities from AW? They
invented their own format, but where are the tools to go with it?

If I am to use third party tools in order to use this service I am
buying, I want a better choice of which tools those are. As a
customer, I don't really care how much extra code it would take to
add .gif support. All I care about is that if AW allowed me to use
them, it would save me a bunch of steps when using animated or
masked textures, and give me much greater choice in what tools
I use to create content.

The fact that a lazy programmer is all that's needed for .gif support
is just a bonus feature of that format ;-)

Sep 18, 2003, 3:40pm

When you 'create light fx=pulse time=5', it would be nice if you could
add min=.2 so that the light would only go to 20 % of it's full level
instead
of going completely to off.

Sep 19, 2003, 10:24am

I can already set the maximum light exactly the way you say. What I want is
a
way to set the minimum amount when the effects are used. They currently fade
the light all the way to black.

I want a way to set the 'black' level.. not the white level. I want to be
able to
use the effects in a much more subtle way than is currently possible.

I might want for example a light that varies between 50 and 75% brightness.
I can get the 75% brigthness maximum by setting the light to 0xC0C0C0,
but the effects will not allow me to set a minimum level of 0x808080

It might be better if instead of a 'min=fraction' they had a 'min=color'
parameter that let you set the 'other' color that the effects interpolate
between. There is an interpolation algorithm in there that is currently
using the color black as a hardcoded parameter. I would just like that
parameter to be made accessable. It would increase the utility of this
command with very little extra coding.

[View Quote]

Sep 21, 2003, 2:28am

Yes.. but again brightness is only dealing with a maximum value. I want to
set
the minimum.

I would settle for a dimness= (or obviously a di=) command.

[View Quote]

Sep 21, 2003, 10:16pm

Yes, but it's not what I am asking for.

[View Quote]

Sep 22, 2003, 10:39am

No.. when the FX are in use, they vary between a minimum and a maximum.

The maximum is just the level and color you set for the light.

The minimum is the color black, or the brightness at 0%, or the
dimness at 100% or however you want to look at it.

Maybe if I explain it in terms of workarounds...

I set up a light and go fx=pulse time=5

Over a period of 5 seconds the light goes from bright to completely off.

I don't want completely off though.. I want 50% light.

So I put another light there at 50% brightness, but now I've used two
lights and I only have eight lights total.

I want to just tell the lighting effect not to go all the way to off.

[View Quote]

Sep 21, 2003, 4:16pm

Extend the existing terrain system to include a single bit of information
that describes wether a given terrain cell is passable or impassible.

In conjunction with the existing mechanism to not allow flying or shift
through, this would give a world owner a per cell method to restrict
where visitors may go in the world.

This would allow you to have for example a coastline that will not allow
the visitors to enter the water, or mountains that are too steep for them
to climb.

It's only one extra bit of info per terrain cell. Surely there is an unused
bit in the current scheme that could be put to use for this.

Sep 21, 2003, 10:21pm

Because building walls takes a lot of time, and ruins the look I am trying
to acheive. A simple message saying 'you are not allowed to go there' would
be cool, and flipping a bit on a terrain mechanism would let a bot load
a bit mask blocking out where the terrain is navigable. It's amenable to
high leverage with third party tools.

[View Quote]

Sep 21, 2003, 10:30pm

Please stop throwing lines of code and megabytes of program size in my face.

I am the customer here, and I don't like having to spend more time than I
have to to make full and efficient use of the product I'm paying for.

Give me real features.. not time consuming workarounds. I don't care how
much code needs to be written or how much bigger the program gets. I
will save the time and bandwidth over and over again if the features help
make working with AW more efficient.

[View Quote]

Sep 22, 2003, 10:41am

Bummer :-(

[View Quote]

Sep 22, 2003, 5:27pm

You throwing the source at me would not change what I wish for.

No more than citing megabytes of code size, or hours of programming
effort does.

I wish for what I stated, and I still do. I will eat the megabyte on my hard
drive for the bigger browser.

[View Quote]

Sep 22, 2003, 10:01pm

Fair enough.

It's hard to distinguish the hard to do's from the impossible to do's,
the false it's hard to do's and the it's a dumb ideas.

You did say you liked the idea. If my reply seemed edgy, it was
not completely aimed at you, but in general at the negativism that
greets a lot of the ideas that come up in here.

[View Quote]

Sep 21, 2003, 4:22pm

If you right click on a terrain cell built by a bot outside your worlds
build zone, it turns into a hole.

That sucks. If you can't edit it manually, there should be no effect at all
when you right click... not a hole.

Sep 22, 2003, 10:51am

Edit the terrain inside your build area, and make sure the last thing you
do there is make a hole.

Then, right click on terrain outside your build zone. It will make a
hole there.

This happens in several worlds in AW Europe. It seems it's also
setting the altitude as well. I just tried it again in a different world
and it's still happening.

[View Quote]

Sep 23, 2003, 10:15am

In AWE the universe dialog says minimum world 43, latest world 56.
This is the uni that the terrain bug happens in.

In OW, the latest world says 43 and the bug doesn't happen.

Very odd. I will show the universe owner and let him get hold of the
AW team.

[View Quote]

Sep 24, 2003, 2:42am

This bug is caused by mapping your right mouse button to the toggle
move mode action in the new control configuration dialog.

Apparently, right clicks are sneaking halfway through the "can't edit
terrain" logic when they are mapped in this way using the new dialog.

[View Quote]

Sep 25, 2003, 9:42pm

For old geezers like me.

A bigger chat window font.

Noone under 40 is allowed to have a negative opinion of this wish.

:-P

Sep 25, 2003, 10:08pm

Thanks man.

Just won five bucks betting someone wishes DO come true :-)

[View Quote]

Oct 4, 2003, 3:45pm

it would be nice to have something like a HUD for avatars.

It could be an optional additional line or two in the avatars.dat file.

If provided, it would name a texture and a mask with an update= type update
rate for fetching new images.

Avatars that have a specific tag would have this texture mapped to them. If
you are using first person view, and if you have HUD enabled in your
settings, this texture would be painted full window size in the foreground.
Perhaps there are two textures named.. one that other people see (and you
see in third person view), and another that only you see from first person
view.

This would be useful even if the images were static. You could use it to
'clone' avatars and give them different textures within limitations without
having to create a copy of the avatar model as well.

Where it would really be useful is in conjunction with object server
applications that could provide dynamic information in a game style heads up
view.

Perhaps the SDK could also have a method added to allow bots to change the
image.

Oct 4, 2003, 3:54pm

Given that the concept of tagged polygons is already built into the
rendering engine, it would be cool to be able to 'cycle' through
sets of tags in an object in order to do true object animation.

You would create several different objects representing something
in a different pose, and then combine them all into a single object
but with different tags for the polygons from each of the original
objects.

In your world you would create the object and put something
like:

create taganim start=400 end=408 time=1

To cycle through each of the sets of tags in the object from
tag 400 through tag 408.

This seems a cheap way to do true object animation that fits
within the existing framework of how everything already works.

Tags are already used to signal objects that are invisible, or that
don't collide, and this is almost just an extension of that idea. The
only difference really is which tags are not drawn and when, and
the fact that which tags don't get drawn changes from time to
time.

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