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Apr 27, 2003, 7:15pm

I'm writing a bit of a game here, and I'm just wondering if anyone knows if
there's a way to have the bot set the owner of an object it creates to
something other than the ppw owner used to start the bot. (note: this is in
my world, where I am caretaker and have all rights)

The issue in question is that the users can destroy pieces of the
environment (causing them to be deleted). When I reset the environment, the
bot uses the stored data of all the destroyed objects to reconstruct them -
this works fine. However, the owner is always set to my citnum, regardless
of what citnum I tell it (aw_int_set (AW_OBJECT_OWNER,whatever);), which is
problematic considering that other people are also building in the world,
and when their destructable objs get reset, they are then owned by me,
making it impossible for them to alter them.

Any ideas?

-Monkey

Apr 27, 2003, 11:39pm

Doh! Can't believe I didn't bother to check what that function was for.

Thanks =)

May 6, 2003, 4:33pm

I was wondering if anyone out there could point me towards/provide me with
more detailed information on how to utilize aw_query (or, I suppose
aw_query_5x5 would be better).
I've been doing a half-a$$ed version for some time which queries only a
small portion of the world (stolen from the doc example =P) but I'm
uncertain how to get it to do the whole world... Can anyone point me in the
general direction I want to go or else a doc that will help?

Monkey

May 6, 2003, 8:51pm

Nevermind that, someone pointed me to aw_cell_next

[View Quote]

Feb 1, 2004, 9:45pm

Wouldn't we be required to distribute custom toolbars to anyone we wanted to
be able to use such features, though? I can't imagine too many casual
visitors to a game downloading something like that, so this is pretty much a
feature limited to universe owners. :P

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Feb 3, 2004, 11:08pm

Oh, I'm not saying it's useless, just a bit limited. Having the browser
download a set of toolbar files from the world's OP (if they're even
provided) would be much better, IMO. You can certainly put your game's
toolbar up for download, but few will actually bother to install it, and
even more will be terrified to DL it. I will, of course, be making a custom
toolbar to handle a number of Proxima's game commands as soon as the 3.5 SDK
is here, I just feel the need to point out how it could be better than it
is.

-Monkey

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Feb 3, 2004, 11:48pm

Well, you know, they wouldn't *have* to be bitmaps. I would assume that
custom world toolbars could be jpgs without it being a particularly serious
issue. :P

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Feb 9, 2004, 7:36pm

Now that would be a glorious day for AW, when we could finally have some
real balistics-based combat. Well, for people who like FPS games anyway. ;D

-Monkey

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Feb 6, 2004, 3:26pm

0 is actually the return value you're looking for; most of AW's functions
return an integer error code, or 0 if the function worked (as a side note,
outputting this code somewhere will allow you to see what went wrong if
something failed, by looking up said number on the error code table here:
http://www.activeworlds.com/sdk/reason.htm ). You will notice that 0 is
defined as RC_SUCCESS.

I cannot help you with VB specifics as I only work in C++, however from your
post I gather you have not installed an event handler for
AW_EVENT_WORLD_INFO (
http://www.activeworlds.com/sdk/AW_EVENT_WORLD_INFO.htm ). This event will
be called for each world returned by aw_world_list, and will set a number of
variables which you can retrieve in order to actually store/whatever the
world info.

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Jul 22, 2004, 1:30am

Unfortunately there's just no way to make a terrain cell a hole for only one
user; the change would impact anyone in the world. While a bot could be made
to create this effect, it would be totally broken if there were multiple
users in the world, assuming they didn't all intend to move as a group. If
you only intend one user to see it at a time, then a relatively simple bot
could be made to handle this, however there's no decent way for said bot to
detect the user's current visibility setting (unless you set min vis to 100
and just assume 100m vis for everyone). If a min vis of 200 was possible,
then there would be no confusion at all here, though it might cause some PCs
to die.

Okay, hold on -- it is actually possible, it's just something you couldn't
accomplish unless you were a universe owner or had way too much money to
waste (err, I guess those are effectively the same thing).

The only way I can see this working for a group of people in a world at the
moment is complex and bizarre; it requires you to have as many identical
worlds as you intend to have users. Each user is sent to one of the empty
clone worlds (up until none of them are available, at which point they are
automatically ejected), where the terrain effect in question functions with
no issues. The strange part is that we then use additional bots to mimic the
movements and chat of the users in the clone worlds; the effect should be
totally seamless (assuming all worlds and bots run from the same PC, or at
least the same LAN), aside from the fact that everyone you talk to will have
[these] around their names. Writing the bots would actually be the easy part
here, as the biggest concern is obtaining all those clone worlds and bot
rights.

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Aug 13, 2004, 5:02pm

This may have already been covered, however I was unable to find any
reference in the NGs.

When using AW_EVENT_URL_CLICK, all clicks I trigger by clicking a URL in a
website occur twice for each single click. Has anyone else seen this issue,
and possibly found a way around it (aside from simply dupe-checking in code;
I have already implemented this, and it solves the issue, but it seems a bit
absurd)?

Aug 13, 2004, 7:45pm

http://www.activeworlds.com/sdk/AW_EVENT_URL_CLICK.htm

There is no link from the SDK documentation index, however the docs are in
there. Strange.

[View Quote]

Jul 22, 2004, 1:30am

Unfortunately there's just no way to make a terrain cell a hole for only one
user; the change would impact anyone in the world. While a bot could be made
to create this effect, it would be totally broken if there were multiple
users in the world, assuming they didn't all intend to move as a group. If
you only intend one user to see it at a time, then a relatively simple bot
could be made to handle this, however there's no decent way for said bot to
detect the user's current visibility setting (unless you set min vis to 100
and just assume 100m vis for everyone). If a min vis of 200 was possible,
then there would be no confusion at all here, though it might cause some PCs
to die.

Okay, hold on -- it is actually possible, it's just something you couldn't
accomplish unless you were a universe owner or had way too much money to
waste (err, I guess those are effectively the same thing).

The only way I can see this working for a group of people in a world at the
moment is complex and bizarre; it requires you to have as many identical
worlds as you intend to have users. Each user is sent to one of the empty
clone worlds (up until none of them are available, at which point they are
automatically ejected), where the terrain effect in question functions with
no issues. The strange part is that we then use additional bots to mimic the
movements and chat of the users in the clone worlds; the effect should be
totally seamless (assuming all worlds and bots run from the same PC, or at
least the same LAN), aside from the fact that everyone you talk to will have
[these] around their names. Writing the bots would actually be the easy part
here, as the biggest concern is obtaining all those clone worlds and bot
rights.

[View Quote]

Jan 4, 2005, 2:52am

ALICE is effectively a chat simulator. It's very much like megaHAL. It will
attempt to hold a conversation to the best of its abilities and has limited
learning capabilities.

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Jan 12, 2003, 4:30pm

I discovered this one a while ago while attempting to surround my world with
a wall. Oftentimes, when attempting to move an object to the very edge of
the world, it will stop exactly one click before reaching the edge. This
does not seem to be affected by the size of the object, as the client uses
the object's center point for testing the world limits.

While attempting to collect more specific data (which sides of the world
this occurs on, etc.) I noticed that the problem was more sporadic than
this - that facing a different angle or moving the object through an odd
series of movements would change which sides (of the world) would react in
this manner. I also noted that moving the object with the mouse (right click
and drag, something I almost never use due to the fine control required)
will allow you to move it to the maximum extents in any direction.

This was tested in the world proxima (p-20/5u) with terrain enabled
[disabling terrain or enabling ground - any combination - has no effect]
using "pole4m02" as the test object, but I have had similar results with
"walkxxx" and "ppxx" objects.

Home-built Athlon XP 2100+ (1,733mhz), 512MB DDR 333 RAM,
GeForce4 Ti 4400 at 1280x960x32bit, DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0901), Using
Direct3D T&L mode (aka DX8 mode),
SBLive! 5.1 OEM, Windows ME, Cable Modem, world hosted on this PC.
-Monkey!


[View Quote] > Please post reports of any bugs you can find in build 419 of AW 3.3 as a
reply to this post. If there are a lot of informative replies I will
mention this thread in the beta newsgroup so that the developers will know
where to find it. If there are any replies at all, I will try to use the
information contained in them to improve my own testing of the AW 3.4 beta,
so that your efforts will not have been wasted.

Jan 12, 2003, 4:33pm

Still, it strikes me as rather impossible for anything like this to have
caused a full system meltdown! This would imply that this somehow altered
critical system information. There are other, more likely causes for this
sort of deterioration.

-MoNkey!

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Jan 12, 2003, 4:42pm

I have attempted to reproduce this using a zaw2 in my world proxima
(p-20/5user).
The description box contains:
"word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,
word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,w
ord,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,word,wo
rd,word,word,word,word,"
which is apparently the limit. (without those quotes of course)
The action box contains only "create sign."
The sign appears as 8 small word's across the middle, with the rest cut off
(on both ends, as the first 'word' is missing part of the w).
No crashes or other discomfort to report, however holding the mouse over the
object does not bring up the usual description popup, and the word 'word' no
longer seems to mean anything to my brain.

Home-built Athlon XP 2100+ (1,733mhz), 512MB DDR 333 RAM,
GeForce4 Ti 4400 at 1280x960x32bit, DirectX 8.1 (4.08.01.0901), Using
Direct3D T&L mode (aka DX8 mode),
SBLive! 5.1 OEM, Windows ME, Cable Modem, world hosted on this PC.
-Monkey!


[View Quote]

Jan 12, 2003, 5:05pm

First, I know this is not the correct location for this, HOWEVER, as I am
not a beta tester, I must find some alternative way to voice this concern,
and since TZ seems to be one of the most active testers...

My information regarding this issue is limited, as I do not have access to
the versions in question - however, I have heard from my scouring of the
beta NG that AW 3.4 may be using 10 avatar updates per second, compared to
the 1/second which has been used for quite a long time (even in 3.3? I don't
know)... see (news:3e1f184b at server1.Activeworlds.com) message in beta NG
titled "Modem: Bumpety Bumpety Bumpety Bumpety *SPLAT*" ... I do not know if
this is true, however if it were, it could be at least partially accountable
for some movement problems experienced.

So, out of curiousity, 1. Does anyone know if this is true?
2. If so, has this already been addressed in some way?
3. If not, should it not be taken into consideration that the number of
incoming and outgoing avatar updates/second MUST be scaled down for those on
crawling old dialup? (for example, a simple option on first start-up:
"please select your connection speed" ... which could of course be changed
later)
4. If this is true, has any data been collected to see if the movement
problems occur under only certain system configs, for example, with dialup?

Huge numbers of update packets, such as in modern online 3d shooters, can
easily flood out the modem user (you won't find all that many dialup
connections successfully playing modern online games).

Discussion?

-Monkey!

Apr 18, 2003, 3:45pm

I'm aware that the current limit of 8 (?) hardware lights is not a simple
thing to get around in T&L mode, however I don't see what the problem would
be with using the 8 closest lights as hardware and making those farther away
software (or whatever method is employed by D3D w/out T&L).... I was under
the impression that this is how modern 3d games using T&L solved this
problem. Maybe someone more knowledgable in graphics programming could have
something to say?

Perhaps a browser setting could determine the maximum number of 'software'
lights while in T&L mode to avoid huge performance drops.

Monkey!

Apr 18, 2003, 5:25pm

Just a little one, I think it would be nice to have a duck function to go
along with the new jumping. Very useful for game worlds (hiding, etc.). It
should lower the viewport perspective as well as doing a seq.

Apr 22, 2003, 5:31am

Perhaps the mechanism could be to blend the two textures and then restore
them as two separate textures which would be applied to the terrain as
usual, bypassing the need to alter the way the textures are mapped.

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Apr 22, 2003, 5:22am

I would imagine the main reason for this is simply a lack of money and
manpower. Rewriting the browser may be worth it, but we have to consider
that it will take a huge chunk of development time and really wouldn't make
sense unless they were in a stable position.

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Apr 30, 2003, 3:45am

I concurr, this is a really important one IMO.

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Apr 29, 2003, 10:24pm

I think it would be relatively easy to create a 'user lightsource'
function - the ability to assign a dynamic light to the user's av through
the bot (limited by rights I would imagine). This would require require only
a very small change to the browser, I would guess.

Usefull for flashlights, etc.

-Monkey

Apr 30, 2003, 3:44am

that should be really easy. AW already has some RWX commands that are not
part of the "real" rwx format, like prelight. In theory, the browser could
recognize a 'light' command.

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Apr 30, 2003, 10:40pm

Right, but I don't want an avatar that appears lit, I want the avatar itself
to create a light source, in this example I'd like to be able to include a
flashlight/torch in the game I'm making. Right now, I use 'flares' like many
FPSs have, little light objs you drop that go away after a few seconds.

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Jul 7, 2003, 10:13pm

Just as a note, I actually have a 16 light source limit when I'm not in T&L
mode. Weird, huh? (GF4 Ti 4400)

It would be up the the world owner to decide how to deal with these lit avs.
I was intending to use them as part of a game, so in this case users cannot
choose their own av, the bot does it for them.

[View Quote]

May 6, 2003, 9:16pm

Currently, calling a 'noise' makes the sound appear to come from directly on
top of the user. This is irritating when, for example, making a game where
sound effects are needed, since all SFX in vis range will be extremely loud
even if they are far away. I would like the option to specify, much like the
overlap specifier, that the noise should be processed for distance/position.

Monkey

May 6, 2003, 9:53pm

Sounds can't overlap, thus completely ruining the idea. The sound cmd is
designed for "background sounds," and I don't see what's wrong with allowing
noises (the only way to have more than 1 sound at once!) to be processed for
position if and only if the user indicates.

[View Quote]

Jul 7, 2003, 10:15pm

Either way, the response from AWI is going to be that RW doesn't support it
(to which I reply, isn't it time to get cracking on your own graphics
engine? Or at least start modifying the default RW engine (they do give you
source with that liscense.... right?))

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