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Re: AV98 (Wishlist)
Re: AV98 // WishlistmauzNov 23, 1998, 6:52pm
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(cross-posting to Wishlist)
Well, since nobody else is answering, I'll give you my (very heavily edited) version of Roland's presentation: " Immigration Officer: ALL: Roland will be giving a talk on the brief history of the development of AW and features developed and to be developed.. BIGBOARD NOW so I don't really have a formal presenation prepared for this...I've been to busy watching the Star Wars preview again and again... and again... but here's what I'd like to do I'd like to start out with a brief history of the development of Active Worlds this should be a fun review for those of you who have been around since the beginning and interesting for those of you who are more new to online VR :) then I want to give my brief opininon of where we currently are, and where we are going and then open it up to a general discussion about the AW technology, inclyuding Q&A so let's start with the histry of AW...I'll try o cover this as quickly as possible development on AW first started in early 1995 at Worlds Inc for the first six months or so all work was done by a single programmer, Ron Britvich aka Protagonist I joined Worlds Inc. in September of 1995 and started working on AW with Ron shortly there after By then Ron was already up to build 38 so I don't know much about the builds befor then :) so I'm not sure how many people remember build 38, but it was a...tad...bit less sophisticated than what we have now :) basically we had a three dee window and a field for entering chat text there was only one avatar, the immortal Cy there was only one world, AlphaWOrld you could build most of the time :) to become a citizen, you had to immigrate via a web page the system emailed you back an "immigration number" that you had to enter in order to be come a citizen it was an ingenious way to keep people from creating a zilliion ciitzenships, since you could only have one citizen account per email address the first thing I added to AW was the first "action" commands... teleport, bump, visible on/off, etc... this allowed people to add a little bit of behavior to their buildings it was very primitive, but a big step forward nonetheless... most of those action commands are still with us today...amazingly enough they are starting to show their age I would say :) yes they work ;) however I also fear they may be a little bit much for some new users to grasp...someday I'd like to see something a bit more user friendly... but anyway :) Moving on to around February 1996 that was when AW first became a 32-bit app back then of course most of us were still on Win 3.1 but this new beast Windows 95 was starting to make the scene so going to 32-bits was the first step to movingover to Windows 95 completely... also at that time, the amzing concept of "dynamic downloading" was introduced :) if y'all remember, the early AW browsers were shipped with all the art included, all textures, sounds,everything the install was 4 megs...in 1995 with most people on 14.4 modems still...that was a hefty dowload anyway we added the ability for the browser to download the art files on the fly, from a web site removing the requirement that all art be shipped with the browser to this day that was probably one of the most difficult-to-implement features I ever added...it was surprisingly complex anyway...that feature allowed us to move quickly to April 1996 when we first introduced the amazing concept of...more than one world! wow it's not just AlphaWorld anymore... at the time, we first called them "zones", but over time that term was dropped in favor of the less-techy sounding "worlds" Version 1.0 of AW was released in summer of 1996 for that we also managed to add....multiple avatars! wow not just Cy anymore... and also, I believe at more or less the samem time we added avatar animations something we pretty much take for granted now...but once upon a time everyone was looking pretty...stiff now for some reason my records of 1996 are sketchy...I don't recall exactly what was added when but fall 1996 saw he first best version of version 1.1 build 133 I believe that was when we introduced the integrated web browser which was a huge step forward for integrating 2D and 3D content seemlessly well, for people that had IE anyway :) we also added the amazing "picture" command :) something else I'm sure we all take for granted now :) but there was a time when you were limited only to the textures on the object path, nothing else the picture comman allowed people to customize their buildings and creations to a degree never before possible we also added linking to WAVs and MIDIs anywhere on the web at the same time version 1.1 also allowed textures on avatars... it was all flat-shaded polygons before that :) MP3! yeah :) I want that too... hehe anyway...we managed to release version 1.1 in December 1996 just in time, because... in January 1997, Worlds Inc., unable until even the very end to understand the value of what they had... cancelled AW and laid everyone on the project off... fortunately for us, however, instead of just tossing it in the trash, they put it up for sale... so certain other individuals who DID perceive AW 's value worked their butts off for two months in order to acquire AW from Worlds by the way, I wasn't one of those people...I took a two month vacataion :) but by March 1997, Circle of Fire had full rights to the AW technology...and work resumed! first day of official operations I believe was March 8, 1997 By May 1997 we had version 1.2 out version 1.2 introduced the concept of tourists for the first time...we added this because it was becoming apparent that we needed a way to get poeple into AW quicker the immigration process, although simple, was confusing enough people that we felt we needed an easier way for people to see it somewhere around then we also introduced the amazing"sign" command :) allowing people to customize their work even more... actually I 'remember exactly when we added the sign command...but it was sometime around then sorry, I mean, I can't remember...anyway version1.2 also introduced the object password...since object theft was becoming a rapant problem rampant it allowed people to protect their hard work with a password so others couldn't just take their models and use them elsewhere an ability, interestingly enough, till completely missing from the web today still also summer 1997 saw the first introduction of a new product...the uniserver for the first time, someone (with a a lot of money :) could run their own AW universe separate from COF's this is still an emerging concept...but now there are at least half a dozen different AW universes that I know of more on that later :) August 1997 saw the release of 1.3 in my opinion, probably the most significant new version of 1.3 to date it introduced most of the new features that shape AW as we know it today including... the worlds list' the contacts list telegrams joining eject privilege paswords and fully integrated HTML hel yes Q&A later :) those were just the biggest chnges:) and then, with build 177, in September 1997, something shocking and terrifying appeared... the registratinscreen :) oops registration screen since this is a technical presentaation I don't want to go into the details of why that was added :) suffice to say, it kept us busy for a good month getting it in :) and on October 8. 1997. registration was first switched on and AW citizenship was no longer free...ah well then work started on version 2.0 in some ways, less of a major version feature-wise, but behind the scenes 2.0 involved an ambitious re-implementation of much of the underlying client/server architecture AW was growing fast, and it had outgrown some of the limitations present in 1.3 among other things, the avatar limit was raised from 12 to 50 making discussions like this one possible :) multiple objet selection was added, a nice tool for builders and everyone's favorite new feature, the VRT clock :) we also raised the infamous cell data limit keeping the hated building inspector at bay for a little while longer :) more on the techy side, we dropped the use of an internet protocol known as UDP UDP had been used since the beginning to implenent the chat and avatars it was a great solution in theory, unfortunately in practice it didn't work for too many different people so it was dropped...and th reliability of AW went up quite a bit also 2.0 introduced message sets for the first time allowing the creation of non-english versions of the browser for the first time this summer saw the release of the beta of the new SDK this is a powerful new tool for developers to add new behaviors to worlds like weve never seen before some of you may have witnessed the first ever SOCCER GAME we had in AW just a few days ago thanks to the SDK and the hard work of several determined AW citizens :) okay..almost done now we're working on versino 2.1 which will bring us whispering, and bot support and file transfer among other things okay...that brings up up to now :) so where are we going? well..beyond 2.1...is 2.2, or 3.0, or whatever you want to call it as usual, there are a million things I'd like to see in that version, and we'll only get to a fraction of them but some of the things high on the wish list include... custom avatars improved bulding interface... I still think building is too hard :) including the use of objects from anwhere...not just the one object path the browser needs to have better support for multiple universes or, any support :) better 3D hardware support would be nice too :) that's tough though...the only way I see that happening is with a native Direct3D port of AW i.e. no more RenderWare that's a big one... also an issue I would really like to see addressed is... easier world hosting the original vision of AW was one of fewer, larger worlds that people spread out through... but the reality has been one more of many, small worlds people like to have their own, small private worlds...that they can control completely which makes sense it's like having your own web page...same thing but the hosting problem prevents a lot of people from having their own worlds up 24/7 I have some plans for something I call a "macro sever"...a single server that can easily host hundreds or thousands of worlds at once it's actually not that hard...I would like to see that happen in 1999 well, that's some of the big stuff anyway :) I see I've overshot my time...dang.... but I don't have anywhere I need to be, so if you want to stick around I don't mind having a discussion now okay... so...not sure how to handle this :) hmmm..gravity....what about it? gravity ...as I recall...that was total spur-of-the-moment I added it one night when I was fooling around with collision detection we liked it so much we decided to keep it :) a history of outgoing telegrams...yes, that would be nice the whole telegram mechanism could stand for some substantial improvement well "when" is the question I can never really answer :) the best I can say is that I like the idea and I would like to see it happen well one thing about telegrams was, we didn't want to wind up just re-implementing email all over again :) since we already have email :) and it works pretty good :) the idea was to provide a light-weight way of quickly getting in touch with others yes...ignore for telegrams falls under the category of "improved privacy" which includes a variety of features... including the infamous green checkmark... my idea there right now is to make contact lists more reciprocal... in other words, you can choose to only expose information to the people who are on your contact list hmm I don't know, I don't see a whitebaord happening soon it's a nice idea but there's so much other stuff that is more important offline building....welll another nice feature to have however building is so tightly integrated with the server, it's really not possible to build without a server however, that said the ability to run a world server on your PC, and build in it without being connected to the net...now that's possible that is something I've wanted to do for a while [Kasper Voyager: And how would you make sure that 2 ppl don't build in the same place then] well Kasper that is the problem...that is why you need a server hmmm Zeke the world server may be doing more that you think :)_ mirror universe servers...another nice thing to have...difficult to implement though I do think about that one though so far my experience with internet voice has been pretty negative it works okay for one-on-one, sometimes... but I don't see anyway we could have a group discussion like this with voice... not with this many people,. not with the current technologyu since so much of AW is about group chat...voice doesn't seem like it would help okay...object rotation...hehe :) maybe someday :) " By the way, earlier I heard some interesting comments by E N Z O: " I spoke with them [Truespace people] yesterday they are very excited perhaps a special AW bundling deal and a building tool along with the LF people who need avs maybee i will tell you more when i know " And: " we are writing the code for Custom avs in AW then everyone can have whatever they like... inside a few parameters and world owners can dictate the use There is a plugin being written for Truespace they will have a low priced AW bundle that outputs into RWX probly around 30 bucks and Lifeforms is working with them to provide an animation plugin was on the phone with both Seng from Credo and Terry from TS there is also an av maker from cof hopefully we can release it soon roland is working on MP3 welllll... there will be implementation of direct 3d soon (meaning in a year or so...) and that would allow a better mixer direct sound " -- Mauz http://tnlc.com/mauz/ |