Issue #11, May 6, 1996


The New World Times

copies in circulation.

WELCOME TO THE
ALPHAVERSE!

NEW ZONES ALREADY FLOURISHING,
MORE GROWTH EXPECTED

Sunday May 5, 1996

Last issue we talked about the pending release of what ended up being version .78. We mentioned some of the new features of this major upgrade, but we didn't really anticipate the quick growth of "zones," or sub-worlds. These worlds open up a whole new dimension for AlphaWorld citizens. Although some of the things being done in these worlds are difficult or impossible to do in AlphaWorld proper, together with AlphaWorld they form an "AlphaVerse" to which our citizens now have access.

Colony Alpha

The quickest-growing zone by far is Colony Alpha (see Under Construction in this issue.) We highly suggest a visit to Colony Alpha, with frequent return visits to see the rate at which this place is coming together!


Is it just me, or does this place make you think of Barsoom?

Colony Alpha is being built by AW's own Moria (Graham Evans.) You may remember Moria as the builder of the city of Necropolis near Grand Central Telestation. He has been one of AlphaWorld's best builders for some time now, and one of the most imaginative ones. Email Moria if you'd like to find out how to become part of this brave new world.

Telepark: the Nexus

TelePark contains teleport pods to many
spots in AlphaWorld and other zones as well

Some of you have already found the telepark...if you haven't stumbled into it yet, just look NW when you enter AlphaWorld at Ground Zero. There is a teleport there to Telepark, Protagonist's world, which contains teleports to points of interest in AlphaWorld and also to other spaces such as Colony Alpha, the Wild West, and Cyborg Nation.

The Wild West: Anything Goes!

For those of you who have always wanted to build with "Z" objects, the Wild West gives you the opportunity to do so! Wild West is a world where anyone can build anything, and there is no encroachment. Be aware though...anyone can also delete anything in the Wild West!

Cyborg Nation: Surreal

At least one new zone is dedicated completely to experimentation and prototyping. (Well, and humor maybe.) Cyborg Nation is actually my own (Dataman's) zone, so it will grow sporadically as I have time to devote to it. A couple of friends have agreed to help with building (not my strongest suit anyway as you may know,) but I plan to make most of the objects myself as a learning experience for documentation and other purposes.


Cyborg Nation has no theme as such yet,
but the clutter contains a few interesting objects.

If you visit Cyborg Nation, be prepared for a different kind of experience... and don't forget to switch avatars and see what some of them have been replaced by!

WEDDING BELLS TO RING

IN ALPHAWORLD

Monday May6, 1996

With great pleasure, we announce that the first AlphaWorld wedding will take place on Wednesday, May 8th, 1996 at 9 PM Central Standard Time. This is something some of use have looked forward to for a long time! The happy couple (Tomas and Janka) first met in AlphaWorld, and directly following the wedding he will physically move thousands of miles to live with her.

Many AlphaWorld citizens are working to make the wedding a happy occasion. LittleBull donated land for the ceremony, Laurel is building a suitable area, Kalak (Danny) and Lynne Viescas are creating special avatars and David Tolley and Wolf Schmidt are sending over some sound files. NetGuy will be the Best Man and Yellow Rose is to be the Maid of Honor. Who will preside is not quite set yet, but it may be Da5id or our own Dataman.

To find out more about the wedding, and to teleport directly from the web to the wedding site, see this page. We wish the best of luck to Tomas and Janka!

CONTENTS

AlphaWorld Citizens' Directory Makes Debut
Mailboxes have been catalogued for your convenence.
About Our World
Teleporting to new worlds.
Under Construction
A peek at Colony Alpha.
BarZero Powwow Conference Opens
Now a 24-hour Powwow conference is available for AW citizens.
Classifieds
Ads from our citizens.
Editorials
Some words from DatedMan.

ALPHAWORLD CITIZENS' DIRECTORY MAKES DEBUT

ONLINE MAGAZINE HOSTS SEARCH ENGINE

Monday May6, 1996

Ever wonder how to find something in AlphaWorld? Well it's just gotten a lot easier--Protagonist has now organized all the mailboxes in AlphaWorld into a database so that we can more easily find what we're looking for. Our friends at Online Magazine have provided a seach engine and site for accessing it. By the way, if you haven't read it, there is an interesting article in Online Magazine about AlphaWorld, including an in-depth interview with Protagonist.

The search form checks the database of all mailboxes in AlphaWorld, and allows you to search by creation date, site type (as contained in the description field,) citizen name, etc.. To use the search, just click here. This database will probably be updated about once a month.

See Online Magazine's ad in our Classified Ads this issue for a link to a page explaining how you can attach the directory itself to objects in AlphaWorld with preset parameters.

ALPHAWORLD POWWOW CONFERENCE BEGINS

BAR ZERO EXTENDS TO POWWOW

Saturday May 4, 1996

Today Bar Zero, AlphaWorld's first 24-hour Powwow conference, came on line. To connect to the conference, click on Powwow's "conf" button, then choose to join a conference already in progress. Then fill in "BarZero@AlphaWorld" in the "user@host" slot and join the conference!

If you haven't tried Powwow yet, you can go to http://www.tribal.com to get a copy of the current beta software. Powwow is a program for communicating across the Internet which many AlphaWorld citizens use as an adjunct to the AlphaWorld software. Powwow provides text-mode and primitive voice-mode peer-to-peer chat, file transfer, etc..

Powwow's "conference" mode is a recent addition which allows users to chat in groups of more than seven. In conference mode, not all features of Powwow are accessible, but when it gets too crowded in a normal Powwow chat you can move over to the Virtual Bar. Note that a lot of the time the place will be empty as folks just chat in smaller groups, but when your group gets crowded you can now move to BarZero to expand it.

The advantage to having BarZero available is that normally someone in the chat group has to host a conference to expand the group, and when that person has to leave the conference is over. Since BarZero is always open, you can move there and not have to close down the chat group because the host has to leave.

BarZero will get its first real workout on Wednesday, May 8th, as it is used for the wedding of Tomas and Janka (see the story in this issue.) The vows will most likely be taken in AlphaWorld proper and also in the conference.

If you are running Powwow, you should also be sure to visit Geek's AlphaWorld Tribe page and sign up for the AlphaWorld Powwow tribe!

Our thanks to Netguy and mgib for providing the idea for BarZero.

EDITORIAL

Why So Much RAM?

First let me say thanks to HenrikG for the topic this month...but before getting into that topic, let me digress a little: I have been absolutely swamped. I had an appendectomy about a week ago and evidently it will take a while to recuperate, but even before that I was very behind on almost everthing. If you have emailed me and I haven't followed up on something, please email again and don't take it personally. As I work to try to help the rest of the AlphaWorld team to get a real "release" version ready, details tend to slip through the cracks. The New World Times is a very important part of my job, but other duties take precedence at times, especially as I recover from surgery.

Now...

The RAM Dilemma

I've heard mixed reactions to the new versions of AlphaWorld, from "it's ten times as fast" to "it's slower than it used to be!" Evidently this is not entirely RAM-dependent, but it certainly won't hurt to get more RAM. Fortunately, timing is good because RAM is cheap now! After years of RAM prices that stayed high despite dropping prices on all other hardware, RAM has finally started to drop dramatically. So if you don't have at least 16 megs, think seriously about upgrading. You'll enjoy AlphaWorld immensely more if you have enough RAM to handle the software.

The reasons that AlphaWorld requires so much RAM are not simple, but it all basically comes down to graphics rendering. Because so many bitmap textures are used to make AlphaWorld objects look realistic, it is a RAM-hungry application. If you'd like to see the alternative, go to your Options menu under Performance and turn off bitmap textures and facer objects...you will most probably see a speed increase and use less RAM, but the AlphaWorld experience will lose a lot of depth!

As I find out more about the factors that slow down AW's performance I will post them on the docs page, but for now just assume that the client will not run in less memory in the future, nor is it likely to run better under Windows 3.1. For those who dislike Windows 95 for some reason, I don't know what to tell you except that this is Microsoft's world right now, and they have made it very attractive for developers to move to Windows 95...and just about any new software you get will run better under '95. So bite the bullet and go for it, folks!

<Y.T:>"The problem with you hackers is you never stop working."
"That's what a hacker is," Hiro says.

--from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash

AlphaWorld is a trademark of Worlds, Inc. The opinions and other content of this paper do not necessarily reflect those of Worlds, and belong only to Dataman.