Issue #14, Saturday September 14, 1996


The New World Times

ACTIVE WORLDS CITIZENRY
REACHES 100,000!

SIGN OBJECTS AND FREE TELEPORT HELP SPARK BUILDING BOOM

Wednesday, September 11, 1996

Picture compliments Jaojoby.
Today AlphaWorld reached a milestone as our 100,000th citizen immigrated! Ziper, an experienced IRC chatter, wandered in to find a crowd of excited people waiting for him.

In an email to Protagonist, Ziper said he has wished for a program like IRC but with graphics...and was amazed to find Worlds Chat Gold and Active Worlds/AlphaWorld, which are way beyond what he had envisioned.

Ziper, we welcome you to our Brave New World!

Sign Objects Add New Depth

Sign Objects are a new innovation in Active Worlds. There are presently five types of Sign Objects. SIGN1.RWX is a "realty sign," SIGN2.RWX is a street sign, and SIGN3.RWX is a standalone sign object. TPORT.RWX is meant to be a teleporter object but also features a "sign polygon" so that you can type in the name of the destination for the teleporter. NEWS1.RWX, the newsstand object, has been adapted so the bottom half is a sign.

The way the signs work is detailed in the help file. There are also numerous examples of sign objects in the Ground Zero area, but the basic way that it works is that you type in the text and it is converted on the fly to a bitmap, which is then applied to one polygon of the object. Be careful: if you want your frame rate to stay reasonably high, don't put many sign objects in one area!

Teleport and Warp Unrestricted

Now that we have a "back button" to keep folks from getting stranded in the middle of nowhere after an unwanted teleport, Protagonist has decided to "unrestrict" the teleport and warp commands. You can build your own teleporters now, and the warp command can be used for amazing things...there are now at least three different roller coasters and a water slide in Active Worlds!

The Active Worlds documentation team is busy documenting these commands, but they work very much like web page teleport and teleporting using the menu, which are both covered in the help file already.

New Building Objects Released

Several new building objects have been added, with more on the way. Until we get a built-in object browser (hopefully pretty soon,) the up-to-date reference file for building objects is here. This reference has recently been brought up to date to reflect the new objects, which include:
  • COLM4M02.RWX, COLM8M02,RWX, and COL10M02.RWX, which are columns similar to the old "01" series except that they have been mapped for textures...so when you use the ANIMATE command to put a texture on them it looks good (hopefully!)
  • POLE1M02.RWX, POLE2M02.RWX, and POLE4M02.RWX. Unlike the columns, these have no texture on them by default, but they can be textured with ANIMATE like the columns.
  • CACTUS01.RWX, CACTUS02.RWX, and CACTUS03.RWX. These are non-textured saguaro-style cacti in various sizes.

Telepark becomes World Gateway

For those of you who have been looking for the teleport to Telepark, look instead for World Gateway. Protagonist has changed things around so that teleports to places within AlphaWorld are grouped near Ground Zero in AlphaWorld, with one teleport to World Gateway...which in turn leads to teleports to other worlds.

New Directory Structure

One of the most problematic behaviors of the Active Worlds Explorer in the past was that artwork for each world you visited was kept in directories called FILES1, FILES2, FILES3, etc.. This worked fine until you needed to find artwork for a specific world, whether to delete it or browse it with RWXLOOK, or whatever. If you visited a lot of worlds, you could have a whole lot of these directories. Furthermore, if your local cache got corrupted it was possible that you'd waste a lot of disk space with duplicate files.

In the new version, each world's files are stored in a subdirectory with the same name as the "short name" of the world. So for instance, AlphaWorld's artwork is stored in subdirectory AW under your AlphaWorld directory, Arctic Light's are stored in ARCTIC, etc.. If you have upgraded to the most recent version and still have subdirectories under AWORLD called FILES1, FILES2, and so on you can delete these directories and their contents. The upgrade should have deleted these directories.

Tip: If you're using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser, change the line "name=netscape" to "name=iexplore" in the [browser] section of your AWORLD.INI file using a text editor.
CONTENTS
Virtual YellowStone is Open for Preview! Circle of Fire Studios shows some impressive application of the Active Worlds technology.
Party at the Razzles' Castle is a Huge Success. A mystery game, standup comic, trivia contest, scanvenger hunt and lots of chat!
AlphaWorld Top 10 Tricks. Dane Gobel joins the NWT staff for a Letterman-like countdown.
Ask Xavarella One of our favorite builders offers advice to AW citizens.
Under Construction Astounding new constuction in AlphaWorld and other Active Worlds continues.
Advertisements Ads from our citizens. Don't miss the Help Wanted ad from Worlds!

VIRTUAL YELLOWSTONE OPENS FOR PREVIEW!

CIRCLE OF FIRE STUDIOS SHOWS HEAVY DUTY TALENT




Old Faithful erupts in Yellowstone.

Circle of Fire, an art studio which has been working with Active Worlds technology for a while now, has opened a virtual Yellowstone Park for preview. This world is made up of entirely new artwork from the ground (literally!) up. Magnificent backdrops, custom avatars, clever animations, new textures and a very cool theme all contribute to make this a great place to visit.


The mysterious and eerie magma
chamber lies under Old Faithful


Yellowstone at night.

Yellowstone actually consists of two linked worlds. The main world is the park itself. Another world simulates the Magma Chamber and Steam Chamber underneath Old Faithful. If you walk into the geyser, you will "fall into" the Magma Chamber area. Be sure to hang out there without moving too much until you download all the animations and sounds! Once you get the full effect, walk around a bit and you will automatically warp to the Steam Chamber under the geyser. From the Steam Chamber, you can look straight up to see the Geyser above you...and then look back level and fly up slowly into the tube...you'll come flying out into Yellowstone!
Be sure to visit Yellowstone at different times of day. Timing is generally gauged by East Coast time (where Circle of Fire is,) and the place changes every day around dawn, sunset and nightfall.

The Cave.

Both the Magma Chamber and Steam Chamber are actually in a world called The Void. Despite some heavy-duty animations and sounds, frame rate in The Void is impressive due to lack of a ground object or backdrop. You can actually enter The Void at its "Ground Zero" and see a mysterious cave setting, from which you can teleport elesewhere through custom portals designed by Circle of Fire.

Circle of Fire Studios is available to do custom artwork and design of virtual worlds. Email to Rick Noll at fire@user1.channel1.com for details.

PARTY AT RAZZLES'
CASTLE IS HUGE SUCCESS

GAMES AND OTHER ACTIVITIES DRAW RECORD CROWD

by Liz Rasmussen (Razzles)

The party at Razzle's Castle was a great success. Many thanks to all that attended. A new record for was set that day for total Active Worlds attendance.

The party kicked off at 3pm PST with music & trivia hosted by Protagonist. There was a Murder Mystery to solve and a Castle Scavenger Hunt as well. Later we had stand-up comedy provided by the one and only Dr. Smith.

Both Razzles (Dave & Liz) were able to be in AlphaWorld at the same time--they had two computers set up just for the party so they were both able to greet the guests as they entered the castle. Most people know that Razzles is a husband and wife team, but to some it was a shock to see two Razzles at once.

The Murder Mystery went over quite well, even though finding the clues at LittleBull's construction yard deterred some players. For those of you who played this game, LittleBull hid the clues in the following locations:

  • "Building materials" was in with the panels and could be seen easily in 3rd person view.
  • "Arches" was in with the Arches (DOH!)
  • "Beer Mug" was with the miscellaneous objects.
  • "Bird Feather" was among the tree objects.

The Murderer was none other than Murphys, part of the creative team that has been building the Twiglet Zone. Murphy is the one who dropped the Arch on the Building Inspector! The main clue that gave Murphy away as the murderer was that he did have bar napkins, while Dataman did not. Congraulations to the Murphys for doing such a great deed & giving The Building Inspector a grave site in the Twiglet Zone's Graveyard. Unfortunately, The Building Inspector is back! Word has it that Worlds has a factory for producing Building Inspectors just in case something like this happens to one of them.

There was no true winner of the Murder Mystery game. There were two people who guessed it right but didn't follow the rules, and one (Denedes) who worked very hard at solving this game and did find all the clues and the murder weapon on his own but failed to guess the correct murderer! Unfortunately, the murder weapon was found by the two people mentioned above before the game started.

The Scavenger Hunt went quite well. There were quite a few people exploring the halls and towers of the castle. Congratulations to winner Russ Hansen aka Tsuki for getting a total of 95 points. He found 9 of the items on the list and one of the bonus items. The Scavenger Hunt can still be played at the castle if you'd like to try it. See http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/scav.htm for details.

Dr. Smith's stand-up comedy was a huge success. He drew quite a crowd around the stage with his jokes and routines. The crowd was so thick at times even I missed some of the jokes. Then Dr. Smith invited others to try their hand at stand-up. Jeff Foxworthy impressions were great, and we also had some really terrible knock-knock jokes and lots of silly one-liners. Many thanks to Cliff for warming up the stage for Dr. Smith and being part of the stand-up comedy! All in all it was a great show!

ASK XAVARELLA

NWT INTRODUCES OUR FIRST ADVICE COLUMN

Dear Xavarella:

I thought I saw President Clinton at Ground Zero the other day. Could this be possible, and do you know how many other celebrities frequent AlphaWorld?

CelebritySeeker

Dear CelebritySeeker:

I don't have access to all the "numbers", but I can say that I personally experienced a very ugly incident where Princess Di slugged out the tourist, Barbara, for taking her picture.


Dear Xavarella:

I am really attracted to this one guy I see around at GZ, but I don't think he even knows I exist....:-( What would be the best way to get his attention? Shy Shanubia


Dear Shy:

It is very effective to circle Ground Zero, while repeatedly shouting, "Anyone want to see my new implants?" I have found that this gets loads of attention. Hope this helps!

Confidential to HardLuck Cy: Please try not to take everything so personally. All those voices you are hearing are probably in your own head.


Please send your questions to: ASK XAVARELLA c/o tvfacts@itw.com Discreet, no-nonsense advice on all matters. Names are changed to protect the innocent.

ALPHAWORLD TOP 10

By Dane Gobel

Hello. Im Dane Gobel, I'm sure you have figured that out already. I'm better known around the net as NETHEAD. And please dont ask what the name means, it speaks for itself. Anyway I'm almost 11 and I will be doing a monthly Top 10 list and some other articles in the New World Times. My first list will be on the Top 10 Stupid AlphaWorld tricks. HERE IT IS:

10: Walking through through various items-holding shift while walking into something will allow you walk through it.

9: Hyperspeed backwards is pretty cool, because if you are in a heavily populated area, you will see a whole bunch of buildings trailing off in the distance.

8: Hidden underground worlds aren't really a trick, but it is a pretty cool thing if you really like to explore in AlphaWorld.

7: This is a cool thing in AlphaWorld, although it is also the simplist thing to do. Walk foward in third person. You articulate.

6: Special animation isn't really a trick, but it is pretty cool. If you stand still in third person, your character will praise Ra or something. To see what each avatatar does, look in the next issue.

5: Whiplash effect: If you travel at hyperspeed in third person, then you will notice that your camera will not quite catch up with you and then will spring back on you when you stop.

4: Hidden avaters: you can find these when you go into certain worlds and go to the avatar screen and simply start choosing avatars right and left.

3: Another way is to mess around with the ini file. Go into the AWORLD.INI file and type something in the line where it says avatar=. Try avatar=bird.

2: If you line up a whole bunch of teleport devices in a roller coaster-like pattern, and go in to the first one, then you will get thrown into the next and the next and so on and so on.

1: Another very cool thing to do is to switch to a different articulating avatar while doing your special animation. The new avatar you choose will do the old avatar's animation. For instance, if you first choose Hotep, and then choose Shred (the surfer,) then he will praise Ra. I have seen some pretty odd surfers, but this tops them all.

E-mail me at daveg@worlds.net to suggest topics for other Top Ten lists.

AlphaWorld and Active Worlds are trademarks of Worlds, Inc. The opinions
and other content of this paper do not necessarily
reflect those of Worlds, and belong only to Dataman.