what does ActiveWorlds have that we don't?

Not much, according to this listing of features in the new AW 4.1 client:
http://help.activeworlds.com/aw41/

They do have ZONES (defined areas where physics works differently), VOIP support, and support for .PNG and .GIF textures. That looks like the extent of it.

Oh, and MIDI support, which seems to be used most often to drive users crazy with bad MIDI tunes. heh.

User-uploadable meshes? Dunno, I haven't gotten on AW in ages.

The most important features it has that SL doesn't have:

- The ability to import meshes.

- Huge and relatively inexpensive worlds that can be hosted on your own computer.



The most important features it doesn't have:

- People

- Marketing

- An economy

- Decent avatars that can give a young man wood


They could release a new AW next week that's technically better than SL in every way. But that doesn't mean it'll be more popular, because it doesn't have the most important feature - people!!

AW traditionally offered a selection of avatars to pick from, such avs being designed by the owner of each world. It seems they have some support for "custom" avatars, now. Whatever that means. The feature seems to be limited to "developers" atm.

What type of custom meshes does AW allow? For building or avatars?

No scripting or physics -> complete lack of rich, interactive content.
AW is a mostly static world where all you can do is upload a few simple meshes and try to tile and overlap them together to see if you can actually do something new.
SL is a dynamic environment where anyone can create amazing things with the builtin modeling and programming tools.

The ZONES idea seems really good.

Let's have that.

Oodles of land. In 1999 in AW, I'd covered land that was the equivalent size to a couple of sims here.

Now, what about There? Has anyone tried that out?

(Don't get me wrong, I am happy here)

They put newbies in hawaiian Shirts. In SL you get a plain white one. Whats up with that? XD

You can get a hawaiian shirt texture off the SL website though. Heh.

I have never played AW but I don't understand why mesh would make a difference in either game. You can only do so much with a mesh skirt and top and the important thing is what you wear under it. Maybe AW or SL has better things to wear under mesh clothes but I have no idea which one.

The avatar mesh is what your avatar is made out of (its shape kinda). Not mesh the fabric. So in AW you can upload things that have a very unique and complex shape. In SL you can't upload a mesh.

We don't want to GO anywhere, we just want all the good features available.




Not MIDIs

I would kill for PNG & GIF support (animated GIFs as textures?).

I will kill someone if they add MIDI. Either that or I'll constantly be playing a midi of , loudly at that, "Girl From Ipanema" in protest.

See /13/33/93040/1.html for a more detailed analysis of AW 4.1 and SL and what each have the other doesn't, etc.

Coming to a Second Life near you in version 1.13:

Mesh Uploads! zOMG!

MIDI Music! LOL!!

More Greifers! BBQ!!

I was bored one day:

http://www.SLBoutique.com/anim/

Animated GIF ---> SL Targa Converter

Oh wow! Thanks!

What a cool tool. Thanks!

I haven't been in ActiveWorlds extensively, but don't they have "bots"--some sort of NPCs?

From what I looked at when I looked over AW, a "bot" is basically a PC, except instead of being controlled by a person running the client, it's controlled by a program they wrote running on their computer. And this is the nearest AW has to scripting.

In other words, if you want to make a vendor in AW, you'd have to make an alt, give them a "vendor box" avatar, walk them into your store, and then write a program that logs on as them, waits to get paid money and gives the item to the buyer, and then run that program on your computer 24/7. Eech.

Thanks! I've been meaning to make a few changes to make it work a bit better, but haven't had the time. Either way, it's open source. A few changes I want to try to make:

(1) handle transparency correctly and map to the targa 32-bit layer (currently, transparent GIF pixels become white)
(2) Figure out the X by Y grid for the frames by taking into account the width and height pixel count rather than just the number of frames in the GIF
(3) Allow options for dropping / duping frames for a more efficient grid (IE, if a animation has 80 or 82 frames, dupe or drop a frame to make it 81 frames, and a 9 by 9 grid)

If someone wants to take these ideas and run with them, by all means, be my guest!

Regards,

-Flip

On Update Wednesdays I log on to There and ActiveWorlds to see what's up. ActiveWorlds I've seen very little of because of how limited "free access" is, but what I've seen has been ugly, unappealing, and unfun.

There is prettier than ActiveWorlds, but compared to Second Life it pretty much sucks, as far as I can tell. There appear to be a number of interesting looking areas in There, but NO ONE goes there. Everybody seems to congregate at the newbie beach or one of the markets and just stand around and talk.

There has built-in voice chat (for paying subscribers) and I haven't been able to use it since I'm free only, but I really shudder to think what it's like. (Typing, ideally, forces people to choose their words carefully, and you don't hear people munching on Doritos and watching Starsky and Hutch reruns in the background.)

Avatar customization is extremely limited compared to Second Life, and although There has a cool try-before-you-buy feature (which I would LOVE in Second Life), there are some serious limitations with purchaseable items.

For one thing, There is completely PG. All player-made items must be submitted for approval before being sold. Also, from what I've been able to tell there's no such thing as a 'store' in There. There are little Kiosks where you can buy company-made things it seems, but for player-made items, it seems like they're only available from the website, which is auction-based. It doesn't look like you can permanently list items there either, so the total available inventory seems pretty small.

Here's something that REALLY sucks about clothing in There: You have to buy clothes that match your skin tone! For example, if you buy a tube top, that top includes not just the clothing, but the skin for your arms and torso! My avie there is very pale and I have yet to find any clothes that both appeal to me and match my skin tone.

Ooh, another thing I hate! There is no chat history. Everyone speaks in little chat bubbles. If a bunch of people are close together their bubbles can obscure one another- but you have NO WAY to go back and see what you missed! (IM has a scrolling history, just not open chat.)

Also, you are allowed to customize your avatar once for free after initial account creation. After that you must pay each time you do it, I think.

I haven't seen anyone with what appear to be attachments like we have in SL. Attachments can do almost anything. In there, people just seem to wear simple, (boring) clothing and any goofy emotes or whatever you see them doing are just features built into the client.

Sorry if this is random, incoherent, and/or inaccurate. Just, from what I've seen, neither platform is a viable alternative to Second Life.

If a virtual world doesn't have scripting it is of no interest for me.

SL's scripting is pretty weak, but it does work sort of.

Oh god, I tried active worlds ONCE. Active Worlds does not compare to SL

ALTHOUGH, some features I noticed that I did like were: the mesh uploading (as mentioned) and the ability to upload GIF textures in Second Life...

But anyway, I guess you have to upload meshes in order to build anything in Active Worlds... I tried building myself; ended up just copying another creator's "box" and was not able to do anything with it but move and rotate it. I do enjoy having the inworld creation tool in SL, rather than being limited to uploading what you create outside of the game.

There's also another game thats kinda similar to Active Worlds from what I've seen: Worlds.com
A feature in this game I noticed mirrors which not only reflects the walls/objects in the room, but also the avatar. It would be nice to have mirrors in SL. (Though they can be somewhat simulated with prims I guess)... But, the mirror feature would not only be useful for bathroom mirrors or vanity mirrors, but reflective surfaces as well, such as metal, windows, floors etc... Also, the ability to create your own horizon in the distance!

Visually, Second Life is much smoother, "softer", texture and detail can be much more intricate. Second Life has much more depth and "life". Worlds.com gave me a headache, the textures were just aweful from what I saw; and from a distance they dont "smooth out" like SL . Things do not render as smoothly in Active Worlds either.

Now There on the other hand....


I thought There does have a chat history box ? It's buried in one of the menus somewhere, I forget, maybe they got rid of it...I haven't been to There in a couple years now, since 10 minutes after logging into SL convinced me to quit There.


There are demos in SL no? I guess people don't make demos for everything, including clothing, but we COULD - which I am working on for my own shop.

But what I do miss about There are the vehicles. They can actually be driven!

Trying to create content in There is such a waste of time. I don't recommend the huge hassle in learning the exclusive to There proggies.

I've played so many online games I get them all mixed up so correct me if I'm wrong about some of this lol
..Always end up back in SL though!

IMO-
It'd be nice if our avatars in Second Life were a little more "in touch" with the world and it's surroundings. Even with all the attachments, building options, animating, and scripting, I still feel a sense of detachment from the world surrounding my av. I understand this isn't so easy, and technology probably isn't there yet. Would be nice to work toward that though