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marvin // User SearchIndication: walking against wallJun 18, 1998, 1:17am
When we first got gravity I spent time building a slide from high
altitude before I discovered gravity would not let me fall down a slope, only up a slope! :) zer0 [View Quote] Telegram MuteJun 12, 1998, 1:30am
If you don't want to recieve telegrams when you are online in AW, or not
have a load of them dumped on you when you first log into AW, then you need a "Refuse Telegram" setting. The downside is no one would be able to send you a telegram as long as your browser was set to disable them (just like disabling join). You can't expect the servers to store a load of old telegrams for you until you are ready to see if you have one. Too many people would forget and leave the setting set to off. Too many people that were popular would abuse the feature. The servers would fill with unwanted stored telegrams. So if you got it, you would have to decide, no telegrams at all or give em to me now! Later zer0 [View Quote] capture and animaliaJun 12, 1998, 12:20am
To hell with other programs! We have a program that has a graphic we can
position and zoom in and out on now (Browser!). All we need is a button to "Snap" the AW Browser camera and a few "Save As..." options to let us pick "*.GIF" or "*.JPG"... etc. Then all we need is a way to attach the files produced by the browser to a telegram and we could all snap pictures of each other all the time and send them back and forth! Would be great for the next wedding in AW. Later zer0 [View Quote] solid av'sJun 12, 1998, 1:13am
Solid Avatars could only be implemented in one way. Only if the Avatar
is static (not in motion, not changing it's coords). Multiple moving Avatars with collision detect would make the lag from intense animation and image updates seem like light speed! The system resources needed to track the positions of two moving avatars as they intercept in real time is not here yet. If I was one of the avatars and you were the other, the location where we intercept would have to be the same on both our systems. I'm not sure any two systems ever have the exact same coords for the moving avatars at the same time. That's a question for Roland. This is not even taking into account at all the 3D surface of the avatars! I am assuming you mean any form of collision detection at all. Like an invisible "pole" vertically through the center of each avatar. The surfaces of the moving avatars could not be monitored in real time with our current hardware. BUT! I see no reason the browser could not check for an avatar that is "Parked" and not let a moving avatar pass through the parked one. The parked avatar could just appear as any other "*.RWX" object until it's coords begin changing again. Now... if you got that... What would we do with absolute GZ (0N 0W...) where all the avatars stack up on each other as people enter the worlds? I guess we could go back to the good old days when avatars fell out of the sky. Then they could just stack up head to toe into the heavens. That would work. Look sort of funny on popular worlds! Hehehehe Later zer0 Star light, star bright... I wish we may have night every night :)Jun 13, 1998, 12:07am
This is a very good idea. Nothing to make AW (or any world) more
intresting than what is going on in that huge virtual sky! I think there should also be "Cloudy" days, "Stromy" days, and anything else that would make AW a little more RL. Everything is there to select different backgrounds and GZ default sounds. All the world servers need is a way to automate it. zer0 Ejection identification - Put to TOP of listJun 11, 1998, 11:04pm
I got a real simple solution to the whole thing. And the Browser is the
key! All we need is a file that is used to list any text string we do not want to view in our personal copy of the Browser. Sort of the reverse of the new user defined "message" file. When the browser sees the listed character string ( on a sign, an AVs name, in the chat stream, embedded within a stream... etc.) it could replace it with other characters! So simple! For example, if you had "Shit" on the list and anyone chatted it within your browsers range the browser could find it on the list file and replace it with " at !*$" or maybe "!!!!" or whatever! Maybe even have another word the user could define in the file for the substitute! For example "Shit=#2". Then when someone chats "Eat Shit" you get "Eat #2". The vulgarity is not diminished for the sender, and they look stupid to those that are listening. Have the Browser install a default "alias.txt" file for all the words that COF thinks or offensive. Delete the file, delete a line from the file, to get back to the real nasty free AW! What do you think people? Should we put Roland to work on this one for Beta build 259? Or is there some idiot that thinks there is something politically incorrect with this idea too! Ejection identification - Put to TOP of listJun 12, 1998, 11:43pm
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Thank you TechnoZeus! After reading a number of your post in this NG I
will take that as a thumbs up... :) zer0 Ejection identification - Put to TOP of listJun 13, 1998, 1:51pm
Well, there are other positive side effects if this was implemented...
one being the people that curse all the time would never be able to tell if the words they were using were filtered or not by the persons Browser they were talking to. Especially if the person they were talking to only responded with normal responses... like they did not notice anything out of the norm. It would take some of the fire out of the abuser.... You just brought up another advantage to the method I described. It could be used to monitor/substitute for ANY character string of printable characters. Meaning any language. It would serve most peoples needs even if it was a very short list of words. It would make the abuser work much harder to get their jollies. It could also be designed to handle a set of characters that were embedded in a string of characters (harder on resources). It would be easy to make it where it did not care about mixed case (that is the easy way!). It could even be designed to watch a complete string of chat (character string anyway) and truncate or dump the string if it found any part of it that matched the strings it was watching for... Lots of ways to go here to get the most out of it.... Later zer0 [View Quote] Ejection identification - Put to TOP of listJun 15, 1998, 12:45am
It would have to be totally user defined icey... you have or don't have
your list. I have or don't have my list. :) [View Quote] Ejection identification - Put to TOP of listJun 16, 1998, 12:28am
Well, after talking to a number of people in the know (Protag included)
it appears I might have gotten myself over excited about the usefullness of this feature. It might be a good idea, but in general most agree it will only help to hide a problem that will not go away. So be it! :) zer0 [View Quote] Online User ListJun 14, 1998, 12:53pm
That would render the privacy of the contact list (showing which world
you are on or not) a joke. I always have all privacy features wide open, even join! I think like you, these were very important features we needed forever. What happens? We finally have a way to locate people and see if they are in AW and for some reason most users seem to disable these features. None the less, I do believe in privacy. So if the list you suggest was done it would be a little disappointing, because most of the people on the list would have to be listed as "Unidentified" to protect their privacy they had selected. :) zer0 [View Quote] Roland! THE Answer to Vulgarity! :)Jun 11, 1998, 11:37pm
I think I have the answer that sould please everyone, including the
people that want to squirt all the trashy language into AW. If the Browser is capable of handling the resourse requirements in a timely manner, and I think it could. The answer is another "*.TXT" file the browser will seek at startup and open and load into memory to use during a session if it exist. It would need to be a "*.TXT" file so anyone could edit it with anything, just like the new message file. Let's call it "ALIAS.TXT" for now. If you open the file you would see something like: SHIT=POOPOO HELL=HEAVEN DAMN=DARN .... A conservative default version of the file could be provided by the install with instructions explaining how to edit it and what it was for. If the user deleted/moved/renamed the file the Browser would not filter or alter anything. If the user felt it was too restrictive, they could delete the lines they wanted to recieve in the RAW format. If they felt it was not strict enought, they could add lines to the file to limit/modify additional character strings. This could be used to satisfy the "Vulgar" individuals also! They could swap edited version of the file with each other that had the opposite effect (make nice word strings into nasty evil ones)! The best of all possible worlds for everyone. The Browser could use the list of character strings to monitor for and substitute words; on signs, object comments, Avatar names, telegram messages, chat stream, words embedded in strings... etc.! Of course this does not fix it for the PeaceKeepers, but it should get most people that have been bitching at them off their ass. In case you can't tell, I will be able to accept AW in its natural RAW format for the long haul. Later! zer0 <·><·> Environment mappingJun 14, 1998, 12:56pm
Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 14, 1998, 1:28pm
I used Rolands name in the subject in hopes of it drawing his attention.
Dirty trick I guess. Since day one, when we got the wonderful new feature of avatar animation I quickly realized there was something wrong with it. There is alot of animation now, many man hours went into its development, but for me it was a big waste. BECAUSE YOU CAN'T CONTROL IT AT ALL! If you enable it you get animation all right, but it is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose! The animation buttons are fantastic, but they are rendered useless because no one can tell you clicked one. All the involuntary animation is perfect (walking, flapping, blinking...) and should always be happening when animation is enabled. I can even think of many more involuntary animations that would make AW more natural and realistic. The animations the buttons generate are great also, BUT ONLY IF A USER HAS DECIDED TO EXIBIT THAT BUTTONS BEHAVIOR AND HAS CLICKED THE BUTTON!!!!!!!!! Now if some users want to have a crowd of avatars checking their watches and streching and dancing, etc. at random then I guess they should be able to set their browser to see the show. I think most people would set the browser to a setting that made the button animations only happen when users clicked them and only the involuntary animations happened on their own. This has bothered me for a long time now. I have tried to get the idea across many times in the past but never in here. In fact it is the main reason I decided to try the NGs. Please give your feedback on this issue, even if Roland is too busy or not intrested, I would like to see what you guys think. I think the more realistic AW becomes the more people will use and appreciate it. This sounds like a very small detail, but it is realy a hole in the design that hurts realism that has never been addressed. I have kept my animation turned off since forever. I wish I could watch the birds flap by and see Butch strut, but I refuse to do so with all that insain spastic automatic crap happening everywhere I go. I have many ideas about new involuntary animations all based on a moving avatar (except one) but I want to see if the subject is relevant. Sorry if this offended anyone that created the seqs. :) Didn't mean to. Later zer0 <·><·> Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 15, 1998, 4:58am
Cool... I was not sure how often Roland frequented the WishList NG...
About Automatic Animation... As I stated, I always keep animation disabled. About the only time I ever enable it now is to show someone that has never seen AW what it is. Sometimes then I enable it. Everytime I ever had it enabled it was just like when the feature was first introduced. If you have it turned on and an avatar is standing there minding its own business, in a minute the avatar will be doing one of the animation sequences. It will happen with out any user input. Sort of like a screen saver. This is unrealistic. I would much prefer that every single animation sequence I witness was generated by a human being at the other side of that avatar. Only animation I will accept as "Automatic" are the ones I called involuntary (walking, flapping, blinking). I think most people would pick animation to actually mean something instead of the way it is now. If you see an avatar "WAVE" it would be nice to know it was a real wave. If you see one look at it's watch, you can expect the wearer to say something like "I have to go it is getting late!". See what I mean? As far as I know the random generated out of control animations happen for any avatar that has animation all the time without the user doing anything to make them happen. Their button clicks for a given animation sequence is just added to the storm of automatic ones. Right? Now you make me wonder if I have had animation turned off so long it has been improved/corrected and I am way out in left field! I will go immediately to enable it and see if I am still right. Maybe I will get lucky and it is different and I can leave it on finally! :) zer0 [View Quote] Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 16, 1998, 12:10am
Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 18, 1998, 1:02am
No.. it is just like I said it was... Don't want anything automated
except involuntary... I'm keeping it disabled forever. zer0 [View Quote] > Naaaa, just that you can expect to make a few mistakes when trying > anything new...:) actually mistakes are how you learn.....:) or > should i say, if you don't make the same mistakes twice, then your > learning.....hehehehhe sheeeesh...i can see this going nowhere quick. > LOL hehehehe Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 18, 1998, 1:04am
Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 18, 1998, 1:13am
Don't like it, don't want it, won't use it. Parked avatar should only
exibit actions triggered by the user (except for the involuntary blink). If you like all the extra fine, but give me a way to separate it from the real user actions. zer0 [View Quote] Roland: Automatic Animation is Unrealistic!Jun 21, 1998, 6:11pm
Actually I am rude and stubborn in RL also (wife says so all the time).
Sort of old and set in my ways too. :) zer0 Reality is too boringJun 21, 1998, 6:28pm
I believe in going beyond reality and the farther the better. But you
need to make AW as close to reality as possible first, or at the same time you strech possibility. People need as much realism in AW as can be implemented. It is not possible to make AW too real, but it is possible to make it much more RL than it is today. All the extras that go beyond reality are EXTRAS! Like teleporting, flying, knowing someone is in there on some world somewhere... etc. The more of RL we have the faster AW will grow. If you could hand my avatar an object that was really a file transfer to my hard drive imagine how much more realistic AW would become! More people could use it for Real reasons. People that did not know how to download a file from a web page would know how to hand your av that same file as an object... BECAUSE IT WOULD BE NATURAL TO THEM! Realism is the lifes blood of AW. If something else comes along that is more Real and catches up with AW then all bets are off. We need more realism now. zer0 Reality is too boringJun 21, 1998, 6:42pm
About two years ago before we got "Join" I suggested a way to share a
users viewpoint. What this means is a way to allow others to see what your av is looking at regardless of their location. Say another selection for a person on your contact list that is called "Viewpoint" maybe. You click on it and if they had it enabled, you can ride around in their head or from their 3rd person view and see what they see. Could be a very important tool to teach with. One person could have many attached to their "Viewpoint" as they gave a tour of some AW site for example. Could help alot with big meetings where you want all to witness but can't handle hundreds of people chatting their 2 cents worth. Thought I would mention it again... your "Viewport" idea brought it back! :) zer0 Reality is too boringJun 21, 1998, 6:52pm
This brings up something that is older than AW even. My wife is still a
WC (Worlds Chat) user. Of the few things that are superior to AW in WC (not many!) the one that would be very nice to see n AW is the fancy way you teleport in and out of WC. In WC for those that don't know about it, when you teleport in others around you Avatar see a bright blue light that flashes away to white and disappears and at the same time they hear the "teleport" sound happen. Same effect when someone leaves... now it might get a little noisy at GZ... but Hey! It is GZ and there is alot of traffic... more REALISTIC!!!! I think this is completely doable. You might not get to hear or see all teleports because it is only possible to generate one at a time... but it would be hard to tell you had missed one. :) zer0 |