Aug 17, 2006

Metaverse EX Reaches 997 Downloads!


I was randomly traversing the Internet today, mostly reading some of the older entries for The City of Nidus and came across the blog entry when I had first gotten Metaverse EX on Download.com. Back then I was happy to see the first milestone of downlads in the range of 300 + downloads (I mean, the fact that other people around the world were checking this out). So today I decide, "What the hell", and go to Download.com and check the status of the downloads.

Hot damn! 997 Downloads!? Wow, I'm greatful that I caught it before it passed the 1,000 downloads mark :) I know comparatively 1,000 downloads isn't much on the Internet, but remember - this is 1,000 more people that have been exposed to Active Worlds as a result of our promotions. Pretty cool, indeed, but nowhere near the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of downloads the original AW 3.2 listing had. Of course, Active Worlds 3.2 has been listed on Download.com for a timeframe of years whereas Metaverse EX has only been listed for a few months.

I believe we are doing pretty good for a lonely little world in the AW Universe :) We aren't totally packed to the hilt, but then again, nobody is. I would also like to point out that the listing for AW 3.2 on D
ownload.com is packed with horrible reviews. At least the few reviews we have are mostly favorable :) Anyways, just thought I would share this little milestone with you, our residents.

Stormclouds in a Cup :P


I know you are looking at the heading, and then at the little picture of what seems to be... a Starbucks Coffee Cup? And saying... Huh? Ok here's the deal. Particle effects like rain have a very small effective range, and thus use for large scale weather effects is really a pain in the butt. I know when we first were working with it, we had to place a particle effect every block just to create proper overlap. This was nearly 10 seperate particle effects just for the area surounding our ground zero. Imagine if we wanted rain for the entire world?

So over in another universe where I like to test my ideas we were screwing around with rain but the problem with range came up again. Some of the Beta people who may read this know what transpired already, but I'm going to spell it out for the people who aren't guessing already. Movers have a much larger visibility range than a normal object, roughly 20 meters from the object itself (which is pretty far) and is independant of the selected visibility of the user. So, we thought, why not attach the rain particle effect to a small object like crate1.rwx and place the object underground?

Viola! There we had rain that extended 20 meters in radius. Actually it extends about 30 radius coming from the object but only 20 when walking toward the object. So to play it safe for overlap, go with 20. Generally speaking, this allows the world VR5 to use only 5 particles effects to cover our entire P-40 with rain.

Useful? More than likely. Did you know about it already? Maybe.

Hey, the concept and idea was new to us and I have yet to see anyone else use this idea in their space or world. Anyway, that's my advancement for the week. Nothing spectacular, but hopefully this is useful to you as a world owner or builder :)

Looking to the Future (With working Mirrors) - MPL Knight

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