About this blog and its purpose

There are many things to do in Activeworlds virtual reality environment. I've chosen my way. It is a way of a builder. There are also many ways to build. My way is to create a virtual town.

The town is Horizon City. It was established January 2000 and it quickly became one of the most popular cities back then, with hundreds of builders. Besides that the town serves as historic reminder of how things were at Activeworlds, it is still constantly developing virtual experience, displaying latest features and architectural possibilities.

In this blog I will keep track how the things are going in Horizon City and in Activeworlds community.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Shear Terraining

New shear command is one of the coolest new features. It allows yet another new method of landscaping. A builder can now use flat objects with shear command and make a smooth 'terrain' out of them. I made a small sample about how it works near Mini Fukuoka. I'm sure that someday, someone will make a bot that can build these smooth terrains easily. If you are, or if you know a bot maker, I can share my idea about how such bot would work.

With regard to the Mini Fukuoka area, I develop it different way than many other areas at Horizon City. I actually update the area and demolish or update old buildings there. As most of the city's areas are preserved for historic reasons, Mini Fukuoka is not. Recently I updated all roads there by using color tint command. The roads looks much better now imo.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Speedbuild 2010 Results


Remember the speedbuild contest that I was participating? Well, it went good! It was quite intense and we had actually fun with other contestants. The results came out last week and I won! My task was to Create a HISTORY MUSEUM detailing a theme from Active Worlds. So I made a building called "History Museum of One Specific Topic from AW". The building exhibits traditional tourist avatar fashion from years 1997-2010.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Cy Awards 2010 Achievements

The Cy Awards 2010 gala was held last weekend. There was over a hundred people following the event. I had to stay up to 4 am to follow the award ceremony!
Two of my creations were nominated for awards: Collapsing building for 2010 Cy Award in category of "Best Effect" and Cobra Wing for 2010 Cy Award in category of "Best Build". Neither of the builds qualified to top 3 on their category.

The winners are listed here at activeworlds forums.
AW Reunion seemed to rule at Cy's this year. I have to admit of voting some of the "AWReunion nominees" too...

Congrats to winners and nominees too!

Blog Layout & Other Updates


Hope you like the new layout. The background image is a screencapture from the city GZ.
I also updated the official Horizon City ad: horizoncity.cjb.net/hcad.jpg.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

A Way to Build - Casa Cubic



The cubic house is ready and open. I call it Casa Cubic. In a way there is something different at this building. I pushed limits of Activeworlds building with it and only used elements that exist at original Alphaworld environment. No third party textures were used. I'm quite satisfied about the result. It proves that Activeworlds building environment is unique compared to some other 3D platforms. In AW an user can choose to build extraordinary structures with smallest details or he can build with 'normal' 3D-way: using boxes and other simple elements with neat textures on them.

Everyone can visit there. All you need is Activeworlds browser, then you need go to world AW (Alphaworld) and teleport to coordinates 6748.6s 14220.5e 4a 275 or type ^jump casa cubic to chat screen inside the browser.
Welcome!