Tutorial Zone complete?
…so I got to thinking about the overall “sense” of the tutorial zone – never a good thing when I have lots of other things to do, but the new procrastination plugin kicked in and I ignored my streaming head cold symptoms and began tweaking…
Object market re-worked
It seemed to me that the tutorial “shells” were facing the wrong way (they faced the road and had their backs on the internal lawn area) – by rotating them 180 (and re-arranging the foliage) it feels a lot more inclusive, like the tutes and the object market relate to each other – they are ALL about the art of building so that was settled (at least in my own fevered brain).
I added a campfire talk circle, with a “cone of silence” around it so private group discussions can go on there, re-jigged the guided tour a little so it made sense and I think I am pretty well done here.
Tut Zone overview
Looking at it from above, it looks like there is very little here, but I know how long it has taken me to make, and feel pretty proud of it.
In the one compact u-shaped area we learn how to make, move, rotate, scale, colour, texture, script and select objects, how to film them afterwards and share our plans for doing so – nice, compact, accessible and … yeah, I know, talking to myself, you get that.
What is missing? Suggestions gratefully received.
Got Class…
So I have been chipping away at a large building that will house a bunch of stuff on sustainability, eco footprints and other environmental issues and found myself building this old-style education building. It is growing on me, like the mould is growing on the rising damp, or the moss is growing on the poorly drained pavers in the playground.
Anyways, it is a large space, so needs division – in this building there is a W-E corridor that bisects the building, doors lead off to theaters, break out areas, classrooms and the like…
A dank corridor
…and it is beginning to develop some interesting characteristics. I am quite happy with the styling, it reminds me of somewhere I have actually been, but for the life of me I cannot put my finger on where. Never mind, i am sure it will come to me.
The theater needs some breakout spaces, discussion pits and places to learn stuff so i have begin kitting out rooms for various purposes.
Conversation Zones
To take a large area and subdivide it for people to have conversations is easy – to stop the chat leaking in between groups – no so easy. I have used zones here to block world chat, so they can sit in small groups and discuss stuff without having to hear other groups in the room – little “cones of silence” which I think will work ok. We shall see this week when we have punters in and chatting.
A conventional classroom
I also made a more conventional space, a classrooms – you know, the old school model of kids in rows – I figure some things should be inflicted virtually as well as physically 😛 I would gather this space would be useful for gathering the troops, explaining something – we shall see.
Theater Mezannine
I also, at least temporarily, kitted out the theater mezzanine with a big table, some chairs, display surfaces and a podcast piano – I figure it would be useful to be able to stream podcasts – would like to stream real live feeds but I guess that is something I still hope Activeworlds can do. Funnily, I also made a naughty chair, over in the corner – I can imagine a virtual teacher suggesting a virtually naughty kid sitting in it.
Oddly, and you can see the visual remnants of this in the faint but discernible rectangular prism lines through the far wall, when you set a zone to be visible, its outline shows through most everything for miles around … this is odd and I am not sure if I like it much at all.
Once I had the floor plan for upstairs sorted, walls fitting seamlessly, cornices and doorways in place, signage, lighting and aircon ducts etc, I cloned, lowered and voila the bottom floor is not complete also. Much to my chagrin however, I discovered that my side doors did not align with the central corridor on the ground floor, but a little superficial wall massage and it looks like it was always as it now is.
In the “zone” and feeling moody
One issue with a “world” is the global settings – particularly lighting. Now if you are outside, this is fine, you would consistently want the sun/moon in the one place [although a multi-sun world might represent a challenge still]. The ambient light [that which generally soaks everything non-directionally and the directional light that originates from the major light source [the sun] as a global setting lets you pick intensity, angle and colour. These effect objects differently using the SUBTRACTIVE colour model – let me explain.
We see objects in the real world as a particular colour because the surface of those objects are reflecting THAT colour light into our eyes. A red shirt looks red in white light because white light contains some red – the shirt absorbs all but the red which it reflects and we see it – got it? In-world objects have colour schemes also – if the grass, for example is to be seen as green, then there must be some green in the directional or ambient light, else it will not appear green. Lighting in a virtual world [activeworld and secondlife] model this same system so some interesting moods can be created and commonly recognised objects can take on new qualities if illuminated using different colours to those it would naturally appear under white light.
… however
If you create a chamber, with a roof and solid walls, say, the world light settings seep through and plainly illuminate the inside space just like it is doing the outside – this is weird to say the least.
Zone object being placed
Activeworlds combat this issue by allowing you to create zone objects [rectangular prism, cylindrical and spherical] that let you apply local settings. In the above illustration, I have created and sized “red zone” to fit inside my airlock [but have yet to lower it in place]. Its ambient and direction lighting gives the user a feeling of being de-contaminated – red and dangerous looking. I also changed the local friction and gravity in this zone so it behaves like it is viscous to travel through. Similarly, inside the dome, I made a large spherical zone that filters outside light and lets my local lighting do the job it was placed to do.
So what? Zones will be very useful – we can make “holes” through our landscape but the global water table is just below the surface which by default means all stuff below that is full of water. To make a subterranean [or indeed a submarine or some breathable space below surface] you surround it in a zone that excludes the water and presto. Zones will let us make detailed and moody interiors as well which will greatly add to the sense of space.
Ground detailing and second floor
With a simple concrete “plinth” in place, the dome looks a lot more like it belongs there [a narrow collar would also help from an engineering perspective given the inside struts etc – the beauty of a virtual world however is that the rules of building are not restricted by the forces of gravity or tightly bound to the laws for physics, popular culture or bad taste so we can get a little liberal with the building regulations depending on the culture we are depicting. I floated a second floor donut [well, technically it is a torus, but it is near lunchtime so donut is fine] as a circular viewing gallery – I will re-wire the lift to take you up and down I think and it might be useful practise plotting waypoints.
I added some programmed light sources to see if I could [I wonder how often exploration is justified for “shits and giggles”] and we start to get a feeling for the place. Above the the outside airlock there is a red light – when you activate the door, the door tells the light to go green [to indicate all is ok to enter]. When you travel beyond the threshold of the door it closes and changes the light back to red. I will leave my magic carpet parked outside, but might see if I can find a Dalek exoskeleton to travel around in [I am a geek if nothing else 😛 ].
