Congratulations AW Universe!

While the Active Worlds universe was rocking out to the Aztech Rising concert, a delivery truck showed up at our ground zero... and after some unloading and setup, MPL Knight signed for the new and improved arcade machines he had ordered about two months ago. The delay was apparently caused by a random Tsunami in the virtual oceans off the shores of AWGate.

In any event, we have the delivery of the arcade machines! So here's the deal - the arcade machines are in two custom objects to reduce the occurance of zbuffer. The top piece (marquee) can be one of two objects, one is a sign and the other a picture object. The bottom half is generic and can have a picture command on it to show a screensot of the game that is tagged to it.

We've had a couple of bids on the arcade machine, but for now they are not for sale. VR5 is not really in the business of selling models, and any models we make are for company use. Another reason is because they are not really finished yet.

Again, the motto for us is to create prototypes and continuously improve as we go. I apologize for the often low framerates and the hundreds of objects we have around GZ and elsewhere. These builds are prototypes and tests, and we are busy making optimized build sets to replace the FPS hogs we have now.

So far we've taken out the prototype subway we had (in anticipation of AW 4.1), and this has increased our framerates at GZ to something more useable. Whenever AW 4.1 does decide to actually be availible... we'll start zoning everything out properly and working on the subway again.

Yes, we know some of our builds are flooded :) The concert took most of our effort, so we didnt have time to fix the flooded areas in time. We will get to it :)

I would also like to publicly thank everyone who helped make the Aztech Rising concert a success! Stacee @ AW was a huge help for increasing the world limit for the weekend to handle the short burst of traffic. We didnt have 150 people in world, but we did keep a steady 50 during the concert! This was enough to make VR5 the number one world in the AW Universe!

Would like to thank Capri Graphics for the stage, Aztech Rising for playing, DMC2U for the help in last minute setups, SWChris for helping with some lag issues before the concert. TunaBlues was awesome with the corona light display :)

Apparently it is impossible to use remote commands with coronas... but then again we had them at the concert.... guess there is always a first time for everything :)

Also would like to thank AW Radio for setting up the simulcast for the concert, and allowing us to handle 114 listeners for the concert. I'm not sure of how many people tuned in for the concert, but I do know we just about maxed out our own station The Edge.

Great job, AW Universe for making this a concert to remember!

Sincerely,
MPL Knight

William Burns
VR5 Online, LLC

AZTECH RISING PLAYS NIDUS

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN... AZTECH RISING!!

On April 22nd, 2006 there will be a concert like no other in the virtual universe.
Two hours of streaming concert from the band Aztech Rising, hosted by the City of Nidus, VR5 Online and The Edge Radio.

The concert is free for all who enter, though our world can only host a total of 45 users at the same time, so this is a first come first serve event. Included will be about two hours of music from Aztech Rising (no longer will the audience need to click an object for each song) and our streams can accomodate 25 Highband and also 25 Lowband (for dialup users). Also for the intermission between sets, There will be a LIVE interview! (If you cannot get into the world for the concert, there will still be 5 streams left on the station so you can still hear - http://www.theedgeradio.org)

The concert start time is 10:30VRT and the location will be Nidus Outdoor Arena (teleport availible at GZ).

Another first for a virtual concert is a fully functional giftshop offering Concert T-Shirts (Real and Virtual) as well as the ability to order copies of the CD. There is also the abiity (from what we are hearing) to purchase a copy of the band's CDs for instant download! When was the last time you attended a virtual concert and walked away with a real tshirt?

Not to leave any stone unturned, we are also providing a working Papa Johns Pizza for those who wish to order some pizza and snacks for the concert. Those with a Papa Johns in distance can make the entire order and have it delivered from the VR Concert area to your home in real life.

Aztech Rising is a mellow sound much like attending a Pink Floyd concert - so come prepared to listen to the sound and watch the displays :) We would like to personally thank the members of Aztech Rising for offering to play in our humble world - we are doing everything we can to make this a concert to remember!


In Other News:::

The City of Nidus has been experiencing some really heavy rainfall over the past few weeks, resulting in widespread flooding for some of our locations. We are working feverishly to correct the flooding problem in some of our locations as soon as possible and apologize for the hassles this may bring our residents.

On the bright side of things, we have also inherited a new lake near the Arena, so the flooding wasnt all that bad. Things should be dried up better before the concert date and we do not expect to cancel on account of rain.

More exciting things...

The Nidus Ground Zero has been greatly reduced in Lag over the past few days and we are seeing a dramatic improvement in FPS for even lower end systems. Also to note: we have created a visual teleport page for our world that can be accessed through the following means - Standing on the teleport pad at GZ will load the page. You can also access this page from the GZ Kiosk (that options button on the ground) and lastly, directly entering the website location http://www.vr5online.com/teleports

For the time being - only a couple of the teleports are wrong (well not really wrong but they take you to flooded buildings). Due to the flood in our world, we are currently correcting this.

Again, we would like to thank the citizens of Nidus for their participation and support all of these months during development - this concert is our way of giving back to the community. ENJOY!

AIML For Dummies

I admit defeat... when programming my original Hybrid AIML interpreter (core) I didn't realize how hard it would be to seperate the generated AIML from it's datasets.

I tried soooo hard to seperate the AIML files for a normal AIML bot... I even tried to mess around with the source code... (my original). No success.

I know somewhere I had this idea about a hybrid AI engine with rediculously complicated reasoning tiers and so on... but looking back at the code - I have no idea what I was doing all those years ago. One day I may actually get the source back together and recompile - but then again, I also realized from the conversations I've logged from the AIML Pandorabot that people in here are not exactly useful for training a bot (and so learning would be useless).

No point having a bot that can learn on its own if the people talking to it are foul mouthed and incoherant. So I am back to square one... Not really a bad thing - I've decided to switch over to Magine's AW AIML bot (thanks Magine for releasing this) and just grabbing whatever AIML files I had on the other server and integrating into this bot.

Because there is always a reason to split hairs (you know who you people are), I am going to say this the first time through:

1. The "bot" is Magine's (based on some prevous pascal version) and is based on GNU Public License
2. About 1/2 of the AIML files are written by me (William Burns) and are from CORe (I replaced alot of the aiml directory)
3. Anything left over is property of whomever made it.

There. Done. Put down the weapons and go home.

The bot itself will be in the world whenever I get around to setting it up on a server. The following people may continue to pick apart every sentence of this post by emailing me personally: wburns@vr5-online.com

1. Andras
2. Strike Rapier
3. Whomever else has nothing better to do

Have fun :)

Boys will be girls

E4 have got a new show preniering, "Boys Will Be Girls" in which they get a bunch of washed up boyband members still desperate for fame, and persuade them to become a girlband. They'll then have to fool a studio audience.

But the big question I have is "Is this a semi-serious look at fame, gender, and desperation?" or (more likely) "Is this a Space-Cadets style prank meant to make guillable and desperate has-beens look foolish on TV?"

I'm hoping the former...

Press release reads as follows

In this brand new entertainment show, former 80's pop star Nathan Moore, who was once in bands World's Apart and Brother's Beyond, teams up with music industry guru and former head of A&R at Sony International Olivier Bezardi to try to pull off one of the most bizarre and funniest stunts in pop history: passing off a bunch of male ex pop-band members as a brand new girl band.

The road to pop fame is littered with casualties but how far will a fallen boy band star go to be famous again? Will the boys be desperate enough to act like girls, perform like girls and, of course, dress like girls in their quest to reclaim their former celebrity status?

In the first episode, Nathan and Olivier raid the industry scrapheap and invite suitable - and hopefully willing - boys to audition. As the lads give it their all, it becomes obvious how hungry they are for another bite at the pop cherry. But the boys have no idea about Olivier and Nathan's audacious plan. Finally they shortlist the four boys they want. But will the boys want to be in their band?