Objects of desire…

…now it puzzled me that our brand new, shiny world, kept referring back to activeworlds.com – not that I have anything against aw (far from it, they have been incredibly supportive to the n00b that is me).  It seemed strange to me that all world geometry appeared to be coming from them – when EQ admins testing the world entered SciPrime, all they saw was broken objects (and not my partially raised buildings)

Seems aw is blocked on EQ networks, which got me thinking that we should do it differently anyway. After getting FTP access to the “webroot” of the host server for MyWorlds, I placed a folder called “objects”, then sub-folders called “models”, “textures”, “sounds” etc.  Then downloaded objects from archives, uploaded them to their respective sub-folders and ….

After tweaking the world settings to re-direct the object path to our location, we now have locally hosted objects live in-world.  Now I have only changed the object path of ONE world so far – “Obscura” (our sandbox building zone) – in doing so I have broken all the existing links to scenery and atmosphere which makes for an interestingly sparse blank world (think training room from Matrix) – but I was able to pop newly uploaded objects and they arrive nice and fast.

Next task – fully populate our object path and then I can switch all worlds to our object path, then we should be cooking. Quite happy with this, it means we can also add our own geometry as well, and may be able to work out how to let users upload geometry also – imagine how wonderful it would be for users to be able to sculpt their own 3d objects and let others use them in-world.

…back to marking for the moment tho … oooh, shiny! Dang this interweb is full of stuff I would much rather be messing with – you gotta do what you gotta do tho I guess.

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2 Comments

  • wonko says:

    …do not panic if “Obscura” seems a little broken; yet to load the full object catalogue into the local object path – will happen soon.

  • wonko says:

    golly gosh – found an archival repository of objects, and some additional public source objects … hundreds of them – woo hoo, will transfer them across to MyWorld when I can. This points at the more and more pressing need for a builders database to keep track of these things – will brainstorm a structure and get one established I think.