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  June+July+August 2016
  AW Community Meetings (june+july)
 
* AW Community Picture
We celebrated the 21st birthday of Activeworlds, with games (hunt game, zookeeper game,...) , a parade and parties. And traditionally there is always a community picture.
This year we had a lot of new citizens and former citizens which had returned to AW,so that we have now a community picture with 160 citizens.
Just like last year, Bach Zhaa has added some citizens with Photoshop, for those who couldn't be there at the exact moment of the picture.
Finally on 8th of july the community picture of 2016 was ready.

* MyAW stops its services
In july , GSK has announced to stop with his MyAW website.
GSK has taken into consideration that there was too few interest (few logins and new posts), compared to the amount of money he had to spend in order to update and maintain the website.
Main features were a social networking site for AW users only and also the use of PTZ. These PTZ (points) could be collected by participating at games. You could also trade those PTZ or spend them again by hosting your own game. And with those PTZ you could buy 3d-model objects.
GSK started in 2014 with Awcom.me, then he developed the new Activeworlds website , then he started with Awld.me and finally with Myaw.us. Apart from that, there were webpages for the the OMG awards and for his games in his world Aurora.
This means that again a resource website goes down (AW Newsletter in 2013, Smaug's AW World Magazine in 2014 , Maxpoly's AWLife website in 2015 ( partially disabled), and now MyAW.US in 2016.
Main resource websites are now the AW Facebook , and AWPortals. Apart from that, you still have the Yellow Gazette, and of course AWTimes.
Note : GSK has been banned from AW in august , and he will probably stop all his other website services too.
* Community Meetings on other locations (than the AW landing zone)
Although the Community Meetings have been hosted before on other locations than the traditional landing zone, now it has been decided to do this more often.
There are 2 reasons for this :
1. As the number of visitors has increased for the last few months, this causes more lag (the avatars itself cause a lower framerate) , and some citizens even got disconnected during the conversation. Now the meetings will be hosted where we have less objects , and less citizens ( no greeters , no interruptions of new arrivals) .The fps (frames per second) remains high, because it concers only the avatars of the community meeting participants .
2. AW asked the users to shut down their bots in the AWExpo landing zone during the community meetings . But organizing this meeting may not be a reason to shut down these bots, that's why Bach Zhaa prefers to host the meetings elsewhere.
The community meeting of 17th july has been hosted in the worlds AWReunion, on a location without any objects , only with some edited terrain textures.
* AWportals : new features
 
A lot of new features were announced in may ,now there are additional new features :
1. The awportals bot announces when a new user enters into Activeworlds :
[Awportals AWGZ]: ** Please welcome NewCit as the newest citizen of Activeworlds **
2. The bot announces the events that will be hosted soon, and shows also the url-link of the events pages of awportals with the event.
 
* AWTeen : building has been restored
 
Building has been disabled in AWTeen during since january, due to a registry issue.
The problem has been solved in june, now everyone can build again , and you can also use jump points again :
http://awld.me/awteen.php
Note : GSK was in charge of AWTeen, GSK was banned from AW in august , and building has been disabled again.

 

 
* Riders of Alphaworld
 
"Riders of Alphaworld" has been created by Genevieve. This "R.A.W." . is newly formed club in which members share in the exploration of sites throughout AW. Custom made bikes have been created and are provided to all who wish to participate.
The idea of these biking tours is quite simple, but its done with a technique that is unknown to a lot of users. The Riders are asked to set their "Auto Walk". While riding forward with this Auto Walk, they can type things in the chat window at the same time.
For using this Auto Walk , go to : Options - Configure Controls - Auto Walk
Now you choose the hotkey , e.g. the key "รน" or another key of your choice.
Then try this out on your avatar : press the arrow key to go forward , then press the hotkey and the avatar walks automatically. Stop the auto-walk with hotkey "5".
And now with the mover bikes : first select the mover , then the arrow key, then the hotkey. Stop riding with hotkey "5" and press F12-key to detach from the mover

The event will be hosted once or twice a month on sundays at 9 or 10 PM VRT and will be announced on the website AWPortals.com . Each tour has a different starting point so we ask that you download the area, prior to the start of the tour,before attempting to teleport in with your bikes. (You can teleport with your bike mover too , as long as you remain in the same world).
* Zookeeper Game
 
This new game has been developed by Bach Zhaa, Memyself and Maxpoly and can be found in the world Winter on position 733N 1857E.
The game is simple to play , but in order to make a game that works perfectly, a lot of bot progammation has been done for this : these are some of the issues :
* making a hud screen for the game.
* showing the commands and scores both in the hud window and the chat window
* throwing a random number for the dices
* play the game by yourself or by multiple users
* adding sounds of the animals in the zoo
* skipping a dice turn when a player goes afk ,so that the others can contiue to play
* while the game is running, a new player can join the game at any moment
* showing where the avatar has to go after having throwed a dice (and register when the avatar has gone to this position)
* showing each time whose turn it is for playing
* showing the scores for each player
* showing the winner and telling that the game is over
* New worlds : MysticZones & MysticStar
 

MysticZones is a new world , owned by Charlies (#364315). The world is a StarTrek themed world and consists of a large space station. Everyone can ask by telegram for building in a part of the space station and you can start building any kind of room(s) inside it.
Apart from that, you also have the world MysticStar. This world represents the universe Enterprise Star ship. Not so spectacular from the inside , but when you teleport to 2N 2W 30A , then you fly up and put visibility to 500 and then you got a great view upon the star ship.