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  Nov.+Dec. 2017
  AW News ( november+december 2017)
 
* Winter Holiday Village VI : Holiday Mountain
 

Once again we converge on Winter World’s Snowy Mountains for the 6th Annual Holiday Village Contest & Building Events. Starting Friday December 1st at 12:01AM VRT till Tuesday January 2nd, 2018 at 8:00AM VRT. Location : the world Winter, position 595N 1975E (=same location as last year). This years fun theme is created for the Mountaineer in all of us. Designing, Building Warm Welcome Holiday Homes and Shops in the Hills of Snowy Wonderland.

Building resources can be found on the hud screen buttons in the world Winter: "old object yard" and "new object yard". You can also type specific commands in the chat window too : "texture index". If you want to return to your building spot, then type "done".
Returning this year is the 'Citizen's View~N~Vote' System as part of the lot teleport setup. Simply an easy go see and look at each build, then vote after all viewed method, with an easy 'Click~N~Pick' for your favorite choice. Citizen Voting opens Tuesday January 2nd, 12:01PM Noon VRT through Saturday January 7th 6:00AM VRT, for all to 'View~N~Vote'. Gifts and Prizes for all our fun builders. Winners will be anounced at the Sunday Jan 7th, during the Community Meeting in Winter Wonderland. The winners also get terrain rights in the world winter. Entertainments will be scheduled all thoughout the month with Games, Parties, TGIF and Weekly Dancing at the Community Village Lake and GameLots.
* Pictures with Santa Clause
 

Each citizen has the opportunity to have a picture taken of his avatar together with Santa Clause. The is a 3d scene in the AW Landing Zone for this. The pictures are taken by Genevieve and Vampire Queen and afterwards the picture will be transformed into a postal card with the colors and lay-out of your choice.

This event brings also extra activity in the AW Landing Zone for AW newcomers.
Hot Air Balloon Festival (11->19 november)
 
Hot Air Balloon Building Contest
The Hot Air Balloon building contest will run from November 11th - 19th and will take place in the world AWReunion on position 153s 37E. Please join us in having some fun while folks build their mover balloons. The contest aspect of the event consists of two categories, standard and custom ,in which the first and second place winners of each category will be awarded cash prizes. First place $50(US), second place $25(US) in Paypal transfer or AW credits. Details pertaining to the contest can be found at the build site. Please contact Bach Zhaa, Maxpoly or any of the other world caretakers to claim a build spot. Judging of balloons will take place on the 19th (VRT time) and the winners will be announced during the community meeting. Lift off for a tour with all the balloons will follow completion of the meeting. *Volunteers will be there to help create movers, if you have never done so before,and assistance will not be deducted by the judges when scoring. This contest is for all to enjoy and socialize. We will have music hosted by RJB radio and Virlands. Hope to see you there!

 

In the landing zone of the building contest area , you will find mover building tips, and building ideas : you can use a nice standard basket model , use textures of 256x256 or 512x512 pixels, and there is also a video about the Balloon Fiesta 2017 in Albuquerque (New Mexico), which can boost your building inspiration !
 
Hot Air Balloon Tour
When the building contest is finished, there will be a balloon tour , all the created balloons will go up and fly simultaneously , so be there for flying up with the balloon that you created. This will be a unique community event !
* CharleyO has passed away
 
On 14th november we had received the sad news from CharleyO's sister (on the citizen account of CharleyO ) that CharleyO has passed away on 11th november after a short battle with cancer. This sad news comes only 2 months after the news about Tunablues' death.
CharleyO was online for the last time on the 19th of september. We know him as a loyal citizen who liked going to the various party events in Activeworlds His real name was Charles Prince.
Charley O at the Halloween Costume Ball in 2014.
* Using bots has been disabled in Alphaworld
 
Activeworlds has disabled the bot use in Alphaworld, since the start of the pumpkin hunt in october. There may be several reasons why bots have been disabled , some people think it has to do with bandwith, but the real "reason why" is yet unknown. You can still use the bots in other public worlds (Yellow , Winter , Mars, ....)

Some people are building in Alphaworld, and are used to make backups of their 3d-scenes with a bot.

Fortunately they can use awg-files , which are rather small backups (of maximum 1024 objects.) For more information about how to use them, go to this webpage :
http://www.venice3d.net/2017create53.html
Other bot utilities, like e.g. creating a seed object in an empty piece of land, cannot be used anymore in Alphaworld.
 
* New worlds :
 
TorTuGor
TorTuGor is a Gor world (on Gor Books inspired world for adults) , and it is a p40-sized world, p65-sized with the surrounding landscape .World owner is Dominicus (#294957)
 
Daydream2
This new world is owned by Lady Tosca (#428719), from Australia. She has returned to AW after more than a decade. Also her son helps her now with the realization of her new project , he helps her with the setup of her objectpath. The world is currently closed until it is ready for inauguration.
Landscape in the world TorTuGor
DStudio
DStudio is a new world owned by Kevinheeren1 (#418176) , from the Netherlands. Kevinheeren1 is setting up a new website for the AW-Europe universe, which also uses the Activeworlds program. The website of AW-Europe for citizen registrations and world purchasing went down 2 years ago. Kevinheeren1 is now making a new website, so that registrations in AW-Europe will be possible again in the near future. The world DStudio is currently used as a testing world for these purposes.
 
Novalis
This world is owned by MillionaireFan1 (#410682) , and will be used to host his games "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" and "Family Feud".
On 26th november , there will be the auditions, on 3rd december will be the season premiere, each time at 8:30 PM VRT.
TymeLess
This p50-world is owned by Tiger Hunter (#355785) and Moonwings (#350237).They have been running together some worlds for more than a decade. Tymeless is their newest project , and they have used a backup file from a world scene that they had in 2006.You will find a vineyard, a medieval walled village with harbour and boats and fortress. There is also a large set of pirate avatars. The water/sea is still disabled , because the building of the 3d scene is still under development.
 
Purpleworld
This new world is owned by Vampire Queen1 (#361158) and is still closed to the public
 
Relapse
This p10-world is owned by Javitzso (#393232) , (at this moment not yet a 3d scene)
Vineyards in the world Tymeless
* Useful tips :
 
Keep animations with AW program in background
 It might happen that the animations (rotations, seq animations) in Activeworlds will stop when Activeworlds is in the background. We mean with that : you are running another program on the same computer and when you come back to the AW-program, you noticed that the animation has stopped... You can solve this problem by adding a feature to the Aworld.ini file :
never_background=1 to the [Special] section of the file.  This allows the AW browser to remain rendering even though focus is off