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  August 2016
  AW News (august)
 
* AW Expo Renovations
 
The AWExpo area , which is the AW universe landing zone since june 2015, has had quite some renovations for the last few months.
First of all , there has been made a tunnel that connects to the movers park area. When you go further south, then you will arrive at the games expo area .This are has also been expanded and renewed recently.
At the west side of the AWExpo staircase , you will find now a beach area with a tiki bar as well. The calendar wall has been moved a bit to the southwest .
At the east side of the AWExpo staircase, you will find a sort of kiosks with ads and teleports about featured locations in Activeworlds : games, rides, contests, cities, etc.
At the staircase itself, you will find info about the egghunt game, which has been introduced in april 2016 . In the south west side of the landing zone area, you will find the preparations for a Pokemon hunt , which will be an addictional hunt game in the AWExpo area.
And in front of the AWExpo staircase, you have the AWPortals events calendar, showing the next upcoming events in Activeworlds.
* New project : Star City
 
Star City is a new building area in Alphaworld started up in april by Dovestar.(#278411), and has become an attractive city project now.
SWCity , Horizon City and other famous towns in Alphaworld have barely any new building activities or events, and don't have any expansion areas for new builders. That's why Dovestar decided to startup a new village elsewhere in Alphaworld. Star City is located in Alphaworld on position 9236S 1456E and has been created as a new active building area, for the existing citizens but also for newbies , and with a large expansion zone.
When newbies want to start to build in Star City, they will be at the same time a member of this Star City Community and will learn things from their neighbours and have new contacts.
Besides the buildings of Dovestar , you will find building areas of : Good Person , Kuma Bear , Ozyseo, Iao Moonshadow , Kenneth, Stanly, Tarza, Color and Preston Garvey.

Apart from some smaller attractions : airship/blimp area , movie boxes area, there are some areas in Star City which are worthwhile mentioning :

* Star City : Doves Nest Dance Park
 
Just next to the Star City entry point you have the Doves Nest Dance Area 9234S 1470E , where you have a large central bar . You will hear music of Dovestar's RJB Radio station ,which you will hear as soon as you enter the zone of the Dance Club , but you can also select the radio with : activate media http://173.192.207.51:7029 . Doves Nest has dance movers , a sky of coloured PE-clouds and a colour-animated dance floor , laser beams , etc. ...and there is also a chatbot.
There will be hosted every week parties on saturday and on monday, starting at 8PM VRT.
* Star City : TAG Game
 
One of the buildings in Star City is a the "TAG-game" built by Ozyseo on 9230S 1500E.
The game is, just like in the world Combat, based upon clicking other citizens, but the game concept here is very simple, in view of having "just a bit of fun".

The game is a kind of "hide ans seek"-game. You take part at the game by climbing the stairs (the bot will mention that you entered, shows the number of players, and shows who is tagged at this moment ). For instance :

[TAGBot]: particpant ..... has entered TAG! Players = 1 Nobody is IT!
Then you go to one of the 3 floors inside the building, each floor has a different colour. And your start to hide or seek.
The purpose of the game is now to click one the participants. Then the gamebot mentions that the participant has been tagged. The participant that has been clicked as last , remains tagged until that participant is able to click one of the other participants..
* Star City + Inspiron world : Book Readings
 
Star City Presents a book reading, first reading is on Thursday August 4 from 10-12 VRT at Star City Community Park - Alpha World 9236S 1453E. Dianne the story-telling bot will recite the first three chapters of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card with ample breaks for discussion and chat.
Each week, the bot will recite the next chapters of the novel, until the book is finished. Then the week afterwards, the bot will start readings of another book.
As from 25th of august, the book reading will be hosted in Dovestar's world Inspiron.
* Pokemon Game in Beta Version
 
With the current internet hype about the Pokemon games, Bach Zhaa has started to make a Pokemon hunt game in the AWExpo area on position 7701S 1394E.
All Pokemon figures have been created, as well as the basic steps about how to catch a Pokemon inside the AWExpo area.
There is a floating white cube..  thats a pokestop. So click the upper half of the white cube. Then look into the distance and you will see light beams.Those are the pokemons locations.
Fly to them. When you see stars being spit from the ground..  littel fireflies  thats a pokemon. Walk to them. Then look around on the ground for a target and stand on the target. Line up the target and the ball and click to throw. You will either miss or capture. When you capture,  walk over the spinning ball to collect the pokemon. Bring it back to the LZ. Click the glowy sign to recieve credit and thats it.

In the beta version, everything is functional already, except for getting the credits.
* AW resources for promoting your events.
 
Resources are often changing : new sites and media appear , others have been shut down or forgotten. People in AW live in different time zones and cannot always communicate directly with eachother. Here a short list of resources that you can use for promoting your events.
* Make yourself a poster of the event : a picture tells more than a 1000 words. With a poster we mean a picture, with text information (what/ when (date+VRT time)/ where).
* Genevieve has begun recently with a monthly calender at the LZ . Telegram to her about your event , posters will be added on the wall behind the calendar.
* Strike Rapier has reactivated AWPortals in april . Now you can post your event (+poster) at AwPortals : https://www.awportals.com/aw/events/.
* There are several AW Facebook groups. This is the official one :
https://www.facebook.com/groups/officialactiveworlds/
* During the chat of Bach Zhaa's AW Community meeting.
* Information given to the gatekeepers : they will be helpful to you

The monthly calendar made by Genevieve.
* Announcements of Rick Noll (CEO of Activeworlds)
 
* GSK has left Activeworlds. This means that he wont be admin on the Facebook page
or in the world AWTeen . What will disappear as well are his build in the AW Expo Landing Zone, his world Aurora (with the games : Who wants to be a Millionnaire, Deal or No Deal, Russian Roulette) . Also these supportive websites and items will disappear MyAW.us (with the PTZ system) , AWLD.me , the Omg awards, and the Smart TV.
The cause of the departure is about a drama club that he supported and some Facebook posts about Rick that were taken out of context (and frustrating) and so we had to remove him.
* There is also good news, concerning the development towards AW version 7.0. There is developed a new program for template worlds, a new gate world and some other stuff, but all of this is taking longer than planned.