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Exploring the oldest building commands |
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| Introduction |
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| Since july/august 2019 you can find a tutorial zone in the world Yellow on position 1900N 1400W ( or 1950N 1400W for the french citizens). All the yellow signs are teleports to a specific tutorial area. In april 2020 , a new teleport sign has been added : AW versions timetable. This shows an overview of all the new features that have been implemented for every version . Als the month and year of introduction has been added. |
| This overview is based on information that is published on wiki.activeworlds.com . |
| These pages are made by Chris (#290065), who is the programmer for Activeworlds. For each version upgrade, you can find here a detailed description of each feature that has been fixed, modified or added. At the right side of the wegpages, you will see "Chronology". Here you can go back in the version history until version 4.2. |
| In the upper right corner of the webpage, you have a search function, if you type "category:versions", then you will have an overview of all the versions, also of the Alpha Series. The Alpha Series is about the realizations before Activeworlds started with publishing the versions (with version 1.0 in october 1996). There is also the webpage : |
| http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=Early_Changelists |
| Other older information comes from a website, created by Mauz : |
| host.activeworlds.com/mauz/public/awhistory.html |
| Activeworlds has preserved the website content. You can also find information on the Wiki pages, by typing "history" in the search windows. |
| A third resource are the Activeworlds Newsletters, which started in october 1998. You can find these AWTimes pages by clicking on the "Archive"-button. |
| Another resource are the Newsgroups, which also started in 1998 , and which you can still view by going to awportals.com and then choose "Newsgroups archives". |
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| Yellow 1900N 1400W - tutorial zone : teleports overview |
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| Which commands will be explored |
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| Based on the resources above, we know of each trigger and each building command , when they have been introduced in Activeworlds. Eccept for these : |
| The triggers: create, activate , adone , sdone |
| The commands: animate, astart, astop, frame, solid, name, noise, sign,teleportx. |
| Introduced in 1995 : sound , bump, teleport , warp , visible |
But there is a way to know it, and that is by exploring the oldest building zones in Activeworlds. In this case, you right-click upon an object, then you see the object properties, and at the bottom of this window you can see when that object has been built. If the builder has moved or modified the object, then the creation date will be replaced by a new "built" date. |
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| These are the oldest worlds,where you can view the object properties (most of them are building worlds) , each time in the area around position 0N 0W : |
| ABC (1997) |
| Alphaworld (1995) |
| Atlantis (1997) |
| Cofmeta (1996) |
| Manhattan (1997) |
| Mars (1997) |
| Winter : for instance on position 9N 39W (1997) |
| Yellow (1996) |
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| Although Mauz described in her History Pages that the first action commands were introduced in october 1995, the first one that is found is from february 1996. Maybe it takes some time before citizens started to use the action commands . |
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| Picture from Mauz's Activeworlds Pages |
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| Another reason can be : there was still no an action command field in 1995 (see pictures). But only ancient citizens know exactly how everything happened. |
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| Alphaworld 41N 51W |
| (september 1995) |
| The action commands did not exist at that time. The builders could build with the objects of the objectpath, but could do nothing more with the object. |
| The builders name is in this case <not a citizen>. A lot of objects that were created at that period have no builders name. This could be because people were able to build , without registration. The difference between tourists and citizens was introduced later. |
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| trigger : |
create |
| command : |
sound |
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| Alphaworld 77N 65W 3A |
| (february 1996) |
| This is the first (earliest) build that i have found with an action command. There are certainly others , if you use a bot , you can find a lot more objects. |
| The sound command is one of the first command, here of a midi file of the sound files of the objectpath of alphaworld. |
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| command : |
animate |
| command : |
astop |
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| Alphaworld 963N 523W |
| (april 1996) |
| Here you find something that looks like a car. There has been added a texture (booth) to the awn43.rwx -object by using the animate command . The texture command was only introduced in october 2000. Until then , builders used the animate command. |
| Also the command astop has been used there. This command is used to stop the animation that has been created by the animate command. |
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| trigger : |
activate |
| command : |
url |
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| Alphaworld 53N 99W |
| (may 1996) |
| According to the webpages of Mauz, the URL command was introduced in december 1996 , but here i have an example that was built in may 1996. And the URL-link still exists today ! |
| The trigger activate was also implemented from the early start of Activeworlds, and was mainly used for teleports and warps. |
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| trigger : |
/// |
| command : |
sound |
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| Alphaworld 10088N 5543E |
| (june 1996) |
| Here you have an action command with a .wav-sound , but without the use of a trigger (create or activate) |
| Surprisingly, this command script still works today ! |
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| Alphaworld 10111N 5537E |
| (july 1996) |
| Here you have another example , this time for a midi-sound , |
| Also this command script still works today ! |
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| command : |
teleport |
| command : |
sign |
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| Alphaworld 38N 65W |
| ( august 1996) |
| Here you have the command activate teleport command |
| And this is also a sign object, with the sign command : there haven't been used double quotes in the script, but the script still works like it used to be. |
| According to the webpage of Mauz, signs were introduced in september 1996, but it must have been a bit earlier. |
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| Alphaworld 10068N 5568E 180 |
| (september 1996) |
| The stair-object has a midi-sound command (the ancient script), but it has also a name command. |
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| command : |
visible |
| command : |
solid |
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| Alphaworld 10068N 5568E 180 |
| ( october 1996 ) |
| When you click upon the pole behing the stairs, then you find the trigger command, which will make the stair disappear and make it non-solid as well. When the stair has disappeared then you will see a teleport sign , that will bring you to another location when you click upon it. |
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| trigger : |
bump |
| command : |
warp |
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| Alphaworld 1009N 506W 3A |
| ( october 1996) |
| This transparant object has been made invisible with the visible off -command, and there has been added the bump warp command, so that the avatar floats forward when the user bumps against the invisible object with the avatar.. |
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| Cofmeta 47S 15E |
| ( october 1996 ) |
| This is an example of the astart command in the world Cofmeta: When your avatar bumps against the fence, then there will appear an electric charge -texture. |
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| Alphaworld 1010N 446W |
| ( june 1997) |
| The picture command was introduced in december 1996. This is a command script made by Thorus (#106224) , who is still a regular visitor of Activeworlds today ! |
| This concerned a picture url of streaming television. The url doesn't work anymore, only Thorus knows if this really worked , if he still remembers that .... |
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| triggers : |
adone / create |
| commands : |
astart /astop / name / visible /solid / animate |
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| Cofmeta 13S 75E |
| ( december 1997) |
| Here you have an example of the astart command and adone tigger. The command script doesn't seems to work, but this is only to show that all these commands were already in use in 1997.. |
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| Yellow 21N 19E |
| ( october 1996) |
| Here we are in Yellow world. This should represent steam of a geyser, but as you can see, with a black background. The option to mask the texture was only introduced in october 2000. That is according to the webpage of Mauz. The steam -animations in the background however, have already been built in may 2000. |
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| Alphaworld 29S 3W 1a 270 |
| (november 1996) |
| This sign proves that the world DAAP is already an ancient world, existing from the early beginning of Activeworlds , and still existing today. |
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| So far the overview of the oldest building commands. |
| I didn't find any examples of the commands frame, noise and teleportx and of the trigger sdone from that era. But these commands aren't used that often |
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