Maple Valley In Full Bloom

Yellow World -- From ascending mountains to flowing streams, Maple Valley is a practical home away from home. Situated in Yellow world, this fertile valley is the latest update to the world by its watchful caretaker, Digigurl.

Maple Valley is a pre-terrained building area, sporting customized terrain for the builders. Such features are a far-cry from the standard flat grasslands of the world. In this area, builders can now have a lakeside home or mountain cabin without having to build the entire environment themselves!

Not intent on breaking the theme of the world, a cabin has been placed in the center of the valley as the ground zero area. Quick teleports to the Yellow object yard and texture yard can be found there. A small list of rules can also be found here.

For builders, the global Apollo bot services are always available here. To begin building, just find your ideal location and say ap:seed! Also, holes in the terrain or any other local services can be arranged by Digigurl on request.

As a final accompaniment to this new area, Digigurl also announced that the object path had been updated. If you're interested in building in Maple Valley, you can teleport there or say ap:goto PT2 in Yellow World.

AWMyths 1st Anniversary Contest

Written by Garrick - AWMyths Correspondent

AWMyths World -- Do you think you have a cool idea for an adventure-type quest that people will enjoy? Build a rough sketch of it in a public building world such as AW, AWTeen, or Yellow world! If you're not a good builder, then assemble a team of builders to collectively work on the project! All ideas will be judged on July 15th with the winner receiving build rights in AWMyths on July 16th to put his/her/their creation into action! In addition, every member of the submission group will receive 5,000 SP (in-game money).

In order to place a submission, please send an e-mail to contests@awmyths.com with the following criteria:

1. Name(s) of all people involved
2. Coordinates to the rough sketch of the adventure
3. Short description of what the adventure is all about (in case it isn't clear in the build)

Remember to have all submissions in prior to July 15th!

If you're working in a group, please keep registered group members restricted to a maximum of 3 people.

'Ashianae’s Journey' Galaxy Opens for Alpha Testing

AWForums -- Draedan Entertainment announced today that it was looking for Alpha Testers for its current project, Ashianae's Journey. Responsible for the AW world AWRPG, this new pay-to-play game is on its own galaxy server and is set to be released next year.

A representative from Draedan Entertainment, Poseidon, posted the following release on the Active Worlds Official Forums.

For a few months a group of us have been working to materialize a new gaming experience based on the AW software. At this point in time we are looking for people who would be interested in alpha testing. The game is not incredibly far along, though there are plenty of things to test such as the mechanics of combat, and how they effect our servers.

If you're interested in being a part of our testing, and seeing how the game shapes up as it progresses please visit our site and drop us an alpha tester application... We'd love to involve AW users, and get feed back from the community at large.

The website for the game can be found at: http://www.ashianae.com

To clarify for people... This development is taking place in an AW Galaxy, and worked on by a few of us AW citizens. The basis of the games history has similar roots to that of AWRPG, but this is by no means a continuation of AWRPG itself, in any capacity. Comments and questions are always welcome. More information about the intents of the game, its mechanics, and the Alpha program can be found in the "About" and "Alpha Testing" sections, respectively.

Focusing heavily on questing and puzzle solving, Ashianae's Journey aspires to provide engaging quests and interactive storyline development. Combat will be in the game, both Player-vs-Player and Player-vs-Environment (i.e. monsters), however it will take a 'back-seat' to more engaging activities.

The alpha testing application can be found here.

AWTeen to Hold Pioneer CAV Contest

AWTeen World -- Ready to show off your Custom Avatar? Wasting no time after the release of 4.2, AWTeen announced that it would be holding a CAV Contest on Saturday, June 28 at 8:00 PM VRT. The location will be announced before the event begins.

There is no general theme to judge by, so feel free to make your avatar as outrageous or as sophisticated as you please. Participants will only be able to submit one avatar, and the best male and female avatars will win a prize.

This contest is one of the first events to utilize custom avatars. The lack of theme may make it difficult to judge fairly, and may lead to future 'beauty contests' to be themed and focused on objective qualities. Talk of this is already being spread by some users, wanting contests to design avatars after famous people or characters.

Users that are unable to make the date can still participate! Simply upload a screenshot of your CAV and send the url to Joshua in-world. Screenshots must be turned in by June 28.

Tip: Users who need to take a screenshot can get a full-body shot of their cav by opening up the CAV Window, and cropping the dressing room out of the screenshot.

Forums Integrate Social Networking Infrastructure

SW City -- Complimenting the release of Active Worlds 4.2, Martin rounded out this week by updating the AWForum's vBulletin software to version 3.7. Such forum updates are usually worth a passing mention and rarely add new features, however this update may have forever changed the way we use the forums.

To elaborate, Friday's update to 3.7 allowed Martin to integrate several major social networking features into the forum. These features allow groups of users with common interests to create social groups to discuss them independent from the main forums, the ability to upload and organize photos to a photo album, a completely redesigned and retooled user profile, and the ability for mutual friendships.

Though introduced without great fanfare, this new social networking infrastructure has the potential to be extremely useful to the Active Worlds citizen base. What these new tools are essentially doing is giving citizens a common ground to share not only their interests, but their communities and also to display their in-world content by filling photo albums with screenshots of Active Worlds. Citizens that don't have the knowledge or the resources to create their own website may use the group feature to host their organization, and with integration into the forums they already have a potential audience.

Furthermore, these new features -- if used as intended -- may help to relieve some stress on the main forums. With the addition of public messaging on user profiles, some of the stress caused by two users chatting in a thread may be alleviated.

Much of this is only conjecture, but these are possibilities of what this new infrastructure can provide. Their integration into the forums means that citizens can already readily access it without any hassle! Perhaps I should leave the rest to the reader, though. If you are interested in these new features, simply access the forums and visit your User Control Panel. Have fun!