VRMLWorld.net

[Tito1]

I suppose it was about time I posted something on this forum, after all, I have been going in and out Abnet connected worlds for over a year now. But I guess my biggest contribution to the Abnet community would be my website dedicated to custom made Half-Life game maps converted to VRML scenes, which of course, are all hooked up to the Abnet server.

Now, I realize that any body with some notion of VRML and the Abnet platform can put together a site loaded with multi-user worlds, but my aim was a little bit more than that. To help stand out from the crowd, I needed to come up with some kind of custom "login interface" unique to not just Abnet server user's websites, but to VRML chat in general. Just clicking on a link to connect to a multi-user world was not enough, I need to make it more engaging to the user, give the user more options control. My idea was simple, I needed to come up with a login form through the Abnet gateway that could let you do this:


1: Type in a name you want to go by in the textbox.

2: Select a VRML world from a given list of worlds available, either it be through a select field, picture gallery or some other way.

3: Choosing an avatar - Here you have two options on doing this, you can select an avatar from a given list of available avatars pretty much in the same way as the VRML world was selected, or instead, if you rather use another avatar of your own, just type in (or copy & paste) your avatar's full web address in the textbox.

4: Name, world and avatar have all been selected, you are all ready to go now. The last step......pressing the submit button! And a few seconds later........you are in a Abnet powered, 3D chat world, simple as that.


Well, the good news is, this idea has already been realized! Yep, you guessed it, it's on my website. Now, I made two versions of this custom login form, the first one is the multi-page deluxe version, found through a linked scrolling gallery on the home page. The other version, is the one I call the "Express Login", which is basically a complete, one page take on the first, multi-page deluxe version. Of course, the magic behind these snappy forms is non other than a big mash-up of different Javascripts, with a dash of AJAX.

Well, that's pretty much it then for now, all I can further add is, I will be gradually adding more selectable choices, time permitting of course, to my already establish listings of "Half Life" VRML worlds and avatars found on my website. I would appreciate any comments or questions on my work....

http://www.VirtualHL.info

[Rick]

Nice work Tito. This is what I hoped people would do!

I'd like to add entries for each of the worlds to the vrmlworld
database. Just give me the go ahead and I will.

The advantage of having them in the database, is that they
will become part of the world list that is accessible from XML.
As users enter and leave, the user count gets updated for
each world. They will also show up on the main page at
vrmlworld.net

I'm not sure if you saw some of the other posts about s.php,
but it allows you to do something like this:

http://vrmlworld.net/s.php?output=XML combine that with
an xslt style sheet, and you can get some interesting results.


If you go to http://vrmlworld.net/worlds.php , it is an example
that shows you how an xslt style sheet can manipulate the data
from the world list. The big advantage is that the data is small
and the formatting happens in xslt. This makes it very fast
as the MSIE client does most of the work and server doesn't
have to do anything except spew out the current database
status.

http://vrmlworld.net/worlds.xsl is the style sheet for worlds.php
You could do the same thing with s.php and a different stylesheet.
Note: you would have to proxy s.php on your web server to avoid
cross domain permission problems

More info about s.php is here:

http://vrmlworld.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=136

More info about xslt here:

http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/default.asp

More info about proxy scripts:

http://www.abdulqabiz.com/blog/archives/general/php_proxy_script_for.php

Thanks again for contributing!

-rick

[vcard]

Hi tito,

Thanks for the ideas and examples.

Nice conversions too
Because professional designers have not yet opted for VRML/X3D in a large scale [hope that will happen in the next (?) future] there are not many well designed original worlds (although you can also find them) and what you often see in the web, and associate with the technology, are "kids" like stuff.

Conversions are definitely a nice way to show some of the potential of this great and open technology for so many things and get enthusiasm about it.

Thank you and keep bringing us more conversions and worlds to surf and enjoy

vcard

---------------

Grand Prix Race teams (VRML world), soon on ABNet2
http://www.odisseia.univ-ab.pt/grandprix/

[Tito1]

Hey, no problem vcard!
Since I already put together all the tricky JavaScript form functions to come up with this working, custom login form, feel free to adapt my form's source code for your own use. Of course, you will need to remove all of my HTML formatting and replace it with your own. My Express login form is a perfect example to customize with your own worlds and avatars, so your website visitors has something they can choose from. Everything is all on one page, like seen here: http://www.virtualhl.info/VHLbase/ExpressLogin.htm

Our good friend Mr. Zed Zordaan did just that, you can see his login page here: http://h1.ripway.com/Zordaan/

[Tito1]

Until I get a full grasp of what I need to do for doing my own customization on the Abnet interface, I will in the meantime take a break from that and work on some more VRML scenes for my website. Here are some screen capture shots of 3 VRML scenes converted from game maps made for Half Life, Counter Strike Source and Quake 3 that I have been tooling around for a while now.

The first map is called "Charon", and if I remember correctly, it is based on a level design from the "WARHAMMER 40,000" game. You can find for info on this game here: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/landing.jsp?catId=cat210004&rootCatGameStyle=wh40k Here are 4 pictures of Charon:








These next 4 pictures are from a scene called "Knight Castle", which might be my next VRML world I will be putting up on my site:






And finally here are the pictures for the 3rd VRML world I will be deploying soon, this one is called "Absurdum":





So, any of you want to suggest which of these scenes you think should be connected to Abnet first? Majority rules.....

[vcard]

Hi tito,

You are working very well That looks impressive

Like all and vote for the second one (with a castle look) as the first to finish. Can't wait to put my av's on them

Just posted easy info about connecting worlds by the new interface and consider it as yours. It's here:
http://vrmlworld.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=621#621

vcard

[Rick]

I like the last one: "Absurdum", that with some star trek avatars would be great.