IN-WORLD Event Publishing System
Posted: Fri Jun 27, 2014 1:14 am
You may (hopefully) have seen the Event Display Boards at Kitely Welcome Center and possibly something very similar in a few forum posts by me and one or two others Finally I can reveal a bit more on some of what I've been working on
I am just releasing this week the first version of the events publishing board to the general population, be very nice to it, it's still new. This is an in-world system, so it has been designed to be as easy to use as possible. Place it where you want the event to be, and start filling in the information. To help you out, it will auto-generate textures directly from the world page.
Hopefully you'll want to replace the auto-generated texture as quickly as possible with your own 512x128 image on the internet
Naturally it displays more than one useful timezone for you to see(which also gives an idea of how far apart two places in the world actually are), plus a countdown of how long before the event for those who can't get their heads round timezones The fun thing.. this generates and uses textures BOTH in world and on the forums (or elsewhere if you ask nicely, there is an API) so you can display the image, the link, the world page (click to teleport in world) and link to a forum post with extra information on your event... Oh, and it generates the forum code to do that automatically and updates in real time, so it's always fresh information
The truly sharp eyed of you may notice that the texture size is 512x128 on the forums, yet the in-world images are higher quality, and so is the in-world text. This feature required an enhanced texture generation engine capable of seamlessly and automatically working in multiple resolutions and was added on Ilans request. This helps reduce fuzzy textures on older computers having anisotropic filtering disabled and just, well, looks better The ability to display HD textures on the in-world board is however, only available on request.
The boards are set to work as display units and publishing units, so any of YOUR own events can shown on the board. If you plan on putting multiple boards next to each other, just hit "Close" on the main menu, the darn thing is quite complex.
The larger in-world boards will be made available shortly, and will have the ability to display local events (ie, yours), ongoing events and the main ones. I'm also planning on adding an app for my range of in-world computers to display events as well... Just to let you know, the signature on my profile uses the same technology...