VastPark Masterclass 1
Here’s the video of a recent lecture I spoke at which was given in-world:
VastPark Masterclass1 from VastPark on Vimeo.
VastPark tools go public!
Very recently the entire toolset for VastPark went live over at www.vastpark.com!
Included in the current toolset:
Creator 0.9 Beta 3
– Like Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG for HTML, the Creator is the WYSIWYG for IMML. Allows users to create virtual experiences very rapidly and deploy them in a variety of ways
Browser 0.9 Alpha
– Used to view the virtual experiences (parks) built in the Creator and hosted on VastServer
VastServer Alpha
– Hosts IMML for consumption by the Browser, manages multi-user interaction, uses very little resources and can be hosted on any Windows PC (XP SP2 and above)
Viewer Alpha
– Used to view ParkPak files, which are self-contained virtual experiences. Want to do a 3D presentation using VastPark? Use a ParkPak to remove the risk that internet access may be down where you are presenting 🙂
Asset Publisher Alpha
– Finally, those eagerly awaiting being able to use their own content can do so! The asset publisher allows content creators to publish content online quickly and easily.
Multi-User Stress Test #1
After our recent stress test (which stressed a number of things, including the devs!) we finally have the chat transcript available. Take a look at the official VastPark Team Blog for the full overview here and the pdf of the transcript here.
Openly-Social VastPark
As was recently announced to quite some fanfare, Google’s OpenSocial looks to be an interesting development…except it seems that they forgot one slightly important thing! The domain name, www.opensocial.com, happens to be owned by none other than VastPark.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent update to the VastPark front page explaining our involvement:
“Two years ago we formulated a vision for the future of social networks. It was a vision of distributed and connected communities where users could share and build relationships across multiple sites and social networks. We did not believe that any one social network would remain siloed.”
The art of making a user click
After allowing a sizable portion of users in to have a taste of VastPark, it was interesting to analyse the first batch of “in the wild” crashlogs that were submitted (thanks again to everyone for hitting the submit button!).
In all, it was pleasing to see that so few crashes were making their way to my inbox, but the ones that did may have revealed the greatest marketing secret of all time, the word monster. The single most consistent error that made up 85% of the logs over 2 days was due to a dodgily published model lurking in the web service, going by that name!
The lesson in this for the team at VastPark is to make sure that enticingly named content in the system will not crash the application when a user clicks on it and for everyone else; if you want someone to click on something, the word monster is a good option 😉
The new VastPark.com goes live
The new VastPark website is now live!
As well as providing a lot more information on VastPark than has previously been available, it brings with it the first members of the invite list gaining access to the software. This also means that I can begin writing up scripting examples again 😀
The first ‘Worlds Collide’ mini-review
The guys over at Metaversed have had a look over a preview build of the upcoming VastPark Creator release, check it out what they had to say at:
http://metaversed.com/25-sep-2007/sneak-peek-vastpark-creator-readies-beta
VastPark ‘Worlds Collide’ Preview
With recent announcement of the VastPark ‘Worlds Collide’ beta, and the actual release getting nearer by the day, I figure its time for a few thousand words about VastPark.
Here they are:
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VastPark.com relaunched…sort of
Yesterday the new VastPark website went live with a brand new front page, but not a lot else for the time being 😉
The old site is still accessible via a link from the new front page, so a bit of the VastPark history remains available.
Stay tuned for the rest of the site upgrade as well as the new VastPark release, codename “Worlds Collide” sometime during the next month.
Rebuilding the platform
Over the past few months things have been fairly quiet in terms of new releases and general info appearing on the Official VastPark website. But I can tell you this has been for good reason.
Behind closed doors at VastPark central we have been working quite hard on a totally brand spanking new rewrite of…everything!
Some of the more notable changes:
- WPF! One of the biggest changes to Windows application development in recent time and we’ve jumped on board. Expect to see some nice looking UI’s
- There are now 3 core applications; Creator, Browser and …? Find out soon!
- More flexible and re-usable scripting design
Of course, to top this all off there is a new website which should come online in the next few days.