Vinny - Active Worlds Exploration (Are You Lost?) - General

Was that the Mars Volta playing at one point? If not it really sounded like them.

Found [url=http://vinesauce.com/vinetalk/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=634]a little something from the Vinesauce forums[/url]. [quote]Made this account just to share more about this since everyone is pretty curious about it. I spoke to Fujiko, as well as a bunch of other people who play Active Worlds. The way I found them was actually kind of a fluke. I had downloaded the game, and was playing it with a friend. We were exploring a massive city a bunch of players had built and my friend found a billboard that had an address to a Discord chat group sort of deal. We clicked it and we found a very active AW chat group, it was actually pretty amazing. We asked the people there some questions and we found out that they were all people who had once played AW, and still kept in touch through Discord. I asked about the stream and they had told me that activity in the game had increased a bit because of it. I also asked them about Fujiko and the only thing they really told me was that he was a 'known troublemaker'. Anyway, one thing led to another and this creepy guy from the Discord (he was not Fujiko) somehow found me at the city and asked me to follow him. He took me to the place Vinny was in at the last moments of the stream, and he just kept asking me to follow him. He took me to several places (he also turned into a deer at one point) until we stopped at some sort of garden. There, Fujiko, and two other people also appeared out of nowhere. I continued to ask them about what had happened on the Stream and from what one of them told me I basically gathered that Fujiko was a pretty known troll who used to play AW (and most likely helped build, or administrate the world from the stream). He found out from the stream that Vinny happened to find the place, and went there without hesitation to scare him. He was probably a pretty well versed RPer since he had been playing the game for a while. I asked him more about Active World in general but I know most of you won't care. Basically, the game had been steadily declining in activity since 2000, and still had some small areas of activity until about 2010. Tl;dr - Found a Discord chat of a bunch of people who used to play AW. Spoke to a creepy guy and he told me Fujiko was simply a troll who had helped create the place in the stream. He followed Vinny and scared the crap out of him Anyway.. Here is a video I made of the whole fiasco, I have more footage but I condensed it down (may upload all of it if people really want to see it) - [media]https://youtu.be/vs1ADW52nos[/media] This is the Discord link, as of the time I'm typing this there's no one on. If you find people on it, please be nice to them because they were very helpful - [url]https://discordapp.com/channels/163797058044559360[/url] This is the channel of one of the people from the Discord, he was a really nice guy and answered a bunch of questions I had. He actually has a series where he explores AW, I highly recommend you check him out - [url]https://www.youtube.com/user/SWChrisMC[/url][/quote] From what has been discussed in the comments, one the guys found out Vinny was playing on Active Worlds, and when they saw the world they all played on being visited, it pretty much set something into motion where some of the oldies decided to get on and fuck with Vinny a little bit through some RP'ing. It's pretty awesome actually when you read into it.

If Vinny's video revived Mutation, I'd stop by AW again.

This just gets deeper and deeper, I love it.

[QUOTE=RearAdmiral;50021799]Was that the Mars Volta playing at one point? If not it really sounded like them.[/QUOTE] Yep, "Miranda That Ghost Just Isn't Holy Anymore."

I love these. This is still one of Vinny's best videos: [video=youtube;TIZrHe-93WU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIZrHe-93WU[/video] The trippy, late-90s graphics, the way the music syncs up perfectly with what's happening, the sheer length and scale of the whole thing... I once spent a Friday night watching this for the first time with a friend, both dead tired, and god damn it was a mindblowing experience. The worlds themselves look like they're sprawling with life, but in reality they've been abandoned for a very long time, some areas might not have been visited for over a decade. So eerie. I love this stuff.

[QUOTE=blerb;50019744]at first I couldn't really believe it wasn't scripted, but with the discovery of a potential ARG, I guess the makers of it could coordinate enough to actually spook Vinny (or whichever Youtuber/streamer happened to take the bait first). If I had to guess Id say the devs of this game want to announce a new project and are using their defunct old game to do it, or maybe a group of devs just hijacked a completely dead game to do it. Should be interesting to see how it plays out regardless. All of that said, Vinny just did not feel genuine to me in this video. Wouldn't be surprised if he was in on it tbh.[/QUOTE] He's definitely overplaying the drama way too much. It's certainly possible that was just some random person in the game acting creepy intentionally, or it could've been scripted, doesn't matter to me, really. Either way, he really does not feel genuine at all in this video, I agree. Maybe I'm just not able to suspend disbelief and find it as [I]spooooky[/I] as it supposedly is.

[QUOTE=Zero Vector;50023074]He's definitely overplaying the drama way too much. It's certainly possible that was just some random person in the game acting creepy intentionally, or it could've been scripted, doesn't matter to me, really. Either way, he really does not feel genuine at all in this video, I agree. Maybe I'm just not able to suspend disbelief and find it as [I]spooooky[/I] as it supposedly is.[/QUOTE] It definitely was spooky during the whole stream cause it happened live, and the fact that it was so unexpected. It's just like boring shit for like an hour then suddenly this starts happening. Plus the added fact that the dude who was there had been logged in for a month before it happened, and that he seemed like an NPC.

It's cool that shit like this is still up and running. It kinda makes me want to get on and do some kind of virtual archaeology tour or something.

[QUOTE=PelPix123;50021931] i popped into AW and my friends list was full of online people...vinny's video singlehandedly unkilled AW...[/QUOTE] Unfortunate that it probably won't last. At this point I'm surprised AWI hasn't gone under tbh.

[QUOTE=PelPix123;50021931]activeworlds is great. everyone there has a fantastic sense of humor. they always take advantage of the desolate nature of the game to scare newcomers. It's like a sport for us. I've been an AW member since 2005. sorry to spoil the fun [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] AW is like SL, except the people are significantly less weird. It's mostly a bunch of old game devs and programmers and retired people that used to work in computer graphics that like to fuck with people by doing creepy shit. AW has free building and world creation, so you can make whatever game environment you want. It also has a pretty good SDK and a pretty good bot and script system, so you can program whatever mechanics you want for your environemnt with a bit of work. [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] the building system is a lot line minecraft, except instead of blocks, it has arbitrary meshes. you can use any meshes you want. There are large build projects that put even the most obsessive minecraft stuff absolutely to shame. The largest planned city in AW is SW City, which is [B]50 square real miles.[/B] [IMG]http://www.swcity.net/archive/maps/2007_august/7.jpg[/IMG] [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] [video=youtube;q26rqNGFA-E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q26rqNGFA-E[/video] [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] they even have a fucking fictional world history of this city, they wrote an entire big lore thing and invented races [editline]28th March 2016[/editline] i popped into AW and my friends list was full of online people...vinny's video singlehandedly unkilled AW...[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]AW has free building and world creation[/QUOTE] Wait, really? I thought you still have to pay for land. This could be interest- [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/sapqwiJ.png[/IMG] fuck

[QUOTE=Aphtonites;50028015]Wait, really? I thought you still have to pay for land. This could be interest- [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/sapqwiJ.png[/IMG] fuck[/QUOTE] They've probably disabled it to deal with the massive influx of vinesauce people. If you're particularly interested they'll probably re-enable it after awhile. Land is free in the public building worlds, like Alphaworld and AWTeen.

[QUOTE=DemonDog;50028216]They've probably disabled it to deal with the massive influx of vinesauce people. If you're particularly interested they'll probably re-enable it after awhile. Land is free in the public building worlds, like Alphaworld and AWTeen.[/QUOTE] Do you have to pay to import meshes? I'm kinda tempted to build a small town or something with them.

[QUOTE=Aphtonites;50028236]Do you have to pay to import meshes? I'm kinda tempted to build a small town or something with them.[/QUOTE] Technically speaking. In order to use your own meshes you have to have access to the "object path" of whatever world you're building in. Usually the only way to do that is by owning the world, which has to be paid for afaik.

Active Worlds was the shit when I was a kid I played SO much of it. And back in the late 90's early 00's it was actually pretty populated. When I think about it, it was basically my version of minecraft back then. I built towns, space ships, adventure dungions, and explored places like mars, atlantis, 1930's cities, and they even had a fully functioning persistent AD&D MMORPG world you could play in. As the days went on though the membership started getting expensive and the engine/tech behind it stopped being so cutting edge.

Someone should code a bot that walks around recording all of the worlds and puts it on youtube for some kind of achievable nostalgia before the game goes offline.