Sheltered Constructor
(Continuing the thought process from an earlier blog entry.)
Here are some pictures of Building Shelter as it progressed. I didn't take any snapshots of the alpha or beta trial games back then. I did keep archives of several iterations of the game in order to preserve old scripts and ideas. I suppose I also kept them around for just this reason - to remind myself of the progress.
Here is the first Sheltered Constructor. It was a single rectangular prim with two small circular prims under it. Eventually (ie. by the time I decided to start archiving versions) the two bottom prims would change back and forth from an alpha hidden state depending upon what "phase" of the game you were in. In the early version of the game contestants were to build an object and then take it and give it to the host. The host would then copy the object into the controller's inventory. When ready the vote phase would start, the vote prim would become visible and accept touches, and the object's text would change to a list of entries.
Here is the same generation of controller while in edit mode so that you can see the hidden prims.
I really like the dialog voter that I created from the start. It has stayed with the game through thick and thin. It has changed quite a bit along the way though. In the early versions it would list out the name of the objects as dialog button names. It was able to do that because the objects were copied directly into the main controller's inventory. Later it became the pad number approach we have today with a static amount of numbered dialog buttons.
Here is the vendor when I started using the wall in Wingo as the backdrop for the controller. The prims have been flattened and stretched for easy mounting against a wall. The round prims morphed into rectangles on either side of the main controller prim. This one is in vote phase so the vote prim is visible and accepting touches.
One of the pieces that took me the most time early on was scrapped after I begrudgingly gave up on it. The controller would rez the objects from inventory over numbered pads set a certain number of meters apart on stage. So people would build anywhere they wanted, say in the seats or on the dance floor, then copy it to the host for submission. The problems that popped up were constant permission issues and the fact that the rezzed objects did not match their original rotation. They were always rezzed at a rotation of <0,0,0>. Further if someone had added a script to rotate or do something else the effect was lost when rezzed automatically by the controller because of placement and rotation. One other annoyance was the size of the submissions. Some submissions were too large to fit within the allocated numbered pad distance so they rotated around and into other entries's space. The display of the entries just did not work in an automated way.
A suggestion came up to allow the contestant to have full control over the display of their entry. If they cannot determine the display parameters then the voting audience is not going to have the proper view of their work to vote against. I have to admit that I was not keen on the idea if for no other reason than sacrificing many hours of work on the auto-rez idea. Once I accepted it I must admit that the suggestion helped the game turn the corner! In an alpha test brainstorming session (pretty sure Travis Lambert, Sumar Morgan and Carl Metropolitan were there, but I cannot remember who else) it was also mentioned that the builders should be able to build on a numbered pad. This would allow the builders to create and prepare for the display of their objects within the same building space.
As a final round of that trial game I used the theme "Pad", or some such, in order to get a playing surface for builders to work on and display their creations over. Travis was the winning builder with this quartz building pad.
Later I asked Travis to help with an idea of creating a stage floor that would cover the Payment Podium seats. He suggested if we were going that far we might texture the stage floor with the playing pads on it. That saved at least 40 prims by eliminating the primmy building pad in favor of a single texture.
OK, I'd say that's a fair review of the evolution of Building Shelter. I hope you enjoyed the visual tour at least a little.