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| about:start [2022/03/01 12:06] – amanda | about:start [2022/06/25 20:11] (current) – typos and clarifications amanda |
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| ====== About AltAway ====== | ====== About AltAway ====== |
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| Back in the 1990s, we had Lucasfilm's Habitat on QLink, for Commodore 64 users, and Fujitsu's Habitat based on that. In 1993, they Fujitsu started work on WorldsAway, and partnered with CompuServe to launch the first world, the Dreamscape, in late 1995. It and was going to be the future of online communications. User customisable avatars could wander around an expansive world and interact with each other, buy sell and collect various objects, and join in community games and activities. It was even pitched as hosting business meetings. I was a subscriber and a very passionate user of the service. This was fun, and I made many friends. For a detailed history, I recommend looking up the RenoProject website (No connection to me, I'm just a fan!) | Back in the 1990s, we had Lucasfilm's Habitat on QLink, for Commodore 64 users, and Fujitsu's Habitat based on that. In 1993, they Fujitsu started work on WorldsAway, and partnered with CompuServe to launch the first world, the Dreamscape, in late 1995. It was going to be the future of online communications. User customisable avatars could wander around an expansive world and interact with each other, buy sell and collect various objects, and join in community games and activities. It was even pitched as hosting business meetings. I was a subscriber and a very passionate user of the service. This was fun, and I made many friends. For a detailed history, I recommend looking up the RenoProject website (No connection to me, I'm just a fan!) |
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| Now in early 1997 Fujitsu published details on their Affinity programme, whereby worthy causes would be sponsored to run their own worlds. | Now in early 1997 Fujitsu published details on their Affinity programme, whereby worthy causes would be sponsored to run their own worlds. |
| The history of VZones is long and convoluted, but boils down to the domain name and physical Sun servers being handed around multiple owners and companies, with the service closed down and reborn phoenix-like several times. I have my doubts that the current owners are operating under a legal licence, either from Fujitsu or Oracle, (The Sun server operating system licence was non-transferrable) however, that's no concern of ours. | The history of VZones is long and convoluted, but boils down to the domain name and physical Sun servers being handed around multiple owners and companies, with the service closed down and reborn phoenix-like several times. I have my doubts that the current owners are operating under a legal licence, either from Fujitsu or Oracle, (The Sun server operating system licence was non-transferrable) however, that's no concern of ours. |
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| Fast forward to 2016, in a bit of nostalgia, I did some web searches and found that WorldsAway was gone, Avaterra was gone, VZones had gone. I did find Metroworlds, a new service using a licenced copy of the original server and client. This made me dig out my old code and revisit it. 20 years of additional experience and advances in technology made it only a few evenings work to produce something that worked somewhat better than the code that had taken months before it was abandoned. With the old logs, it was easy. I even managed to recover the original Dreamscape and other world locales that had been visited at the time. But again I shelved it for time based reasons. | Fast forward to 2016, in a bit of nostalgia, I did some web searches and found that WorldsAway was gone, Avaterra was gone, VZones had gone. I did find Metroworlds, a new service using a licenced copy of the original server and client. Filled with renewed enthusiasm, I dug out my old code and revisited it. 20 years of additional experience and advances in technology made it only a few evenings work to produce something that worked somewhat better than the code that had taken months before it was abandoned. With the old logs, it was easy. I even managed to recover the original Dreamscape and other world locales that had been recorded in the log files. But again I shelved it for time based reasons. |
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| Onward to 2019, and I discovered Metroworlds had vanished without trace, and Vzones had appeared like a phoenix from the ashes. | Onward to 2019, and I discovered Metroworlds had vanished without trace, and Vzones had appeared like a phoenix from the ashes. |
