Creator tool Beta 2 Release

Hooray, we've done it. Beta 2 of our Creator tool is out the door. If you're a member of the beta community, jump in and download it.

It's taken longer than I expected but the journey to this latest release has been a unique one. Much of the effort went into entirely changing our file format. Beta 2 features a brand new markup language that we've been working on for some time: IMML. IMML stands for Interactive Media Markup Language.

Why would we go through the pain of such a radical change?

We wanted to adopt a high level "HTML-like" language that's easy read and write. We also wanted it to be fundamentally file format agnostic and to suit our twin ambitions of "Code once, run anywhere" and aiming towards something that can support all kinds of virtual worlds and a wide range of real time interactive purposes. Since 1999 when I first developed the dream of the VastPark platform, I've never found any markup language that would help us achieve our ambitions, so we've been developing it ourselves. IMML files are in XML with a schema (so auto-complete works). IMML supports a range of unique features includes describing connections between independent virtual environments: for instance one world within another and geometric connections between worlds. I'm excited about IMML so I'm sure I'll write more about its development in the future.

Beta 2 of the Creator tool also features support for multiple lights, spawn controls, everything can have its own timeline for controlling time-based events and much more. So a lot of the work we've done is fundamental to improving what you can achieve with VastPark. No we have some tidying up work to do as we complete some of the features we've been wanting to add. We're hoping that this will be easier now that we've defined so much of the IMML language.

Through January to March there will be a few bug fixes and some improvements in the user interface and functionality. The next major tools release will be our 1st beta of the Asset Publisher. The Asset Publisher will allow you to publish your own content into the VastPark platform. You can choose how your content is shared: is it only available within your worlds or can others use it as well. We're putting the structure in place so that you can sell your content if you wish to. Expect a date for release in Q1 2008.