Hooray for 2009

As the 2009 working year begins for me on Monday, I’ve been reflecting on our development aims in the first 3 months of 2009.

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What being an official VastPark Developer gets you?

In our first newsletter to our developers we sent out yesterday we said what being an official VastPark Developer gets you. Well we felt we hadn't expressed things very clearly so this post attempts to be clearer.

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Developer documentation

We are now opening up our introduction to developing on the VastPark platform. It is targeted at experienced developers wishing to get a quick start on using and developing on the VastPark platform. The documents contain information on the nuts and bolts of VastPark including MetaWSS, IMML, scripting and plug-ins. Feedback appreciated!

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Developer Program expansion

VastPark welcomes five new develpment companies into its Developer Program.

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VastPark apps crashing on startup?

We’ve been seeing a few crashlogs recently that seem to imply that either the VastPark installer has neglected to update your system to the correct version of .Net Framework (3.5 SP1 for Browser, Creator and Publisher) or that the install hasn’t quite gone as successfully as it could have.

If you find you’re seeing the friendly VastPark error box on startup of the apps mentioned above, give the following a go:

• If you recall seeing the .Net Framework install and update and haven’t restarted your computer, give it a restart. It’s possible some parts of the framework were in use during installation so a restart may help
• Didn’t see the .Net Framework box appear, or suspicious it didn’t do what it was supposed to do? Try a manual install.

If you’ve been a victim of the startup app crash, please let us know if any of the above fix the issue. If you recall what happened during installation that would be helpful also

Changing the VastPark cache settings

Wishing you could control the cache settings for your VastPark applications? Never fear, there’s a way to do it.

Items are currently set to expire in 5hrs. To change this, go to Windows Start > Run

and type in %localappdata%\VastPark\Browser\config\

Hit enter, then edit settings.xml in notepad.

Change:

<ItemCacheExpiry>FiveHours</ItemCacheExpiry>

To:

<ItemCacheExpiry>Never</ItemCacheExpiry>

...to make it never expire. Perfect if you want to demonstrate things offline.

Or:

<ItemCacheExpiry>Always</ItemCacheExpiry>

...to make it always expire (useful if you want to ensure you get the latest content).

Hope that helps a few of you.

VastPark P2P Closed Beta

After a number of internal tests working closely with the guys from NICTA we’re now ready to begin accepting registrations for the closed beta of the VastPark P2P networking code.

We plan to run a number of multi-user tests over the next few months, so be quick to register and get in on the action!


Visit the P2P Closed Beta registration page here.

0.94 Preview Releases Online

After a somewhat hectic last few months which has seen some interesting new uses of VastPark, super-optimistic release dates slide past and a trip to a warm Los Angeles with not one, but two announcements, we’ve decided to open up our development snapshots to the public. 

These snapshots are the builds we use internally for development work and contain goodies from the coming 0.94 release. The links are ‘hot’ meaning that the files they link to will be updated regularly and without notice.

Note: Parks created in prior versions of the toolkit will likely require some minor changes to make them work as expected in these snapshot releases. Stay tuned for an article on migration or if you can’t wait that long, come say hello in the forums.

Get your snapshots from http://www.vastpark.com/index.php/dev-snapshots/

LuaInterface also google-coded

Some of you may know that I’ve recently added the role of LuaInterface maintainer to my repertoire and after some minor changes to the codebase, it’s now available over at google code for your viewing pleasure:

http://code.google.com/p/luainterface/

VastPark uses LuaInterface as the bridge for Lua scripting, which is our scripting language of choice. Its proven to be a great option for scripting for many game development houses worldwide and we have to agree, its flexibility and speed are much appreciated

Added a GoogleGroup to VastServer Core

Last week we uploaded our open source server code to GoogleCode: code.google.com/p/vastserver-core. Today we got around to adding a GoogleGroup that developers can join to discuss issues with VastServer Core: groups.google.com/group/vastserver-core.

Publisher Beta 1 Released!

Today marks the first of the v0.94 powered applications surfacing online, with Beta 1 of the Publisher released.

With this update, the Publisher is now closer to being a convenient content management hub, enabling media to be published, previewed, deleted and metadata to be edited.

New Features
- Preview content before publishing
- Preview existing content from the index
- Edit existing Item metadata
- Delete existing Items
- Preliminary publisher group support

Visit the download page for the installer and let us know what you think!

VPWS down for maintenance later today

Update 21st June, 4.30pm All done! Users with Publisher accounts will find the Publisher is temporarily broken, a fix is on the way shortly.

Update 21st June, 3.30pm Entering into another maintenance window now...

Update: Everything is back up and running, there will be another maintenance window occurring at a similar time on Monday.

The VastPark Webservice will be temporarily offline for an upgrade later today from 3pm GMT+10 for around 30 minutes. During this time the Creator, Publisher and Browser might behave slightly erratically. VastServer and the Viewer will not be disrupted.

Apologies for any inconvenience, this is one of the few remaining hurdles before we can get the next release out the door

Three concepts enter a room

Three concepts enter a room, each with a point to prove…

“I allow developers to extend VastPark in any manner they want!” exclaims the Plugin, freshly built and bursting with potential. The Widget, hearing this is unimpressed and replies “that may be so my friend, but I can reference you and your brethren to create a self-contained package full of life!” Not wanting to be left out, the Park waits quietly as the Plugin and Widget turn to stare with disdain. “Well...I’ve been around for longer than you both, can reference each of you and am the container most users will use to create their virtual experiences!”

If you’ve managed to cringe your way through the above, you may have noticed a few new members of the VastPark family, Plugins and Widgets. Both of these elements are part of the IMML specification, but haven’t been implemented...until now.

Coming with the next release of the platform in July, Widgets and Plugins will both be present as part of a major rewrite of the entire codebase to improve stability, modularity, performance and memory consumption.

Some of the goodies coming in the next release:
- Major improvement to the Publisher allowing for updating, deleting and previewing existing metadata and content
- Support for publishing Widgets and Plugins
- VastPark Scripting API v1
- Fixed support for streaming sounds
- Across the board performance and memory usage improvements

Editors note: Is your comedic genius better than ours? Leave your attempt at “3 concepts enter a room” in the comments!

Stress Test #2 Results

Thanks to all who came to the test yesterday. We had 20 of you running around inside concurrently but more outside unable to get in. We’re working on getting more of you in next time.

So when is the next Stress Test? It looks like Stress Test #3 will happen around the end of May. (Nope, we didn’t release a software update during May/June due to the significant overhaul required to take VastPark to the “next level” - so the stress test#3 won’t happen until after the next software release is out and stable - Ed.)

If you have a client needing to use VastPark, feel free to contact us for a confidential discussion.

Some stats from the test:

• Approx 20 concurrent users were online at any one time


• Browser was flaky


• Server solid as a rock, 0 crashes and CPU usage was negligible.


• In the 9hrs 25mins since the server was restarted for the test, there were:
  
  
  
  • 167 hits to vp://vastverse.com/stress-test2/
  
  
  • 14 hits to showroom
  
  
  
  

• The new webservice didn’t break and there weren’t any reports of login errors that we’re aware of. A login error would’ve given the users a login failed dialog box or a scene without content. Anyone who experiences this please contact us.

Welcome to the early days of VastPark

Thanks for your interest and excitement! You can now download our preliminary toolset. These tools are free and always will be. We’ll also have pro versions and encourage 3rd party developers to release extensions which they can sell at whatever price they choose.

Right now, we’re flat out fixing bugs, making improvements, demos and documentation. Any help that you as the community can provide to one another is appreciated by everyone. We’ll have a public forum online before our Stress Test#2 on the 22nd April.

We’re really looking forward to working with you now and as things progress.

cheers,

Bruce Joy, CEO (April 10th, 2008)