Avatars United

Check out our teaser! A beautiful video creation by this years´s intern Marew.

This post has been written by the winner of the CCP Games & Avatars United application development contest Dr Battlesmith:

Writing apps on Avatars United

As an 8 year-old child of a merchant family working the stations of Kor-Azor, I came 3rd

in a color by numbers competition at the local EBank branch. This set me on the path

which brings me here today, having crawled my way up from newbie, to amateur, from

coder to code-monkey, each day waking with my sights set on one-day reclaiming glory

in competition. Waiting for this moment!

Big Thanx to CCP, AvatarsUnited, OpenSocial, Google, the sponsors and participants.

I believe the best way to learn a new technology is with a fun project, it’s always easy to

put in extra time when something is for fun. Having worked with OpenID and social

networks my eye had been on OpenSocial and the AvatarsUnited competition was the

perfect opportunity to dive in and see how it all works.

Dr BattleSmith

After a few experiments with making requests to APIs and saving data to AvatarsUnited,

I started a rather simple project “Have you got?”. This grabs a characters assets from

Eve API and saves them to AvatarsUnited. With this done that data can now be retrieved

by the characters friends. It’s literally less then an hours work to take the return from an

API and share it among friends. It was impressive seeing the leverage that could be

gained with a few simple steps.

EVE MineManager

I have been involved in a lot of projects where offices are striving for efficiency and

there is often a brick-wall when it comes to how much CPU or bandwidth a technology

uses. OpenSocial is really amazing in this respect, the client does much of the hard work

and you can often use data directly from an API without any kind of post-processing. The

speed of everything, from responsiveness in the client, to how quickly APIs could be

mashed together was a source of wonder.

This lead me to a more ambitious project “MineManager”. With this app Eve-Central,

Eve-Metric and a custom built API for saving/retrieving ops were added to the mix along

with Eve API. Working with so many different sources was no harder then the first app,

OpenSocial provides all the tools needed. Extensions provided by AvatarsUnited allow

access to groups and Eve related parameters, along with access to the members roles

within groups which can be used to give permissions within your apps.

The core of “MineManager” is rather simple but as with any project going beyond a few

functions it takes a lot of time to make things presentable with a usable interface. This

stage just can’t be ignored and often takes longer then any actually coding. I used

collapse-able areas to gain a lot of screen real-estate and had some buttons hacked into

places where buttons aren’t designed to be. This did cause cross-browser issues however

they could be debugged with browser tools.

EVE "Have you got?" Application

Looking back, the OpenSocial way of doing things is easy to learn with some experience.

Generally it’s perfect for grabbing any kind of XML or JSON data-source and quickly

turning that into something cool for your friends, while all the features of social networks

are readily available. You can do everything from sending messages, making activity

notifications, to uploading new media to a users gallery.

Creating fast interfaces with enough room to move is helped by the tools for managing

tabs while anyone experienced with ActionScript will find some of the techniques from

that language work very well in this form of JavaScript where you are working with the

interface so directly.

Overall I found it a dream to use, although I did reach for tools in the wrong place a

couple of times, the forums and ticket system quickly sorted out my miss-understanding

of documentation. Can’t really over-state how impressed I am with the OpenSocial

framework and the tools provided, while AvatarsUnited implementation is spot on.

They’ve really done an amazing job with everything from the developers area to the

ticket system, all the latest technology with OpenID access included.

If you’ve got a multi-user Eve application planned, from industry to PvP and you were

thinking about Windows or PHP as your back-end I’d seriously recommend AvatarsUnited

and OpenSocial. The whole system allows you to get up and running much faster while

most of the permissions and multi-user stuff is taken care of for you. Very glad I’ve had

this chance to take a good look at OpenSocial, as it’s probably one of the better designed

technologies I have encountered.

It’s been a great competition and I’ve learnt a lot.

Can’t wait to play with all the apps!

Dr BattleSmith

We are proud to announce the world’s first MMO centric social application development contest.  A jury, consisting of representatives from CCP Games, Google’s OpenSocial team and Avatars United will evaluate the submissions. Read about our contests here www.avatarsunited.com/eve-app-contest/ .

Contest 1 – App development: The first is an application development contest that challenges you to build fun and useful EVE specific apps to get the chance to win all the awesome prizes listed below.

Winner Prizes

• $1,000 prize money
• $1.000 Amazon Web Service Credits
• Asus GeForce GTX 295 1792MB PhysX CUDA
• Asus 24″ VH242H Wide Gaming LCD TFT Monitor
• Popcorn Hour A-110 Media Tank
• 1 year subscription to EVE Online
• 1 year EON subscription
• EVE Online special edition box signed by EVE Dev team
• 1 ship model from the EVE store

1^st runner-up prizes:

• $500 Amazon Web Services credits
• Asus 24″ VH242H Wide Gaming LCD TFT Monitor
• ASUS GeForce GTX 295 1792MB PhysX CUDA
• Popcorn Hour A-110 Media Tank
• 1 year subscription to EVE Online
• 1 year EON subscription
• EVE Online special edition box signed by EVE Dev team
• 1 large EVE poster from the EVE store

2^nd runner-up prizes:

• $500 Amazon Web Services credits
• Asus 24″ VH242H Wide Gaming LCD TFT Monitor
• Popcorn Hour A-110 Media Tank
• 1 year subscription to EVE Online
• 1 year EON subscription
• EVE Online special edition box signed by EVE Dev team
• 1 large EVE poster from the EVE store

The app development contest ends September 15, 2009.

Contest 2 – App idea: If you have an idea for a killer app but lack the time or skills to build it yourself by submitting your idea to this contest you can also win cool prizes (listed below).

• iPod Touch 32Gb
• 2 months EVE Online game time
• Avatars United Goodie bag

The app idea contest ends August 15, 2009.

This contest is a first step in realizing our dream of building an eco-system of useful and fun applications to improve all of our MMO lives. So, don’t wait! Go read more about the contest here (www.avatarsunited.com/eve-app-contest/) or check our existing applications here (www.avatarsunited.com/apps).

Since we launched the new website back in June, we have a had few people start hacking on Avatars United applications. However, since the application support is still pretty new, people have had to ask for our permission to become app developers. This is changing today, as we are opening up the Avatars United Developer Platform to everyone!

We hope and expect that people will build some really cool apps with what the platform has to offer. For a hint of the possibilities, check out our newly launched EVE Achievements application, a unique mashup of Avatars United’s social graph and the EVE Online API.

For more information about the Developer Platform, read the introduction on our new developer blog which we also launched today.

Have you checked out the updated Avatars United yet?
After months of back breaking digital work we are finally releasing an updated Avatars United for you guys to enjoy. Though radically different, today’s release is far from complete, so do expect frequent updates these coming weeks. Here are some of the new features:

Applications: From now on you will be able to install applications (apps) to fit your specific interest and if you want you can even build apps for the whole of Avatars United to enjoy. Some apps can be installed to your profile page while others will be installed to your groups (think DKP apps)!
Our first apps, found today, are classic features from Avatars United Beta such as blogs, photos, and comments that now can be installed/uninstalled. A new app is the “Feed Reader” that allows you to scan all your favorite feeds and share quality posts with your friends on Avatars United. Since we have built an open platform (OpenSocial) anybody can join and build truly unique virtual world apps. We’ve got some really cool stuff in the pipeline! If you’re a developer and you want to get in touch with us mail us at developers@avatarsunited.com .

Customization: One really cool change allows you to design your own profile page AND group page selecting a background picture and theme. Today’s catalog includes our own homemade artwork but will within shortly allow you to contribute with your own stuff.  Drag and drop boxes is also on our “to do” list and should appear soon.

select backgrounds and themes for your profile page

Currencies: We are introducing our own virtual currencies with the first being Avatars United Coins! Avatars United Coins allow you to buy stuff like backgrounds and themes and can be acquired by answering surveys or purchased via mobile phone. Soon you will even be able to get Avatars United Coins by creating cool backgrounds and apps and selling them to others. We will also soon be launching a second currency that will be 100% achievement based but still allow you to buy cool stuff. You will only be able to “earn” this currency by doing things on Avatars United!

Live chat: After having received hundreds of feedback requests for it we are proud to announce the launch of live chat functionality, in cooperation with Meebo, for all worlds. At last you can hang out and talk with likeminded people without having to create intelligent forum topics.

Virtual Gifts: From now on you will be able to send people you like, respect or praise virtual gifts as tokens of appreciation. Funnily enough the most popular type of events on Avatars United 1.0 was the creation of events around people’s birthdays and rezzdays. In this new version of Avatars United you not only be able to add your birthday to your account info, but we will also let your friends and group mates know when your birthday is coming up.

send your friends gifts as praise or appreciation

Improved Groups: Not only will groups now be able to install applications for all members to enjoy but each group admin will have lots of management settings to play with to enhance role management.

3^rd party logins: Since many people visit a variety of Internet sites on a daily basis we have allowed people to connect the Avatars United accounts with some of the major account providers out there. Simply put you will now able to log into Avatars United with your Facebook, Google, Twitter, OpenID, Yahoo, MySpace, Windows Live (and many more) accounts. If your friends sign up they will be able to enjoy an express account creation through 3^rd party logins.

login using your accounts on other social services

PLEASE NOTE

As you probably know we’re just a team of 5 childhood friends working on Avatars United from a garage in the outlands of Scandinavia. Our limited manpower has not allowed us to finish building all of the functionality we had originally planned to include to this launch. Hence the event functionality, the videos application and the photos application for groups are not ready yet. But will be… someday! Rest assured, all of the old data is saved and will be included as soon as we complete these features.

Now that you’ve read through this painstakingly long blog post, go to Avatars United, check out the features and GO NUTS! We would have never made it here if it this far if it wasn’t for your belief in us, so join us in our pixel shedding combat to make this the best social utility for virtual worlds in the world! (pun not intended)

All the best

/The Avatars United team

From our office cave in Sweden we can see how people start to enjoy the newly arrived spring weather while we continue our work on building the applications platform for Avatars United (AU). In the real world people often go to the same places to do completely different things. Some people might hang out in the park to relax while others might go there to exercise. Funnily enough MMOs and even AU work in the same way. Last post we told you guys about our upcoming applications platform. This time we’re going to tell you how applications could bring cool things to you!

With applications AU will allow each and every one of you to install and un-install stuff relevant to your interest. If you’re into statistics and comparing your performance to that of others, you might want to un-install the blog application to go for other applications out there to meet your needs. If on the other hand you’re more into the social side of your MMO you could go ahead and install applications to discover and share stuff with your friends and the broader community. Our vision is to allow you to adapt AU to your individual needs.

Together with the launch of applications on AU we will also be giving you all additional options in terms of customizing your profile pages. We originally launched with three main themes that we now will be extending to allow you to redesign the look of your individual avatar profile pages with more of our home made artwork.

Simply put most of the changes we have been working bringing to AU are ultimately about giving you guys more choices. Don’t hesitate to comment or to email us if you have ideas on expression through applications and customization. We’d also like to thank you for the emails we have received since the last post. Keep’em coming!

We are proud to announce big changes ahead on Avatars United (AU) !

During the past months we’ve been hiding away in Sweden’s snow covered forests working on bringing you guys a set of improvements that we believe will radically change the way we all will be able to use AU. In addition to that, we’ve created this blog in order to give you all the opportunity to follow our progress in terms of ideas and actual development. Indeed we felt that we owed it to you all out there supporting us! Thank you for all the support throughout 2008 it kept us going and motivated us throughout the year.

So what type of changes are we talking about? Well, since mid 2008, we have been working on a set of APIs, a platform similar to what Facebook offers, with tools and resources that allow developers to build social applications on top of Avatars United. These applications can either be used privately or in collaboration with other avatars, which means you will be able to install all kinds of tools onto your profile pages. For virtual worlds with API:s such as EVE, WoW and SL (for instance) that means that all kinds of cool stuff can theoretically be built. Concerning the changes ahead, rest assured that none of these changes will affect what can be considered as AUs core in terms of functionality today. Changes to be expected will however have numerous implications in terms user interface and will furthermore allow for completely new ways to use AU.

We will be updating this blog regularly with more news and thoughts on upcoming AU features. If you are hungry for more info us and the underlying concepts for AU go ahead and read the Enemy Unknown company blog over here. We are also giving our avatars with stars the opportunity to get a sneak peak on the upcoming changes, so if you’re of them send us an email here. If instead you want to get an early access developer account send us an email to developers@avatarsunited.com and tells us about your ideas and we might let you in .

Cheers