One of the most useful features of a multiuser virtual world platform like Jibe is the fact that it can be accessed from a web browser. Just click on a URL and you are instantly in a Jibe world.
But Jibe doesn’t just live on the web. It also communicates with the web.
Let’s learn how to easily make Jibe cause new content to load on your webpage!
It’s fun to walk, run and fly around in a Jibe world. Multiuser 3d virtual worlds like Jibe are at their best when you explore them. You never know what you might discover over the virtual horizon.
If you want to give visitors in your Jibe world the ability to instantly “teleport” from one location to another, you can easily set that up too. Today we’ll learn how to set up any object in your Jibe world so that, if you click on it, your avatar is instantly teleported from one place to another.
Today we’ll learn how to build a door in your Jibe world that automatically opens when an avatar approaches and then closes when the avatar walks away. We’ll also make the door play a nice sound as it opens and closes.
Fire up your Unity editor, open your Jibe project, and let’s get crackin.
Jibe is a powerful platform for creating multiuser virtual worlds that can be deployed on the web. And since Jibe uses the Unity3d development environment, you can easily pull in any 3d mesh model to use in your world.
But what if you want to build something in Jibe and you either can’t find the perfect preexisting mesh model or you don’t have the skills yet to create it from scratch with a 3d modeling program?
That’s where primitives and model packages can save the day!
If you explore my Jibe world, you’ll find a windmill sitting on top of a hill.
I think it’s a nice example of how you can create an immersive scene in a virtual world by combining a few basic elements.
And it’s all about the small details.
One of the great things about creating your own multiuser virtual world with Jibe is that you can use all kinds of assets created specifically to work in Unity. And in addition to tons of interesting 3d models, you can also pull in pre-made Unity-based games.
Here’s how you can add a classic Memory Puzzle Game to your own Jibe world.
It’s been 2 months now since I first opened the doors to my Jibe world.
In that time, I’ve had 1,269 different people visit it.
To everyone who has visited, thank you. And to those of you who haven’t visited yet, I hope you stop by someday soon!
Jibe 1.3 has been released by ReactionGrid!
In addition to a bunch of bugfixes and new features, we’ve now added the ability for avatars to fly.
To celebrate, I imported a model of the Space Shuttle Orbiter and placed it in the sky of my own Jibe world. To visit it, just fly up! And to learn how I set it up, read on…
ISTE SIGVE (International Society for Technology in Education – Special Interest Group for Virtual Environments) is a group of educators, administrators, and educational technologists who are interested in the development of 3D Virtual Environment platforms for connection and collaboration.
They hold online meetings each month, and on May 17th they invited me to speak to their group about Jibe and Virtual Worlds on the Web.
GAMBIT is a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore, created to explore new directions for the development of games as a medium. The lab focuses on the creation of video game prototypes to demonstrate their research as a complement to traditional academic publishing.
Tomorrow (Friday) at 4pm Eastern, Chris Hart (ReactionGrid CTO) and I will be at the GAMBIT lab at MIT to talk about Jibe!
More details can be found on the GAMBIT blog.
There will be a live video stream of the presentation, so you can also tune in to watch.
UPDATE 5/24/11: Here’s a recording of our presentation.
-John “Pathfinder” Lester
Be Cunning and Full of Tricks 