Towns 3 is on Indefinite Hiatus.

[Shallotte]

Quote:

In anticipation of the support for Flash going away, we have been working on a new Gaia Towns. This new version will be quite different than what we had before: for the first time Gaia Towns will be in an actual 3D environment! We will have more details to share as we get closer to releasing the beta!

I knew that in ATS, Lanzer said Towns 3 became a much bigger project in scope; But wow! It really is big! I'm super interested to see what these 3D environments will be and what features towns 3 will have. 3D definitely opens up huge potential for features and events, as 3D is time consuming to initially set up- but much easier and more flexible to implement new things to.

I'm super curious! LIKE SUPER DUPER CURIOUS. emotion_kirakira Normal expected things aside; It would be so cool if Gaia incorporated that old Pixelcon idea into towns 3 eventually as well!! Imagine being able to set up stalls in a big 3D Bartons to sell your artwork(Not for cryptocurrency though, RLC would be nice!), or to set up a stall that lets you sell items like the marketplace!

My biggest wish though; is for Events to return to towns. 3D gives a lot of flexibility to do something crazy one day! I'd also like to see a re-release of the Gaia UFO item that would let you fly around a bit in 3D space! That would be so dope emotion_kirakira

But maybe someday(definitely wouldn't be now), Towns 3 could become a bit Second-life-y? Like, a system where you would have the ability to customize and program things into your own home space(like assets you made yourself in blender)? That would be really cool too!

------------

So what about everyone else? What are your thoughts? And what is your Towns 3 wishlist of things you hope to see?

Edit: It was apparently announced this month that the skeleton build is on indefinite hiatus, as the team responsible for building it was not actually skilled enough to make it work.



Gaia Corporation.... When will you learn that doing things cheaply costs you more in the long run??? emotion_facepalm I had a bad feeling that the team you hired was not skilled enough to do this... Not just because of the visuals I saw, but because it's been 3 years. 3 years is not an acceptable amount of time for a skeleton build to be completed... You should've pulled the plug and hired someone else within the first year. I'm almost certain that a team of four people could've gotten a working skeleton build finished under a year, if not months.

Now it's a situation where you paid an unskilled team far more for an unfinished project than it probably would've cost you to hire a skilled team and have something finished. emo

Hopefully you can get something working.... or get Towns 2 converted- but I really hope that you stop looking for cheap talent to do these ambitious projects. You aren't ever going to find another [JK] that is going to deliver passionately good results on a small budget again. He did that because this website was his baby and he loved it dearly; But elsewhere quality and talent is going to cost you.

[dreamsk]

My first impression: dear god why. Really who thought this was a smart use of your resources?? We'll see I guess.

[Glasya]

How the heck are our avi's, 2D doodles that they are, going to interact with a 3D space? Will they be flat little cutouts in a 3D environment like paper dolls? Will it look like Pokemon B/W where there's a little bit of not-quite 3D but 3D emulated graphics?

[Rude]

Holding reservations until we see a demo, but hearing 3D gives off war flashbacks from 2007 emotion_omnomnom

[marysueshelley]

I am just a shadow of a shadow of a shadow...

Salaura

How the heck are our avi's, 2D doodles that they are, going to interact with a 3D space? Will they be flat little cutouts in a 3D environment like paper dolls? Will it look like Pokemon B/W where there's a little bit of not-quite 3D but 3D emulated graphics?

Paper Mario, methinks?

...Always trying to catch up with myself

[chibiviolets]

the looks of zOMG (exept for zen gardens) and towns are pretty ok, idk why they need to be in 3d.

[Newzpop ReportaTyro Bong]

Hey. emotion_yatta Not sure how much people have been paying attention to the Towns & Rally news, so linking up interesting quotes from this year with their sources for reference.

Hope this helps for people just catching up on this news!

admin

We have just resumed work on Towns 3. Codemoney is back and helping us convert Towns into HTML5. We hope that there will be a beta version ready for testing as early as next month.

Source: January Company Update and new Gaia Pledges!

Lanzer

The towns 3 engine is finally ready for beta testing! The first map we will be releasing is for Gaia Rally, so technically this is Gaia Rally beta test. sweatdrop

Hop on over to https://www.gaiaonline.com/rally2020 to try it out!

The new system should work on both desktop and mobile devices. There are still a couple more features we need to work on, and more graphics and UI stuff to tweak and optimize. Please let us know of any bugs or feedback on things you would like to see change or added.

Please leave your feedback on the Rally 3 feedback thread

Source: Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020

admin

After much anticipation, Rally 3 was finally released last month. There's still a lot of work to do, but we hope that Rally and Towns 3 will provide a new virtual platform for both desktop and mobile devices!

Source: April Company Update and new Gaia Pledges!

admin

As all staff members continue working from home, we're focused on improvements to Towns 3. We've also begun planning for the Summer Event as well as continued development on the story telling system.

Source: May Company Update and new Gaia Pledges!

Lanzer

After zOMG is converted to its own app, some of Gaia's existing features that cannot be converted to HTML5 such as aquarium will probably face the same treatment as those titles have too much art asset to be converted. I can't make any promises to housing in Towns 3 just yet as we're still deciding how those aspects are handled moving forward as the environment might move to an actual 3D environment.

For full context, see source: Posted: Sep 23, 2020

admin

In anticipation of the support for Flash going away, we have been working on a new Gaia Towns. This new version will be quite different than what we had before: for the first time Gaia Towns will be in an actual 3D environment! We will have more details to share as we get closer to releasing the beta!

Source: November Company Update and new Gaia Pledges!


Unrelated to the quotes above:
All I want from Towns 3 is a zurg reference. ninja Doesn't even have to be in 3D. Just something.

[Newzpop ReportaTyro Bong]

Salaura

How the heck are our avi's, 2D doodles that they are, going to interact with a 3D space? Will they be flat little cutouts in a 3D environment like paper dolls? Will it look like Pokemon B/W where there's a little bit of not-quite 3D but 3D emulated graphics?

That sounds cool though. emotion_kirakira The thought of Gaia doing that brings back fond memories of Ragnarok Online with its 3D Backgrounds and 2D avatars. Curious to see Gaia's art direction in Towns 3!

dreamsk

My first impression: dear god why. Really who thought this was a smart use of your resources?? We'll see I guess.

Hey! biggrin Good to see you! xd

Back in the day Rally & Towns were very popular features. Adding some new bells and whistles to a newly updated version of Rally & Towns may draw back community members and bring new ones. There are some Gaians that used to use virtual chat spaces almost exclusively as well; and there may be future Gaians that will enjoy the new feature just as much.

[Moonracer]

I'm...not sure how I feel about this. I guess whatever gets people in the door to spend money is the motivation behind doing a 3D towns? Perhaps it is the fact I don't know CGI/3D modeling...I haven't done it in YEARS and even then it was only one class and basic stuff, but... I don't know that seems like a lot of work on something when there are other things a bit more...pressing? *shrugs* But as usual what do I ever know about doing/running half the stuff on this site.

I think I'll keep my expectations rather low, but remain open to the possibility of being surprised...in a good way, and expect so many bugs that it might actually break something pretty badly.

Other then that...*shakes head and slowly face palms* Yeah...seems legit. *sighs* I'll just wait to see what it's line and so on.

[dreamsk]

Newzpop Reporta Tyro Bong

dreamsk

My first impression: dear god why. Really who thought this was a smart use of your resources?? We'll see I guess.

Hey! biggrin Good to see you! xd

Back in the day Rally & Towns were very popular features. Adding some new bells and whistles to a newly updated version of Rally & Towns may draw back community members and bring new ones. There are some Gaians that used to use virtual chat spaces almost exclusively as well; and there may be future Gaians that will enjoy the new feature just as much.

If towns is what Gaia means by 3d, then what was the big hassle with the new towns? Just watch the video in my post to get a real understanding of where I'm coming from on this.

[Sugar Mason]

gaia_star Uh........
I am excited when I read the news but I also got a bad feeling on this to be honest.
Like, it's been said so many times but there are a lot of things around Gaia that needs to be updated, cleaned up and/or cleared out due to inactivity. Guilds needs update so badly, zOMG Clan needs to be dealt with as well, MP has a few more bugs to squash, no longer used Perma RIGs like Lisa and Narwheel needs to be shut down and have its items be sold in Rococo/MN as direct sales on limited time...

It might be possible since, when I was an active zOMGaian and is ofc watching old zOMG videos, I stumbled across this video showing an actual 3D zOMG map preview. It's not screen-transition based, instead the camera is fixed onto the player, and you can rotate and pitch the cam view to your preference like in many MMORPGs.

But that was long ago. I guess we'll just have to see, and hope they make good progress in this new project of theirs...

On side note: I never experienced Towns-based events, so I definitely like this Towns 3D to have it as a feature. ninja

[Shallotte]

MarySueShelley

I am just a shadow of a shadow of a shadow...

Salaura

How the heck are our avi's, 2D doodles that they are, going to interact with a 3D space? Will they be flat little cutouts in a 3D environment like paper dolls? Will it look like Pokemon B/W where there's a little bit of not-quite 3D but 3D emulated graphics?

Paper Mario, methinks?

...Always trying to catch up with myself

Yeah, It's definitely going to be 2D avatars(projected onto transparent image plane) in 3D space. There isn't any other way to do it- because you'd have to 3D model every current item on the site; and thats just not possible.

Having the characters oriented to camera and flip around like a paper mario character is the way to go.

[Nyadriel]

Aside from the Forums, Towns have been amoung the roots of Gaia offering some storylines of their own. Including alien invasions to... uh... invasion of toads so big that they take up the entire avatar box. LOL And scenes of grunnies going nowhere on the frozen ice of the ponds in winter. *snirks*
Events like snowball fights, water balloon/watergun fights, soccer, ToTing and caroling at the houses and so forth. Weddings were held. All kinds of other shenanigans.
They were fun times! And that was just for Towns 1!

Towns 2 had it's own crazy shenanigans. Including people dancing.

I am looking forward to the craziness that will ensue in Towns 3 when it comes out.
I have just one word for it all.


AHHHHHHHHHHHH!

[Shallotte]

Moonracer

I'm...not sure how I feel about this. I guess whatever gets people in the door to spend money is the motivation behind doing a 3D towns? Perhaps it is the fact I don't know CGI/3D modeling...I haven't done it in YEARS and even then it was only one class and basic stuff, but... I don't know that seems like a lot of work on something when there are other things a bit more...pressing? *shrugs* But as usual what do I ever know about doing/running half the stuff on this site.

I think I'll keep my expectations rather low, but remain open to the possibility of being surprised...in a good way, and expect so many bugs that it might actually break something pretty badly.

Other then that...*shakes head and slowly face palms* Yeah...seems legit. *sighs* I'll just wait to see what it's line and so on.

The way I see it, Gaia needs a more modernized live chat feature or the site will continue to struggle to get more users. At the websites peak; towns was completely saturated with people. In 2006; I was rarely on the forums and always chatted/made friends in towns. That was just the climate at the time.

Problem is, like zOMG, the lack of updates and the discontinuation of towns events(+Goldemort) completely killed peoples interest in Towns/Towns2 and for the most part, rally also. Allegedly, Towns 2 was also a nightmare to add new things into it- Which contributed to it's inevitable death.

If they make Towns 3, and keep it update friendly(AND ACTUALLY UPDATE IT) I feel like it would keep people invested in sticking around. And would be a better look for newer users. Once events/games start up in Towns 3; it'll slowly but surely naturally become the feature that most people will use over time- Which imo, I feel like that alone makes it worth investing into. Personally, I'm bored sitting around on the forums with nothing much to do.

[Shallotte]

Newzpop Reporta Tyro Bong

Unrelated to the quotes above:
All I want from Towns 3 is a zurg reference. ninja Doesn't even have to be in 3D. Just something.