2023 - 2024 Year Reports – And the situation gets even more busy! World website development took a major advancement and a long time to do it limited at times to one day per week to work on it. In the spring 2023 we were hit by a series of snow storms eventually leaving us with about 3 feet deep snow everywhere. The fall of 2024 was an improvement and we knew what to expect and had the wood shed filled before Oct. with a spare stockpile in another shed. So then winter decided to only give us the light dusting treatment for snow all season. Sigh.
World website progress has finally reached its designed goals. My hardware server had to be taken out of the data center due to the hosting company change of plans in what they wanted to do. That did not include colo hosting of my server. They had inherited me anyway and I was not a significant money income for their company. The end result is I had to move my websites to a friend's hosting server. Better helping him with the cost of my virtual server than somebody else's company. I was able to upgrade Gospel World website to the new beta version of the programming just completed with all the improvements it has. But I only have 5 regions available to use. So we have Welcome, Gospel World Plaza, SDA Church, and some maintenance regions in operation for now.
2022 Year Report – What a year - getting Sovaria Estates into operation and expansion of the MyWorld website for Halcyon worlds has taken up 3 quarters of the year. We also had to move twice between July and September, as the house we were in was being sold and the property we were buying close date was a month apart. So we had to move to a separate house for three or so weeks. So last quarter of the year was spent in getting house at the new property set up and moved into and get prep for winter underway.
2021 Year Report – This has been a very busy year! A new world had been set up and expanded fast, then in October, it was suddenly closed taking with it all the resident's contents. A group of its members worked with me to open a new entertainment world that is resident owned so no one person can close the world. Thus was Sovaria Estates world created. Then another world closed with no warning dumping its residents out with no recovery of their work and contents. Its been a tough time for them all, as this makes the second time for such closures with no options. All of this has been keeping my time and efforts overloaded with website world and world building for a more stable future. Progress on Mundos Market has also been slow as a result — postponing the projects I want to advance in Gospel World. I have allocated land space for an adventure in "Pilgrims Progress" for Gospel World.
2020 Third Quarter Report – Business with our LocalFood4U.com has expanded a lot this quarter. Progress on Mundos Market continues with features added posted on its website. Church services in Gospel World SDA Church have been done every week. Found a PDF copy of Andreasen's book 'The Sanctuary and its Services' and started to enter it into the GLC Book Library. It will be one of the books based on a study course about the sanctuary and will include a virtual study of it in Gospel World. Students will be able to walk around in it and text chat with the priests found there.
2020 Second Quarter Report – Gospel World gains back a region server adding 10 more regions for use! Discover Creo Mundos world project was moved back to the A Dimension Beyond hosting server. Steady progress made on Mundos Market with the addition of the Administration programming put in place.
2020 First Quarter Report – COVID19 happened. For most of this quarter, it was a boost to virtual world activities as more people found themselves at home and looking for something interesting to do. The general restrictions have little effect on me as I work from home anyway. Mundos Market advances with website logins working for validating accounts from member worlds.
2019 Third & Fourth Quarter Report – I started running regular services for the Gospel World SDA Church at the same time they are in the Adventist Community Church in Second Life. Foundational programming started for Mundos Market and website started.
2019 Second Quarter Report – Lots of interruptions in my time and effort in the last two quarters this year; creation of a new Halcyon world for the people who wanted a home from the InWorldz world that closed last summer, then work on the current edition of the Amazing Facts Study Guides Bible Course added to their Bible School, edited and put open to translation. The Bible course is for a project in India and will be in 5 major languages in that country. When the translations are completed the course and translations will be imported to this GLC program for use by the Bible School. Work I am doing to update the AF Bible School is top focus to complete now.
2019 First Quarter Report – Recovery was completed by Jan. 2019, Gospel World was put back into full operation. Impetus was given to the SDA Church addition, the Assistant Editor of Adventist Mission visited the church project in SL to do an article for the Mission 360 publication about the virtual church and promotion of the Gospel World SDA Church for more information. This is to be in the May issue of the magazine. I have been working on advancing Mundos Market world marketplace to make it easier to get the content I need for Gospel World and to all other Halcyon based worlds. That project is starting to gather some speed in its growth and activity in it.
2018 Fourth Quarter Report – Disaster Strike! On Oct. 6 about 10:00am my server lost the hard drive that held the servers for all my websites including this one. While getting that restored the following week, it became apparent I would have to do deeper work and rebuild my server hardware with updates to bios and virtual server management. This took an additional week to accomplish with the web server going back online Oct. 22. Virtual world recovery continues to get Gospel World restored and work in it resumed.
2018 Third Quarter Report – I have started the construction of a place in Gospel World to have an SDA online church there. This will be a better place for those who wish to be part of a church group featuring Granite Bay SDA church and Amazing Facts programs. More on this in the next quarter report and options on this page get added!
2018 Second Quarter Report – Just when you think you are making progress, life hands you a setback card! My primary computer died with a bios error. I had to fall back to a less powerful one to get back into operation. Discover Creo Mundos has been making some progress with two meetings a month. Time I wanted to spend on the Marketplace development was taken up by a contract job. The Marketplace is important to Gospel World to be able to get the content needed to advance its use.
2018 First Quarter Report – From the end of one project comes another. All of those who had hopes for the IMA project decided to proceed on our own. We created Discover Creo Mundos to be a group showcase for projects devoted to the expanding the use of virtual worlds for real world applications. This project features no predefined organization or aspirations to produce or test any of the virtual world platforms, but the promotion of their use and application. This is a group of the world owners and developers who are willing to share ideas and collaborate to the benefit of all. In this group I will be working on the creation of the Halcyon World Marketplace using Discover Creo Mundos as the source grid for it.
2017 Rest of the Year Report – Dreams come and go. As the year progressed, it became increasingly clear that the direction IMA was taking was not where anyone interested in it wanted to go. By the end of the year the IMA project dissolved and came to an end. At the same time I progressed in the documentation and advancement of the MyWorld website and installation of Halcyon based world grids.
2017 First Quarter Report – New development this past quarter where the Infinite Metaverse Alliance (IMA) was formed to promote and coordinate virtual world application beyond entertainment use. This new development will also include a multi-world marketplace for Halcyon based worlds. Such a marketplace will greatly help the future development of Gospel World. I am helping IMA with virtual world and marketplace implementation.
2016 Fourth Quarter Report – Some progress was made in the Welcome Island content. I started a new website business that took all my time, thus limited what progress could be done here. See LocalFood4U.com for information about that site.
2016 Third Quarter report – Gospel World region management programming has been started and has basic operation to view all region status and ability to close regions. Halcyon development continues to improve world operation stability. Work has begun on the Welcome Island and its virtual world training course for new arrivals to learn how to operate in the virtual world environment.
Four new Guest avatars were completed! Introducing Kyle, Greta, Lei and Kim:
The complement of starting guest avatars is nearing completion with four more to go.
2016 Second Quarter Report – Bad news time. Two of the schools that had been running in the GLC program closed their operation in April. That was 90% of my funding for purchases to get things in Gospel World. At least there is enough content for Avatar creation and customization. The world still lacks in trees, brush and landscaping content.
One bit of good news comes from the advancement of the Halcyon program running the world. Region restarts from in-world are working. I have finally got the process for land parcel transfer working so land can be assigned to others and group ownership. This is process is critical for member schools to manage who has access to their land areas.
2016 First Quarter Report – The last three months have been concentrating on grid software updates with the upgrades to the Halcyon programming from InWorldz. Lots of bugs have been getting corrected and some new features added in. I also upgraded the server, putting in a larger SSD - OS drive for the virtual machines and upgrading the Quad core CPUs to Hex Core CPUs. This provides more power and expansion room for School regions in Gospel World.
Sweet E's delivered several more clothing textures for the Mesh It styles I have. These will be applied to the clothing options and used with more avatar selections.
2015 December Report – Heather completed two of the set of guest avatars and I was able to write the programming into the new account registration page to select them. Introducing Eric & Victoria:
More are in the que being created. More texture styles for the clothing we have are in the works. This will make for more options to make the default avatars. It will be easy for me to add them to the selection page. One more step toward getting the world opened!
Over the Christmas season, Heather completed two more avatars. Introducing Jadyn and Fayth:
Next on the list are Asian, India and middle eastern avatars.
2015 November Report – InWorldz has released the first edition of the now open source server code on GitHub. I have updated Gospel World to the Halcyon grid server software. Performance has been significantly increased and regular updates can be managed much easier.
* 10 more hair styles were purchased from Alli&Ali Designs and added to the collection.
I got a contract with Mesh Flowers & Plants in SL! Finally I can get some good flowers and plants; 43 flower plants were ordered and delivered to Gospel World. It is nice to have some color and plants – the third day of creation has been a long time arriving!
2015 October Report – Several things have happened in this month. Elyse was able to complete several of the textures for the mesh clothing styles and those have been set up for access at Admin Island and at Gospel World Plaza.
InWorldz has opened their world grid server code for open source on GitHub! The development of the Halcyon system for grid operation and management is rapidly making advances for a strong and stable world operation. This action will improve the progress being made in Gospel World and will get several of the annoying problems in Gospel World resolved in next month. My son Ricky was able to help the Halcyon project by correcting the programming that disabled the ability for the trash to be emptied and is working on getting the web based profiles operational.
2015 September Report – I connected with Elyse who owns the Sweet E's clothing store in Second Life and set up a contract with her to create textures for the mesh clothing I have and for my purchase of additional clothing she makes. This will go a long ways to getting the default avatars completed.
2015 August Report – Since Last April we have moved to a friend's house which they are refurbishing to sell. It is a temporary landing spot for our family while we continue to look for the place God wants us to move to. In the mean time we can help our friends by giving them some income from the house as our rent and be able to help them get the place ready to sell.
Now that my computer and development server are back in operation, I will again be making some progress on Gospel World. The randomly vanishing regions problem was resolved by the Inworldz team. Progress on the default avatars can again resume as we move toward getting the world opened for general access.
2015 April Report – Offline IMs now are sent via email!
We received on the 16th, notice to leave the house we have been renting for the last 27+ years to be out by July 1, 2015. All work on Gospel World is suspended until we can find a new place to live and get setup again. Only necessary support for the schools and students can be managed until after the move has been completed. More will be posted when there is anything to report.
2015 March Report – Mesh feet, with two styles of shoes have been set up.
Some Mens boots were also released.
Some mesh clothing from MeshIT, Animation overrides and four more skins were purchased from *Step-Inside*. More clothing items are needed to provide outfits for the default avatars and make enough content for individual choices later. Avatar animation overrides were implemented with men and women versions. These provide more natural animations for standing around, running and walking.
Earlier in the year Arlene joined the team and brought in her skills in clothing design she developed in Second Life. She has released three items:
2015 February Report – I found a merchant in the InWorldz grid who sells mesh feet. These are much better than the default avatar feet and are a must for select ladies shoe styles and simply going barefoot. When I contacted Lia and she discovered the world was for my Bible School program, she was very excited. She is a Christian in Russia and offered to provide all four of her feet styles to Gospel Learning Center free of charge! So we set up the purchase agreement that way. I in turn needed a control HUD to provide the skin tone adjustments for the feet, so I created a new HUD for her business in IW which she has the rights to provide to any world she sells her feet. In addition I created a skin applier tool that skin merchants can use to make matching textures for the feet and apply them for customers. In this way her business can expand and other merchants can provide accessories for them. Here are the three styles I will use:
I told Lia I was also looking for someone who was skilled in making avatar skins. She put me in contact with her friend who runs the *Step-Inside* business in InWorldz. I was able to set up a purchase agreement with Lany to get skins that would suit our purpose and to have them supplied with suitable underwear as part of the skins. She was happy to do that for me and provided the underwear also as garments that can be color tinted for every purpose that may be needed. She also provided a good collection of eyes for avatars for free! Lany's husband runs the MeshIt business in SL and IW providing mesh clothing styles and shoes that will work with the iFeet. Here are the skins I was able to start with:
This month has been a very busy time getting these products set up for use. Heather is working on avatar shapes to create the starting collection of avatars, that are ethnically represented, for use with new accounts in the world. Next month we will be setting up with a line of mesh clothing combined with texture based clothing to give a very good selection of styles that can be used to personalize each person's avatar.
2015 January Report – After some negotiation, a major advancement has been achieved and the first merchant connection for Gospel World was made with Alli&Ali Designs who makes the best hair styles in Second Life and InWorldz. An initial order of 10 hair styles have been purchased for resident use in Gospel World. This will allow the creation of default avatars for new accounts and options for hair style selection choices for customizing your personal appearance. The ground work is now in place to get more merchants involved to supply products for private world grids like the Gospel World.
1/20/2015 Offline messages are now stored and delivered on login to Gospel World. This feature required addition of an external web page to provide the save and retrieval of the messages.
August Report – World Map display implemented! Ricky went to work on the world map generating process to improve it. The implementation we had was slow and used a lot of memory. We knew there had to be a better way to approach and solve the problem and have it be able to run in Linux and Windows servers with a minimum of resources and do it at a fast rate. Mission accomplished! Ricky called his program Anaximander after one of the earliest map cartographers in history. It is a map generating program after all!
June 2014 Video Report See a video tour of the Gospel World current state of development.
A new viewer logon page was created and put in place. Now the way is open for showing any image backdrop for the viewer page.
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