Ancient Spaces Blog

Hi folks,

A warm welcome to the new Ancient Spaces blog. Those of you who have been keeping track of us (through several recent articles and this site) will already know what we're trying to do: in the long run, AS is meant to become a virtual 'multiplayer' world based on ancient civilizations. As a teaching and learning tool, this is a little different than most fledgling MMORPGs: our content will be vetted and continually improved by the academic community (in Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and First Nations Studies, among others), and built from the ground up by our students and its own players.

We've gone through some major developments since the site was last updated:

- Thanks to the modeling team, there are plenty of new 3D environments under construction for the pilot launch this September (mainly for application in courses), ranging from Egypt, Greece, Machu Picchu, and the Northwest Nisga'a First Nation in B.C. Check them out here.
- Thanks to the programming team, the Ancient Spaces platform is expected to go into alpha testing at the end of July, with the beta expected for the end of August. In about two months it will be ready to download as a Windows executable. It's based on OGRE 3D.
- Once the platform is in beta, we'll be sending a notice to our mailing list inviting participation (programming, modeling, and academic).
- The UBC programming & 3D modeling team will now be blogging here on a weekly basis, so I hope there will be enough updates and material to give you plenty to look at in the weeks ahead.

In the meanwhile, check out the website, read more about our team, and let us know what you think so far.

Michael Griffin
Project Mgr.