For the third time in a row, Worldforge participated in Google Summer of Code, with three students completing the program this year. Worldforge is the original open-source Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) project, so it’s great at getting students who are interested in games into open source.

This post showcases some of the work done by one of our students, Tiberiu Paunescu, to implement a series of improvements to the Ember UI. These improvements were all end-user focused and meant to provide a better and more streamlined user experience.

The first feature implemented was an improvement to the inventory which makes it possible to drag items from the inventory widget into the world, and place them there. When an item is dragged off the inventory and into the world a preview model is created, showing where the item will end up.

The second feature Tiberiu worked on was a new quick-help system. This is designed to provide context-sensitive help messages to the user, triggered by various actions performed. The overall goal is to make it easier for new users to quickly get immersed in the world, and to get proper help messages when they are needed.

The last feature implemented is a new action bar framework. The action bar allows the user quick access through either the keyboard or the mouse to frequently-used items and actions. Action bars can be created and destroyed on the fly, and items can be dragged from the inventory onto an action bar to create a new binding.

Action bars are also property persisted between server sessions.

As you can see from the videos, these are all solid and very useful features which greatly improve the user experience. Tiberiu is a great example of the amazing contributions that can be made in just one summer, we’re all very proud of what Tiberiu has achieved.

By Erik Hjortsberg, WorldForge Mentor

This post is cross posted from the WorldForge Developers Journal.

Most people don’t know that almost every single one of the tool icons in both SketchUp and LayOut was created in SketchUp and/or LayOut – by our own John Bacus, no less. Tool icons that look 3D (like Push/Pull, Tape Measure and Paint Bucket) are all SketchUp models that John inserted into LayOut. Most have no post-processing at all.

While I was working on the updated Quick Reference Cards for SketchUp 8 and LayOut 3, it occurred to me that other people might be interested in using our icons. Having them as high-resolution images is super-useful for creating tutorials, which is something a lot of folks do. Laptop stickers and t-shirts with Follow Me on the back are also great expressions of SketchUp nerdom.

I’ve uploaded a couple of zipped folders that you’re free to grab; each icon is an individual, 800 x 800 pixel PNG with a transparent background:

Please use this post’s comments to let us know what you plan to do with them.

Update: Corrected download sources for the icon files.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

Located 250 miles east of Moscow in the city of Nizhny Novgorod, the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady is a remarkably beautiful structure. SketchUp user Semenov Nikolay has built a 3D model of the church and it’s amazingly well done.

Along with the impressive architecture and texturing, Semenov also built up the terrain around the building to make it more accurate. All in all, it was very well done.

The model is not yet in the Google Earth 3D Buildings layer, but you can get it from the Google 3D Warehouse: Info | KMZ

We often like to showcase excellent 3D models like this on the site (such as Andy Dell and Peter Olsen‘s work), so if you’ve created a noteworthy model or a great collection of them, please contact us so we can check it out. Thanks!

(via the 3DWH Twitter account)