Major Additions - Living Avatars

Introducing Living Avatars!

Today is a great day and I have something really cool that some of you are going to love! It's called Living Avatars, a new vBulletin addon that I've been working on for almost one year.

This program will allow your users to customize their avatars by using the mouse to drag and move items around (items such as clothing pieces, etc). In order to collect items, you need to spend points, the more you post on a forum the more points you get! Thus, Grow your Forum with Living Avatars!

Tour

Click here for the tour movie.



Here is how it works in detail:

1) Download and install Living Avatars to vBulletin (install instructions below).
2) Once installed, go to the Living Avatars admin panel and click 'forum integration'.
3) The user profiles of your members will now have an extra link:



4) Now, the more a user posts on your forum, the more points he or she will earn. If a user has posted 500 times, and then you install Living Avatars, then that user will start with 500 points.

5) Once users have a few points, they can then start spending their points to collect items:



6) Now that they have collected a few items, they can create their ultra cool avatar! Check it out:



I highlighted the canvas in red, in that box (the canvas) you can use your mouse to drag items around. It seriously works beautifully.

7) Now, press the 'Save Avatar' button and your avatar on vBulletin will be updated:



And that's it! Cool yeah?!

Ok, so on with the install instructions:

Installation Instructions
Installation is very simple, just follow these steps and you shouldn't have any problems (if so, then I'm sorry and I'll try and help you out asap!).

1) Download & Extract living_avatars.zip
2) FTP the living_avatars folder to your forum
Example: http://www.yoursite.com/forums/living_avatars/
3) Run Setup: forum/living_avatars/setup/
4) CHMOD the Living Avatars 'avatars' folder to 777 (this folder: /living_avatars/avatars/)
5) Delete the setup folder (/living_avatars/setup/)

Now that Living Avatars is installed, go to the admin panel of Living Avatars and click the 'Forum Integration' link, from there you can press one link which will update the vBulletin modifyavatar template to insert the Living Avatars link.

Upgrade Instructions

1) Download & Extract living_avatars.zip
2) FTP the living_avatars folder to your forum (overwriting previous Living Avatar files)
Example: http://www.yoursite.com/forums/living_avatars/
3) Run Setup: living_avatars/setup/
4) Delete the setup folder (/living_avatars/setup/)

Uninstall Instructions
1) If you enabled the forum integration link from the LA Admin Panel, then login to the LA Admin Panel and disable it.

2) Drop these tables:
la_admins
la_avatars
la_groups
la_items
la_items_purchased
la_packs
la_points_spent
la_positions
la_settings

3) Delete the living_avatars/ folder.

Why should I use Living Avatars?
"Grow your forum with Living Avatars" - Simply that! Not only is Living Avatars a lot of fun to use but it's also addicting. Users will want to post on your site in order to gain enough 'points' to purchase a certain item (ex: Sword of Doom!). Imagine having certain items that are rare & expensive, such as "Dracula's Cape" which can only be purchased 3 times and costs 50 points (aka posts)...get it?

Where can I download more Avatar Packs?
You can download free user created avatar packs here:
Avatar Packs

How can I create Avatar Packs?
Please read this tutorial if you are interested in creating avatar packs:
http://www.livingavatars.com/help/p2_articleid/2

LA 120 Released
+ New Frontend & Backend
+ New theme editor

LA 115 Released
+ Better vBulletin integration

LA 114 Released
+ Online/Offline feature now works correctly.
+ LA admins can be deleted from the admin panel.
+ Fixed a positioning bug in the canvas.
+ Fixed IPB and SMF userid/avatarid conflict.
+ Fixed PHPBB3 download.php file change.

LA 113 Released
+ SMF Support (1.1 -> 1.3)
+ Better Forum Link Integration.
+ Less Warning Messages.
+ 'Bring to Top' is now used.

LA 112 Released
+ Added IPB 2.3 Integration.

LA 111 Released
+ Added phpBB3 Integration.
+ Fixed Crop Tool.
+ Better LA link integration for phpBB2.
+ Fixed a bug that caused avatars not to show up in the forum.

LA 110 Released
Updates & Fixed Bugs
+ Database changes, redid a lot of the LA Grouping logic.
+ You can only reinstall LA if logged in as admin.
+ Fixed 'Items Misplacement Issue'.
+ Fixed mysql error when adding admin with high userid value.
+ Items & groups an be moved around & deleted.
+ Removed admin/forumlinks.php file.
+ Add/Remove Forum link added to settings page.
+ New layout for admin panel.
+ New groups can be added.

LA 102 Released
+ Avatar Packs can be upgraded.
+ Avatar Packs can be uninstalled.
+ Minor changes to the design layout of certain pages.
+ Fixed a points remaining calculation bug.
+ Fixed a mysql_connect() database warning for vB users.
+ Other small misc fixes.

LA 101 Released
+ Better error checking when saving avatars.
+ Update to work with the vBulletin File System.
+ Fixed some vBulletin & phpBB integration issues

Always Backup your Database before Upgrading
Living Avatars might have database changes during the upgrade. Please, take the extra time and backup the living avatars tables (the tables that are prefixed with 'la_' in your forum database) before upgrading to new versions. I always do as much as testing as possible before releasing updates but it's still better to be cautious.

[pantherson]

Thank you, the server's admin has just changed the permission of the folder and it now works well.

However, there's another problem of displaying avatars. Admin's avatar (mine) is displayed in the user CP page, user profile page, and in all the post. But user's avatars are not. I can see their avatars in Admin Control Panel > User Manager, but those avatars are not display in either user profile page nor in their posts. They still can see their own avatar on their own user CP page, but that's all.

Please help! I use VBB 3.6.7 PL (latest version). Thank you very much.

[PinkLiquorice]

Brilliant Installed great thanks!

[subduck]

Originally Posted by pantherson

Thank you, the server's admin has just changed the permission of the folder and it now works well.

However, there's another problem of displaying avatars. Admin's avatar (mine) is displayed in the user CP page, user profile page, and in all the post. But user's avatars are not. I can see their avatars in Admin Control Panel > User Manager, but those avatars are not display in either user profile page nor in their posts. They still can see their own avatar on their own user CP page, but that's all.

Please help! I use VBB 3.6.7 PL (latest version). Thank you very much.

That's strange, post a link to a user's profile that is currently having this trouble and I'll look into it when I get some free time.

[subduck]

The avatar packs page has been updated:
http://www.livingavatars.com/avatar_packs

[ringleader]

My God that's excellent. I've never seen anything like it in my life.

*installs*
*nominates*

[animate]

is the best mod i ever been see!

For future Release would be cool a Sell(Auction) Function or Trade Function with other users!

[DeiseHost]

Fantastic. Just what I needed.
Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!!

[SkyCatcher]

Installed. Love it!

I went through the index.php, forumlink.php and editavatar.php and translated it into German. It would be really really really nice to add phrases to your next release so we don't have hardcoded messages

[ERuiz]

This is AWESOME! I have a question though. It seems that the script looks at a user's TOTAL POSTS count in order to determine how many points that user has earned.

Can it be setup so that we can have the script look at another field to determine this value? See, I run a Virtual Airline website and our pilots have a custom profile field which shows how many flight hours a pilot has. And depending on how many hours a user has, it determines this user's rank.

So, if I can get LA to use this custom profile field, then my users will be able to dress their avatar with the right uniform depending on their hours (points).

I am guessing that it is hardcoded... Is this correct?

If so, can it be made so that it gives us the option to change the field LA uses to determine how many "points" a user will be awarded?

Another thing... Is this mod compatible with VB 3.6.7 PL1?

[SkyCatcher]

Originally Posted by ERuiz

This is AWESOME! I have a question though. It seems that the script looks at a user's TOTAL POSTS count in order to determine how many points that user has earned.

Can it be setup so that we can have the script look at another field to determine this value? See, I run a Virtual Airline website and our pilots have a custom profile field which shows how many flight hours a pilot has. And depending on how many hours a user has, it determines this user's rank.

So, if I can get LA to use this custom profile field, then my users will be able to dress their avatar with the right uniform depending on their hours (points).

I am guessing that it is hardcoded... Is this correct?

If so, can it be made so that it gives us the option to change the field LA uses to determine how many "points" a user will be awarded?

Another thing... Is this mod compatible with VB 3.6.7 PL1?

I ran across that query somewhere while translating. Yeah it's a hard-coded query, it would probably be easy just to change the table field it's querying. Right now it's using Total Post Count - points spent = Points remaining (available).

I'm using 3.6.7 PL1 and it works fine.

The bug that was fixed still remained on installation of 1.0.2 though where the items would re-center themselves after clicking enter.

Editing the la_position(s) table and setting x y z to unsigned fixed that problem, as per authors website.