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.

[shabab-on-line]

Hi

It's great mod

I need to know where I have to change the appeared words?
Another way, I need to translate it to Arabic, where I should start from?

Thanx

[wolfstream]

Would be nice if the developer would actually handle subscriptions in a timely fashion. I paid for a "pro" version, haven't heard anything from them since doing so 4 hours ago.

[Adromir]

@wolfstream: You are a coder/designer yourself and can not imagine, that developers of small apps have nothing to do all day than to wait for subscriptions? If it would be 4 days, i would understand you, but 4 hours? Come on..

[wolfstream]

So, it's ok, in your mind to take money from individuals and not deliver product, or support? Hrrm? Of course it's not.

As a coder/designer myself, I have never, and will never setup an application to take money from someone without giving product to them immediately, unless a contracted job is necessary. That's just common decency and respect to your customers. Fraud checks should be done BEFORE payment is accepted, not delayed.

If this was a "service", then yeah, I could see waiting a bit, but it's not.
In addition, if this was not during business hours, again, I could see waiting a few hours, but once again, not so much.

Payment was made @ 1230 their time, well into the business day, well inside hours that support should be provided. Since this is a pretty reasonably known business (subdreamer), there were almost guaranteed to be people there. They just didn't want to do their jobs, and THAT is what I find fault with.

Better yet:
ziad has been online since I made my post requesting clarification as to why this hasn't been resolved yet ( a good 3 hours before I posted here). Did I get a response there? Nope.

[subduck]

wolfstream,

I am not taking your money, running away, and refusing to give support... lets please take a step back. It's really sad to see people blow up like this over a small mistake.

We have a system setup on livingavatars.com that will automatically setup your account as soon as the purchase goes through. For some reason, your account did not get setup correctly. It's very rare, but this happens sometimes. I'm away from my computer right now and won't be back until Sunday, but I had my accountant send you a copy of the latest version to your email.

I'm sorry I missed your post on livingavatars.com, I promise I didn't see it.

I would really prefer not to continue this on vbulletin.org, if you check your email you should have LA Pro by now, when I get back this Sunday I'll setup your account so you can use the support desk.

Sincerely,
Ziad Hilal

[wolfstream]

subduck:
I'm certainly not blowing up here, I was just responding to the individual's attack.

While I understand vacations and all, that really doesn't release the obligation of customer service and support here. Really, I understand that these things happen, but when it takes a thread like this to bring it to the attention of your company, and emails are ignored (I've sent at least one), it doesn't speak well at all.

[wolfstream]

Just a quick followup:

This was in fact resolved. Mail was sent out a few minutes before my post was made, but didn't get to me until just now.

Still not impressed with the delayed response, but it does happen.

[subduck]

Originally Posted by wolfstream

subduck:
I'm certainly not blowing up here, I was just responding to the individual's attack.

While I understand vacations and all, that really doesn't release the obligation of customer service and support here. Really, I understand that these things happen, but when it takes a thread like this to bring it to the attention of your company, and emails are ignored (I've sent at least one), it doesn't speak well at all.

For the record, your 1 email (sent at 6:30pm, 6 hours after the transaction) was never ignored. You created a post here complaining about us to everyone before even emailing us. Normally, I would just let this go, but it's really not nice to bad mouth us and make us look like we don't care about customers when that is simply not the case. If you would have emailed us instead of posting here, then it would have been resolved right away.

[wolfstream]

Originally Posted by subduck

You created a post here complaining about us to everyone before even attempting to contact us.

Really? Are you sure about that?? Please, don't dare try to pass this off on me not contacting you. I tried three methods, in this order:

#1 - Your forums, an hour after no email was received.
#2 - Here
#3 - Email

Now, see, you had been online on your forums between #1 and #2, you chose to ignore the thread. That's fine, but that really is a strike against you.

it's really not nice to bad mouth us and make us look like we don't care about customers when that is simply not the case.

I absolutely agree, but guess what, sometimes what you don't see as the case isn't always so. For example, brushing off paying customers for hours, during normal business hours no less, that says the opposite of what you just said.

Sometimes it is, in fact necessary to get nasty, and while I hate to do it, I will, by no means shy away from it. Why? Because sitting around for hours, waiting for you to respond got me what?? Nothing. Posting a response in a more public forum got me nothing. Sending a nasty email (which I do hate sending), same thing.

Moral of the story? Don't ignore your customers. We do pay the bills. I understand you don't THINK you were ignoring me, but, you did, in fact login to your own forum, at least once or twice after I made the post and chose not to reply to it.

From what I can see, the product is great, but I gotta say, customer service, really leaves a lot to be desired. I shouldn't HAVE to contact CS at all, and I shouldn't HAVE to post in a public forum (or two) AND send an email just to get what I paid for, over 8 hours after the fact, ESPECIALLY when dealing with as big a company as subdreamer supposedly is.

Anyways, I'm done here. Please, the next time you try to attack your customers and accuse them of something, make sure you've got your facts straight.

[subduck]

I know you really believe that I saw your post on our forum and decided to ignore you, but that is simply not true. I would have replied immediately if I saw it, I don't know why you refuse to believe that but there's nothing more I can say on that matter. You have this idea that we are some big company attacking you when, but wolfstream that is not true. As time passes I'm sure you will come to realize that we are here to help you, customer support is really important to me and I promise that after being a customer you'll find out that we really do care.

I'm sorry you ended up waiting hours before being able to download our software, that of course is our fault, and I'll find out why your order didn't go through. I do apologize for that, but please believe me that you were never ignored, not even for a second.