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.

[wolfstream]

Subduck:
It's all good, like I said, the problem (for me) is now resolved, and while it took time to do things, as long as the software on your end is being looked at, hey, that's all good. Maybe it was the differing paypal and order email address? I use my gmail account for things I absolutely NEED to get through, because it's not as strict as my own spam filters. Then again, with over 150 domains, I've got to be pretty strict on filters.

Another issue entirely:
For those interested in a usergroup limitation to this, I am in the process of putting this together and testing it out based on this mod, some template hacks, htaccess mods and file renaming. If enough people are interested (and the integration author gives permission (I won't redistribute the LA files, but I'll tell how to get it working)), when I'm done testing I'll put up a workaround for it.

[subduck]

Sounds good!

[soniceffect]

Originally Posted by 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

It would seem I am experiencing the same problem with your automatic email system. I have posted on the forum (albeit not very long ago to be honest) but have had no responce as of yet. Please could you let me know what I need to do in this case. I can email you my transaction id etc if needbe.

Just as a quick note though, these things happen and reading on previous responces they seem a little hostile at times. Living avatars is an excellent product and yeah ok, there seems to have been a messup with the emailing software. These things happen, threads get missed, emails get missed, and hell if I was on holiday the chances are I would probably be too drunk to read them anyways LOL.

Excellent work peeps .... Pwease can I have me download LOL

[nomoreturn]

First of all its a great mod and 2nd is that working on 3.8.2 if so i installed it but when i run living_avatars/setup/ got this error
so if its working on 3.8.2 then please help me to fix it thanks




Living Avatars Database Error:

Invalid SQL: SELECT value FROM la_settings WHERE varname = 'version'

MySQL Error Description: Unknown column 'varname' in 'where clause'
MySQL Error Number: 1054
Date: May 10, 2009, 7:39 am
File: http://www.mysitedomain.com/living_a...up/upgrade.php

[jilly]

I'm having the same problem too - paid for the pro version, and posted on your forum yesterday, but no response still.. Paid for the pro, but instructions on how and where to download the pro version had still not been sent.

[soniceffect]

Lookin like they have a prob with the auto email Jilly ... Would email them as well

[subduck]

Originally Posted by jilly

I'm having the same problem too - paid for the pro version, and posted on your forum yesterday, but no response still.. Paid for the pro, but instructions on how and where to download the pro version had still not been sent.

Hi Jilly, can you send me an email: ziad (*AT*) subdreamer (*DOT*) com

[subduck]

Originally Posted by nomoreturn@hotm

First of all its a great mod and 2nd is that working on 3.8.2 if so i installed it but when i run living_avatars/setup/ got this error
so if its working on 3.8.2 then please help me to fix it thanks




Living Avatars Database Error:

Invalid SQL: SELECT value FROM la_settings WHERE varname = 'version'

MySQL Error Description: Unknown column 'varname' in 'where clause'
MySQL Error Number: 1054
Date: May 10, 2009, 7:39 am
File: http://www.mysitedomain.com/living_a...up/upgrade.php

It looks like you're running an upgrade for Living Avatars?
Can you please give me some details on your setup, example:

Previous version of Living Avatars Installed
New version you are upgrading to, etc

[nomoreturn]

Originally Posted by subduck

It looks like you're running an upgrade for Living Avatars?
Can you please give me some details on your setup, example:

Previous version of Living Avatars Installed
New version you are upgrading to, etc

Thanks for reply but i never installed living avatar before Got this error on my first time installation of living avatars . I also want to know is that working on 3.8.2 because i'm useing 3.8.2 and may be the error came up for the version diffrence

[subduck]

It works fine with 3.8.2, the error you are getting is from the upgrade script, you need to run the install script. Ex: www.mysite.com/living_avatars/setup/install.php