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.

[RollaJedi]

Hi
I'm wanting very badly to install this, but I have a question. Is there a way for members to have both a regular avatar and have an LA avatar below it? I really dont want them to have to choose between one or another. Please let me know if it can be done and how. Thanks!

[RollaJedi]

or maybe perhaps have the LA avatar only appear in your signiture as your profile image??

[Freesteyelz]

I believe the Pro version you can place LA in the avatar or signature in conjunction with an avatar.

[forum4]

I upgraded to 3.8.4 about a month ago and forgot to reinsert the Living Avatar link. Well, I did now, but I get this error message

Warning: imagepng() [function.imagepng]: Unable to open '../avatars/la_3.png' for writing: Permission denied in /home2/forumwom/public_html/living_avatars/includes/save_avatar.php on line 181

The avatars file is already at 777, so I don't know what else I should do.

I went to your site, but can't even figure out where your forum is there. None of the links work at livingavatars.com, so don't even know how someone would go about buying up the Pro.

[Digital Jedi]

He's doesn't have a forum anymore. Something happened right around the time vB announced 4.0. I don't think he's planning on running a vB board anymore, as Living Avatars is designed to run on a couple of different board scripts.

la_3.png is there, right? And your sure it's the /living_avatars/avatars/ folder that CHMODed? Try reinstalling the script like you would if you were doing an upgrade, remember to double check that folder's permissions when you do.

[forum4]

Great, but I don't want to have to reinstall all of the packs I've added to it. Maybe it just isnt' upgraded for 3.8.4? Yes, the avatars folder is 777 and has always worked fine before.

If I have to start over from scratch, I don't think I'll waste the time. My members don't seem to be all that into it anyways.

Just because it's for many forums doesn't mean they should just not have a forum. Was 4.0 a bust or what? If I go to their site now, there doesn't even seem to be a way to upgrade.

[Digital Jedi]

Upgrading, and in this case, re-installing, is not the same as starting from scratch. Just like an upgrade, overwrite your files, and run the install scripts again. Don't uninstall, just proceed like you would for an upgrade.

[forum4]

Anyone else using this with 3.8.4? It saves the avatar, but looks like the forum won't allow it to change the current avatar.

Well, for some reason, once I deleted the old la_3.png file everything seems to work fine now. I don't know why, but for some reason, the old la_3.png and the other old la files, wouldn't allow themselves to be overwritten.

[Redneck-Melly]

Ok, so I installed LA on an account that was deleted, I deleted this account, and now I can't get to the ACP of LA. How can I uninstall and reinstall this?

[Digital Jedi]

Originally Posted by Redneck-Melly

Ok, so I installed LA on an account that was deleted, I deleted this account, and now I can't get to the ACP of LA. How can I uninstall and reinstall this?

Yikes! That's a good question. You might need to look around and see how you can manually restore a user account through SQL, otherwise I don't see you getting in any other way.