Ambrosia has included a few additional items designed to enhance your Avara experience:
 
Avara Commuter
Avara Commuter is designed for people who often play Avara on different Macs, such as those in a computer lab at school. Once you have paid for Avara, your copy is personalized with your name (which appears in network games). However, this information is lost when you move Avara to a new computer, which can be cumbersome if you play from a computer lab.
Ambrosia to the rescue! Avara Commuter keeps a copy of your registration information. Running Avara Commuter on a computer in a lab will register your copy of Avara on that computer. It even totes around your preferences file for you! When you quit Avara Commuter, your registration information and your preferences file are removed from the computer.
 
The Avara MicroTracker
The Avara MicroTracker allows you to search for Internet games of Avara without having first to run Avara. To see if any games are currently registered at the Avara Tracker, just run the MicroTracker. It will let you search for Internet games exactly the same way you do in Avara.
If you already have Avara running as a server, you can use the MicroTracker to see what other games are out there without closing the server. Just put Avara in the background and run the MicroTracker.
Making Your Own Missions
With a drawing program and a little imagination, you can create your own Avara missions.
The objects in Avara missions are created as layered drawings saved in PICT files. All you need to create a mission (sometimes called a “level”) is a color capable drawing program that keeps track of layers.
Most of the missions that come with Avara were created with ClarisWorks, and it is quite likely that your Macintosh already has ClarisWorks installed. (Apple includes it on most of the Macs it sells.) ClarisDraw is a little more powerful, and has some features that make mission design easier.
If you don’t have either Claris program, consider using ShareDraw. It is shareware ($30) and will work just fine as a mission editor. It even sports some features that neither of the Claris programs offer.
You don’t need anything more than a drawing program, but if you are ambitious you can create your own sounds or 3D objects for use in your Avara missions.
Avara uses a custom sound format. A program called SoundComp is included in the Avara distribution and is used to convert sounds from SoundEdit format to the Avara format. Many of the sounds that are included in Avara were created with SoundEdit, which is a commercial product. The author of Avara found that Sound Sculptor II (shareware, $30) was better than SoundEdit in many ways. If you wish to create custom sounds for your missions, Sound Sculptor II is highly recommended.
Avara also uses a custom 3D geometry format. The BSPSplitter program included in the Avara distribution accepts either DXF polygonal models (AutoCAD format) or OFF .geom files (without proper support for color) and converts them to the Avara format. Most of the models in Avara were created with StrataStudio Pro. Some were made with Infini-D. Both of these programs are commercial. Any 3D program that creates DXF models should work, and a shareware program called PatchDance is available (shareware fee is on a sliding scale: $0-$75). PatchDance requires a PowerPC and uses Apple’s QuickDraw 3D.
With the shareware programs, you have all you need to create your own missions in Avara. Ambrosia is happy to support and promote shareware. If you try these programs and find them useful, please support their authors by paying your shareware fee!
For complete instructions on how to go about creating an Avara mission, please refer to the Avara Level Design Manual in the Avara distribution.
