AW 5.0 wishlist

[Commie]

AWI has stated that they're actively looking for ideas from the community to include in AW 5.0 and has requested a bullet-point feature list. Post your ideas in this thread and we can pick the best and most feasible ideas to present to them. This post will be updated as the thread progresses.

Enhancements to Existing Building Features:

• Rotable v4 objects (zones, particle volumes).
  Reason for wish: v4 objects are not very compatible for buildings that are built at an angle.
  
  
• Mip-mapping option for emitted particles. This would allow them to be used as detailing more seamlessly.
  Reason for wish: Would allow emitted particles to look better when they're given a long lifespan. Useful for applications were particles are used as grass or flora, or ground detailing.
  
  
• Either a mask= argument for the 'Color' action command, or a way to specify a color as a texture in the 'Texture' command (eg Create texture #FFAAFF mask=window1m).
  Reason for wish: Allows masks to be used with colors without needing to clutter the object patch up with simple color textures.
  
  
• Either the ability for zone fog to work in a skybox enabled world, or a zone feature to disable the skybox within the zone.
  Reason for wish: Would enable more powerful immersive scenes for themed environments within a world
  
  
• The ability to texture and mask particle emitted Models.
  Reason for wish: Enables more applications for emitted models.
  
  
• Enhancements made to water zones to allow for visible water surfaces.
  Reason for wish: Would greatly improve the ability to place better water bodies within AW.
  
  
• Allow the "radius=" argument to work both ways, so that objects vanish when you approach them.
  Reason for wish: Would enable LOD-like options for builders as well as potential game-design application.
  
  
• An argument for the teleport and warp actions to disable or override the world's teleport/warp sound effect.
  Reason for wish: Sometimes the world's teleport/warp sound effects clash with the application or environment.
  
  
• Allow zones to specify directional lighting.
  Reason for wish: Zones can only specify ambient lighting, which yields a dull and washed out environment.
  
  
• A zone fade-in/out enhancement. This would work by graduating the difference between the current lighting and fog settings into the zone's settings.
  Reason for wish: When entering a zone with custom lighting or fog, the change is instant, which takes away from the immersion and makes the browser look unpolished.
  
  
• Consider making zones ignore user's visibility range, so that they always renders, similar to how mover tags work.
  Reason for wish: When zones are used in outdoor environments, the builder needs to build many zones to account for users with shorter range visibility so that the user cannot walk into a spot where they cannot see a zone tag. This is especially important for underwater applications. Multiple zones are clunky to arrange and manage.
  
  
• Enhancements made to the 'seq' action command. Be able to specify a % speed of the sequence (slower or faster). Be able to chain together sequences by grouping them in a parathesis (eg "create seq (wait,look,wave)").
  Reason for wish: Enables more applications with the seq command. Helps create more life-like environments.
  
  
• An argument added to the "Activate" trigger which only allows the trigger to happen if the user is X meters away from the object. For example a user can't click a door to rotate open unless you are within 4 meters of the door object. Would also be suggested to have a different cursor when the user is out of range, so that they know they need to move closer.
  Reason for wish: This would be useful to game design. Users should not be able to interact with objects unless they are within reasable distance from it. Currently, builders need to setup cumbersome pseudo-invisible click blocking objects to achive this.
  
  

New Building features:

• An action command to offset the centre axis in an object
  Reason for wish: Would enable many more applications for objects when combined with the rotate command.
  
  
• Object twisting and skewing
  Reason for wish: Would enable more decorative abilities for objects. More sophisticated looking builds.
  
  
• Opacity command with time and wait arguments
  Reason for wish: Would enable more special effect abilities for objects, as well as common applications as such windows, clear objects, etc
  
  
• A new trigger - "timer", to trigger events at a certain VRT time (for example clock tower bells). Either a time, or range of time would be specified
  Reason for wish: Would enable more special effects to environments without the use of bots which can too much hassle for small applications.
  
  
• The ability for the browser to accept commands from the web. Eg the user could click a link and it would trigger an event in the browser, such as turning an object visible. This would allow AW to indirectly take advantage of all the already developed programming languages out there.
  Reason for wish: Would enable complex interaction with objects. Greatly empowers game developers in the AW platform.
  
  
• An action command to change the light properties of an object (ambient and difuse)
  Reason for wish: Would enable more applications for a single texture and object.
  
  
• Following that, a way for ambient properties to go beyond the world/zone ambience. For example if the zone was at 50% ambient light, allow the object to act as if it were at 100% ambient.
  Reason for wish: This would allow glow-in-the-dark objects, and useful for lighting, and objects that are suppose to be emitting light.
  
  
• An action command - "print" - to print text over the 3d-overlay. Acceptable triggers would be activate, bump, or enter/exit zone. Text would print in the center of the screen, and use a time, wait, and fade-in, fade-out arguments. Recommended to also have an argument to only allow this trigger to happen once per browser session.
  Reason for wish: This feature could add a game-quality like polish to the browser by printing an overlay of the name of the area the user is at. For example when they teleport into SW City, it would print "SW City", fading in, then out. Of course, it could be used for other applications as well, such as tutorial guides for example.
  
  
• A successor to the dated "create animate me" action commands when needing to build a sequence of commands and events. This can be accomplished a few ways. An object keyframe technique would be very intuitive.
  Reason for wish: Would enable a much broader audience of builders to build more advanced and powerful scenes. Very few people know how to build sequences using the 'animate' command, as the command wasn't originally designed for that purpose.
  
  
• Allow builders to use the RWX command !prelight on a per-object level via action commands.
  Reason for wish: Prelight would be useful to light up polygons in situations where there are many light sources in the scene (such as a long hallway), where using 'create light' wouldn't work due to its 8 light source limit.
  
  
• An additional data field for objects - original creation date.
  Reason for wish: This date would specify when an object was originally built. Due to AW's historical significance, old dates on a build can be somewhat of a historical asset to people, and discourage renovations/updates or fixes.
  
  

Building-interface related:

• When placing an AWG group, have the objects remain selected by the user before being published to the world server.
  Reason for wish: This would allow the user to fine-tune the placement of the object group first, as it can be difficult to relocate it after its already been placed.
  
  
• Allow objects to move along their local axis while moving them around during construction.
  Reason for wish: Would be allow building to be more intuitive and ease-of-use, namely when objects are rotated along the z-axis.
  
  
• Allow editting multiple objects' action properties, however possible. It may need to be that only objects with the same action properties can be editted at the same time...
  Reason for wish: Would save a great deal of time during construction.
  
  
• The ability to select multiple objects in-world and declare them as a group. An object group would be provided a secondary object property box to apply actions to everything at once. Object groups would also share a common axis point.
  Reason for wish: Would be especially useful for the rotate command to rotate a group of objects around. It would also potentially save on cell space by applying actions to a group vs every individual object.
  
  
• Object filename auto-complete in the building property dialog box
  Reason for wish: Would greatly help with casual builders who haven't memorized object names yet, or even experienced builders who may have forgot. Could encourage the use of better, matching objects, and increase the overall build quality.
  
  
• Object variants. Object variants work by including more than 1 object file in a .zip file on the object path. The object property box would ask for which variant object to use. Perhaps also a custom object script markup could be included in the object file to comment what version the object is, displayed in the properties box.
  Reason for wish: This system would prove useful if a modeller has to update an object with new features, or fix an existing problem, but wants to leave it up to the builder if they want to use it or not. This reason against adding a brand new object to the object path would be if the object is part of a series that follows a naming syntax (such as size/dimensions). Object variants can also be used to add various default texture variants to the same model.
  
  
• Colorblind-friendly colors for the cell grid. Green/red is commonly the worst color combo to use for this. Green/blue could work.
  Reason for wish: Cell grid is difficult to read.
  
  

Non-building related:

• Browser option to fade objects into visibility range using opacity (or per-object based if this unfeasible)
  Reason for wish: Less noticeable loading in the distance. Objects popping into vis range doesn't look polished and dates the software.
  
  
• Better teleport and contact list organization. A way to organize things into folders/groups.
  Reason for wish: A basic quality-of-life feature that established AW users would find useful.
  
  
• An adjustment made to teleporting to prevent users from falling before the ground below them loads.
  Reason for wish: When teleporting underground or in the sky, newer users will often rapidly fall before the scene loads. A suggestion is a physics pause for a moment, combined with the user's current cell location having highest load priority.
  
  
• An adjustment to physics to allow avatars to move along with objects when standing on moving or rotating objects.
  Reason for wish: Would breathe new life into the special commands by enabling it to be used for functional applications. (server-movers don't quite hit the mark as a suitable replacement).
  
  

Community related:

• An enhancement made to the encroachment detection where if an encroachment is detected, check a user-level permissions database table to see if the user has allowed encroachment for this person.
  Reason for wish: Short of using the same ppw, co-op building can be difficult and limiting for a community of builders working on a project.
  
  
• Browser mechanics to officially support communities or organizations within the universe. A user would be able to register a community and invite users to it. There would be a window interface which serves as a portal of information about the group - a memberlist, information, coordinates, etc. More importantly it would add a tab to the chat window which links everyone in the community together to communicate on.
  Reason for wish: This would be AW's equivilant of a "guild" in MMORPGs, which proves to be not only very popular but serve as a retainment tool that helps keep people around longer due to the social aspect. However it's done, we would like to see any sort of mechanics to better support co-operative efforts in general, as this feature aspect has been largely untouched since the day ppw was first introduced.
  
  

World related:

• Overhauled right's list. Use that fancy MySQL database we have to manage rights on an individual citizen basis.  There would be a "default" entry to set the rights for people who aren't in the database.  Then you can override this for individual citizens.  It would be a simple check-box interface for each entry, new entries are copied from the default.  Would go beyond current rights including shift and fly rights.
  
  
• Increased terrain resolution. The ability to increase the number of points per terrain cell used to build terrain (increases in powers of 2... 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 points) to allow people to build much smoother looking terrain.  Perhaps a system that lets you select the sub-division on a cell-by-cell basis (better resolution for some cells that need more detail, lower for those that don't need it).
  
  
• Automatic blending of terrain textures. There already exist many algorithms used by many games for performing these kind of calculations.  Place down textures on the terrain, adjacent cells are blended together by the algorithm.  Settings to tweak and fine-tune how the terrain blends in your world can be modified in the terrain options for the world.  This would save people from having to make a large number of transition textures for good looking terrain.
  
  

[Baro]

We've got radvis for making object vanish past a certain distaince, I'd like to be able to do the opposite and make objects vanish when WITHIN a certain distance, that would let us do LOD like things.

also a "tint" command or something would go a long way to re-using textures.  Imagine if you could darken/lighten/colour textures with a simple command.  It would allow us squeeze so much out of existing textures, and it would mean a single white/gray texture could then become any colour you wanted!

It would also be wonderful if while building there was a key we could hold down to move objects on their local axis.

[Tauntaun]

I think it would be great to have a 'picture in picture' type of option to open a small preview window with an alternative view.  This would be like a controllable camera.  You click on the preview screen to take control of the alternate view and to move it around.  A simple button would allow you to switch the secondary view to your primary, in which the camera is normally present as a eye-bot type drone avatar but takes on the users avatar settings when it is selected as the primary view.

Potential Benefits-
For construction it would allow for an alternative view, letting you preview what you will see from another perspective (i.e.- could position the camera as a top down view as you design corridors).  This would also give great perspective in terms of how large your avatar is compared to the setting.

For the creation of your avatar, you could use this alternate view mode as a replacement for the preview window; allows you more customization for previewing what your av will look like when applied.

Could have added functionality for scripted sequences (i.e.- the user walks into a haunted house and hits an invisible trigger that temporarily brings the secondary window showing the door behind them shut close).

The 'picture in picture' could also let you still build/do something else while chatting with a group of people together at a public locale (i.e.- work on a new building while having your alternative camera at AW GZ letting you see the people you talk to on global chat.)

[Tauntaun]

Ohh!  And hotlinks inside of pictures would be great.  Like being able to specify an 'x' and 'y' starting pixel coordinate for a hotspot that then you can specify an 'x' and 'y' pixel length and height for.  When the mouse cursor hovers over the hotspot, it applies a specified 'activate' command.  This could let you develop interactive consoles within the AW environment, letting you select multiple options in a single picture object and even allowing the picture to change when clicked on (i.e.- a left nav bar that is a picture gallery in which each hotspot you click displays a different picture).

[Commie]

Also remember that less people use AW for building now-a-days, so some features that apply to people who only use AW as a social or gaming outlet would be a plus.

[Ferruruccruio]

I would like to see:

• Pattern command - create pattern (x y z axis specifying direction, 3 numbers) (distance) (total number of objects in pattern)  this might be specialized to my building technique though, since I frequently include repetition, like stacked floors in skyscrapers, or anything vertical at that matter.  It would also help with the complex patterns I do in hallways, railroad ties, repeating patterns you might see in a bridge (like trusses and cables if it's hanging)
• Moving platforms - the ability to ride platforms in any direction via simply stepping on.  Useful for subways.  You could simply walk aboard a platform, and walk around inside of it while it's moving.
• IM windows where you could invite groups of people from your contact list in, much like inviting people to a conversation on MSN.  This would eliminate the need for a bot.
• Telegram organization: same deal as with the teleport request
• Option to remember where you were before exiting browser, or a browser crash.  The server could store your location when you left, and teleport you back there when you log back on.  The browser would first wait for the server's teleport coordinates before defaulting to your home location, if it can't find anything.  Second Life does this.  It makes for a nice, rather seamless experience.

[Absolute Monarch]

How about a mass/group invite? As in you can invite multiple people on your contacts lists to join you..

[SW Chris]

Adobe After Effects-style keyframing GUI mode for object animation (for all commands that can be applied to an object)
Reason for wish: Allows for very complex yet efficient keyframed object manipulation with a shallow learning curve without having to master a programming language.  Adobe After Effects has arguably the best animation interface for 2D and 3D video objects that I have ever come across, and it can be arguably the best animation interface for virtual worlds.  Great selling point for end users and corporations alike.

Related to the keyframing system above; Ability to save a script of keyframes, upload that script to a server (world server or an external web server), and then apply that script to an object using a "create keyscript [url]" command.
Reason for wish:  Saves lots of cell space and could possibly even save the programmer from having to retrofit the cell database to store added information within the cell database.  If this was the case then the Keyframe Mode GUI functions solely a script generator.  Scripts are then uploaded to the server and applied to the object with the proposed 'keyscript' command above.

"Zone Fade-In on Enter" checkbox with an additional box that lets you specify how many seconds it takes for the zone to fade in.  
Reason for Wish:  Allows smooth transitions into a zone.

"Zone Fade-In on Exit" checkbox with an additional box that lets you specify how many seconds it takes for the zone to fade out.
Reason for Wish:  Allows smooth transitions out of a zone.  These features are not co

[Commie]

Adobe After Effects-style keyframing system for object animation (for all commands that can be applied to an object)
Reason for wish: Allows for very complex keyframed object manipulation with a shallow learning curve without having to master a programming language.  Adobe After Effects has arguably the best animation interface for 2D and 3D video objects that I have ever come across, and it can be arguably the best animation interface for virtual worlds.  Great selling point for end users and corporations alike.

You can go into detail? I haven't used it. Would it be action command based or...? 

[SW Chris]

After Effects is all about keyframing.  You have a time line in which you create keyframes of the object in certain positions. The system then animates the object by moving the object between the keyframe positions as a function of time.  

Like After Effects, the system would be GUI-based.  No need to type long strings of commands or learn a programming language.

At point A, let's say it starts at 0 seconds, you have the object in its default position.  At point B, let's say it is at 5 seconds, you create a keyframe and then move the object 10 clicks away.  Between points A and B the object moves 10 clicks away at 2 clicks per second.  It accomplishes the same thing as "create move 5 time=5", but the beauty of where keyframing comes in is that you could do this for multiple iterations of the move command without the object resetting itself from its starting point when it moves onto the second move command.  

After Effects also allows you to specify logarithmic curves or angles between keyframes that determine how fast the animation happens between keyframes.  So you can achieve a similar effect as the smooth tag does for the move command, or you can do more complex things like have the object animate really fast at first, and then slow down to a crawl.  

Now apply these two principles to scale, astart, astop, adone, rotate, twist, skew, texture, sound, noise, etc, and you will start to realize the possibilities and complexity that you can achieve.

Because of my net connection I couldn't watch this tutorial, but I think it shows you visually just how such a system would work:  http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/tutorials/03.Animation/

[Commie]

I still don't get the logistics of your idea. What do you mean "create a keyframe"?  Is this something in the object dialog box or... I imagine it would be like a tag object (like a v4 object).

[Baro]

All that stuff would still need to be saved in the objects somehow and would eat the cell dat up.

I'd love to see a new data storage and retrieval system for objects that isn't horribly limiting and slow!

[Ferruruccruio]

Messed up my post by quoting myself.  Lemme try again.

Multi-edit - ability to edit many objects at once in a mass-selection.

[Dr. Tax, Ph.D]

I agree with most of these wishes.. nicely layed out thread.

Multi-edit - ability to edit many objects at once in a mass-selection.

YES.

[7]

For water zones:

• Water Surface Enable/Disable
• Water Surface Texture/Mask
• Water Surface Texture Map Tile Ratio (Controls texture to poly map ratio eg 1:1 for the entire size of the zone or 5:1 for the zone etc)
• Water Surface General Settings (based on the world features)
• Water Surface Direction (Rotates the texture map on the surface)

This could be used in conjunction with the current water system to allow water at multiple heights to help assist in creating: Ponds, Rivers, Small Streams, Lakes, Oceans, etc.

[SW Chris]

I still don't get the logistics of your idea. What do you mean "create a keyframe"?  Is this something in the object dialog box or... I imagine it would be like a tag object (like a v4 object).

Okay, so you don't seem to understand the concept of keyframes.  Did you watch the tutorial video?  Don't think about how you would do this in AW at this point.  Just draw a line in your head.  This line represents an object as it exists over a period of time, starting at the point it is loaded into vis range and continuing into the future.  Let's say the object is a cube.
 _
|_|

Cube's Timeline:  

Loading Point                                                               End Point
X______________________________________ ___________X

Traditionally, a keyframe is a single frame in an animation sequence drawn by an artist, between which other frames are interpolated.  For the purposes of this thought exercise, think of frames as individual cells* of an animation that runs at 30 frames per second, or 30 fps.  Keyframes make it possible to not have to draw an image 30 times to represent a single second of fluid animation.  As far as AW goes, it has the basics of this sort of thing already in place, but it is represented textually with the time= and wait= tags.  It is how fluid movement and transformation of objects over time is possible instead of having to build a new object for each 'frame' of an animation and then use a combination of vis=on and vis=off and AAA to switch each frame on and off like we used to have to do in the 1990's.

In Active Worlds, using keyframes on a scale effect/command, you would select how you want to animate the scaling of the cube over a period of time by placing points along the cube's timeline.  On each of these points you specify the scale the object should be at at that point in time.  These are what I'm calling keyframes because these are the key points in the animation that the builder specifies while AW takes care of the rest, hence the 'key' in the word 'keyframe'.  All other points in between are interpolated by AW's engine as the object grows or shrinks in size.  

Let's say you specify "scale 1" at 0 seconds, "scale 5" at 5 seconds, and then "scale 2" at 7 seconds.  Apply this keyframe to an object and then upon loading it, the object will load at its normal size and grow over the course of 5 seconds to 500% of its normal size.  At five seconds, it then spends the next two seconds shrinking back down to twice its normal size, and then it stays at that point.

 _
|_|

Cube's Timeline:  

Loading Point (scale 1)            5 seconds (scale 5)              7 seconds (scale 2)
X_________________________X____________ ____________X

 _                                        __________                       ____
|_|                                      |              |                      |     |
                                          |              |                      |___|
                                          |              |
                                          |              |
                                          |_________|


Do you understand the concept of key frames better?  If not, how can I clarify the concept?  Once you get this, then I can talk about how a keyframing system can be best visually represented in AW.

*The word 'cell' in this sense refers to a clear plastic sheet--similar to an overhead transparency--upon which a traditional pen and ink animator draws a character to be animated.  It's not related to the concept of a 'cell' in Active Worlds or its cell grid.

[Absolute Monarch]

For water zones:

• Water Surface Enable/Disable
• Water Surface Texture/Mask
• Water Surface Texture Map Tile Ratio (Controls texture to poly map ratio eg 1:1 for the entire size of the zone or 5:1 for the zone etc)
• Water Surface General Settings (based on the world features)
• Water Surface Direction (Rotates the texture map on the surface)

This could be used in conjunction with the current water system to allow water at multiple heights to help assist in creating: Ponds, Rivers, Small Streams, Lakes, Oceans, etc.

I'd like to see a realistic water system (similar to the one in SL's) ... I think we established last night that this was without limitations of the graphics engine...

[Tauntaun]

keyframes = p0wnage

That would be amazing and require very little editing to the existing system  Just a new easy to use interface.

Far off amazing ideas-
Remote viewing displays (like security cameras/mirrors- would be great to create Portal-esque effects).
Speech to text and text to speech.
iPhone/Netbook version of AW with simplistic graphics processing, minimal user interface, and designed for chatting over building.
Real-time command feed for building (similar to how html publishers have gone; when you type in 'create' it will bring up a easy to click menu for available options under the create command, with descriptions if hovering over a command for too long.  Could also auto detect named objects nearby and remember commonly used commands).
Customizable bots/pets (using the custom av style interface, allow custom settings for a bot- could be used to create a custom dog/cat/bird av for a potential pet-bot).
Help section with real-time chat to AWSchool/AWGate volunteers, and/or search able database/forum for frequently asked questions.
Polarization of objects (i.e.- apply a color tone to an existing object, allowing you to easily make pink toilets or black computers without actually changing any object resources).
Ability to switch from a metric based coordinate system to US system (i.e.- could go to 15 miles N, 15 miles E, allowing easier understanding of values to new users and offering builders new 'hot coordinates' to build at).
Option to create a user profile within Activeworlds (similar to a forum profile, that could contain users publicly listed build locations and optionally present information such as immigration time, build #, frequently visited worlds, e-mail, community awards; accessible by a search or by right clicking on a users avatar).
Chat command <Syntax>, that would randomly choose and display a Syntax fact where the brackets are located in chat.

[Tsukasa]

I don't know if this was to be implied along the 'object twisting/skewing' item, but I would also like to see a 'stretch' option.  Where skew would slant an object:
 _                  _
|_|  becomes /_/

Stretch would taper it:
 _                __
|_| becomes \_/


Also, I would like to see a 'tscale' command, so that textures on objects could be scaled up or down to match the mapping on other objects in a build.  This could be an additional argument to the scale command, but could be much more useful as it's own command.

[Espilae]

Chat command <Syntax>, that would randomly choose and display a Syntax fact where the brackets are located in chat.

You, sir, are a genius.

[Absolute Monarch]

I don't know if this was to be implied along the 'object twisting/skewing' item, but I would also like to see a 'stretch' option.  Where skew would slant an object:
 _                  _
|_|  becomes /_/

Stretch would taper it:
 _                __
|_| becomes \_/

Taper was a command that was discussed in length with Chrispeg last night. Seems doable.

[ʗαртдɨɳ ṂДÐ ɱїкє]

My list, with extensive use of "air quotes" to clarify my "wishes" :

Sort of from Taun's list, but rendering the "output" of a camera onto a 3D surface. This would be even better if somehow the camera object referenced didn't have to be within visible range...so we could have "portals" to each teleport location at SWGZ and won't have to use static pictures Also makes the SWSS much more fun to work on. Croquet Project has this ability already.

Ditch "Telegrams" for IMs, only persistant like how ICQ does it...meaning you don't have to be logged in to receive. Messages are just organized by who you're talking with, to reduce clutter and make it easier to communicate.

Mass-invites, I imagine this can't be too difficult to implement if the code already exists to invite one user.

A building command that lets us edit UV mapping would be hella useful. Or even just arguments for the "texture" command with x/y scale factors for the UV map.

This is getting more complex, but add logic into the building command system? The ability to perform different actions on create/bump/activate/etc. based on different conditions would be a very powerful feature.

While we're getting nitty-gritty, what about object action/description compression? Figure out some way to let us squeeze more bytes of commands into objects, or squeeze more objects into cells because each contains "less" data First things that come to mind are storing commands with some sort of shorthand version that's not neccesarily user-friendly (it would be translated back in the object properties window anyway), or doing Huffman encoding on the description/action fields before storing to the DB. Even if this doesn't allow for more objects, it could speed up load times.

And finally...
MP3s/Audio that loop seamlessly!!!
I've only been asking/promoting/whining-about this idea for 4-5 years now. And it's not just a "building" feature. It can really break up an environment with a cool ambient noise loop if there's a regular 1-second silence to mark the beginning and end of the loop. Part of this is due to the MP3 codec (short silence added to beginning of file), but this is where exploring other codecs (like...Ogg Vorbis?) can be handy. I'm not experienced with how easy this is to implement, but if it won't take a significant amount of time then I really, really, really would like to see this (finally) happen.

[Commie]

I highly doubt UV manipulation is feasible 
Mature and professional modeling programs have a hard enough time with messing around with UVs already. I doubt AW is gonna throw together something from scratch.
No need to add the sound suggestion, CMM. I got word they're overhauling the sound system in one way or another already.

[Tauntaun]

You, sir, are a genius.

I'm quite serious about the <Syntax> command   AW needs more easter eggs and random functions to bring smiles to the universe!  Sorta like some of the shirt designs for custom avs.

[Tsukasa]

Good to hear that tapering objects would likely be a reasonable addition, but it's kind of sad to hear that scaling texture mapping might not be so easy...

I just remembered another one that would be really useful:

An IF/THEN type argument for Astarts.  Rather than totally rework the scripting system the addition of these basic arguments could greatly improve the workability of complex astart animations.

Projects like Anthony's tower of hanoi, or the working 3 story global elevator that I made would be doable with a lot less steps if there was a consideration for what has been done already in the animation.