Building in ActiveWorlds
Important note: The last I checked, AW has decided that tourists should be restricted to only a few worlds, so many things on this page and others may not apply to them. I'm not going to change the wording because I'm not sure if ActiveWorlds is going to keep restricting the tourists to only a few worlds or will eventually change their minds and allow tourists to roam freely again.
Please understand, that I no longer recommend ActiveWorlds to people in real life or on-line. I have tried to do an honest review of the main 3D chat programs, comparing prices, number of users, cost of worlds, how many worlds in each program, and so on, but ActiveWorlds is near the bottom of the list.
For those who wish to contact me, try coming to my world, This Is It. And no, it's not in that hell, ActiveWorlds! Thank the gods! Or, to quote someone I have a growing respect for: "Thank God almighty, I'm free at last!"
You should go to the world AWSchool (if AWLD isn't being anal-retentive and keeping the tourists out of it) and learn the basics of building first, before you try it for yourself. Reading all the signs and taking notes of the parts you think you won't be able to remember is a good beginning. Also, if you have any questions, writing them down so you can ask someone later is a good idea. After you've learned as much as you can on your own, you can try to contact one of the teachers listed in there. They can show you how to build a basic structure. When you've completed that, here's some other tips from me to you, that they don't tell you about.
* Make a WordPad file for each world you're going to build in, and when you see an object that you want to use, you can copy and paste the object's name from it into that file, and write a short description of it after it, so you'll know what it is without having to try it out first. If you don't know where a world's object yard is, and there isn't a sign or a teleport at that world's GZ (Ground Zero to the new people out there which is 0N 0W in every world) you should ask someone, and go there to look for things you would like to use, since most of the world's objects are usually found there. In some worlds, you can go to the GZ in it and say the words object yard, and the bot will tell you where to find it.
* After you get about 20 or so object names, it would be wise to start organizing the list into sections like walls, panels, furniture, et cetera, and separating each section with a row of * before the list gets too cluttered to find anything easily.
* Remember that you will probably need a WordPad file for each world you build in, because objects that work in one world may not in another, or they'll be something totally different than what they were somewhere else.
* If you're a tourist and you want to build somewhere, you should consider hiding it in a very far away location, so that someone isn't likely to find it and delete it. Since you're a tourist, anyone can delete what you build, even other tourists! Looking for this place is fairly easy. You can use higher numbers that're odd, and not even numbers like 200N 200W, because those are usually always taken. The trick is to find one that's fairly close by some object, copy the object, and move it very far away from anything else (like around 50 co-ords) so the chances that what you build will be discovered by accident and deleted are few. You should also write down the location somewhere so you don't lose it. One final tip for tourist building: Don't tell anyone that you can't trust not to delete it where it's at. If you put a lot of work into something only to come back later on to find it's gone, it could really bring you down.
* Find out what the rules of building are in the world that you're thinking of building in before you start. In some worlds, certain content is a no-no, and if you build something they don't like, it'll be deleted.
* If you use a lot of commands in the action box of an object, it'll quickly fill up the 'cell data limit' for the area you're in, and it'll also slow things down for visitors to your builds. If you or one of your visitors has trouble moving around inside of your build, you should consider cutting back on some things, or at least try to replace a few of the objects with commands in them with regular objects that you don't need to put anything in the action box. This'll also allow you to add more objects to the area without getting 'full messages' from the building inspector. For the best object yard I've seen so far, I recommend Lara's NorthWest Builder's Supply? located in AlphaWorld at 1095N 988W.
* A fairly common first time builder mistake: You don't need to put the object name in the description box to get an object to work, unless it's a sign or something that needs it to display the text. That's only done in the object yards where you can put your mouse over an object to see what its name is without having to right-click on one to find out. If you go back through all those objects that you wrote something in the description boxes of by mistake and remove the object's name from the description boxes, it'll clear up more 'cell data space' for you, and you can build more stuff in that area. :-)
Back to CyberWoLfman's ActiveWorlds Experience.
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