Before you Start
This is the most important and most overlooked aspect of building: To claim land you must completely cover it with objects. You must cover every inch of land you own. Don't leave any gaps! Be sure to claim as much land as you will need. If you don't cover it, you don't own it, and people are free to build in any empty spaces you leave. Don't count on others to be polite and honor your borders. If you don't want others building there, cover it. Using large flat pieces (such as Walk Objects) is the easiest and most efficient way to completely cover your land.
Far too many people fail to do this and simply spread trees and fences around their house, leaving the yard open. Sooner or later someone will come along and put something in the bare space in the yard. Some people do it to be mean. Some are just experimenting with building and don't know what they're doing. Regardless of the reason, you will be stuck with some useless object in your yard that you cannot delete (because the object will be owned by someone else and Active Worlds prevents you, and anyone else, from deleting the property of other citizens.)
Activeworlds Inc. gets email every day from people who don't follow this advice and then
request that we clean up unwanted objects. Our staff could not ever hope to keep up with
the thousands of builders in AlphaWorld, let alone the entire Active Worlds Universe. We can't settle land disputes, remove unwanted
objects, or clean up abandoned buildings. This can all be avoided if you take the time to
cover your land first!
Getting Started with Building.... The "guts" of building
with the Active Worlds
Browser takes place in the Object Properties dialog box:
To display any object's properties,
simply right-click on the object. The Object Properties
dialog box appears, and you can view the object's Description, Object filename and Action in the
various fields, plus the owner's Citizen ID and the date that object was last modified. If you own
that object (you were the first one to put it on a vacant piece of land), you are allowed to make
changes in the appearances or actions, and you're also allowed to move it to other pieces of vacant
land or your own property.
Building new objects with the Active Worlds Browser is a three-step
process. First, you'll need to find some existing object to copy, or "clone" -- that's the only way
you can create a new object. This will be your starter object. Then, using the mouse, keyboard, button bar
or the Object menu in the Object Properties dialog box, you move the object to the desired location
on your property. If you want to turn the object into an entirely different object, you can change
its Object field in the Object Properties dialog box . Finally, you can also change the object's
Description and Action -- just click on the desired text box and type in your changes.
You can only build on areas of a world that don't already contain other people's objects.
This means that the first thing you'll need to do is scout out an unused area and "stake your claim".
Try to find an area that is big enough to build what you want, and that is not part of another
person's property.
The only thing that is necessary to claim a piece of land as your own is to place
some of your own objects on it. As a citizen, any object you build will be stamped with your
citizen number; you will be the only one allowed to move, change or delete that object.
Property built by tourists, on the other hand, can be deleted by anyone.
As mentioned above, the first thing you want to do is cover your new land with many large,
flat pieces (such as walks or floors). You can always remove them later when you are
ready to build in that exact spot.
Keep your building neat!
Nothing ruins the look of a world more than lots of shabby,
sloppy building. Make sure that the edges of adjacent objects meet cleanly;
overlapped objects and randomly placed objects look bad.
Overlapping many objects in one
place can also cause flashing or "z-buffer fighting" and ruin the effect of your building.
Selecting a Starter Object
Find an object that's near to where you want to start building.
This can be any selectable item: someone else's object,
a piece of the street, it really doesn't matter.
You will soon have a chance to change a copy of this object into something else.
Right-click on the object once to select it.
Then press the INSERT key or Duplicate button
to make a copy of the object. The new copy will appear behind the original.
The yellow rectangle that indicates a selected object is now around your copy. You're ready
to move your starter object to your new homestead.
Moving an Object
You can use the mouse, keyboard, or toolbar to move objects that you've selected. You can
also use the Object menu.
The arrow keys move the selected object forwards, backwards and sideways.
The plus key on the numeric keypad raises your object above the ground.
The minus key on the numeric keypad drops your object back down. Be careful! It's possible
to sink an object below the ground where you can't see it.
The Page Up and Page Down keys rotate your object 15 degrees around the Y axis (the Y axis points
straight up and down in Active Worlds.) 15 degrees means you'll have to hit
these keys twelve times to make an object spin halfway around.
Beginning with Active Worlds 3.3, if 3-axis rotation is enabled in the world, you can also use the
/ and * keys and the Home and End keys on the numeric keypad to rotate the object around
the X and Z axes, respectively. Using the right combination of X, Y, and Z-axis rotation,
an object can be placed at any possible orientation. You can also left-click and drag
on a selected object to free rotate it into any orientation.
Holding down the SHIFT key allows you to make smaller adjustments whenever you're moving
an object. Holding down both the SHIFT and the CTRL key
simultaneously allows extremely precise adjustments when moving an object.
You can also use the mouse to move objects.
To move an object with the mouse, simply right-click on the object once with the
mouse in order to select it, then right-click on the object again and hold
while moving the mouse. The object will move around in the horizontal plane. To move the object
up and down using the mouse, hold the CTRL key down while dragging. As with the arrow
keys, if you hold down SHIFT while dragging, the object will move at smaller increments,
allowing more precise placement.
Note that in order to drag an object with the mouse, it must first be selected. This is
to avoid accidentally moving objects while selecting them.
If you have a mouse with a mouse-wheel, you can also rotate the selected object(s) in place by
turning the wheel. In addition, clicking the mouse-wheel while an object or objects are
selected duplicates those objects (the same as pressing the Insert key).
Once you have moved the object to where you want it, simply left-click the mouse
or close the Object Properties dialog box to deselect ('drop') the object in place. If you want to
keep moving the object, just select it again by right-clicking on it. If you want to delete an
object, use the DELETE key or button while the object is selected.
Tip: It's a good idea to first drop a copy of your starter object at its final destination,
and then select it again before you change the object type. Otherwise, your starter object might
disappear if you accidentally mistype the new name!
Building Sounds
Active Worlds 3.4 now supports the concept of
Building Sounds.
Building sounds can be turned on or off in the
General Settings
dialog.
