Vital Resources

This tutorial is just that: a tutorial. It's meant to get you started without too much trouble. But there is a great deal more to learn about building.

For one thing, the objects we've used in this tutorial are only a tiny fraction of all the available objects. Objects usually have cryptic, hard-to-guess names. Who would think that "tbldt00.rwx" is a table? Likewise for textures. How do you figure out that "grass" is not a texture name, but "grasso" is?

There is a list of all the Alphaworld objects Similarly, there is a texture list. However, these are singularly difficult to read, and nobody uses them on a regular basis.

The answer is what we call an "Object Yard." An object yard contains examples of all of the available objects, carefully laid out and organized by type. There are also "texture yards" which have categorized examples of all of the available textures.

The oldest object yard (and my personal favorite) is NorthWest Builder's Supply, located at 1096n 987.9w. This yard was built and is maintained by Lara, who is one of the most active and best-loved members of the AW community. Recently she had to expand her object yard to accomodate some newly added objects; newer objects can be found at 23555.3N 23517.6W 0.3a.

A good texture yard can be found at 1379.7N 1853.6W 0.1a 180. This texture yard was built and is maintained by kellee, another active community member.

The commands that I've covered here are only the most basic. There are lots of other useful commands. Try reading the manual. Click the Help tab, select Building, and then click on a topic that looks helpful. Documentation is also available from the AW Com website ( click here).

Another excellent way to learn more is to keep exploring other people's buildings. If you see something you like, examine the object to see if you can figure out how they did it. If you are a citizen, you can send telegrams to people asking how they did thus-and-such. As long as you're polite about it, most people are willing to explain their techniques. Note: telegrams that are not delivered get deleted after one week. If somebody is on vacation, they may not get your telegram at all. If you don't get a response, send a fresh one the next time you see that they're online. Also, sometimes a person will stop coming to Activeworlds. Their account remains active, but they no longer use it. So if you try several times to contact someone and never hear back, it's probably because they aren't really there at all anymore. This is called being NAC -- "Not A Citizen" -- and originally referred to people who stopped using AW when fees were introduced for citizenship. It has since come to mean anybody who has drifted away.

The worlds AWSchool and AWUniv offer teachers who can help you learn to build. Simply teleport to the world, and you'll find more information about how to contact a teacher.

Lastly, there are other, more advanced tutorials available over the web. Click here to visit the SW City Academy, a tutorial site covering many of the more advanced topics in building.

And that's more than enough to get you started building. If you have comments or suggestions (constructive suggestions) regarding this tutorial, please contact me. You can telegram me in AW (My citizen name is Selanit) or you can email me. I prefer email, since I am often away from AW for long periods of time. Enjoy yourself!