Finding Land
There are roughly a thousand worlds in the Activeworlds universe. However, the vast majority of these are not open to public building. Most of them are privately owned by citizens who wanted precise control of the environment.
This is not to say that land is hard to come by. AWCom provides several public building worlds, including Alphaworld, Yellowstone, Mars, and many others. Of these "public" worlds, by far the most popular is Alphaworld, which appears in the world list as "AW."
This tutorial will focus on building in Alphaworld, because that's where almost everyone gets started. Many people never build anywhere else. Also, Alphaworld is still the largest world, meaning that it still has the largest amount of available space.
On the other hand, Alphaworld also the oldest world. Which means that the best spots were all taken years ago. Here is a satellite photo of Alphaworld:
The centre of the square is Alphaworld's Ground Zero, 0n
0w. As you can see, settlement progressed out from the centre along
horizontal, vertical, and diagonal axes, creating a star-like pattern. The
pattern is because the early builders tended to pick locations with
easy-to-remember coordinates. 0n 500e is easy to
remember. 3400n 3400w is easy to remember.
Coordinate sets with 0 as one of the co-ords created the horizontal and vertical
lines spreading out from Ground Zero, and sets where both coordinates were the
same number created the diagonal lines. People also tended to settle as close to
Ground Zero as possible, with the result that the regions immediately around GZ
are the most densely built.
The world is not built solid. There is lots of open space left. Try
typing in random coordinates and seeing if you find open space. If that's too
disorderly for your taste, start at GZ and teleport along one line until you
find some open space. For example, start at 0n 0w,
then teleport to 500n 0w. If there's no space
available, teleport to 750n 0w, look around again,
and continue travelling north (or south, or whatever) in 250 co-ord intervals
until you find some space.
Another tactic you might try is using the Alphaworld Mapper's QuickNav to survey potential sites from orbit. Type the co-ords you're interested in into the text box and the mapper will generate a map of the area for you. The co-ords are just like you'd use to teleport with in Activeworlds. Once you're looking at a map, you can zoom in and out and shift in any direction. Just keep sweeping over areas and you'll find a spot.
What to look for in a potential site
You need to have a section of just plain, unused terrain. This is what unused
area looks like:
