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Are you a good Active Worlds caretaker ?

Tips & Tricks to become a perfect Caretaker

• What does the word caretaker mean ?

It's the word used to indicate in general the owner of a virtual world of the Active Worlds kind.
The term "world owner" is also used.

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• Tip n°1

It's important to reduce at maximum the sizes of textures and objects as not all your visitors might have a highspeed internet connection. The sizes of your objects are in direct relation to the time needed for downloading all objects into the visitor's cache.

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• Tip n°2

The same texture of 15kb displayed on 10 different objects will still only be a one time download of 15kb for your visitor.

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• Tip n°3

An object of 3kb with 350 faces which contain 5 different textures of 15kb each will have for result that your visitor downloads 3kb to which is added 75kb of textures, thus 78kb in total.

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• Tip n°4

Many have difficulties to understand why, since they already downloaded the world into their local cache, they're still moving very, very slow. Which slows down the browser in a world is not as much the number of Kb it has to download in objects and textures, but rather the number of faces it has to display. Depending on a computer's configuration, this can be quite a heavy task. On top of that, even the faces which are not displayed (for example, you are standing in front of a wall, you only see one side, but the browser also displays the other side). To explain this tip, put 3 trees with 15000 faces each and try to walk passed them.

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• Tip n°5

The same object of 3kb with 350 faces placed 10 times in the same area will still only be 3kb to download for your visitor, but will also be 3500 faces to calculate to be displayed.

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• Tip n°6

Free downloaded 3D objects converted directly into RWX format are to be avoided. Often they are not designed for a virtual world but for landscape scenes with a (very) high level of details (and thus a large number of faces).

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• Tip n°7

Users of Truespace who are using directly their .COB files (an other supported format) have to stay careful (see tip n°6).

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• Tip n°8

Your eyes could cheat on you with textures appropriate reduced in the number of faces on your objects without changing the appearance.

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• Tip n°9

An animated texture is not only more heavy to download than a simple texture, but they're also known to quickly make your eyes tired. To be used with parsimony.

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• Tip n°10

The create light, movers, particules objects, and rotate commands are also to be used with parsimony for the same reasons of the calculation times at the level of display performance.

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• Tip n°11

Always keep in mind that even if you have a super Hi-Tech computer with lots of memory, the latest ultra fast CPU, a super fast Internet connection and amazing graphical display performances, that this might not be the case for everyone else.

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• Tip n°12

Only leave the object refresh time at a short interval when you have modified an existing object without changing its name or if you have modified the avatar list. In all other cases, it's totally useless and can be annoying for visitors who have a slower Internet connection.

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• Tip n°13

Still for computer performance reasons which won't be the same for everybody, don't impose a distance of sight of 100m to your visitors who will thus be obligated to download and to display everything which is present in a circle of 100m.

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• Tip n°14

An object is only visible when its centrepoint is in sight range. If you have to display large extensions, it's better to divide them in several objects.

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• Tip n°15

Think about giving logical names to your objects. It will appear more logic to find a table named "table.rwx" than a table with the name "xbv125z2.rwx". This is also more easy to find objects within your FTP and for "builders" if your world is open for public construction.
When your world is open for public construction, make an exposition of all your objects to make it easier to find objects, or, if you do not have the space available, make a list available containing all the object names.

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• Tip n°16

If your world is opened for all public, state clearly in the welcome message of your world who its owner is and where one can report questions or problems. This can also be useful during your absence when someone would like to request a space to build or would like to congratiulate you for your work.

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• Tip n°17

Don' forget that when a caretaker gives his privilege password to someone else, the caretaker gives the same rights and access to this other person as the caretaker him/herself has in a virtual world.

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• Tip n°18

It is advised to change your passwords from time to time.
When you do change your privilege password, do not forget to also modify your privilege password in bot configurations which might be present in your world, as they might no longer be functioning.

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• Tip n°19

Try as much as possible to always have someone present in your world, for instance with help of friends. Your welcome is important for a good impression, especially for new visitors.

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