Building Tips

How many objects in a cell?

Once you get the hang of moving objects around so you can build stuff, you will soon find that if you try to do too much in one cell (10 X 10 metres) the dreaded Building Inspector comes along and says: "Try building somewhere else. This space is full". In Yellow, each cell can hold lots of objects (about130), with the proviso that all the text in the object properties box does not exceed 5500 bytes. How do you check that? The Object Properties box is packed with information

about the object itself, and how much space it will take up in the cell you have it in. See the picture of the Object Properties box and look at the Cell Limit line on the very bottom. If the percent there is about 90% or more, you are almost full and the Building Inspecter will come calling.

Using Name posts

If you are using pictures from a remote site, or are using the same texture over and over again, a neat trick in saving space in your cells is to use the Name command instead. To see how this works, go to Digigurl's Demo Yard (teleport to 705.62N 954.50E 0.05a 173) and look at how she uses the Name command. For example, instead of using a remote picture command in the Action Box in the Object Properties which would take a LOT of space,like: create picture www.fredssight.com/pictures/AWpix/birchtree1.jpg[not a real URL], you could simply say create name tree, where the details of the picture are stored in a remote object.

The downside of this is that if you have lots of names with lots of pictures, it will take a long time to download, because the AW browser program has to go and find all the pictures from their sources and then download them. If you have a slow Internet link, things will be very slow. Even a fast network link will have problems with very heavy builds. As an example, go to the Rosehill Manor (ap:goto apmanor) and you will see what I mean.