SW City Builders Academy
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The SW City Builders Academy is an educational resource made by Syntax and SW Comit. It is currently maintained by Syntax and SW Chris.
The Academy contains building tips and techniques for building your own creations, primarily in Activeworlds and Deltaworlds. The Academy's main focus is sharing very specific methods of building, and not so much on the basics of building.
History
The original Academy was a small wooden building in downtown Central SW City, built sometime in 2000. Ironically it was deleted years later due to no longer meeting "standards of building".
A new Academy, with a more campus-like layout, was built in August 2001. Each building on the campus covered a building tactic or lesson. Classes included How to Get Started Building, Basic Commands, Troubleshooting, Innovations, Astart Astop Animation Scripting, Masking, Object Gridding, and Visuals.
The academy also featured a graduation system, which involved building something that met a list of requirements. Admission into SW City staff and/or acquiring prime pieces of property required graduate status. However, this version of the Builders Academy became obsolete as new techniques were developed and new versions of Activeworlds released, and all graduation ceased being a requirement for building in SW City or joining staff.
The Academy program sat mostly dormant from 2002 to 2006. Updates were only added the website version, and those were far and few between. Between 2003-2006, all newly acquired building techniques and tips were shared on the SW City Forum in the building section.
In December 2006, the new Builders Academy wiki-based website was launched.
Features
The Builders Academy has five categories of topics:
- Articles: These are critiques and examinations of buildings in Activeworlds. Reviews like this can help builders know what to look for in their projects, or learn what not to do.
- Building: Covers building techniques that serve as a foundation for more advanced techniques.
- Guides: Guides are the most developed section of the Academy. These are typically lengthy how-to guides on topics such as realistic road design and planning, performance tuning your projects, and structural detailing.
- Resources: Resources are directories of art content that builders can use to enchance their projects, such as sounds effects and picture graphics.
- Toolbox: A repository of building action codes, prebuilt object groups called AWGs, SW City Interactive-enabled AWGs, particle presets, and simple techniques such as road curving.