Sis's VP Help Page


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Avatars
Gestures
Tours
Trading Files
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Virtual Places is a chat based program that allows you to put a face with the name. A Virtual World. In Virtual Places you choose an identity, and a pic to portray your identity (Avatar). You enter a community and chat with hundreds of other people. You are given standard program AVs, however you'll want to shop around to find an AV or AVs of your own.


Avatars

There are hundreds of sites that provide these for you already made or you can make your own. There are tons of AVs on this site to start you off.


DOWNLOADING AVS

To download an avatar simply right click on the AV you want to download and (depending on your browser)from the menu, choose either "Save link as", "Same Image as" or "Save target as". Save it to "programfiles/Vplaces/EXTs/Avatar". That's it! Then you are ready to use it.


CHANGING YOUR AV

To change your avatar.... Select "Avatars" from your file bar at the top of the browser and choose "EDIT Avatar" Or just put your mouse on your current AV or your name on the chat list and right click and choose "edit avatar". In the box that appears on the bottom of the pic choose "personal" then click edit. All of your available avatars will appear in the box. Use your slide bar to see them all and click on the avatar you would like to wear and click OK. Then OK again and you should have a new look.


MAKE YOUR OWN AV

As you remember from above I said you could make your own AV. Here's an idea of how. Most people use the Paint Shop Pro, Me. I either use MicroGraphics or Photo Works. AVs must be gif files. With the right programs you can turn any image into gif. Bring up the pic that you would like to make an avatar out of. Resize the image to W=48 L=64 pixels. Then go to file and choose "Save as" av.gif. Save it to "programfiles/Vplaces/EXTs/avatars". Simple as that! You have your own AV.

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Gestures

WHAT ARE GESTURES?

Gestures were natural, general responses, but in a short animated gif, or a gif pic that go along with common sayings, such as hello, good bye, thank you, and so forth. Since the beginning of VP and the unifacation of a lot of very imaginative members, Gestures have evolved into far more. The gestures of today are music bits, more animation and thousands of expressive sayings from movies, sitcoms and even the most used slang of this generation. As with the avatars, there are hundreds of sites containing huge collections of VP Gestures. There are some located on this site as well.


USING GESTURES IN VP

Using Gestures is a pretty simple progress, but the more gestures you have the harder they are to find on your pallet. So always be very selective on your gestures. To use a gesture during chat... Click on the yellow smiley face located at the bottom of your chat window. A pallet will appear with buttons that have pics on them. To choose a gesture just push one of the pictured buttons and hit send. This will play the gesture for the whole room. Don't worry and think something is wrong with VP if you know someone is playing a gesture and you don't see it. The reason you won't see some gestures get played is because you do not have that gesture. You'll know a gesture has been played when (You see this in the chat window).


DOWNLOADING GESTURES

It is easy to download gestures, however most gestures are in Zipped format, so you will need the program "WinZip" or another zip program. When you see a gesture you want, right click on the gesture and (again depending on your browser type) choose "Save link as" or "Save target as". Save them to "programfiles/Vplaces/EXTs/Gestures". Now when you are out scouting and downloading gestures, you will not be able to use them until you shut down VP and restart it, or after you have downloaded the gesture then click on the yellow smiley face at the bottom of your chat window and when your pallet comes up, hit the F5 on your keyboard function keys, It will take just a moment to load them and you can then see your downloaded gestures and begin to use them.


GESTURE HINTS AND TRICKS

One thing I will warn you of, Gestures are addictive. Nobody can stop at just one! Here's the problem. You press on your smiley face and find that that last batch you just picked up made the pallet go off the screen. What to do to get to those top rows? Well there are a couple of ways to deal with that. First, your windows system is probably set at 640x480. You could change your window settings to 800x600. To do this... First come out of VP and shut down any other running programs. Go to your start button. Go to settings. And choose Control Panel. (Win 3.1, Go to windows Applications window. Control Panel.) Choose Display and click on the settings tab. Go to Desk Top Area and slide bar over to 800x600. Click on Apply and come out and restart windows and then restart VP. the only problem with this is it makes the buttons smaller and a little harder to see. Second. For those of you who don't like the smaller, harder to see buttons, You could leave your windows set at 640x480 and move your VP window around to get to the gesture you would like to play. This is a little more work and does end up hendering you on how many gestures you'll be able to get and use. The way to do this is, go to the very top right hand corner of your VP window and click on the middle button. You will have to manually stretch the window out a bit more. then when you want to play a gesture you can't reach in your pallet, simply move the window down to where the smiley face is still clickable. This will do it, although it is a bit more work.


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Tours

This is a really fun and unique feature added to VP. A tour vehicle is another small pic that pops up when you activate a tour. Others can double click on the pic and become part of YOUR tour. That is to say, that you can go ANYWHERE on the web and those in your tour go with you without any effort on their side. They will stay with you where ever you go as long as they stay on your vehicle. There are two ways to work this feature. You can keep it a tour for just the two of you or you can have a bigger tour with up to 11 people. To work this feature, go to the top of your browser and click on Tours. Choose edit tour and you can pick whether you want a two person tour or up to 11 people. Then you can choose a tour vehicle to go in. The program comes with stock tour vehicles. There are also lots of pages that will provide you with tour vehicles. This page has some to choose from too. Or you can make your own. I'll tell you how in a min. Once you have chosen the tour vehicle, then you are ready to begin a tour. At the top of your browser, choose tours, then begin tour. Your vehicle will appear with you already in it. The only way for YOU to get out of the vehicle is to end the tour. Others may join your tour by (as I've already said.) either double clicking on your tour vehicle or by right clicking on your name in the room list and clicking on JOIN TOUR. Once everyone is aboard, Go to your favorite links and they will be there with you!


MAKING YOUR OWN TOUR VEHICleS

Now I mentioned that you can make your own Tours. I won't leave you hanging. As with Avatars, Most people using Paint Shop Pro to make them. Take any pic that you would like to make into a Tour to your paint program and Size the pic to..... Two person tours, W=50, L=40 pixels Up to 11 people, W=144, L=64 pixels To save it go to File. choose Save as, and tour.gif. Make sure it is saved in gif format to work in VP. Save to...... programfiles/Vplaces/EXTs/tours. That's it!! Your ready to use your new tour vehicle!


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Trading Files

Another great advantage to VP is it allows you to send and receive files from other chatters. So if someone plays a gesture that you would like to have, then you can have them send it to you right there in VP. Same applies for Avatars. Here's how you send a file...... Right click on person's AV and select send file on the pop up menu. You will then have a choice of sending Avatars(Selecting this will bring a window showing the pics of all your Avatars.), Gestures (this selection will bring up your gesture pallet allowing you to pick out the gesture you want to send right from your pallet.) or files (selecting this option will let you send a file out of your directory.). Select the option you want and then click on the file or pic. you are sending Then select send and the other person will then receive the sent file.

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Contact Me

Hopefully this will be enough to get you started with VP. I hope to see you in here. Take a moment to look around my site for AVs, BRB AVs, Mega AVs, Mega BRBs, Gestures, Tour Vehicles, and many links to browse too. If you have questions about VP, feel free to visit MY CONTACT PAGE There you can choose from several ways of getting your word through to me. Your comments and opinions (good and bad) are very important to me. I will respond as quickly as possible to try to provide any help that I can. Happy Surfing!! Happy Chatting too!!!!!


Need More Help?

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