 
If the server does forget the number, the dispenser won't work. Ouch. Once you have your avs (props) all ready, you need to choose the type of room you'll design and create. First, let me describe the four main kinds: 1) The Traditional Dispenser. A "traditional" room, with spots you touch to receive the av. The spot's name tells you more or less what kind of av you'll be getting. 2) The Background GIF Dispenser. This type of room has the avs showing on the background GIF itself. We have a very cool one (if I must say so myself!) at CyberQuest for the dual filmstar avs. You can find this room in CyberQuest by going to the Quest for Romance wing, then to the Ballroom, then the Nook, then clicking on the Sabrina poster (a lot of clicking, but worth it!). 3) The Overlaid GIF Dispenser. Another type of dispenser has overlaid GIFs in a room. You get to see all the avs available before you begin clicking. This dispenser is very similar to the Background Dispenser. 4) The Next/Previous Dispenser. A newer type of dispenser
has a series of avs available if you just keep touching a particular spot
(often a forward or backward arrow icon). You'll be dressed in one av,
then click on the same spot to wear another, etc. You can find this type
of av dispenser at CyberQuest in the Black and White av
room.  This style of av room has a series of spots with names that, when touched, dress the user in the av. Here's how one such room looks:  CyberQuest uses this type of dispenser in the Female Av Room (to reach all the av rooms at CyberQuest, go to the Foyer, then into the "Mall" room. From there you can find the av rooms very easily). Here's how to create such a dispenser. 1) Go to Wizard mode, then on the menu under Wizard create a New Door. Highlight the door's tabs by clicking anywhere inside it, then size the door and move it into position. The door can be any size or shape, but for this type of dispenser, you'll probably want a basic rectangle. Now, with the door highlighted, open the Door Info dialogue box. That dialogue box has several invaluable spots. On the left you'll see ID, Dest, and Name. Tab down to the name box and insert the name of the av you'll want in that dispenser. Also, under Options, click on Don't Move Here and Show Name. Finally, insert the following script into the Script box:  ON SELECT { Now click OK. So far, so good, but you're not quite done. You must insert (between the square brackets) the numbers of the av tiles you want to dispense. Your finished script will look something like this: ON SELECT { But now you must find out the numbers the server has assigned to your av tiles. You can do this in one of two ways. The first is to put on an av tile (only one at a time) and then type "/TOPPROP ITOA SAY" into your text field without the quotes. You'll see the av number appear on screen and in your log. Then, go to the next tile, and the next, etc. This process is remarkably tedious if you have a lot of avs. (To think of how many avs I put in CyberQuest this way!) Nevertheless it will work. Just insert the numbers between the square brackets of your script, go out of authoring mode, click your new spot dispenser, and you'll be dressed in your av! (Note: Be careful with the punctuation and spacing. There is a space between the numbers, but nothing else. Some numbers will be preceded with the negative sign (-) but others will not.)
A much better way to get your av numbers and the entire dispenser script is to go to BotBot. There, you can create your own cyborg file which can include the "Propspot" script. (If you're not sure what a cyborg file is, please get more information at the Palace web page. I strongly recommend you construct a new cyborg with the "Propspot" script, no matter how long it takes to figure out Botbot and to get your new cyborg to work.
If you already know how to edit your cyborg script, just plug the following into the OUTCHAT section: ;;propspot script for your cyborg If you have installed the "propspot" script into your cyborg, you can now just put on the av you want to put in the dispenser and type "propspot" without the quotes into your text field and hit return. In your log you'll see the entire script. Lovely and simple and very time-saving. Let us sing the praises of whoever created that script! Then, insert the entire script into the blank script box and save. Go out of authoring mode, touch the new spot dispenser, and you'll be wearing your new av! You can repeat this process and place many such dispensers in a room.  The background GIF dispenser works on the exact same script as the traditional dispenser. However, instead of creating a door, naming the door, and making the name visible, the door is simply placed over the part of the background that shows the av. See below for an illustration:  This background GIF shows photos of famous film stars. I created the room using Ray Dream Studio. The avs available, then, are dual avs of the film stars, with two spots per photo on the table. For example, in the lower left corner we see the photo of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman (from that great film, Notorious). We've placed two spots on that photo, one which delivers the Cary Grant av, the other which delivers the Ingrid Bergman av, and when placed together, the dual av looks just like what you see in the photo. The scripts, then, for the spots on such a background GIF, are just the same as described above: ON SELECT { The numbers in the above script would be replaced with the numbers for the av you want to dispense--in the example above, either Cary or Ingrid. And of course, you could find the numbers using the propspot script described above. The Background GIF technique, then, proves itself very easy to script. The difficulty lies in getting a cool GIF in the first place. If you don't have a 3D program like Ray Dream Studio, don't despair (although it's ultra cool and relatively cheap as 3D modelers go). You can achieve cool effects by using a regular photo background, and then placing avs on top of it, making sure all the tiles line up. Then, you can take a screen shot of the room with the avs, and use that screen shot as your background GIF.  Another very similar approach to the one described above requires overlaid GIFs placed on top of a room background. For example, let's say I have a variety of cool female avs and want to change them often. Instead of using a background GIF (with the avs actually a part of the GIF itself), I could use overlaid GIFs using the technique described on another page of these instructions. If you can make overlaid GIFs, simply make your avs into GIFs and call them up in spots. Then, in the Script Box of the Door Info Box insert the following script: ON SELECT { Of course you'll replace the numbers above with the numbers of the av you wish that door to dispense. When the user activates that script, they will be dressed in the av they touch. This particular technique provides several clear advantages: 1) the user can see the av before they click on the door; 2) the overlaid GIFs can be changed to different GIFs very easily without changing the actual background of the room.  This type of dispenser is actually a combination of three separate scripts in three doors. Here's an example of how such a room looks:  In the above GIF you'll see the arrows pointing left and right. Clicking those delivers the avs. This particular room has two sets of scripts, one for women's avs and one for men's. The instructions below just discuss how you'd install one set of scripts. Now, let's talk about the scripts involved. These are somewhat tricky, with several parts you'll have to modify to suit your own needs, so be patient with yourself as you try to learn this one. And refer to these directions frequently. Here we go: 1) Create a door and size it into a spot. Position this spot where you want the user to click to go forward through the avs. Optional: Add in your overlaid GIF of your forward arrow, or the word "forward" or "next" or whatever you want to signal the user the purpose of this door. Click on Don't Move Here, then open the Script Box and plug in the following script: ON SELECT{
2) Create a second door and size it into a spot. Position this spot where you want the user to click to go backward through the avs. Optional: Add in your overlaid GIF of your backward arrow, or the word "backward" or "previous" or whatever you want to signal the user the purpose of this door. Click on Don't Move Here, then open the Script Box and plug in the following script: ON SELECT{
3) Create a 3rd door, size it, and move it discreetly out of the way. Take note of the Door ID number, and use that to vary the scripts above. See my notes just preceding. This door will be used only to house a script. It does not contain any overlaid GIFs. Highlight the door and open it with the Door Info box in the Wizard menu. Open the script box and plug in the following script: ON ALARM { NOTE: After the line CLEARPROPS you'll see an open square bracket [. That's fine. It matches the closed bracket near the bottom of the script right before the ME GETSPOTSTATE etc. Now, in the above script, you'll see lots of square brackets [ ] in pairs. In fact, there are 12 pairs of them. You may insert your prop numbers (see above) between those pairs of square brackets. You have room for 12 avs in this particular script. But you can vary the number easily. Adding an Av: To add one more av to the script, do the following (after drinking another cup of coffee, of course): In the first script we installed, change the number "10" (in the fourth line down) to "11" without the quotation marks. I know it's odd to put "11" there when you'll actually have 13 avs in the script, but as the Nike ad says, "Just Do It!" In the second script we installed, change the "11" in the second line to 12. In the third script, change the "11" in the last line to "12". And add another pair of brackets (AFTER the first open bracket) and insert your av numbers. Deleting an Av: To have one fewer avs available, do the following: In the first script we installed and change the number "10" to "9" without the quotation marks. In the second script we installed, change the "11" in the second line to 10. In the third script, change the 11 in the last line to 10. And delete a pair of brackets (AFTER the first open bracket). Of course you can put many more avs than twelve in your room. I've seen such a dispenser work with as many as 60 avs. Different servers vary and you might not be able to cram that many in a script box on your particular server, so be a bit careful if you're planning on adding a very large number of avs. P. S. I want to thank Katt for providing these simple, elegant scripts. Thanks also to others who offered alternative scripts for achieving the same results.  Hey, if you've installed these scripts and they work, you can be very proud of yourself. It's tricky to get everything just right. If you are having trouble, reread the directions slowly and under the influence of more caffeine.
  Back to Home Page On to
How to Make Link Rooms |
Remember that you should get the numbers from
the server where the avs will be housed and where the scripts will be
located. In other words, don't get the av numbers at your private Palace
and then try to paste those numbers into scripts on a different
server.
Mac users, BotBot seems particularly Mac
unfriendly. The final cyborg it creates will contain much extraneous stuff
with some odd characters. I recommend you edit out the extraneous material
(if you can identify it) and save the cyborg with SimpleText, or some
other text editor. Also, BotBot cyborg's are not compatible with ken
marks' mmmmm plugin for midis and may also cause some odd messages when
changing rooms in Palace.