FAQ

This is the May 2023 revision of the Virtual Paradise FAQ, things may change rapidly over time, including known client issues and notable locations.

Whether you are being welcomed to Virtual Paradise, or you are someone who wants to simply learn more of the inner workings of VP, this is the article for you! If you are unable to find the answer to your question, please join our Discord server for support!

General

What is Virtual Paradise?

Virtual Paradise is an custom-made, online sandbox platform that is heavily inspired by virtual worlds from the 1990s & early 2000s. There is no real objective in VP unlike most games, and can be similarly also compared to something like Minecraft creative mode. There are a series of online servers called worlds that anyone can visit and mostly build within, although most users will gravitate towards Blizzard or VP-Build to create content in.

Who develops VP?

Virtual Paradise is maintained and developed by Edwin as a hobby project during his spare-time. He is the benevolent dictator-for-life of the VP project.

Is this an AW clone?

Virtual Paradise takes heavy inspiration from Active Worlds in particular as VP began development during the hey-day of Active World's prominence as the premier virtual world during the early 2000s. Most of the existing community came from Active Worlds or an inspired server using AW software, so the culture within the general community can be somewhat familiar to a veteran who primarily used AW. VP however, does not use any source code from AW and is a completely homebrew sandbox platform. However, VP does have a lot of very similar building functions that make it mostly compatible with AW-style content creation, as well as a similar user interface.

Is this free?

Yes, there is no subscription or paid registration needed to take full advantage of the VP platform.

Can I get my own world server?

Worlds are usually not given per request due to server limitations, but if a world is needed for a heavily ambitious project that can not be done in a public building world, like VP-Build or Blizzard, you can make a case to Edwin in the Discord or Forums explaining your unique rationale.

Controls

How do I move around?

Virtual Paradise uses both WASD & arrow keys for movement.

• W/Up Arrow is used to move forward, S/Down Arrow is used to move backward.
• Left/Right Arrows is used to move left or right, but A/D are used to strafe left & right.
• Page Up/Page Down is used to look up & down, flying/hovering can be done by using the + & - keys.
• Shift can be used to go through objects and terrain.
• Holding CTRL while using arrow keys can be used to run/move faster.

How do I manipulate objects?

In order to manipulate the 3D environment, simply right click an object or your avatar and you will be shown the Object Properties box which lists all the basic information of an object including its owner & time it was last touched. Use the insert key followed by the arrow pad & +/- buttons to move an object around as you would normally move yourself around. If you have a mouse wheel, you can use that to rotate an object around. To leave the building environment, simply click anywhere on the 3D screen or close out of Object Properties. In order to change an object to something else, you must have the name of the object file on hand, of which there is a wide selection of content at Builder's Supply Content Yard (type !j bscy into VP chat if you are in Blizzard world).

We will have videos that demonstrate how to actually build something in a future update of the FAQ page, these instructions are mainly meant to be a serviceable introduction to the Object Properties interface & object manipulation.

Notable Locations of Interest

Virtual Paradise is a very decentralized community of individual builders or groups of builders working on various content in different parts across several world servers. If you are interested in exploring, feel free to consult this category as a starting guide. The listed areas display the best of Virtual Paradise and are all actively maintained. Jump commands that teleport you to the locations are provided and can be typed into the chat (!j insert name here)

Blizzard

Blizzard is the flagship world and where most builders will gravitate towards due to it having the most content in addition to other quality-of-life features.

• Summerville is the current landing zone that newcomers will likely see first. It is an independently developed city led by graystripe that is open to building. (!j sv)
• Downtown Blizzard was the main starting area for Blizzard before Summerville, however the surrounding area will show you a lot of Blizzard's initial developed content. (!j dtb)
• Victoria is a region of Blizzard under a political union that consists of the cities of Victoria, Sparta, Cannaville, Altes Altergro, and New Beachfield. Some of these cities are open to building, while some are exclusive one-person projects. The Courier is the head mayor. (!j vicky, !j resort, !j sparta, !j cannaville)
• Lynnfield is a city in southern Blizzard developed by cassadaga heavily inspired by small-town culture & architecture. (!j lynnfield)
• Chimerock is developed by alstanbery and is meant to be styled as a 90s crime-ridden, run down city. It is not open to building. (!j chimerock)
• Pine County is solely developed by Demon Dogg as an artistic representation of a metropolitan area. (!j pine county)
• Chafeeville is a "meme community" developed by everyone and is "inspired" by former the Governor of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee. It is highly recommended you do not visit if you are not okay with NSFW content, are epileptic. (!j chafeeville)
• New Cypress Hollow is a city maintained by GC and is the main hub for the Kingdom of Palmshire project. (!j nch)

VP-Build

VP-Build used to be the flagship world of Virtual Paradise until Blizzard rose to prominence. It is still a great place to practice building however and is usually treated as such.

• Lapis Viridia is a town developed by Dragon inspired by nature, and is the most complex project currently within VP-Build. (!j lapisviridia)

Airpark

Airpark is a unique single-purpose world that is a fully-functional, interactive recreation of the The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. It is frequently updated and maintained by GSK.

Vagus

Vagus is a cyberpunk story-based world under active development and construction by Ry, but can be freely visited by all.

Known Issues

VP keeps exiting or is slow! (All Platforms 2023)

If you find your client to be crashing constantly, we recommend you set your graphics settings to Medium Quality, enable VSync, and have "Limit Frame Rate" & "Limit Frame Rate when inactive" to their default settings.

Login Window freezes (Linux 2023)

If you are a Linux user, your login window might freeze due to conflicts between CEF and the desktop environment and/or window manager choice. GNOME & most GNOME-based desktop environments such as Cinnamon & Budgie will most likely work out of the box. KDE is also known to play nice in most distributions, although you may have to switch between Wayland & Xorg modes. If you are using Xfce, MATE, or other desktop environments, you will have to run the AppImage under both sudo & --no-sandbox mode in a terminal.