design

Darkwolf Sim Update

On Monday, I mentioned that my homestead in Second Life was almost completely torn down to make room for changes that were already underway. Well, most of the week has been spent in world working on the sim. Except for my store area, everything in the sim is pretty much done. I didn’t really create anything new, a couple simple mesh objects, but most of what I did was reuse what I already had. Even better was the fact that I could do all this without affecting the existing Wonderland Glade that was created by my SL sister, Indy.

First Level: Wonderland Glade and Docks

The Wonderland Glade is a beautiful forested valley in one corner of the sim that was created by Indygo Moonbeam. That area remained untouched by the changes, but the rest of the sim was terraformed so that it was all water. This made a nice large area for sailing or jetskiing. So, to accommodate that, I created a small dock in which the boat and jetski are located. In addition, I decided to put out the 7Seas Fishing game for any who might enjoy using it.

Wonderland Docks

Entrance to Wonderland Glade

Wonderland Glade

Second Level: Darkwolf Boardwalk and Lounge

The Boardwalk and Lounge was moved up to the second level, and turned to face the west. The old club rez area remained intact, so that all the scenes I previously created were still usable in the new area. The lounge backed up toward steep cliffs, that isolated it from the rest of the sim. Since there was the natural barrier there, the other side of the sim was left undecorated.

Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk

Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk

Third Level: TD Creations Mainstore (Coming Soon)

The third level of the sim is the future home of the TD Creations Mainstore. The store is a single level, having no ceiling, to allow for rezzing of the prefab homes. I still have a lot of work to do on this level, adding more landscaping so it doesn’t look quite as empty, as well as bringing my CasperVend systems over.

TD Creations Mainstore (Under Construction)

Fourth Level: Darkwolf Isle (Our Home)

The home of Lola, Trasee and Kee Darkwolf is isolated from direct teleports. The only access is by being teleported by someone already in the home, or by the teleportation pads on the sim. It is also protected by a security orb so we can enjoy our privacy. The security orb will eject intruders after a warning, but won’t teleport them home, so anyone can still enjoy the sim, without disturbing our privacy.

Darkwolf Isle

Darkwolf Home

Fifth Level: Build Region

The highest level of the sim is the build region. It is where I can build new club scenes, designed to fit at Darkwolf Boardwalk, as well as build things for the store. There is a mirror of the boardwalk so components can be properly aligned as well as a checkered grass area for the store builds. A beach area in between contains a pose stand in the beach that I can use when I’m organizing outfits. As it is strictly a build area, there won’t be much in the way of landscaping on this level, which is why I selected a scene that looked nice enough without the need for the additional trees.

Build Region

All in all, I’m using somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 prims. Hard to have an exact number, as each parcel has a separate group owner. I would guess that I’m not using quite that much. Since I still have the store to do, I will probably end just over that 3000 prim mark. That will still leave me with close to 2000 prims to work with. Looking at what I’ve been able to accomplish, I wonder now, do I really need to upgrade to a full sim in the future? It is still something to think about, but with this redesign, I’ve probably pushed it off until early next year, if at all.

Darkwolf Sim

Darkwolf Sim, at Camelot dAlliez, has been demolished. The cranes came in and picked up the buildings while the bulldozers leveled everything except one corner of the sim. Needless to say, it’s been a busy weekend.

So, what exactly happened? Well, I’ve still been fighting the depression. I had just started to get past it, when the rug got pulled out from beneath me. I became very busy, and with the struggle to deal with life and the limited time that resulted, my depression sunk me down again. By the end of last week, I was looking for a way to climb back up. So, creativity was what I felt like was needed.

First, I was looking into getting a full sim of my own, instead of renting the homestead from d’Alliez as I am currently. I have two weeks left at my current sim before I have to pay again, which would have given me time to move things to the new sim. I’ve been wanting my own full sim with the maximum 30000 LI and full control for a long time. There is so much I could build and design on a full sim, and never have to worry about prim counts.

I thought things through for a while, looked at monthly costs and setup fees. I know I can afford it, but should I do it? Should I just wait for Sansar later this year? What would I do if it didn’t work out? Could I do anything with my existing homestead and a maximum of 5000 LI? I must have spent two or three hours debating before finally deciding that I couldn’t let my depression dictate my spending habits. I need to wait to get a new sim, if I get one at all.

After that decision was made, the next decision was what to do at my sim. I want to make changes, consolidate everything to my sim. How was I going to do that, though? I had bought the fatpack of all sim surrounds from Landscape Unlimited a few months back (Black Friday, if I recall). I started looking at those, both land and sky, to see what options I had. So, after several more hours of rezzing one after the other, I finally made my decision.

One corner of my sim has the Glade. This was a wooded area that was created by my SL sister, Indy. I wanted to see if I could preserve that. But my caverns (never completed), club, and home could go away. Instead, what I would do is move the club and home to separate levels in the sky, using the sim surrounds to make it appear that it was at ground level, while the actual ground was leveled, except for the Glade.

The first level was set up as a beach backed up against steep island walls. I moved the club builds up to that level, instead of recreating the buildings, and turned this into the new Darkwolf Lounge and Boardwalk.

The second level was a mountainous region with one level of the mountain set aside for the store. I created a very simple ground with four walls, and no ceiling, for the store. I built it in Blender, so it was only 3LI with the physics layer. I added my wrought iron fencing to the top of the walls for decoration. The reason it is open is for rezzing of the homes, as well as giving visibility to the mountains outside.

The third level was just a small beach with islands that wasn’t a full sim surround, but just tucked nicely into one corner of the sim. Just big enough for our small home, which I moved up from the ground as it was.

The fourth level was my build area, just an expanse of water with a copy of part of the club, so that I could design new club scenes if needed. Although that design might be revaluated for another sim surround, and my build area set up in that new surround. That’s something I’ll be looking at later.

Finally, I switched my sim from Adult to Moderate. As I’ll be moving the store to the sim, and nothing in the store is adult in nature, I don’t want to limit the possible visitors (not that I have many now anyways). The club won’t have any adult items, and while there may be nudity in the club, nudity is still allowed in Moderate sims. Flying is disabled on the sim, so the only way between the levels is through the teleport pads.

Hopefully, by the time I finish all this, I’ll be mostly back to normal, whatever normal is.