From the Wyverns nest

Sim Building!

July 1st, 2008 Posted in Places

Following the terraforming of Abalus by Daryth and a few minor adjustments by me and Nimbus, the next task is to decorate the sim.  We have 3750 prims on the sim of which we want to reserve 750.  This leaves 3000 prims to do our own builds and for general sim landscaping.

I don’t have the time or skill to build everything a sim needs, so time to go shopping!

Botanicals

Unless the sim is themed to be a barren wasteland, it needs trees, bushes and flowers.  Abalus has a Mediterranean island type theme.   The whole concept of the area is an old volcano which blew it’s top off many thousands of years ago (and the detritus has settled inside the cone) .

To save on prim allocation, around the outside of the island I have generally used Linden trees; these are 1 prim and generally look acceptable for most people (depending on graphics setting).  But within the Island itself I prefer to use prim trees, especially given the nature of the Linden trees to encroach on buildings (depending on wind and graphics settings).

I favour trees from the Heart Garden Centre, these are well priced (often 299L$ or 399L$ for a multipack of 12 trees) with excellent textures and many trees are 6 prims or less.  I really like the Heart silver birch trees and think those are probably the nicest trees they make.  I have combined these with Mediterranean Pines and Mountain Pine for most of the general areas.  On the dragon beach I have used tropical palms.  Scattered around the Island are also the odd Lemon tree and Olive tree.  Equus has Apple and Orange trees, so it looks like we won’t have any shortage of fruit!  On the Isle of Wyrms proper Daryth has also used Heart trees, so this also helps keep the sim looking consistent with the rest of the continent.

I did consider buying some Straylight Botanicals forest trees, however the smaller trees are ~35 prims each (priced at around 160L$ per no-copy tree) and the mega tree just dominates the whole sim.  If I was making a tree house forest sim these would be my first choice however!  I recommend visiting ElvenValley to see a really nice forest sim with the Botanicals trees nicely used (including a mega).

Another tree maker worth mentioning is Julia Hathor, her trees are also very nice, very prim efficient and have some nice features (like the apple trees that do drop apples).  Although I find that it isn’t easy to integrate her trees with Heart and get a consistent look.

Again for bushes I tend to favour Heart, expect to see some Purple Loosestrife, Foxgloves and maybe even some grape vines turning up.

Structures

Most of my major builds are my own, due mostly to the fact I like building structures rather than a lack of purchasable alternatives.

Zephyr told me about the Swinging Rope Briges by Gypsy Paz.  I picked up a copy-mod set for 800L$ through SLX.  The bridges come in 20, 30 and 40 meter lengths and worst case requires 41 prims.  These move when you walk across them! and the effect is really accentuated if you lay them at a slight angle.  The only limitiation is that the bridges don’t like to be put across sim boundaries (they seem to go phantom).

On the South Eastern corner of the Island we have a Secret Hatchie tower.  This tower is intended to be a secret hiding place where the hatchlings can scheme and plot, plus it has really good views into Equus (with boxes under the windows so hatchies can see out).  I wanted to add a pirates cannon for the tower.  I found a few cannons on SLX which looked OK in the ad, but once rezzed either the textures were a bit naff or they were very primmy (40 prims in one case).  Then I recalled that I had seen a good pirates cannon on the Hatchie Haven sim (another Zephyr find).  Examining the creator of that object, I found it was made by Lia Woodget.  Using her picks I located her home store and picked up the no-copy Elysium cannon (16 prims) for 180L$.  This has a really nice sound and smoke effect to it (as well as shooting a cannon ball).

The tower also has lockable doors by Sirius Creations.  These doors are highly configurable (sound, speed, and a lot more) and come in a very wide range of styles.  They are low lag (0.05 max on the script console) and are a snip at 85L$ for a no-copy mod/trans single door.  I choose a couple of solid looking wooden doors and locked the inner one (have to keep my cookie hoard safe).

The other major structural element in the sim is the fishing area; this is a 7Seas fishing complex.  This system is very nice in that the whole installation is both low prim (you could have fishing with just one prim) and has low script usage.  The 7seas system is very good, both from an owners and users perspective.  It is cost effective (a low 750L$ one off cost to acquire the system) , there are frequent updates to keep people interested and the fish that you acquire are fun pets, and are often highly detailed.  My only criticism would be that my dragon can’t hold the fishing rod – not that there would be room for many dragons on the wharf anyway!

Wildlife

Scripted animals can be on the whole a bit laggy therefore we have to be careful what goes down.  Generally we are using scripted animals from Animania.   We have Jellyfish, Swans, Gulls and a Hummingbird.  I did also have a Shark, but this seemed to be a bit more laggy than the others, and a crab but the slope algorithm in it could not handle the megaprim sphere I use for my beaches.  Most of the Animania animals cost between 500L$ and 700L$ for a single animal and are very low prim (as they are sculpties).  We also have Piranhas from Splash Aquatics and these do bite – so don’t fall in the lake!

I may eventually put down some of my exploding sheep – so watch out if you try to eat one.

Shopping links

Here are some links to the shopping locations mentioned above.  Beware! Sometimes content creators do move there shops around, if in doubt check the creators profile.

Heart Garden Centre (Lillith Heart & Dolly Heart) – Trees, Bushes, Flowers

Botanicals (Kriss Lehmann) – Sculpti Trees

Creative Fantasy (Julia Hathor) – Trees, Houses. Birds, Butterflies

Gypsy Gadgets (Gypsy Paz) – Canoe, Swimballs and Swinging Bridge

Black Spot Shipyard (Lia Woodget) – Boats (static), Cannons and other seafaring items

Sirius Creations (Innes McLeod) – doors, gates, also furniture cabinets and beach towels

Animania (Vinnie Baxter) – animated animals, ducks, swans, sharks, hummingbirds, etc

Splash Aquatics (Kaikou Splash) – fish and fishy things!