512m Parcel Owners : What you got?

I've noticed on some threads how easy it is to bash a 512 parcel's 117prim limit as being too low to do anything productive or creative. (=_=)

Well.. I happen to have a 512. I maintain a cookie jar shaped store on a slightly elevated platform that blends with the build around me. And the area below the platform is walled in to make my "basement" of sorts where I have a small underground pond, a decorated platform with a low table to sit at, and some posters here'n there from pikkies given to me by friends and people I meet. (^_^)

All that and I have 8 to 10 prims left. (^_^)

Anyone else out here got a 512m parcel? If you do, what do you do with it? Have you ever run into a time when you wished you had more prims? Or, is it just enough for you to leave your mark and give you a place to hang out? (^_^)y

If you just want to hang out, or need a place to change clothes etc, would it not be more economical (and practical if you want to move around a lot) to just rent a space some place? For this size of a parcel, I mean.

I don't think I'll ever get my head wrapped around that renting vs "buying" thing.

B.

Like many folks I started out with a 512 (back when First Land was still active).
With a little effort and wise use of prims I was able to put together a simple but very comfortable little SL homstead. Of course I always had the thought "If I had a few more prims, I could......", in the back of my head. I eventually moved to a 1024 plot and I now have a 4096 which is great and lots of prims to play with. After owning the large plot for a while I've now reached the point of thinking I should scale back my land enough to drop down a tier level.

When I had my 512, I put a nice low prim prefab on it, and set out to decorate. Interior decorating is something I enjoy doing in RL, so I went to Hoffman's and quickly used up my prim limit. I spent a month or so shopping around, making a game out of putting more stuff into the place. I soon decided I need more prims. The land around me was beautiful, and vacant. But it was also owne by a Casino at the far side of the sim. This was at the end of the Casino Days, and the owner would not sell any of it for a resonable price.

I looked around for a while, but didn't see anything I liked. A friend just moved into a brand new estate, and when I saw her place, I was sold. The sim owner was a friend of hers, and I knew him casually, he was trustworthy so I bought in. The covenant was very light, we had resale rights, and there was a 1.4 Prim multiplier. I started with a 1096, where I went from my Low Prim prefab, to Coco's Cape Cod, which I spent a month changing the outside color, and accidently deleting parts of at least twice a week. I eventually worked up to a 4096, the prim multiplier was upped to 1.5 and I found a fabulous updated Ranch House from Brennan Designs. I onnce again went out on a furniture hunt, can't put old stuff in a new house afterall. I stayed at that place until my short self exile from SL back in April.

A couple of weeks ago a customer invited me to come see what she had done with her plot.

In her 512m she has one of my Castle Princessias. It is fully furnished with low prim furniture and has a lovely little garden outside - complete with plants and a gold-fish pond.

I was really impressed - she has used some very canny shopping and created a darling little home which certainly looks far primmier than it really is.

She even has her car parked outside

Sure, 117 prims isn't much - but in some ways the challenge of getting what you want within the limit is actually rather fun. I remember doing similar with my First Land - it was far more of a challenge then, less to choose from, but it was in many ways more fun than shopping on an big prim-budget, and the results made me far more proud

That ranch, was a lovely house BTW Brenda.

I have a chair ... a beautiful 117 prim chair

Only joking ... at ground level, I have a little cave / stone lean-to with 3 one-prim rock seats and a campfire, a noticeboard with one of Carl Metropolitan's maps on it and a lot of planting, including a big oak tree with tyre swing and a couple of poseballs for weary travellers to rest their tired pixels.

Then I have my skybox, which is in the process of being rebuilt at the moment, but used to have a set of patio furniture (table and 3 chairs), a scripted rug and scatter cushions and some paintings. I like to leave about 20 prims free for rezzing fun items and doing small bits of building.

I see the tight prim limit as more of a challenge than a problem. I think constraints help focus creativity. Having said that, if somebody gave me free prims, I wouldn't complain.

I've built on 512 before, not hard as long as you build carefully. For example, it always amazes me that prefab builders use four prims (or more) for the walls. A simple hollowed out cube, path cut an opening for the door and then maybe another prim to center the door. My first home I ever built on a 512 used nearly all my prims, I deleted it the next day and built one that looked better in 12 prims Now I have 578 prims to work with and I'm still focusing on prim count, just on a larger scale

Have to be premium to buy land, so I enter this assuming premium.

Premium gets you 512 tier free (still have to buy the land). Never have to pay tier to anyone. No expense after buying the land.

Renting - have to buy (some as little as 0L, some a week to a month of rent up front), and then continuing expense for the tier.

So, if you are premium, do not own land, and only want a spot to change, go find a 512 plot of land at about 3.7 per square foot, or roughly 1895 Lindens. 1895 spent, once. No more fees until premium runs out, then have to pay Linden Lab. So if you are already a year premium account, it is 1895 for a year of 512 land vs. how ever much you would have to pay to rent.

Oh, and I've seen 3.7m land out there. Just do not recall seeing any 512m plots for 3.7m. Might have to pay 5000 for that 512m. I haven't looked at 512 land in a long while.

I had a 512 until I decided to convert my land into a store and bought more land. It was big enough, and I had enough prims up until that point. I was mainly looking for privacy and a place I could learn how to make things. I had had trouble in the past at sandboxes, so I wanted to upgrade.

What's with the 512 bashing thing? I don't get that. I've, too, noticed that recently.

Well, you'll want to keep the prim count of the building (just assuming a house/skybox) low of course. But the next part of it is furnishing, and that doesn't have to mean trying to put as much stuff as possible into your house. It can also mean making as many functional empty spaces as possible.
I mean,
-leave enough space to walk around, without bumping into things
-Hang a wall-sized painting. You now have a good excuse *not* to put down anything within 2 meters in front of that painting, so you can admire it in full
-Don't make rooms too big, to reduce the amount of empty space at the cost of only 1 prim wall
-Don't make too many rooms either, since then you'll end up spending prims to decorate each one of them.
-Investigate into rezboxes. Not the temprezzers, but the type that allows you to plop down different scenes and different kinds of furniture. These allow you to make a single room multipurpose: a bathroom, bedroom, livingroom, whatever, all in the same space. You'll save yourself from having to design and furniture one of each of those, but have only one of them rezzed at any once, saving you the prims from not needing the others at that moment, allowing you to make add more detail to each seperate setting. (note: systems like these are for sale, but if you're making your own: you will need copy/modify permission on each object in each setting!)

Wasn't it? Every so often I get the urge to pull it out abd start decorating all over again. Maybe when the weather gets less agreeable, I'll find more time to play SL and rent a nice big plot somewhere.

My first land was a 512,I built a low prim marquee,left the grass and filled it with low prim builds for sale.My only indulgence was a 10x10 shelf with grass and a pup tent to sleep in.In my early days I thought your ave stayed inworld when you logged off!! LOL.Since then I have grown to 4096 and down again.I used a 512 For my SLX box and yard sale to great effect.Now I am back to 4095 again.
One thing I know for sure IMHO is you always need more prims.

I built an 8-prim, 2-story house and a teleporter takes up the last 2 prims. I distribute this house as a freebie. It is a hollowed out box with large picture windows. I could have saved another prim or two but I figured I would splurge a bit so the house wouldn't appear to be all glass. So, clocking in at 10 prims, that leaves 107 left for decorating, which is more than enough for those two floors if you use good low prim furniture, and even a tree or two for the yard. I've given away hundreds of copies of that house in the last year, and built similar efficient models, custom, for landlords. 117 prims is plenty if you're smart and efficient.

When I got my first land, I built the predecessor to that 10-prim house (clocking in at 14 prims) and was going to put two down on the lot to use it as a rental - that is, until I got my Asian skybox from Minoru Musashi and decided to use that lot for my home. My skybox clocks in at 67 prims. But you'd be surprised how well it came out, even with only 50 prims left for decorating.

No, not really.

If you go Premium at the annual rate, you pay $72/year, but get back about $54 of that in weekly stipends. That costs you about $1.50 per month.

Land is at an all time low in terms of price, so you can easily get a 512sm for under $12.00.

Total cost runs you no more than $2.50/mo. or approx. L$675/mo. with complete control over your land and the ability to resell and recoup at least some of that cost if you decide to move.

The answer is, it depends! Renting from a large mainland landlord that passes on the discount is often cheaper than going premium and getting the stipend. The only possible exception would be by renting tier (which generally clocks in at the half-sim discount rate) and buying a small parcel. (edit: for a group)

I still own my First Land an only once did I wish I had more prims. But I discovered sandboxes an that desire went away. I used to have a furnished, multilevel house, but it felt tiny an cramped an cluttered. Now I have a sky platform surrounded by invisible walls (cause I kept dropping things on my neighbors--a rocket last time). I've no furnishings; just a pose platform, a sculpie rock and a 10mx10m builder's grid. The only thing on the ground now is a "Children at Play" sign. Last time that I checked, I was using a total of eight prims.

I'm currently looking at larger plots in PG areas, not becuase I need more prims but because I want more empty space. Strange, ne?

Kitsy =^.^=

Don't forget the 300L stipend which reduces the cost of premium to a couple bucks per month. You wind up spending around 6200L per year to be premium after the stipend is calculated in. So the total cost of buying for the first year is the cost of the land plus 6200 versus the cost of renting. Calculate some equity in the property as well. Even if the price of land drops, you'll still be able to recoup some of the cost of the initial purchase, so your investment cost=the initial price-the resale value.

I don't know what rentals are going for right now, but I'll bet buying is a pretty good option in the long run.

As for what to put on it, I think you can do all sorts of things with a 117 prim limit. In fact, I wish more builders would limit themselves to a 512 parcel for their building just so they would keep the prims under control. The Troutlab 2000 was a freebie skybox, so I can't complain at all. I love it, and the price was right. It's the perfect space, but for crying out loud! The floor alone is probably 25 prims. I could have done it in one with the right texture. If the builder had put some more thought into it, he really could have reduced the prim count substantially. If he'd had to build on a 512...well, it wouldn't have fit, but if it did, he would have been forced to limit his prims.

Rather than swiping the textures and rebuilding it my way, I'm leaving it. It uses up a pretty good chunk of the prim allotment on my 1024. As I learn to build, it is forcing me to think about my prim counts and to find ways to do things with fewer prims.

I also still have my first land 512 plot. I originally set up my first shop and home there. Downstairs was the shop and I lived upstairs. Only problem I found was that I couldn't display too many of my items in full, only as pictures, which limits things a little.

Now I have my main store on a 2048 plot and a home there too. Still wish I had more prims though, but isn't that always the case?

I still use the 512 plot, but just as a smaller version of my main store. Stuff is displayed as pictures, but I have info and LMs pointing to my main store if people want to take a better look at my stuff. Think my 117 prim limit there is about maxed out!

It's at http://slurl.com/secondlife/huntsman/162/112/115 if anyone wants to how much I've crammed in

Btw, I don't want to sound arrogant, but there are sometimes reasons why even a house for a 512 sqm plot of land eats as many as 50 prims.

-I'm personally not satisfied with windows textured into walls for example. So a window in a wall is already going to take 2 prims here, more on rounded walls.

-Not everybody wants to use megaprims. Yes, they're a blessing for saving prims, but as long as LL hasn't officially announced them legal, or changes the viewer so we can legally create them, I'm VERY hesitant in using them. One well written AR is enough to get your megaprim house removed from the mainland, and no, I don't want that to happen. Not to myself, not to my customers.

-Houses made out of hollowed cubes or whatever form seem nice, but they give 2 problems.
1) The cut results in odd gaps and corners, in your walls
2) Your camera will start to behave different while inside a hollowed prim. Focussing your camera on the wall may move the camera itself outside the prim for example, and you won't be able to get it inside again without resetting it to the default position behind your avatar.

-ramp, stairs or teleporter.. Which to use depends a lot on the style of your build. Good thing there are many nice sculpted stairs these days, saving tons of prims. A ramp in a round medieval build just looks sooo bad, lol

-Details, accents, etcetera. One can live in a modern Mondriaan styled cube with a roof terrace, but one can also live in something more victorian style, with a balcony. The second one will probably cost more prims, but if that's where you want to live, then don't take the cube. Many things ARE possible within prim limits, with prims to spare for furniture. It's just a matter of finding the right ballance. Though don't expect a full blown castle for your 512 plot, you can match the style and go for "as good as it gets".

i bought a 512 plot with my premium account a few months ago when the prices were dirt cheap, i set up a small country farm looking kinda build, not sure why, to much wizard of oz i think and just wanted something pretty in the middle of mainland rather than houses and other such stuff. There's not much there, a broken old fence. broken down horse cart, a few bails of hay to sit on.

i was originally going to convert all the textures to black and white and re-texture the whole thing but i got an IM from new neighbors that had moved in just recently telling me how much they loved it and that it was like there back yard. i just let them have the run of the land now. glad someone gets use out of it.

on another note i recently got hired to build some housing in a steampunk style for a new rental sim coming up, i cut out a 512 on my land and i'm having heaps of fun making a cozy 20X20 house with a garden, furniture and a few prims left over so residents can add a few nick nacks. there is deffinatly much that can be done with a 512 and only 117 prims.

-Crunch

One thing I always recommend to friends when they get their first homes, buy mod-enabled furniture or build your own and set it to phantom. This way you can walk around without bumping into stuff and it still looks good.


I've used these quite a bit in the past, best use of space you can get.

I bought a 1536 for the elbow room. I have a poor sense of scale, so everything I try to build is way too big to start with.

The rental option had one major drawback for me - I was afraid I'd forget to pay the rent each week. For me, it works better to just pay my tier automatically to LL each month. But that's me.

I've found that my toys require a lot of prims, so I'm very aware of the budget. My current project is a 15x15 house with an angled roof, and uses about 45 prims. Once I get it the way I want, I'll work the scale down and see how many prims I can get rid of. There are some megaprims involved, but I'm not offering this for sale, and that could change if I do end up with something worth selling.

I think a 512 is a great size for many things, but I'm more of a country gal. Better to have some distance between me and then neighbors.

Let's see... I bought a 1024 when I went premium, more for the larger footprint than for the prims. But back when I was living on a 512, I always had lots of stuff around and extra prims to play with.

I knew I wanted to live in the sky, so I threw a few Linden trees on the ground. For a while I had a tire swing and a blanket to lie on and read a book, but when the adfarmers moved in, I took them up and just left the trees. More prims to use upstairs...

I had a six-prim sky platform, usually set up with some stools and a few dance balls.

I had a 2-room skybox with a rooftop that was a party area in the one I rented before I bought it, but which I usually used as a workshop. It had a bed, a sofa, and a few nick-knacks. Furnished, I think it topped out under 40 prims.

I had my bubble skyhome, with some low-prim furniture I mostly made myself. It was a very uncluttered look.

Sometimes I'd take one of the latter two down, but at times, I had all of them up at once and still had prims to spare.

On my 1024... I have the sky platform, still unfurnished. If my partner hadn't set home there, I'd take it down, but, well. I have a building platform up high sized to my lot footprint, so I can piddle and position houses without bugging the neighbors. On the ground, I currently have a corn maze, a campfire, and a few trees in the spirit of the season, and way up high I have my lovely, quirky home: a 4-story houseboat I reconfigured out of a full-perms house a friend gave me. It would fit on a 512, both prim-and space-wise, though I might have to reconsider my furnishings and limit myself to just the boat, and not so many miscellaneous areas.

Wasn't there a Forum Parade of Homes around this time last year? Could it be time for another?

My Honey Hut is located on a 512. I have an 8 prim one room yurt on a raised platform with a ramp. The back part of the platform acts as a small porch. The front part of the platform is another small porch. The yurt has a built in bed with pose pillow, a table, and a stool inside it. Below the yurt is all garden space divided by gourd trellises with two one prim lattice garden benches, several species of plant not seen elsewhere on Second Life, two or three modern style bee hives (not skeps, regular square models with two supers and an entrance for the bees.), a Hon-ey-Matic to give passers by free honey, and lately two welcoming gates since I lost my next door neighbor, and no longer have her wall built flush against my below grade property as a marker.

I still have forty plus prims left to play with . I don't like building down to the last prim. The garden seating gives me an extra room and I realized I preferred having outdoor space. I even figured out how to build single prim plants or plant groupings. I have two more plants uploaded as textures. I may make more this weekend.

Most of what I build though is clothes. I like coming back to my neighborhood in Harltey (in beautiful Gaeta) and seeing what is going on. It is nice to be in a neighborhood, even if my neighbors are always changng. There have been three business failures. Life is tough on the frontier, but it is tougher for business people than those of us with annual memberships and 512 worth of mainland.

By the way, there are two other builders advertising yurts. Both yurts are tan. My yurt is light green honey comb pattern and avacado wood on the inside and has the life cycle of a bee as a mural on the outside.

For some reason very few builders make quonset huts or yurts.