Buying a private sim: 4 questions

Hi and a happy new year to all avis in sl

I'm looking to order my first private island from LL. I am reading up on this, but still have some questions.

1) Most private islands I see are totally square. But I don't see a complete square shape with the four example islands on the sl webpage http://secondlife.com/community/land-islands.php. How do I order a complete flat and square island?

2) How can I see from these four island examples if an island is supposed to be a tropical island with sandy beaches or more grass and rock land? I know I can change ground textures later.

3) When I go to the land store and look at the grid map, I can pick many locations for my new sim. I want to have just one sim, but I think it's wise to think about a possible expansion in the future. What is the best advice for picking a location for my first sim on that map? Should I pick a spot with enough room to connect (as a matter of speaking) 20 more sims in the future? Or should I just squeeze in into a more crowded area? I don't think I will ever own more than 3 or even 1 sim lol. Is there a relation between lag (sharing a server with other sims) and having a sim in a crowded or quiet area on that map?

4) In the sl KB I read the tips on creating .raw-files on the page 'Tips for Creating Heightfields and Details on Terrain RAW Files'. My Photoshop-skills are pretty good, but I already read that creating a height map in Photoshop can be pretty difficult. I also read the blog of Emma Nowhere: http://emmanowhere.blogspot.com/2007/03/when-i-first-terraformed-nowhere-sim-i.html. She uses the wonderful tool Backhoe for terraforming, but unfortunately it's only for Mac. Any advice, tools or other info on creating .raw-files?

Hope you people can help me. Any other tips are welcome too. I am in sl since october 2006, but this first own sim is a pretty big step for me. Thanks and have a wonderful 2008!!!

every sim is a square, you can terraform it to what you want, what you see is just 4 basic pre-terraformed island by LL


same as abouve, you have to change the textures when it`s deliverd and terraform it for mountains or beaches


choosing a location is pritty much a gamble, just hope you don`t share with resources with 3 crappy over crowded camping sims, also for expanding, reservations have been removed, if at any time you want to expand but there is another island in the way, LL will move you to make a 2nd or 3rd island fit


editing the raw file is nothing more then an offline "terraforming" tool, when the island is deliverd, you can terraform to what you want and when satisfied, download the raw from the server
also works the otherway, download the raw file immidiatly on delivery and use it as a template, found terraforming alot easier then try to make a raw file lol


wait till it`s deliverd and play with the estate tools, alot will become clear when you have the tools available to play with

happy new year

Happy New Year Paulo! Congratulations on the expansion!

We only just got our sim on xmas day but please feel free to Im Incanus Merlin, who might see this! & say I recommended him, he has 8 sims now & really knows whats what, nice & friendly too i'm sure he'll be happy to help out with any questions! *runsss*

Seriouslyt ho, i'm sure if you IM'd him & said I said he might be able to help abit he would, and pls go check out his sims Fatima's Love, Fatima's Desire etc <<shameless plug for Inc!

The land is under the water. LL's default sims are terraformed to look more natural but if you want a square sim all you need to do is raise the land under the water and then flatten the land so it's square and flat. If you go for a totally square flat island you will have no access to the sea.

You can also send LL a terrain texture of how you want your island to look. I didn't do this myself so I'm not sure of the exact procedure.



The textures are deemed by height. I'm not sure if different islands have different textures to be honest.



Bear in mind that you can move your island at a later date if you so wish. I think there's a fee for this. I don't think location is important as to who your sim shares a server with. I know when my island was having some issues that it was moved to a different server so I don't think the server means that you'll be sharing with your physical neighbours but if you're looking to expand then having your island with more space around it is a good idea. However I don't think you can reserve spaces anymore so there's nothing to stop someone else creating an island near you.

Hi Paolo

Happy New Year! Happy to help if you have any questions - just IM me in world and I can bring you over to our sims and show you a few tips etc.

Thanks for the plug Missfit - did you get your usual bang out of the fireworks last night??? (Happy New Year sweetie!)

Inc

Hi Paulo, here are the answers to your questions:



All four island types can be downloaded free of charge from the Knowledgebase site. Log into the KB, type the word RAW in the search box, and hit #02 should be Default Private Region RAW files. Also in this download site is a 5th file, which is a completely flat terrain file (very useful). So, don't worry too much about the island you order with the new sim, as you can change your mind later.



None of the four islands are what you would call tropical, and most people do not keep them but change these islands for commercially available types, ot make their own, or terraform.



You should try to find an area on the map with plenty of room to expand. If you end up on a server with a neighbour for company, then his server-side lag will definitely affect you. I had this, and asking my neighbour to restart his sim often solved lag in mine.



I use my own windows program for generating RAW files from almost any graphic file. Picture of it here:

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x27/wibs_photos/screenshot01.jpg

It is called SimScape, but I have never gotten around to releasing it, as I cannot get the Visual Basic publishing wizard to publish it successfully for me.



The one thing you MUST get hold of, before doing any work on your new sim, is the ParcelMe device from Appliance of the Mind in Hoini. It is a MUST for easy parcelling of new sims.

Have a great 2008, and feel free to ask me any questions via IM in world.

Rock

Just a comment to clarify about sharing servers and laggy neighbors. Proximity on the grid / world map has nothing to do with what server your island is running on.

I have a two-island estate and in three months, my two islands have never both been on the same server. In addition, every time an island crashes or is restarted, it will start up on a different physical machine as regions grab the first available sim in a queue rather than sticking to the same hardware all the time. (The only exception to this is "rolling" restarts and maintenance downtime: sims do restart on the same server after these two events.)

So even if you have a laggy camperfest sim parked a few gridsquares away, it's highly unlikely that you'd be on the same physical server as them. And likewise if you do find performance is down with no obvious reason, there is almost no way to find out what other islands are sharing the server you are on. However, if you restart your island it's almost certain to restart onto a new server, which may well alleviate the problem.

You can find out what exact server your island (or any region) is currently on, by looking at the Help -> About Second Life menu, it will list the hostname as sim####.agni.lindenlab.com. The #### identify the server itself.

-Atashi

This bears repeating. All that nice water you can see around you on the map, and from your shores, is an illusion. You can't actually go there, it's a void.

If you want to have boating or swimming, you have to put part of your island underwater. Better yet, find someone who already has an island chain, and ask if you can locate your island adjacent to her borders. That way, your residents can use the open water in all the sims.

Oh wow, thanks to you all. I never thought I would get SO many usefull tips! Everything is clear now and it is also very reassuring to know that a sim-newbie like me can hardly make a terrible mistake, because everything can be changed later.

Now I only need to make my final layout plans and look for a good tool to draw the .raw height map. If I may ask (sorry), any last tips on such a tool?

If you do not have a high-end painting program, such as Photoshop, then at a pinch you can use the regular Windows Paint program. Set the Image, Attributes, to whatever fills your screen (I use 800x800 pixels), and keep the color setting to Colors. Then you need to edit the colors until you have a full palette of shades of gray. To do this, on the menu choose Colors, Edit Colors, Define Custom Colors. Click on one of the shades of grey to get the right-hand shade bar set to grey (I usually pick the grey, bottom-row, third from right).

Click in the shade bar at every gradation, and add to the Custom Colors. Now that you have your greyscale palette set up, you are ready to paint your landscape.

Remember that black = 0m, and that sea-level in SL is 20m, which equates to 20, 20, 20 RGB. White equates to 255m. If you are only doing a low-lying tropical island you just need a few shades of grey, from say, 5m to 25m.

Once you have painted your new island you need to convert the bmp file that Paint produces to a SL RAW file. You can do this with the free program, Bailiwick, by importing it as heightfield. As a last resort, if you still get stuck, just send ithe bmp file to me, and I will convert it for you using SimScape, IM me inworld for an email address.

Rock