Another big build is gone...

*sigh* I just recently found out that the first really big cave system that I built, Nohona Caverns, has been deleted. It was 5 levels of intricate caves, behind a waterfall and under a mountain lake.

It used to be on the Nohona Isle sim, later sold and renamed Caribbean Escapes. Yesterday I went to check its exact location, so I could get a SLURL for a forum post on caves in SL. On arrival, I found that inside the mountain, all but a handful of loose prims had been deleted from the sim. So I cleaned up the few remaining ones that were still mine. Nothing there now but a huge hole behind a waterfall, and a handful of prims that belonged to the first sim owner or the second sim owner.

Oh well...

No idea how long it has been gone. I clean out my Lost and Found pretty regularly, and never noticed any huge object return. Probably happened while I was in the midst of some other project...

I may have a backup of the caves, but since it was built in-place, in the excavation, it would be pretty hard to restore it now, even if the sim owner wanted me to.

What a shame.

Is there a sandbox there?

What would really suck is if you didn't rez completely and deleted sections of it.

I dont think that is the case. but yea, it sucks there wasn't a backup.

Do you have a list of builds you created? I would like to see a few. Thanks.

That must leave a great sense of loss after all that creativity and effort.


"pave paradise and put up a parking lot."

No, I was careful to use every trick I could imagine to make sure no prims remained unrezzed. What was left was a few doors from the dungeon in the lowest level, some torches that hadn't been linked to the walls, and a couple of minor wall prims and ledges that hadn't been linked. It had to have been deliberate, because the caves were so big that it took a dozen or so seperate linksets to make it. And since there were other prims of mine still there, it can't have been a "Return all prims on this parcel belonging to Avatar X" action by the land owner. They would have had to manually select and delete a dozen seperate linksets. So I am certain they just didn't want the caves any more, and wanted to reclaim the prim count.

There is no sandbox in that sim. It was initially a residential sim, and appears to still be one, though now it is dedicated to larger "Fantasy Island" themed estates.

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Some of my major works...
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Completely or almost completely eliminated:

Wailele Isle and Nohona Isle - two sims built as a tropical paradise. Sold many times, and now nothing is left but a fragment of terraforming and a waterfall on what used to be Nohona.


In the process of being sold / repurposed:

6 sims that a single parcel owner simply abandoned, when she left SL. The two sim owners kept in in trust for three months, but are now starting to prepare them for resale.

Amarin Island - One full sim and 4 OpenSpaces sims, terraformed into one huge 5-sim island. Was a private residential sim and horse riding area. Included the Imperial Palace from Shenyang China, and a Tibetan Monestary based on the Paro Dzong in Bhutan. Also included a large harbor and lighthouse. Will be sold and moved before the end of the month. Open to the public, until repurposed at the close of this month

Sunrise Hopes - OpenSpaces sim, terraformed as a tropical island with sea caves. Included a 250 M long bridge to Amarin Island. Will be sold before the end of the month. Open to the public, until repurposed at the close of this month


Major Builds that are still intact:

Lost Gryphon Island : My home sim. I own 1/4 of the land in it. Full-sim terraform, 1/4 sim personal build, including a replica of Hikone Castle in Japan. Off-the-map. Access by invitation only. I am willing to invite indiiduals to the sim for tours of my part.

HHP at UH : Full sim build for the University of Houston's Health and Human Performance division. College campus with parklands. Includes a replica of the Jefferson Auditorium (from the University of Virginia), and working clock towers. Open to the public.


Current works in progress:

RUCE 3 : Sandbox sim for Rutgers University, dept of Continuing Education. Has a replica of their football stadium, life sized, as the main sandbox and competition field. Open to the public.

RUCE 2 : (Under Construction now) For Rutgers University, dept of Continuing Education. I am building a replica of their historic "Old Queens Campus, in New Brunswick, NJ. 5 buildings that are on the National Register of Historic Places, built in the 1700's and 1800's. Sim is not open to the public, but you can stand in RUCE 3 and cam over for a look. I am willing to invite indiiduals to the sim for tours of the work in progress.

RUCE 1 will eventually be an Orientation Island type sim for incoming Rutgers University students. RUCE 4 will be anoteher sim of campus buildings and classroom space. Work will start on these two sims after RUCE 2 is completed and opened to the public.


Those are my big projects, the full-sim builds that usually included all the content in them. I've done numerous other full-sim terraforms, and smaller projects like shopping malls, meeting centers, homes... I don't generally keep track of those once the work is done.

how do you manage to latch onto those big projects?

Referrals from satisfied clients.

I got Wailele and Nohona as my first big ones when the sim owner saw the building work that I did to demonstrate the use of building textures that he commissioned me to make. My sample buildings were better than his work at making homes. So he took a chance and let me try to create two whole sims for him. That was my "big break", and I worked very hard for several months to exceed the client's wildest expectations.

Amarin Island was a referral from the second sim owner of Wailele and Nohona. The person who bought Wailele and Nohona from the original owner loved what I had done with them, and told a friend who was also a sim owner that if she wanted great island made, she should contact me. That friend was the first sim owner who the Amarin Island client got her sims from. Sunrise Hopes was an expansion for that same parcel owner.

HHP at UH, they contacted me by e-mail, having seen some of my work, and from my listing in the LL "Full Service Solution Providers" directory. Giving them a tour of earlier builds of mine cinched the deal.

Lost Gryphon island is owned by a friend, who had seen my work. He wanted my household as his neighbors.

The Rutgers sims were sent my way by a friend of a friend who had seen my work, and knew from what he had seen that I could do what he needed. Networking, and a reputation by then for high-quality work.


The key to getting a lot of big projects is being very good at what you do, and consistently exceeding client expectations. When you do good work and go the extra mile to make everything even beter than they had hoped for, people come asking for you. I'm booked months in advance, and I've had to turn down some really fascinating full-sim and multi-sim projects because I can only do just so much, just so fast, and retain my quality level.

I don't get everything I bid for, though. In that same period I have given bids for another 5 to 6 sims worth of work, but they went with someone else.

*Stares in awe at Ceera's list of builds*

Wow....it's really a pity you can't just put them all up for safekeeping and display somewhere...

On all the sims after Wailele and Nohona, I made a point of keeping backup copies of the sim .raw files and the major aspects of the prim builds. So I was able to find a new home for the Imperial Palace at Shenyang, and if I can find a place for it that can cope with over 2100 prims being required, I could set up at least the above-ground part of the Tibetan monestary... It's also been handy for the sim owners who contracted the work. If any of them ever accidentally deletes something, I can usually restore it.

Ah ok, I know someone who was given a sim for his sandbox and found the offer extremely generous but did mention that it pained him to have to flatten out and remove the absolutely awesome set of caves and tunnels, he described it as a work of art.

No, then your friend's sandbox sim wasn't this one, then. The mountain that housed the caves still remains, and the lake on top of the hole and the waterfall down to the cove are still there. It's just been gutted on the inside.

Welcome to bitrot. :-/

Sorry to hear that, Ceera.

I expect that I will never see 99.9% of everything in SL, because by the time I can get around to seeing it, most of it will have succumbed to bitrot.

Oh well. Now's time for a challenge to make bigger, even better, caves!

If anyone can do it, you can, Ceera.

This all begs the question, why aren't builders who build huge builds backing up their work as they build? I would think that it is insane not to in a world that is so ephemeral anyway. What if the customer has a mishap and wants it repaired? There is a definite sense of sadness about this and the few other builds that have gone, a bit of foresight and this need not have been the case.

I build, script and create all sorts of things and eat my own medicine, I backup religiously whenever I make significant progress and always save a copy of the finished item. My things are not generaly large scale but nevertheless I am sure it could be done at least at the end of the project if not along the way.

I don't want to ruffle any feathers, it just seems odd that people don't do it to me and sad that great works are lost needlessly.

I urge builders to go and make backups now whilst they still can.

Unfortunately, full-sim projects are often tightly tied to the terrain terraforming, and a certain amount of it is virtually impossible for the content creator to make a useful backup of.

Take Wailele Island, for example. I could, and did, save the .raw file that I used for the terraforming. So I have a copy of the island's land shape. I also had copies of each type of building in the sim. But that island had over 2000 hand-placed Linden Plants scattered across the sim. And you can't drag-select to select Linden Plants. You must click each individually, and even then they don't highlight so you can't clearly tell which have and which have not been added to the selection group. So the only way to replace them, if they somehow got returned or deleted, is to plant them all over again.

Or take Amarin Island. I did make a backup of all the primwork for the caves and dungeons below the Monastery and for the Monastery itself. Over 4000 prims. But that huge assembly, well over 30 linksets, has to be carefully fitted into the hole it came from. Even with a backup of the terraforming file, precisely replacing that big a collection of prims could be a nightmare. Just selecting all the prims in the Caves took me an hour, to make sure I hadn't missed any doors or other small loose parts. My screen was an almost incomprehensible blur of selection likes before I took a copy.

For the big projects, you have to back them up in terms of major assemblies. Like large buildings or collections of buildings.

I think that most experienced builders *do* make backups of all the major features, but unless you have spare sims laying around, there's no way to back up the whole thing.

This seems like a good place to ask a question I've been thinking about for ages. Long ago in another existence (alt), before I was Astrid Schwade, I visited SL and explored lots of interesting places. One such place was a small town which was accessed by a magnificent white bridge (bit like the one over the Shermerville Straits, but a LOT higher) and the bridge traversed a deep gorge. Since then I've searched the map, teleporting to location after location, and to date I've never found this place.

This thread made me wonder if the village/town and the bridge might actually have been deleted. Maybe the creator sold up and the new owner simply returned the lot. Or maybe it's out there waiting to be discovered again.

Steep sided gorge, big high white bridge, town/house/roads..ring anyones bells..?

Astrid

I really was only talking about the major assemblies, I was not advocating saving the Linden plant layout or preseving the terrain models. Yes you do not quite get the same effect when relaying it out but it sounds like much if not all was lost in the recent losses, not just the minor things.

If I am wrong then fair enough but my advice is still good practice where possible.