Building guidelines, suggestions...

Heyo. Let's start a thread where we can discuss methods for "standardizing" our building ideas to make the world seem a bit more uniform.

Now wait, before you kill me on sight for trying to stifle everybody's creativity, it's not as bad as it sounds

Basically, I want to hear what everyone uses as general guidelines for building.

For instance, how high do you build your ceilings? How did you arrive at your height?

How wide do you make hallways?

How high off the ground do you make conventional windows?

How tall are your doors?

And so on.

I'm just curious.

For me, I usually make my ceilings at least 5 meters high, my doorway 1.5m wide by 3m tall, and my hallways around 5 meters wide. I like big spaces.

What about you?

LF

Unless I'm trying for a specific cramped feeling (i.e. dungeon, maze, etc.), my ceilings are never lower than 5m, and are usually at 7m to avoid the dreaded camera repositioning problem. That said, the ceiling/roof prims are usually the last things I add.

My hallways are a minimum 4m wide, and I like to go 5m if I can. Doorways are 2m x 3m if possible, windows usually 1m above the floor. The smallest room is usually 10m square, unless otherwise constrained.

Ceilings - always 5m high (because a 2 story build can use one 10m tall prim for the walls, this saves prims eh?)

Hallways - dont use em. I really try for open area builds, with the natural curves of the house and any stairways to act as room dividers. I mean really, we dont need restrooms and unless you have roommates, a private bedroom is a moot point as well. And i've lost a friend or 2 in a house with rooms and had a real bear of a time finding them, pain in the buttox.

Doors, almost always use double doors so the openings are generally 3m by 3m wide.

Roofs - I try to stay away from flat unless the style of house/store calls for it. SL is full of flat boxy builds, why add to the blahness of it all?

Garages - ha, ok this is obvious.

-Syn

As for widow height my very un-measurly way of doing it is stand or sit where I will be viewing it from and look out.

I look at the horizon line to and adjust the window so it will lay between 1/3 and 2/3 up in the window view. Basically I’m looking to make the widows more like frames for the pictures of the outside they make. In SL this makes them higher than they would be in RL because of the camera height behind the avatar but for me it gives them a more natural feel and you don’t feel like you have to stoop down to see out.

God forbid I should crash a builder's thread to bring up some consumer issues.

But people do try to live in these sculpture/houses you make.

Five meters is just not enough. There are many avatars, especially the crafted non-human ones, that are way taller, let's say 7. Even on some normal human-looking avatars I find I literally cannot enter some prefab doorways myself and I have to turn the doorjams "phantom" to be able to enter the building.

The camera angles go wack when the ceiling is right above your head like that and it is tremendously restrictive. You walk jerkily around the house and it totally ruins the immersive experience you were hoping to have by having a virtual house online.

Stairs -- worthy of a separate thread -- are particularly dreadful. It's very hard to get them right, and avatars literally get stuck on them sometimes. Ramps don't look good, but too many steps and you waste prims.

I really think the solution is to have vaults, huge spacious overhead, at least 20 meters high, two prims high. Maybe at least 15. But not 5 or 7. That way, the ceiling doesn't bob into view and force a closeup on you. That way you don't bang your head.

Let me take a visible and public example of how *not* to build doors. The Linden telehub at Waterhead. The roof bangs on your head as you enter, and it is very hard to fight your way out of that building. Everyone complains about the telehub at Waterhead. It is built like a RL lodge as if people don't fly.

People fly in SL.

Make them barns as if they were swallows, please. Please stop trying to make little first-life doors.

i don't have alot of rules but here's the ones i do use.......

ceilings are 5 meters cause you get 2 stories out of a 10 meter prim wall. also 5 meters is plenty high not to get the view hung up on it. i have a couple places where the ceilings are 3.5 meters and the view slides in a lil bit closer so the back of your head is still visible but 5 is more comfy if you can pull it off.

for stairs i make them .25 meters per step and make the steps out of a cut hollowed cube so i get 2 steps per prim. .25 meters gets rid of most of the bump bump bump but if it's a problem a ramp with an alpha texture over the steps takes care of it. you could just go with ramps to start with but stairs look nicer. most of my stuff doesn't need stairs or ramps either way tho.

i don't do doors usually cause my stuff is kinda lofty and open. 3 meters by 2 meters is good tho.

never done a hall way and i like floor to ceiling windows.

Just because prims are 10 meters and you get two 5 meter doorways out of a 10 meter prim is not a reason to do something except for those being mathematically precise and not worrying about customers.

Customers can be 7 meters high.

Camera angles DO get out of wack in a 5 meter door. Just walk in any house with one and see.

Something has to be done to solve this chronic problem. If you can't make a door 7 easily due to the "building by the numbers" then make it 7.5, I guess. Or make the doorways 10, that would be even better.

Standardized guidelines like this are useful for RFP specifications. However, if I were commissioning a custom home in SL, I would use different standards for a 512 square meter lot and an estate sized lot.

The ceiling height issue is particularly important in RL, since new construction typically features ceiling heights of nine feet or more. Prospective purchasers associate high ceilings with new construction, and of course with fine old homes from long ago.

*reaches menacingly into his jacket*
you're on thin ice LF...

But seriously, I think the builders measuring stick has always worked well, I don't feel a nescessity to make builds feel standardized. Ok..... well ONE exception, maybe... possibly.
Custom home builders (such as LF) MAY want to standardize certain heights so people know what they're buying. In which case I would say doors should be a little taller than the tallest avatar, cielings are tricky because of camera collision and whatnot and I would suggest a generous height above the max height of an avatar so ones camera can easily follow behind without jumping all over.

Seriously, you have a problem with 7 meter high customers bumping their heads? And you think that a 7.5 meter door should be standard? I haven't seen that many giants around, but if you say they are numerous enough to force everybody else to change the way they build, it must be a big problem.

Okay, I'm not one to dismiss another's opinion out of hand, so I made a 7.5 meter doorway in a 10 meter wall. Pictures attached below. Now, I'm no building expert, but this is seriously what you think should be standard? Don't you think it would look stupid next to furniture that was built for normal sized avatars? I don't know... I find your suggestions to be a bit extreme. This is the huge solution to the "chronic problem" you describe... ?

Haha... that's hilarious... for some reason, and I just don't know why.

But for me, I've found camera angles to be a major prob unless I go into mouselook in a "cramped" home. So I can understand the need for exaggerated space and room to breathe -- not to mention the average height of avatars in here is boosted up too, compared to our offline selves.

Uh, prokofy, who is this 7 meter tall person you know?
Don't you mean 7 FEET?

Generally, I keep my roof heights at a 5m min, with some of the roof heights at 9m (for great rooms, etc.). My doors are 3.5m high - which seems to be sufficient for 98% of the avatars.

I'm sure he meant 7 feet (my AV is 7 ft. tall). As for ceiling heights, I too belive that 5 is just too low. I usually go 7 minimum, with large open area builds (such as malls & clubs) at 10m.

Patrick Playfair

hmm.. shall we also try to avoid bright unnatural colours over huge area's ?

No, I do not mean feet, obviously, the game doesn't measure in feet, it uses 10-meter prims for its standard. Many builders make 5 meter doors, half a prim, easy to do, easy to keep the prim count down. But as Juro Kothari points out, he uses 9 meters sometimes for greater room and that looks great -- look at his houses.

Yes, that large 7.5 meter door looks JUST FINE to me. Maybe I live in a world of schizophrenic hallucination? It looks like that av has plenty of room to walk or fly in the room AND then be able to do a 360-degree turn without having to get a face full of roof or second floor.

What you are forgetting is that avatars do not generally *walk* into a house. They are *flying,* being avian creatures. They fly up to a building, already off the ground some set of meters -- not sure what the standard avatar height level is in-game, this could easily be measured, but it is usually a chore trying to enter a building. Having a larger/higher door enables avatars to fly in easily. To be sure, some builders put "landing pads" of various sizes -- usually not big enough -- but these are still not enough.

I have to wonder why, two years into a game, this issue would still even need to be discussed?

I continue to maintain that a major reason architects do not build comfortable houses in which ordinary players can enter and move around freely without wacky camera angles, view-blockages, and head-bumping, is that they never live in their own homes for even a minute. They often prefer to ridicule those who do, trying to get comical even in this straightforward thread ("you mean 7 FEET? hahaha etc.). Conversely, in their effort to make RL structures that really ape RL, they often loose sight of the actualities of our virtual world. A good example of a failed structure in terms of SL exigencies that imposes a RL "look" is the Linden's Waterhead telehub. Fly out there and record your experience carefully and objectively in fighting your way out to the water, and you'll see instantly what I mean -- it's a headbangers' club trying to look like a cute lodge and it utterly fails at its intent to provide a comfortable newbie experience.

Why all the ridicule in a thread opened with the intent to figure out *what customers want and how to build better*??? If you want customers and income, stop doing that. If you want to just make sculptures, fine, we'll move on and leave your works to art appreciation class. I like fine sculptures, too. They are a joy. But I also like a virtual structure I can fly into easily and inhabit without oppression by architects who chose to impose an art experience on me instead of a domicile experience.

Lordfly, not to single you out, but let's just take one house that I actually do try to go into and actually try to teleport friends into. It's almost impossible to land on the ledge for it, and getting in the door usually takes numerous tries. Fly over and try some time.

Sophos, remember I had to phantomize your door lintel once? And my av is not some kind of basketball player.

Prok,

avatars are measured in feet
prims measured in meters
land measured in sq. meters

I made houses without doors for easy accessibility, you complained your customers didnt have enough privacy.

I live in prefab Barnesworth made. It's very easy to get around in it.

Amen.

Um, I know that Ingrid. Thanks for sending me that AV ruler. I'm 7 feet in shoes!

But...that is not the topic. The topic is doors and roofs, not avs. The doors have to fit the avs. They don't. I know the avs are measured in a kind of "feet" which is just some kind of fake thing, they aren't REALLY seven literal feet as in RL, but tiny creatures, it's a miniatured "game feet" that is actually meters, when you get down to it. The measurement system for building is in METERS. Duh. I have been in the game five months. I do get it. Prims are 10 max.

My point is that the houses are not comfortable enough. Take it or leave it. Get more customers or don't.

And really, Ingrid, I continue to maintain that you MUST put doors on your house for PRIVACY. And what we are talking about here is DOOR JAMB SIZE, i.e. height from floor to lintel, size of door, NOT WHETHER to have doors or not.

Can you all really try to refrain from all the usual ridicule and condescending remaks that pepper this forum? Try to focus on the issue at hand. Lordfly has finally come to the builders' altar-call rail and told us that he sucks at doors and roofs. Speak on it, brother. He has asked for help, knowing there is a Higher Power LOL. So please, the higher power is the comfort of avs who LIVE in these houses, dammit. If Barnes makes houses that are kinda better at camera angles (not as perfect as the Bright Center of the Universe, etc. could manage if trying), it's because his angles are cleaner and he has fine modern lines and not dreck.

I just found a building today that had the perfect size of a doorway. Here it is. God bless you, Richard Evans and trickyLorenz for making this wonderful build in Maxim District. Check it out everybody.

But... but... there's no door for privacy.

The tricky thing with designing homes with some level standardization, is that AV's come in a variety of heights/widths. How then, do you design a home to some standard, knowing it will not fit all?

I smell a contradiction!

You want doors but you want swallows to be able to fly in. And who's going to clean up the bird poop?

Nonsense. The higher power is you Prokofy. We are your minions.

Touche, Juro. But that was a public building. A private building should have a door that leads to a foyer to fly in. That could even be left open, or closed with a door. Then inside, there might be closeable things, and they don't have to be the standard door, they could be sliding back or up.

Apparently, Prokofy is of the opinion that people would buy more houses if the doors were like the one I posted a picture of. I don't share that opinion. Maybe I'm special or something... a 5 meter ceiling has hardly ever given me camera problems... certainly not enough to force me to live in some cartoon house with gigantic doors that tower 3 times my height.

He has repeatedly ridiculed others for their opinions, then called foul when its done to him... claiming that not doing things his way is somehow being rude and dismissive of the customers' feelings on the matter.

Not worrying about customers? Not every customer has the luxury of unlimited prim usage. Some actually want a building to look good with as few prims used as possible. Making each floor 7 to 10 meters in height vastly increases the number of prims required... to insist that there's no good reason to conserve prims is... not worrying about customers!

And he insists that he really meant to say 7 meters, that he's no noob, that we are poking him with sticks for asking about it... So if that was in all seriousness, Prokofy... where are all these 7 meter tall customers that seem to be making builders' lives so difficult? A customer can be 100 meters high... but just because they can be, is no reason to standardize everything you build to fit such people. If a customer is really 7 meters tall, he should be used to having to get things custom made to fit him... or do you seriously think that we should cater to that one guy and dismiss the vast majority of customers that are only as tall as the sliders will let them be? To insist on that would be... that's right... not worrying about customers!

Good idea Prokofy! I'll have to do something like that in my next prefab. The fly-in is one of the main reasons my homes have patios/balconies - they make it easy to drop in.