Architectural Discussion and To-Do List

I thought this would be a good spot to bring up questions and concerns we have about the city layout, zoning, and structures. If we agree on a modification, we can add it to our to-do list.

~Ulrika~

My first concern is that the Church is a little out of balance with the rest of the city, specifically the towers (see attached picture). Given that the church is also way over on prims, deleting one of the towers might help.

What do you think? If you agree, which tower?

~Ulrika~

Ulrika, I agree completely. I would choose the gold tower, it does not really look medieval.
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The intersection of Kendrastrasse and Ulrika strasse: Add a plaza? Fountains? Benches? Statues?

(Ulrika: Bah! I accidentally edited this while trying to reply. That's the danger of being a forum moderator. I tried to repair it but some info got lost.)

I agree with Eugene, but we MUST ask Gwyn!

Also, be very sensitive to each others' builds. I know I have a thin skin when it comes to folks picking on my building limitations and quirks.

I have another thing that's driving me crazy, why do all my transparent Fachwerk textures have white stripes on the top of them? The whole prim is set to alpha with the exception of the faces. Does anyone know of a solution?

~Ulrika~

OK. Let me actually reply to this, this time.

I'd love a small vertical fountain or statue there. It can't be so high to block the view of the structures behind it. Do we have a fountain wiz in our mix? I know Kendra has done one.

Also, if anyone has a knick-knacks like barrels or hay or plows or troughs or what have you, feel free to randomly spread them about the areas with dwellings (preferably in the streets so we don't use up prims for those living in buildings). It could help things look more lived in.

~Ulrika~

Yes. After that we should ask BladeDancer as well. We don't want to modify the artist's work without permission.

~Ulrika~

Well, two things...

One, the "white borderline". Hmm, Ulrika, I wonder if the "side faces" (ie. the ones to the top) have a totally clear texture. This is sometimes just the problem and nothing else, and is easy to fix

As to the questions related to the Kirche, of course I'm the dissenting voice and fully disagree with any changes to it I could go on for several reasons...

- Neualtenburg is not Rothenburg - it's much smaller. Thus, the church looks "disproportionately large", which is exactly how small villages look. Churches inside a very small medieval village dominate the whole place. Castles become usually the bigger structure after a while. All this is "consistent" with the theme (and also, this is not an exception for Bavaria, but it occurs all over Europe).
- it's absolutely not uncommon for churches to have several different towers, and that they aren't tied in to the period that the church was beginning to be built. Towers either are a late addition, or "sponsered" by wealthy patrons much after the body of the church is complete. They also reflect the period they were built, and not the period the church was built. By incorporating two different-styled towers - one slightly gothic, the other more Renaissance-looking - BladeDancer has captured the "natural" expansion of a real church as it "ages" naturally. The inside also reflects this: the church organ looks like late 18th century, and a medieval church would not have pewters or any sort of chairs. Also, the bas-relief would certainly be fitted much later; the confessionary is a late-19th century model, or more likely a "fake" 20th century reproduction; the same also probably applies to the glassware. All this incredible attention to detail has worked out to give the church a very realistic look
- finally, no country in Europe would ever demolish a church tower in this age It's certainly a "fashion" of the past century to mantain structures intact (although this wasn't the case in the past), mostly after so many having been destroyed (and later rebuilt) during WW II

In terms of SL community...

- we already had a student in art history and architecture clinically analyzing the church; I expect she was interested in the details that makes such a building look "real" in SL
- it's a gathering place - some residents just find about the church and happen to visit Neualtenburg afterwards. I have encountered several examples, since the Anzere times; of course, with the new teleport location, this has actually increased
- the church is currently the biggest generator of traffic points for the City (the Marktplatz and the bar/restaurant follow the church closely, although, with the last reparceling of those plots, I'm not sure how traffic will be recalculated by LL - I expect it to get "reset"
- the church is also the only spot listed for Neualtenburg in Find Places (I wonder why!), although for some obscure reasons, sometimes it disappears, and sometimes it appears again
- it's been so far the only place in Neualtenburg who was attended for a whole hour by a certain VP of Linden Lab (should we get a commemorative plaque for that as well? hehe)

In terms of the community of Neualtenburg...

- more prims just means more land should be allocated to that plot. As I said before - and still mantain! - I think we should add more empty plots to the Kirche parcel, to make sure that this particular parcel has enough prims to "legally" support it (ie. 512 sq. m. for each 117 prims). I also agree that there shouldn't be any exceptions on this rule; as a nice side effect, when the whole land gets leased, there will be always a few "wilderness" plots in-between which will never get buildings - since they will be contributing to the Kirche's "need for prims" instead
- although I agree that *some* parts of the Kirche *could* be slightly changed to use a few less prims, this should be supervised by BladeDancer - and I'll be watching that carefully, with my tag as "Neualtenburger City Patrimony Supervisor" I don't expect the Church to be classified as "world heritage" by the UNESCO, lol, but I certainly expect one day to have it listed by LL as one of the loveliest buildings in SL on their official Web page

Since my thoughts are far from consensual on this, I'll propose to set up a "Movement for the Preservation of the Neualtenburger Kirche" (MPNK). The MPNK will meet this weekend to start their protest against any defacing of their favourite landmark in Neualtenburg, and we'll present a formal petition to the City Government to mantain the structure just like it is. I suppose I'll need to ask the City's permission to use the Marktplatz for a gathering in protest

That said and done, I hope that at least I can keep a copy of the Kirche before it starts to get slowly demolished, bit by bit...

The prims are definitely alpha on all four of the untextured sides. I verified this yesterday. It might have something to do with gimp, the program I use to generate the TGA files (Photoshop TGA files lack the transparency layer). I'll continue to research this as it's driving me nuts.

I think your reasons are more than enough to convince me to leave it exactly as it is. Do you know if BladeDancer is still working on the structure? He sent me an IM that led me to believe he was finished with it.

Now that I think about it, when the Schloss goes up, it should help balance the structure.

~Ulrika~

I've discussed this issue in the Textures forum and it looks like it's an artifact common to all transparent textures in SL. The key is to leave a little room around the texture and to set the texture "Repeat" to 0.95. I plan on rebuilding the fachwerks on Friday to fix this.

I've also had an enlightening discussion with Juro Kothari, home builder extraordinaire, concerning my Fachwerk permissions. With his help I've come up with a permission scheme, that will protect my IP (stop the casual taking of textures), our project's unique look (prevent a single person from using a "copy" version to duplicate our sim with one purchase), and allow folks to modify structures. I'm going to set the structure to "modify, no copy, no transfer" with locked-down textures. I'll put those up for sale on Friday as well.

~Ulrika~

So what did you all think of the street names? I thought I'd hear a little more feed back on that.

~Ulrika~

Oh yes! Thanks to Eugene for decorating 1465 Haney-Linden-Straße (Rathaus 2). I was pleasantly surpised when I walked in to see a room full of great furniture. It had such a wonderful atmosphere. I was thinking, instead of a dividing wall, we should do a large drapery or something. I'll see what I can cook up.

Thanks Eugene!

~Ulrika~

That sounds great!

I presume that a "locked-down" texture is one which is also "no copy, no transfer". Is that correct?

Sudane

I was told to set it to no copy, no mod, no xfer, although I thought that wasn't possible. Perhaps it is with textures. If not, I'll research further.

~Ulrika~

I have applied for a plot outside the wall with the idea of having only a hunting lodge and trees. Is this acceptable? I did think perhaps having a couple of hidden wolves might be fun (only static pictures - they won't bite).

Absolutely!

I've updated the Land Services web page. You're in the mixed Medieval Bavarian and modern zone, so you have a lot of freedom. There's more information on the covenants here too.

~Ulrika~