Proposal for a new sim unveiled at the MoCA

Dear citizens

For those of you, who didn't notice it yet a proposal for an expansion of the current sim has been unveiled at the Neualtenburg Museum of Contemporary Art. The unveiling and presentation was witnessed by an audience of 10 - 12 people, which resulted in lively conversation and a lot of enthusiasm for the future of Neualtenburg.

As one of the trustees of the Museum of Contemporary Art I'd like to take the opportunity to say that I'm happy the MoCA can contribute positively toward informing and inspiring the citizenry in this very critical phase of our development. The proposal will be on display for the next two weeks or so during which anyone is welcome to come by and have a look at the detailed 200 prim model. Available is also a notecard with the proposal text and a supplementary homepage outlining the concept.

I am informed that another two proposals have been under development but that they were abandoned by their originators citing the recent debacle in the forum as the primary factor for the lack of motivation in continuing their development. This is in my opinion unfortunate as the most constructive way of countering the destructive bickering lies in emphasising the fact that there's so much more going on in Neualtenburg than petty mud-slinging in the forums.

Join us in world for the real Neualtenburg experience!

I really like this new sim proposal, everyone should go see it, read the notecard, and go to the website. I suspect we'll have some lively discussion about it in the next couple of weeks, before it goes up for approval.

I'm quite excited about the new sim, especially the part about orgies at the baths !

I was fortunate enough to catch the launch of the sim proposal. It's very impressive, I would recommend checking it out on the website. (Could somebody post the weblink here? I'm at work and don't have access to SL here).

The URL is accessible from clicking on the model on display - it's the title of the notecard if I'm not mistaken.

The url is:

http://colonianova.info/

But I'd encourage everyone to see the 3-D model in the MoCA, since it gives a much better idea of what the new sim would look like.

Please do remember that we are in the midst of a 15 day public comment period on the proposal. To try to get thimgs rolling, here are some of my thoughts.

1, The level of detail and thoroughness are apparent and I very much appreciate them.

2. The theme is carefully thought through and well researched.

3. The proposers were very creative in meeting the land allocation targets set by the RA.

4. The proposed events sound like they'd go a long way toward making the new sim a more lively place than Neualtenburg proper. On the other hand, recent city policy has focused on making Neualtenburg a place for 'serious business' (the Neualtenburger Bank, Incorporation statutes, etc.) Will having orgies at the Thermae and gladitorial contests a couple of hundred meters away undermine those efforts?

5. The dense build of the proposed sim plan is similar to the existing. This is good in that it encourages population growth, and intriguing in that it almost begins the idea of starting a cluster of city-states, each 64K m2. The question of interface between the two sims does arise however. The proposal places the new sim to the west of the current one. This will cause the NW Viertel, with its modern architecture, to be immediately adjacent to classical Roman architecture, with the density of both sims not allowing much space to transition between styles. This may undermine the sense of immersion, especially in the proposed sim.

6. I believe that to minimize impact on the current sim, the river course should be slightly adjusted so that the end of the river farthest from the walled city should cross the south border of the sim rather than the corner.

7. The proposed road design creates maximum flexibility for possible future expansion.

There are some of my thoughts. Someone else's turn.

Wow! I have mixed feelings about the Roman theme (as it's a bit cliché especially for a government sim) but otherwise it's super exciting to see the project finally expanding. The more people the better.

~Ulrika~

Even a bank on the platz wants walk in traffic. Traffic can't hurt, even for serious business. Just my 2 cents. Anything to put more avatars on the Platz has my approval.

Will the Goreans be moving in?

Colonia Nova...?

Was the name inspired by the rl town that looks like N'burg, Colonia Tovar?

Neualtenburg was modeled after Rothenburg Ob der Tauber. The similarities it shares with Colonia Tovar have to do with bavarian immigrants settling in Venezuela.

OK, but why did we choose Colonia Nova for the new sim?

Because it means New Colony in Italian.

Well, I like the similarity to Colonia Tovar, the city that looks like N'burg.

Take a look at Rothenburg Ob der Tauber

OK, now look at Colonia Tovar

Kevn, I have looked -- I'm telling you as the designer of the City that it is based on the walled city of Rothenburg.

I'm not denying that. I'm just saying N'burg looks more like Colonia Tovar than than it looks like the walled city of Rothenburg. In my humble opinion, that is ...

I also love the look of the new sim!

Congratulations to Moon and everyone for all the excellent detailed work and research.
It would almost be better to be a seperate Island by itself!

Beyond the generic praise I have some questions about it, but please don't take this as "just criticism" and remember that overall I love it and am excited.

The first thing I thought when I saw it is I want to build it! It would be so refreshing not to have to build in the Medieval German idiom all the time and I think that for myself personally I have pretty much exhausted my "Bavarian energy."

My first question though is - Is this already built?

It seems so "set in stone" already (if you excuse the pun), and knowing the model was made by an excellent builder like Moon, are we really going to be involved in building this place as a community or are we just being encouraged to move into someone else's pre-built fantasy city? I think I would really like living in Moon's fantasy city! (much more than in Ulrika's), but still, shouldn't a community grow at least somewhat organically?

Second question, is that I find a problem with the Fachwerks in Neualtenburg is that they are kind of like tiny "pretend" houses to an extent and hard to actually live in. In a sense are we not swapping tiny unliviable german houses for tiny unliveable roman ones? If Neualtenburg is "the city" wouldn't it make sense for the next sim to be merely a residential area with as "loose" a covenant as possible rather than to recreate all the same areas we have in Nburg City albeit in a Roman theme? (government area, party area, games area, and buisness area).

Third question, is that when I posted earlier in this forum in regards Kendra's proposal about "historical builds" it *wasn't* actually just a dig at her and Ulrika as she and others may have supposed. I was honestly stating my feeling that this is a faulty concept if you want to encourage the migration of interesting new people to a sim. Everyone is a builder and many will want to contribute. I guess this is really the same as my first point, but is it the case that once this thing is built that that is pretty much it for the city? Are we going to be open to changes or updates or replacements for parts or is this entire thing a "historical build" in the making?

The last question I have is in regards the river. One of the reasons that I suggested joining to the south side of the Nburg sim for any new sims is to get away from the dreary everpresent clouds at high altitude and eventually to find the sea! While the presence of waterfront in the new sim brings great joy to me, it seems like the only way this could be possibly be attached to the western side of Neualtenburg is for the waterlevel in the new sim to be set much higher than it is in the Nburg sim. While the Nburg "beach" *is* in the south-west corner and on a map the waterline *would* connect with the river, the level is much much lower.

Am I crazy or doesn't this mean that the new sim will either also suffer from the cloud problem or have a super high water table? If you imagine the water level in the new sim in line with the "default" in other sims, then its a sunny roman city by the sea, which is how the model comes across. If the water level is aligned with Nburgs, then its a cold mountain city full of clouds and the river can't exist except as a deep deep chasm. If we simply deal with a water table "different" from the norm and from Nburg, then what of the next sim that connects? And which water table do we pick for the default of the realm?

Perhaps we could uniformly lower all the land in Nburg through the judicious use of a *.raw file by the differential and thus get rid of the gloomy clouds once and for all?

Minor quibbble - Could the model be rotated so that it orients itself in world the same way as it would actualy join onto the sim? it would make imagining how it will look a whole lot easier.

Does this image help to imagine what it might look like? (From this page.)

Yes

And upon reading my thoughts about the new sim again, even though I qualified them with a preceding "I love it!", they still sound a bit critical to me.

I would like to re-state that I am nothing if not enthusiastic about this new sim proposal.

At what altitude do the clouds kick in?