04-19-2003 14:24
When I was in SL last night I noticed that some of the SIMs had been moved around and since it placed my peaceful cabin just that much closer to the noise of the combat SIM I went investigating to see what was up. I found at the amphitheater the remains of a meeting on the subject that discussed the need for PG/Combat zones as well as Mature/Combat zones among other things. I'm not sure how the changes that were made really addressed that issue, plus the fact that moving SIMs around gives you some REALLY odd looking terrain. I hope this isn't going to be a regular thing (I Know....its beta).

So, as a good beta tester, here are my $2 worth:

(1) Moving SIMs should be the solution of last resort. I have no idea what happens to properties near or over an edge, but it can't be good. We now have some "very interesting" 90 degree slopes that will collapse the next time a bulldozer touches them.

(2) Isolating PG from Mature with a simple SIM boundary doesn't do it for me. Combat/non-combat is less of an issue, but there are common problems. The greatest of which is noise. Combat involves noises that are unmistakable as to their origin, and Mature activities.... well, you get the idea. I really don't see why these separations can't involve a teleport or something where there is a clear choice involved.

(3) I also think there will be fundamental differences in the characteristics for the different SIMs. Combat sims are going to need a lot more horsepower per user than the non-combat ones. Cutting across the corner of the combat sim last night I noticed that there was significant lag in the sim itself. But I also noticed that the sims adjacent to it were suffering too. Maybe a DMZ sim between the Combat area and the rest would help this. (Of course a teleport would solve it better).

A suggestion: Assuming that teleporting between SIM types is out of the question for some reason, I recommend that a more orderly scheme for separating the various types of activities be arrived at now (while it's beta) rather than having post-production earthquakes.

The simplest thing I can think of that would resolve the issues I saw listed at the amphitheater would be to arrange things as follows.... North would be PG, south would be Mature, East would be Combat, West would be non-Combat. If you think of the entire grid as being divided up like a tic-tac-toe game, there would be a generic area in the middle that would be for all participants (welcome areas, things like that). The corners of the grid would be for combinations such as PG/Combat, Mature/Combat, etc. I would do this so that the lines of the tic-tac-toe board were NOT along grid lines, but actually through SIMs. The SIMS where the lines are would be available for public use, but would not be Mature or Combat. People selecting these areas would be, for example, people who participated in Combat activities, but didn't want to put there house *in* the combat zone. For lack of a better term I'd call these DMZ SIMs, and make it fairly obvious that that's what they were so that people wouldn't build there by mistake.

Of course this change would be terribly disruptive to people who have already built (including myself), but as the system nears production status I think *SOME* easily understood system needs to be in place that will continue to make sense as the grid grows. Better to do something drastic now and suffer the wrath of us (hey its only beta) testers than to shake everything up after production.

What we need is a plan.