Island Purchase

Can anybody give me some advice on the purchase of an Island. I've tried that Land Store system and quite frankly I began to wonder why I ever bothered. As you can probably guess I'm planning to buy an Island, but before I do I need a bit of clarification on a few points.

1. According to the log-in page for this web site there are six topologies but the diagram along side this shows only four, is it six or is it four ?

2. Where can I visit the six/four islands in SL, I've found the four in a line at various locations on the map - presumably for demonstration purposes - but every time I try to teleport there it locks up and I go nowhere, then I have to shut SL down and log back in to be able to teleport anywhere. ?

3. How much extra does it cost to design your own island in preference to selecting one of the standard six/four designs ?

4. What's a 'terrain file', the text gives a link to presumably an explantion of this term, but it links you to a page where there is no reference to 'terrain files' ?

5. How long from ordering and paying for the island does it take Linden Labs to delivering the island ?

6. Finally, and this one's probably the most important to me, how much terraforming and texture controls do I have. Can I totally remodel the island and change it's appearance radically (drop areas of the land below sea level, raise high mountains, and change grasslands or sand into rock etc) or are the terraforming controls limited like those for mainland plots ?

I'm sure all the answers to my questions are to be found published somewhere and if anyone knows where that is I'd be grateful if I could be pointed in the right direction.

Thanks..Perre

They are very probably templates that are used for creating the islands when people buy them, and as such, you can't teleport there.



Nothing. You just buy an island with a standard design and then terraform it or upload a raw.



A "terrain file" is a .RAW format file with channels that describe the height of the land at each point. You can see a description here: http://secondlife.com/app/help/islands/pi_rawfiles.php



It depends on how busy LL are. Usually between 1 and 2 weeks.



The terraforming tools on an island are the same as you have on the mainland, but unlike the mainland they work with much greater range - almost 100m in each direction - so you can raise mountains and dig huge pits, yes. Uploading a raw file can alter anything, including the sea level of the sim.

Texturing is a bit more awkward. Each island has four textures - low, medium low, medium high, and high - and SL creates the terrain texture by _randomly_ mixing these together. And that's a big problem - you have some control over where each texture _can_ appear, but you can't specify where it _definately does_ appear because the terrain always has to be generated randomly. This, to be blunt, stinks.

I would strongly suggest some land ownership classes and learn as much as possible before hand.

Land requires a lot of info and it's easy to make a mistake you will regret.

#1 There are 4 basic islands (5 if you count flatland only) The other 2 are for multiple sims.

Question # 3, 4 and 6 are basically the same subject.
You have complete control of have your island looks (that is what the terrain file is for https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=4115). So everything you want to do in #6 is possible. The cost is dependent on if you do-it-yourself or hire one of the developers to do it for you (http://secondlife.com/developers/listings.php?category=FullService).

#5 The time varies. I've heard from a couple of days to over a month.

1. I think they show some four island combo's, so it's something like six designs but two of them are these huge things.

2. I forgot their sim names but it sounds like you found the right four... I'm not sure why you can't get in. Not that it matters toooo much, because you can change your island *substantially*.

3. Doesn't cost anything to design an island, really. A friend of mine needed a .raw file for two adjoined sims and all he had was a sketched topo map - if you know what you are doing and have the software, you can have a pretty good design just from that in about 30 minutes. Or five, if you aren't really slow like I am at it.

4. A terrain file is this photoshoppy thing that converts a little drawing of an island into the terrain. Of course it's more complicated than that, but, it's not too bad once you get the idea of it. Think of a black and white 'topo map' where black is sea bottom, greys are different altitudes and white is mountaintop. Other 'channels' set things like seawater height.

5. A week or two.

6. 100m of terraforming is possible, changing the water height is possible - it's more range than you need, really. The ground texture control is where it's a bit weak. You can have four ground textures (corresponding to altitude) but they don't just layer like a cake. There's some spottiness and randomness to how they blend, and you can sort of tilt, adjust or bend the overall altitudes that they occur at.

as desmond summed it pritty much up

but depending on how much work they have at LL, it could be a matter of days with delivery
when i orderd my island on may 30th, i had it deliverd early june 1st

Thanks for the advice folks, all my questions sorted out brilliantly, and as Najmah Handayani suggests I'll read up and take some classes pretty soon.

That's what a terrain file or rather the channel that is responsible for the land height looks like:



It's quite easy to design your own island shape in Photoshop. Download the terrain.raw, edit it, re-upload it. You can pick up the grey tone used for water or land and add to / remove from the land mass, or lighten up parts of the land to create hills. A few brush strokes instead of hours of terraforming.

I look forward to hearing how it goes, Perre. So far my mainland ownership is going fairly well, with mostly great neighbors, and not too many eyesores. But if things go badly I'd be tempted to get an Island in the future.