Towering/tunnelling questions...

Hi guys, I'm less than a week old so bear with my ignorance...

I've already fallen in love with the wonderful concept that is SL. and I decided to buy a plot of land and start playing, honing skills (well, hatching them in my case). Naively, I though about 10,000 m should do very nicely...

Then I saw the cost! So I opted to start with the basic 512m plot for now. I've got a lovely location and all's well but there is the space issue. So in time honoured fashion, I've decided to go for vertical maximisation.

Part 1)

I'm gonna learn how to build buildings but it's gonna take a while (lots of tutorial lol), so I was wondering in the meantime if there was a pre-fab building of reasonable prim which is a tower - I can't seem to find one. I don't mean a skyscraper - nor something with a thin unusable pedestal with module on top. I mean a roughly cylindical or even square columnar building that I can have over 3+ levels to get more floorspace. Any ideas?

(I have a floating building high up with teleport link too but the lay of the land would flatter a tall thinnish building gracefully sticking its head out of a forest)

Part 2)

I understand the basics of how overground buildings are made but what stumps me is how to excavate a subterranean level. I understand you can have up to 4m underground...obviously this would add another level to my building. Is it that you terraform a big pit and cover it with a floor and cut some stairs into it or is that too simplistic?

Many thanks in anticipation!

you never really go subterainian with 4m your just lower than the ground around you (or in my case only 3 sides of it) but yea you dig it out cover it back up with prims to ground level leaving space between, how you get to it is your biz you could use stairs an elevator or my favorite when you touch a prim it hollows out a floor pim in a circle like a trap door and closes back up... for that nice underground lair effect

i really really wish they would extend that limit to 10-20m becuase its only 4m based around the original landscape, in my lair i have the control room as deep as it will go which is about 4 meters but on the down hillside its well over 10.
4meters is really restrictive with the 3rd person prespective, ive found that atleast 5-5.5m is nice for you camera to not constantly skimming the celing ...

that's basically it. teraform a hole in the ground, then use prims to cover it. you can either leave space for stairs or flying or use a teleport, which is what i did when i built a "basement" level in my last build.

the problem with that is camera positioning. the ground has a drastic effect on camera movement. so if you're you're in the underground room, your view control and angles are gonna be pretty limited, especially on a 512m plot. not discouraging it. it's neat to have an underground lair, but you should be aware of the limitations.

Leo, you may want to check out the Gnubie store in Indigo. Jai sells some nice towers. Not sure if anything will fit on a 512M plot, but they're cheap enough, if they're all too big you could probably still learn a lot by rezzing one in a sandbox and looking at how it's made.

Thanks guys.

My word, there is a LOT in that Gnubie store and all for $1 each item. Sadly although the tower was only 40m square, it was 500+ prim. There is a lighthouse which I'll try out though.

Failing that, yes the modular tower system may be the answer. Thanks for the replies about the digging too.

I think there are few pre-made towers because they're the building type that people seem to most want to make themselves in the process of learning what they can do in SL. I remember my old castle was fun to build, and pre-made stuff just can't match that.