Free Store

I got to thinking that I had made items for the building tutorials that could be of use to people. Having a copy of the finished item might help those that are building. And even for those that don't care to learn -- some simple furniture might be just what they need for their first apartment or home.

So, I turned one of the village shops into FIRST STEPS free store. Right now it has the five items that are in the tutorials as well as the clothes for women.

Find the shop at FANTASTIC 233, 69, 81.

I will be adding tutorial builds to the shop as they come available. Please enjoy!

Shops for Free

The Village Shops at Sam's Place are about ready. OLG is not however (big wink). Still it's looking pretty lonely on those streets and I'd like to see some STUFF in there. A whole sim is a lot to fill when you are building from scratch and there are only so many hours of the day.

SOOOOOOOOO - I woke up this morning in my corporeal world wondering what a plan might be. People are dropping in daily and asking me when they can buy things. This is a good sign I think and hopefully they will return when they CAN buy -- when permissions and credits are in place. Groups too -- / me keeping fingers crossed.

So here is my temporary offer for anyone who is feeling a bit antsy and wants to get their feet wet in Openlife. You don't have to be NEW, but you do need to be "landless" :D

There are eleven village shops and three village apartments. Most of them are completed and available for occupants. Since this is MAINLAND (a good thing in the long run I think but there are few land tools and no groups right now) even placing objects can be problematic. STILL, letting people see what you will be selling or offering when the time comes seems like a win win situation.

So until mainland rentals become a viable option, I am offering shop spaces as well as two apartments for free. Free is good :D



Here is how it works.

Come to the FANTASTIC sim of FANTASTIC and look around the village shops. There are several styles, some larger than others, some with display windows, some with access to the road to Nara. There are currently two shops that have apartments above. My plan is to rent these to the same people so you live above your work. They are furnished. You can reserve -- so to speak -- your future spot, have your sign out and a few empty vendors showing the goods you will sell. This will let people that are roaming around bookmark your shop so that they can find it when they CAN shop.



About the future of the Village Shops:

When the shops become viable, I plan to rent them at a medium to low market rate. It is not my intent to make a bunch of money on these, I want the shops there for ambiance as much as anything. I believe in small footprints on the land -- in real life as well as virtual. So Fantastic will only have basic scripting as Openlife grows. This is not a spot for high powered, complex goods. Think of it AS a village. Small, intimate, friendly and hopefully accessible.

Since prims are not a huge issue here, I am thinking that 400 per shop should suffice. So, you could put out a real example of a sculpty shoe, but not that 350 prim necklace :D. The apartments (there will eventually be three available) are furnished but those renting the shop - apartment duo will get extra prims for their own accessories. The rates for those duo rentals will be double the shop only rentals.

Currently, I would really like people who want these shops to be making goods IN Openlife (not imports). That is just part of my ethic and it may not work, but priority will certainly be given to those people.

Prim Plantings

I spent much of the day making poses. It's sort of a restful pursuit for me and real life was a bit problematic today.

About an hour filling up clothes vendors had me counting gold stars earned and so late this eve I went back over to apartment 9 to add some flowers. I have no plant textures to upload as Phil's database gurus lost a ton of my store products as well as a lot of my textures. Since it has been over a month, it is unlikely I will ever see them again. Oh well.

So with no plant textures to use and prims aplenty, I decided on some botanical prims for the apartments. I took the leaves from earlier flowers, resized and reshaped, added some buds and voila -- indoor greenery.

A version of this -- bigger and more grand -- would look great in the art gallery area. That's another day, however.

The lighting effect is from my graphics program, but who knows? I added track lights the other eve so maybe a spotlight over the plant would be a nice addition. We'll see where the muse leads me.

Drinks Anyone?

I spent the early even working on one of the village apartments. While I, Sam, am a wine drinker, it's important to have all sorts of choices for your guests -- or in this case future renter's guests (smile). So I had a great time making a champagne bucket complete with ICE CUBES as well as some nice sculpty glasses. I also made some track lighting for above the bar and now it isn't so dark in those corners. A floor lamp will give just the right glow for the other side of the room.

AND I even changed clothes finally. YEAH! (Well I changed my shirt anyway -- it's a start.)

Moonlight Fountain

I sprinkled my new tree around and about the sim this morning. So much cheerier and that's always a good thing. Then I decided to work on a fountain for The Village. Now I could have remade a favorite fountain of course, but where's the fun in that? So I started -- once again -- with no plan except that the stone needed to match that already in the courtyard.

Since the fountain was going in the prosperity corner of the sim and since that is tree energy fed by water feng shui wise, I thought, "why not really go for it" and looked up the number that is auspicious for that energy. It was four. Four was simple to incorporate into the fountain and so I did just that.

I tried to make some curved benches to go around the fountain, and while I could DO that trickily, the sit script needed to make my poses work was definitely not doing any good for the sim. So, I abandoned that ideas (stability - stability - stability) and made plain benches and placed them in the grassy area already there. That works. Good to have seating options and nice to have some of my animations and poses around.


Building Tip:

Most of us have learned to "pull a prim" from one already there to keep the alignment. That works very well most of the time. There ARE times however -- like when you have texture and texture rotation and light features and the like already IN your prim -- that simply dragging a copy of the prim you want WITH all those features from another area and then aligning with the POSITION numbers is the easiest plan.

The diagram above shows how I took one of the water prims from the top of one pillar and placed it on top of another by matching the X and Y coordinates. The Z coordinate was the same in this case as the side pillars were all the same height.

I simply clicked on the top ring of the pillar I was headed for and copied those values into the water prim (highlighted in the photo). The alignment is then perfect.

Adding the Details

So while things were a bit stressful today at Phil's, all went swimmingly in OL - yeah! I added three more shops (one a new design that opens onto the walkway to eku's) and I have only one more to go.

Now the REAL fun starts -- adding the details.

It doesn't escape me that my neighbors are building UP. The temple next door promises to be grand and definitely tall. Osiris has started what looks like a new spaceship (shiny and new) right next door. And I am all about small and the details.



So I made a coffee cart today complete with name and decals -- even on the cups. Matching napkins and international newspapers add a sense of reality. I have stools with NO POSE balls. True, they only do the basic "sit", but as scripts are VERY problematic at my sim for whatever reason -- simple is better (thanks Gitfinger).

I have coffee swirling in the cup but only saw STEAM for a second and then the texture disappeared into the ugly gray abyss. So I decided to forgo the steam and go for decals instead. Ya just gotta work with what works.

One more building on the end will make 13 so I guess I'll figure out an apartment upstairs building to make 14 in all.

The Village: Making Progress

Oh I love those prims! I'm very happy with how the village is progressing. Six shops and three apartments so far. The shops all have good access and the apartments all have nice views as well as outdoor space and privacy. Different sizes and styles for different tastes. Lots of fun. I made window boxes under the shutters in the duplex style shop - apartment fourplex. So flexi flowers that blow in the breeze greet the visitors. I'm going to add some tables and chairs between the two shops -- maybe this afternoon. We'll see.



I think this brick style with a slightly retro feel is my favorite so far. I may put some more of those on the last side of the courtyard.

The database is being persnickety again this afternoon so I can't upload my door textures for the white stucco apartments. But that will happen in its own time.

The Village: A Beginning

So what do you do with (almost) unlimited prims. Well ya BUILD of course. And I decided to build a village. I started with a central park as green space is always a good thing. This area is in a "tree" bagua -- feng shui wise so I wanted lots of growing things and trees. I made some circular flexi grasses and added some more of my homemade flowers. A cobblestone walkway adds a bit of an old fashion feel. I've made two shops and an apartment so far. I built the steps you see in the background out of real prims and there are MANY.

I've always been a big believer in details so the the signs hanging for the shops have real chain, the streetlight of course gives real light and the shutters in house number two -- the small one -- are part way open and you can see curtains though the gap. All fun little bits of reality in our not exactly real world.

I have no idea how the village will evolve. That's not really the point. The point is to play and that I am doing. The village adjoins the main park and is bordered on the other side by the huge pond and trees. So it is cozy -- at least as cozy as a village within a "city" with both shops and houses can be.