Discussions were held yesterday at the Land Use Commission meeting about creating a cave and tunnel system in Colonia Nova which would connect the tiny rock cave by the beach on the northeast corner of the sim to the underground tunnel and sewer system under the city. It's a neat idea, and would offer visitors lots of fun new places to explore. Moon did a beautiful schematic illustration of the whole concept. As conceived, you could spend hours down there, and if Rosie was able to add a special "experience" to the visit, it might be extraordinary.
So I visited the site and spent some time meditating on our options, and the problems to be faced. I also, for research purposes, visited the in-world demonstrations of the cave systems offered by Cube Republic, and now, also, by Studio Skye. I do have to say that I was underwhelmed by BOTH of those cave systems, particularly the new one by Skye, which is just not up to their high standards.
But... back to the project at hand. Moon proposes that the cave, or tunnel, run mostly under the main street, the Deacunaeum (sp???). While that may work ok, excavation will still be required on the existing visible terrain surrounding the theater. Excavation in SL means, in many cases and surely in this case, lowering the natural terrain and replacing it with prim landforms. Not terrible... indeed... while the Skye cave might be rather miserable, Skye landforms are used throughout the CDS and SL to stunningly beautiful effect. My intent here is just to describe clearly what we'll need to do.
Since this section adjoins the existing theater, and may involve adjusting parts of that theater, it was pointed out that the theater is not adjustable... it was created by Cadence Theas who left it with no perms. So utterly no adjustments can be made to it. In addition, the theater is now rather old and it might probably be a great idea to update it.
Fortunately, Moon volunteered to do just that. She proposes to replace the theater with a comparable build but one which we can add to the common inventory (Archie) and which uses mesh technology. Adopting this course of action would mean that the theater and the landform and tunnel/cave system could be built together.
Hmmmm... now that's a rather fascinating prospect.
Back to the site. My meditations concluded, taking all the aforementioned info into account, that the entire northeast corner of the sim should be rebuilt. The street and the 4 "E" parcels along it would be untouched, except that beneath them (and the entire rest of the sim corner from the city walls) the terrain would be lowered. The visible landforms would be entirely rebuilt, with the new theater as the central focus, and entrance stairway as it is now proceeding down from the street. Moon's cave schematic shows caves and tunnels from the beach cave at the NE corner, from a trapdoor in the theater, and from the park folly, all threading into the cave/tunnel system under the street, and ultimately leading to the network under the city. This all could be a dramatic re-envisioning of the theater set into the rocky headlands on our very northeast corner, with a combination of natural wildness (cliffs, rocky steps, natural beach and cave) with a certain faded elegant formality of the grand street along with formal theater entrance and park environment.
Kind of a neat idea. For those inclined to support this proposal, I'll note some logistical things. Normally, we are very insistent that builds are not constructed in situ... an SL build under construction is NOT a pretty site. And the continuous beautiful appearance of our estate is of huge importance. But this project presents a challenge, since in my proposal it involves replacing all the visible terrain with prim landform... and probably 99% of everything between the street and the sea. I've already been asked to manage the terrain adaptations needed for this project. If the proposal is given the go ahead, and Moon and I take the leads in this, I suggest that she will probably do the major theater construction in our workshop before anything is touched on the ground. But then, we will need to schedule a marathon land excavation/theater placement effort so that in the course of a day or so the basic visual in that area is changed from one to the other. Details of course may take weeks. But we would have a major focus on making sure that the area remains continuously visually presentable.
Your thoughts and comments are enthusiastically welcomed.
Sudane.................
Whenever I was building on side in the past I got some interested visitors who wanted to watch how building is done.
