Monastery-related lots on sale

[Jamie Palisades]

About eight private residential parcels in our CDS "Alpine Meadows" and "Monastery" sims are available from the CDS government, due to the relocation of the Monastery building complex.
I have asked that some be put on immediate sale, making them purchaseable via the Linden Lab software map "yellow parcel" controls, and have asked to hold others for approximately a week, so that they can be made available with advance notice, to fulfill some of the pent-up demand (as most of our sims are again sold out).
Of course, there also are other parcels available in CDS sims, from either our government or private selling citizens.

I have approved and we have posted temporary draft covenants for the Monastery sim, in the land metadata itself. They will be harmonized with our other sims, probably slightly changed, and finalized, by the RA. The usual CDS-wide rules (see the first section here: http://portal.slcds.info/index.php?id=covenant) apply, regarding theme compliance, laggy scripts and the like.

Also please remember that the Monastery sim is a limited-power "homestead" sim with reduced traffic, prim and avatar load limits. This will affect all residents and users there.

monastery-sim-july09-small.png (41.15 KiB) Viewed 1871 times

Go look. It makes me smile to see it -- and I think its Locus Amoenus neighbors agree. Arria and Ulysee, the sim's designers, have done a fine preliminary job of landscaping the new sim, complying with our usual CDS and Guild procedures. I expect officially (and gratefully) to accept their work, and give final signoff on the improvements on behalf of CDS (like [uri=http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php? ... 319#p12319]we did with Locus Amoenus sim[/uri]) by the end of the month.

Regards JP

[Jamie Palisades]

Comments are welcome. I will bring this, or a revision of it, to the CDS RA for approval. (I think there will be some minor proposed harmonizing changes. Yes, it has some flaws. Better to have something posted, though, until the RA acts.) For now, we simply have adopted the draft that the sim's designers kindly provided, on a temporary basis.

Interim text in force:

Temporary Covenant for CDS "Monastery" sim
as of July 2, 2009

1. General CDS Covenants

1. All structures and scripts are subject to review.
2. No terraforming unless the sim covenant allows it (*)
3. No SL or RL commercial pornography is permitted
4. The use of excessive scripts which adversely effect sim performance is not permitted, determination of the same is at the sole discretion of the Chancellor, who is entitled to remove the scripts. An appeal of the Chancellor decision can be submitted to the SC.
5. Scripts which use llListen (voice command) are only permitted, if they listen only after a touch and then deactivate after a certain period of time.
6. Scripts which spy on residents are not permitted.
7. Bounce scripts are not permitted.
8. Particles can only be used in effects that have real-world analogies, such as lights, smoke, and fire.
9. Particles should be set no higher than 10 particles per second.
10. Scripts and particles attached to avatars are unregulated.
11. Subletting is not permitted
12. No skyboxes are permitted below 512 m in altitude
13. No default wood textured prims are to be left in place longer than 24 hours
14. Exterior signs are allowed, unless they be floating, particle emitting, or rotating.

2. Monastery's Sim-Wide Covenants

The following provisions apply to all parcels in the Monastery Sim:
1. Monastery is defined as having a general Alpine, Rural theme.
2. Monastery is a "multiple prim" sim: this means that a 512 m2 parcel has 234.
3. Monastery allows Direct Teleporting, [but will feature a centralized default Hub in the sim, near the Monastery building].
4. Skyboxes will be not be Monastery allowed. [this is a contradiction]
5. All buildings must be physically plausible.
6. General Restrictions
- 1. No outdoor hot tubs are permitted
- 2. Clubs are not permitted
7. Commercial function is allowed if falling within the theme of the sim, or, failing that, be kept in interior spaces.
8. Monastery has two zones, defined by expected appearances of builds and/or different administration of land: Hamlet (H) and Monastery (M)
9. Monastery has 1 type of building: alpine cottages. It also features a special M plot for the Monastery building.
10. Plots are identified by a string X0,corresponding to Typology-Number.
11. All the buildings exteriors must be built in pre-industrial materials, namely:
- a. Structural elements can be stone, brick or wood
- b. Roofing elements can be wood, slate or terracota shingles, and thatch.
- c. Exterior flooring elements can be brick, ceramics, stone or wood.
- d. Wall elements can be stone, brick, wood or stucco.
- e. Door and window elements can be wood or metals, raw or painted. Large panes of glass in any colour must be partitioned by appropriate framing.
12. Terraform is allowed within a difference of +2/-2 meters, and further terraforming must be approved.
13. Per person a maximum of 2 parcels may be owned. A person cannot own more than 3072 m2.
14. In order to reduce lag, when building a house or large object, textures no larger than 512*512 or equivalent must be used.
15. Anything contrary to what is disposed in the Sim-wide, Zones and Typologies Covenants must require a waiver by the Executive Branch.

3. Monastery's Zones Covenant

a. Zone H (Hamlet)
- 1. The Zone H (for Hamlet) is the Zone on the north of the sim that is adjacent to Locus Amoenus, around the lake.
- 2. Buildings in this zone aim to resemble alpine (mountain) styles of Alpine Europe, mainly alpine cottages.
b. Zone M (Monastery)
- 1. The Zone M is the Zone concerned directly with the Monastery building.
- 2. This zone is defended from any private building other than the Monastery.
= 3. This zone is directly administered by the Monastery Curator, in compliance with these covenants and other applying CDS legislation.

4. Monastery's Typologies Covenant

1. At any given point in plots H, the maximum height of builds is 20 m above the intersection of the build with the ground
2. For all plots H, there will be a border on the sides where the plots meet another. This border of no construction is of 2m. The borders can have trees of small gardens.
3. Plots H must have an open area for garden or woods not inferior to 40% of the area of the plot. The border area counts for these 40%. These areas can feature small builds like gazebos and pavillions, as long as they comply with the border and height rules.
4. Plots H must feature no less than 4 trees per each 512 m2 of plot area
5. All plots can feature any kind of alpine structure.
6. No border rule, garden, or height rules apply to the M (Monastery) plot.

[Timo Gufler]

I have some questions and comments about the covenant.

1. All structures and scripts are subject to review.

I like this rule because it tries to guarantee consistent style, but have been pondering, how does this work in practise? People seem to build houses, but who does really ask someone to review them? Currently it seems nobody even cares to keep on eye this.

If review is required for buildings, when should that be done? If I planned to build a house on my plot and built it little by little, and then polished and polished, at which time a review should take place?

I think the section about script review should be removed. Most of the scripts running in CDS are probably closed-source scripts that come inside objects people buy and nobody, except the sellers, know what the scripts really do.

On the other hand, if you write a script for a product you plan to sell, it may contain your trade-secrets, like algorithms, business logic, password, or server urls, etc. and allowing an outsider to view it can be a risk to your business. Also, who has time to review all updates and rewrites of the scripts, and who even knows they have taken place?

5. Scripts which use llListen (voice command) are only permitted, if they listen only after a touch and then deactivate after a certain period of time.

My understanding is, that the biggest problem are scripts listening to channel 0, because they must process all the chat taking place in their range, that causes lag. If someone has better information, please, correct me. I propose the rule to be changed a bit:

5. Scripts which use llListen (voice command), to listen to channel 0, are only permitted, if they listen only after a touch and then deactivate after a certain period of time.

On the other hand I bet there are, for example, a lot of furniture in CDS currently that simply listen to channel 0 or some other channel for "show" and "hide" commands that control poseball visibility and hence violate the rule.

2. For all plots H, there will be a border on the sides where the plots meet another. This border of no construction is of 2m. The borders can have trees of small gardens.

The plots in the Monastery are small (512 m²) but the current terasses quite big. Especially the lesser dimension of the small plots can make placing a house difficult. I propose the following addition, because eaves of alpine houses tend to be quite long and provide kind of natural border around them:

2. For all plots H, there will be a border on the sides where the plots meet another. This border of no construction is of 2m. The borders can have trees of small gardens. Eaves of the houses are excluded from this rule.

4. Plots H must feature no less than 4 trees per each 512 m2 of plot area

Alpine Meadow has this rule and it works there very well. However, does even the public land of the Monastery sim meet this rule? Since open-spaces have only 3,750 prims available (while full sims have 15,000). Do you think the minimum should be smaller?

I like covenants because they define common rules for behavior and style, and the Monastary covenant is very good as a whole, but I hope the changes proposed above would be considered.

[Sonja Strom]

Since the Monastery has been moved to its own sim, it would be good to revise the covenants on Alpine Meadow that describe the Monastery land there.