[SSP?]

The "pickles" may be the same shape on the map (roughly), but that doesn't mean they will look or feel the same by any means when you are actually there. They would if they were a direct clone of each other, but that is exactly what we want to avoid. Seeing an area on the map is very different from experiencing it in world. Elevation, content and terrain makes a world of difference. 

As far as the name, Evangeline Arcadia, if comes from a discussion when we came up with the idea of using those regions as a basis for more houseboats. Since the beginning people have said they think Bellisseria looks like a baby dragon sitting in a boot eating a pickle (although some think it's a hot dog). So we started calling the regions making up that island "the pickle". Originally we were going to take those blank terraformed regions and cut out the regions in the middle and just "squish" it together. Thus the name "Squishy Pickle" for the project. Instead, I gutted the center and terraformed it so more houseboats would fit inside, but by then the name had already stuck. So when Glam made the gorgeous beach-side concession stand we faux branded it "The Squishy Pickle Bar" to cement the name in SL lore forever. 

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. 

 

[The New LH Release Plan - Your Thoughts]

Are regions named and restarted before they are released? Yes.

Does a region being renamed and restarted mean they are ready or about to be released? Nope. 😁

[The New LH Release Plan - Your Thoughts]

Perhaps I can explain the thinking behind the release strategy and people will understand better. 

Consider for a moment that (and I'm just pulling numbers out of my little metal butt for simplicity sake) whether we make 30 regions in a month and release them all at once or make one region a day, the end result is the same frequency. So what is the advantage of doing it this way?

For one, it put out homes and gets them into resident's hands as soon as they are ready. Also, it is in a constant flow instead of large chunks all at once. So instead of a mad rush Black Friday Sale style release, it is more like "The bakery that makes the world best baguettes runs out quickly, but at least you don't have to wait until next month. Come back the next day or the day after."

The other part is that it allows us to work in a production line sort of workflow, which is all about the process. Once you get the process flow working and working right, speed and efficiency will increase naturally. The more you do something, the faster and more efficient you will become. We can identify bottlenecks in the process quickly and address them accordingly. All of which will hopefully lead to an increase in the speed in which we can release new homes to residents. 

Yes, they will still go quickly. That will be true until we can get enough of them available to meet demand. It's all about tailoring our process to better achieve that.

[Camping Tonight? New Homes Preview Comments and Photos]

5 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

It seems likely that this was in the works -- but maybe not as I can make things pretty fast when needed LOL. I would LIKE to think that TPTB actually read our comments. This looks much more "salable" than some of the others. More "home" and less "vacation abode".  

At takes many weeks or months of work to make and release our houses. We do read and listen to comments. Often the things suggested are either something we already have planned but can't say or something we considered but abandoned for one reason or another. And sometimes it something we hadn't thought about and we give it some thought. 

[Camping Tonight? New Homes Preview Comments and Photos]

16 hours ago, Sean Azambuja said:

the landscaping is what?  I mean compared to the current land, i guess.  But these silly trailers and the landscaping look a bit 2009 to me lol.  Are those things even mesh? 

landscaping a 512=http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Honah Lee Shoal/188/85/22

Jesus, I need to be a mole...  

 

[Houseboat rotation]

Right. That might work on your spot, but another spot they would want to rotate it the other way... or all the way around to the other side. So we have to account for all those possibilities. Do we put docks around the entire parcel? That wouldn't work either. That is why (as I said) it gets very complicated very quickly

[Houseboat rotation]

1 hour ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

But in the examples I was talking about rotating 90 degrees (not 180 degrees as Karl is talking about) so that in each case the short end (front) of the houseboat is facing out on the water like the 16x64 plots....so there isn't a compromise in that situation

If we gave residents the option of rotating their houseboats, this is what the end result will be in many cases. And if the land where the center of the root is near the shore it could push the boat up out of the water when it rezzes. And if they rotate it in a way that it tries to rez with the center of the root in an adjacent region... well, that won't be good. So even as an option, it would still require reworking all of the houseboat regions... and in some cases there may not even be a workable solution.  

[Houseboat rotation]

3 minutes ago, Leora Jacobus said:

Well I guess that that is what @Abnor Mole meant to say: They give you a choice where your big Window should face. If you want to face the sea, choose Windlass or Barnacle, if you prefer to face your neighbour choose Wallover or evening star. There are two round types and two straight types one in each direction.

 

Exactly. If Karl had a parcel where the neighbor and the open water were reversed, his dilemma would be reversed as well. At least in either case, he has two options that face the direction he finds more desirable. It's a matter of weighing your options and finding a compromise between which style you prefer considering the direction it faces in that location. 

[Houseboat rotation]

Long ago, before any homes were even released, we considered a system that allowed residents to rotate and even move their homes on their parcel. Here are the problems we found:

It's very simple to move or rotate a house on your own land. You are the owner. You just edit it, grab a handle and pull. But Linden Homes are not owned by you and don't count against your Land Impact. They do this by keeping the center of the root in the linkset over our land, not yours. You rez them from a rezzer owned by us. For that system to work, it requires that the center of the root in the house linkset must always:

-be over land owned by the Governor and set to LDPW.
-be in the same region
-not be below grade

It also must:
-place the house where there is at least one clear point of entry
-place the house where there are no tree branches inside the home.

When we thought about this idea we quickly realized giving rotation or movement options complicated things greatly. In many cases moving or rotating the home broke one of these conditions. We already had dozens of regions laid out and built. Adding this feature would require essentially redoing most of them. In addition to that, we would also have to test each and every parcel for every possible condition. This would roughly double or even triple our necessary QA time due to the sheer number of possible configurations. It was decided that while this feature would be nice to have, the rework required coupled with restrictions on how parcels could be oriented and a massive increase in QA constituted a cost that did not exceed the benefit.

As far as houseboats go, houses require an unencumbered access point no matter which model you choose and it is essential that we have a set standard for where a house rezzes so we can built to that standard accordingly. In the case of houseboats the doors were not always in the same location or on the same side. This meant they had to be surrounded by docks on three sides and a standard configuration adopted that made sense in a majority of cases. So in some cases certain houses will have better "views" for a location than a different model. In a different location, that situation will be reversed. And these are always subjective. One person may prefer the windows face outward and not care about access to the open water. Another person may have a preference completely the opposite. We went with a standard that tried to accommodate as many of those various preferences as possible, even if it meant choosing a different model house to achieve it. 

So in answer to answer the question "Can you give us the ability to rotate our houseboats?" the answer has to be "Unfortunately, no. We cannot."

[New premium Linden homes fraud...?]

3 hours ago, cleve Byron said:

Yeah, there are new homes and a new region. I've checked it out, seen the houseboats and the homes on land. A number of these appear to be unoccupied, the empties all seem to be owned by someone named "Dyna Mole" and yet when I click on the "Get your new home now" link, the old, very tired, laggy homes in regions that have been around for a decade are all that I'm offered.

These new premium homes being offered seem to be only some to be some sort of bait to keep me paying for a premium membership, dangled just tantalizingly beyond reach but never actually available. The smell of rotting fish here is pretty undeniable.

If you'd like to come to the area Marianne pointed toward you can watch us in the process of building new Linden Homes regions and see for yourself. (All we ask is that residents give us room to work unencumbered and without interruption).

[The Linden Homes Photo Thread]

2 hours ago, kiramanell said:

P.S. Those green 'placeholder' houses, is it my imagination, or do they have an exciting new shape? (Heretofore unseen)

Those green boxes are what we use as a guide when planting trees. As long as the trees do not intersect that box, we know whichever house people choose they won't end up with a branch in their bedroom or something.

["Starter" Homes, more like Retirement Homes, amIright?]

The underlying question is and will always be, "Is the person hosting it making money off of it?" With something like 7 Seas you could have the server to fish, but could not have the vendors selling items for L$ (since I understand the owner gets a percentage). If you normally use it just to buy your own bait you could rez it, buy your bait and then remove it... or just go to the nearest place to buy your bait. But you couldn't leave it out for others to buy from or send them to where they would buy their own bait or upgrades. They would have to find that for themselves.

[Fence remove?]

The Linden Homes Covenant does not allow for changes to the landscaping for a two very important reasons.

First is Land Impact. We only have so much we can use to decorate around parcels. In many regions if we added a fence we would only be able to do that by removing content someplace else in the region first. Second, if we started modifying the landscaping at residents request we would quickly become overwhelmed and doing nothing all day but moving hedges and fences and things.

We realized some people might appreciate a fence or some hedges that do not count against their LI while some may not. The thinking is once we have enough homes in circulation there will be a surplus for residents to try for a parcel more tailored to their liking. 

[What's the reason for max of 5 home abandons allowed in 24 hrs?]

The answer is:

It is a legacy feature that was added when the first Linden Homes were launched way back in the day. People were indeed abandoning and trying again over and over to get a specific house in a specific location. The practice was overloading the system, so the 5 times per 24 hours limitation was implemented.

[SSP?]

Once a region has been released to residents for occupancy, it cannot be cloned to again. It would revert to the saved state of the clone. All of the changes to the live region since it was released would be lost. 

[SSP?]

15 hours ago, s2Pandora said:

I think if they were doing that, it'd be best to bar access of anybody but them. Let people watch, but they can't get in the way.

We can block access if we need to but we'd prefer not to if we don't have to. The main reason we left it open there is so residents can still use the river for boating. 

[So, here’s an idea.]

There are multiple parts of that which would make it insanely complicated and impossible to implement. Without going into detail, it would take more resources to retrofit the old Linden Homes than in creating all of Bellisseria.  It would be much much much much simpler to at some point create a new theme of homes reminiscent of the Meadowbrook style but more updated to current standards.

[If you have more than one home ..]

There was no passive aggressiveness in my previous statement. It is not greedy to have two or more premium alts each with a new Linden Home. If it makes you feel better, replace "it would be nice" with "it would be an act of generosity far above and beyond what is expected". That is all I meant when I asked people to simply entertain the thought of abandoning one as an act of kindness and generosity to their fellow residents.

[Look what's coming....]

Not all viewers do it the same, although they really should since deeding is not possible:

[Look what's coming....]

20 hours ago, Leora Jacobus said:

Sorry I do not really understand the difference - In "about land" I can choose a group and then check "allow deed". Anyway we all can rezz now and after a lot of fumbling we all are on the list of the Control Panel and at least can open the doors!

 

You can check the little "allow deed to group" box, but the actual "Deed" button is greyed out as Linden Homes cannot be transferred and deeding to a group is a transfer of ownership. When you look at About Land it will show you as the owner of the parcel. If it were deeded it would say "(Group Owned)". Certain things like autoreturn not returning items set the same group or only group members being able to rez will work if the land is set to the group, but other things like group members being able to control parcel settings only work with land that is actually owned by the group.

[Look what's coming....]

1 minute ago, Marianne Little said:

The names was SSB something? Now they have names like Tatsulot, Sirinal, Zio and so on.

SSP are our "build" regions. When they are cloned to "live" they get their final names. 

[Look what's coming....]

28 minutes ago, Marsellus Walcott said:

And yes, this will be excellent for sailing. Too bad the moles didn't open up a bit more around Pickle Island. If they did, circumventing it would probably become a thing. As it is right now, there are a few houseboats that gets in the way, which means one would hsve to go through it in order get to the other side.

But yeah, that new channel looks gold for general boating.

Bellisseria was designed mostly with small to medium sized pleasure craft in mind (boats under about 40m). Large vessels like container ships, mega yachts and deep draft sailboats will find many areas (especially close to shore or in/near the marinas) "challenging"

[What else would you guys like to see added to the new Linden Home Continent?]

1 hour ago, TheVeryFirst said:

What are the chances of getting street names and house numbers.

Considering the massive amount of time and resources it would take to:

Name each and every little road and street everywhere
Come up with a numbering system
Create actual signs for names/numbers
Get them through the QA process
Figure in the LI for those signs (which was never accounted for in our reserve LI calculations)
Place out all the signs in the correct spots

All for something that would be cute, but has no actual usable practical value (like a landmark or a slurl region name/coords  has)... I'd say the chances are in the slim to none range.

[⚡ Linden Homes Security System ⚡]

From my experience most people simply are not aware and set whatever orb they have the way they want like they are used to doing in the past on mainland. Once the Covenant is pointed out to them they change the setting or use the one provided in the content pack instead.

[Security/Privacy and New Linden Homes]

The Linden Homes Covenant has also been updated to include the regulations regarding security orbs and devices. You can direct them there as well so they can see for themselves.