Teresa Firelight

I am not sure if you serious HouseBoaters will love or hate what I did.. I turned mine into abit more of a house and a bit less of a boat... I added a top addon (Second Life Marketplace - Wallower Upper Deck Add on), which I then modified it cuz ..well cuz I almost always end up modifying things. I added a partition to separate that addon into two rooms. Then I put a bedroom and sitting room up there, and added a privacy wall to the deck. I also made some changes downstairs, diving the big rectangle into two separate rooms with an entry hall separating them. So downstairs is now 3 distinct rooms.. a kitchen, a livingroom and a hallway. For those of you purists who miss the bathroom, you can hop off the deck I added into the water when you need to go.... So here is a phototour of my 1st attempt at decorating a houseboat. I had to divide this tour into 4 separate entries because the forums would only let me attach 3 photos to each post... So this is phototour 1- the exterior. It shows the front of my 2 story Wallover, the side with the balcony and the water-level deck.

TBH I am so new at houseboats that I wouldn't know a "good location" from one that isn't. I got my first ever houseboat a few days ago (never dreamed I would like one enough to keep it, but I am kinda liking it). The boat is located on Baby Buoy and is in a row of tightly packed homes with one on each side. But the direction that faces out from the boat shows only open sea region (no other clusters of houseboats) and the boardwalk is on an island.. so instead of another house behind mine, it is sand and rocks, which is kinda pretty. Also, I noticed two "nice" features: 1) the pier between my house and the house on my left is double thick, placing that boat a little further away from me, and 2) it faces east and has pretty sunrises. So is this a good location? an average location? or a "not so desirable" location? While on the topic, what features do people feel makes a good location for a houseboat? (I'm asking everyone, not just kali)

So is the assumption that if they "know" the covenant, they will obey it? my experience is that most of the flagrant violators know they are breaking the rules and just dont care...

Part of the mystery is solved.. seems to be two contributing factors... 1) had immediate neighbor with furniture that emitted light that bleed into my space (removed this portion by derendering & blacklisting offending object) and 2) the model I had used (Barnacle) seems to be less texture-friendly than other models. I switched to wallower and the texture mismatch was a lot less noticeable.

Always, maybe it has to do with the model of houseboat you have rezzed. I was pancamming around and noticed that some of the houses have have built addons that look like they match but non of them are Barnacle. I will try another model.. maybe the issue is just with that model.. idk at this point. Also I noticed that some of the barcacle walls dont match each other in the house itself...

Thank you so much for the info. It is odd that LL did houseboat textures this way, because none of the other types of homes have a similar issue. I am a builder at heart, and I tend to build and add on to almost any linden home that I get... adding walls or decks or addon rooms or whatever. This is the first time I have run into the issue with the textures in the content creation packs not matching the home the pack is for. It seems as if houseboats are in a class of their own and maybe they just are not going to be "my thing."

I am having an issue with the textures in the content creation pack... none of them match (or even come close) to the colors on the houseboat itself. I got a houseboat a few days ago and tried to decorate it. Wasn't working for me, so decided to put up a wall in the barnacle model to separate the lower part into two rooms. So I went to the texture pack and selected Innerwall - Gray. The wall was a drastically different color than the boat walls. So I started trying all of the wall colors and every single one of them.. the wall color and the corresponding color in the texture pack (applied on a prim) were not even close. So then I decided to try some of the other textures, like the floor textures, the outer textures, the deck textures, etc. NOT a one of them was even close to a match for what the houseboat looks like. I tried it with the default EEP environment for the region and also with the old windlights.. Still no similarity. I tried using full bright to see if that would fix the mismatch.. nope did not! I even experimented with enabling/disabling the advanced lighting model... No matter what I did, I could not get close to a match. I cant figure out what is going wrong here. All of the other house types, the textures in the content creation pack match well. Houseboats -- no similarity. I find it hard to believe that a content creation pack could be that off, but I also cant figure out what I could be doing wrong to make such a drastic mismatch. (I am an experienced builder so it is not a matter of not knowing how to apply, scale, etc a texture...) Any suggestions?

Maybe that has to do more with the neighbor than with the location? I mean, I am not a houseboat person and I frequently chat with my neighbors in my assorted locations. In fact, a few of my neighbors have become close friends.

Horizons prices are way out of control, I agree. I bought my parcel at what I thought was a totally outrageous price a few years ago.... because I loved the location so much .. this was before Bellisseria was even an option for me. Now the lots near mine are going for more than double what I paid for mine. TBH I am not spending much time at my horizon's parcel because I love the Bellisseria ones so much more. However, I am afraid to let it go because I keep thinking that if I want one in the future, it will be out of my budget, so I hang on to what I have even though I rarely spend time there. Unfortunately, I think it might be hard for the Lab to simply dump new horizons out because they center around their game and they will not want to duplicate the game.

Your new location is stunning.. the prettiest I have seen for a Bellisseria office. Beautiful location and awesome decorations. Well done BBB staff!

A bit more on horizons.. Horizons has some of the protections of Bellisseria, but not many of them. You cant teraform but there is nothing that keeps your neighbors from putting up eyesores, no restrictions on heights of skyboxes, ban lines are allowed, so are short warning security orbs, etc. Some of the horizons neighborhoods are quite nice.. such as the one on Ophelia where I have a house. But in my opinion, they are not nearly as beautiful as the Bellisseria ones.

If you really want more LI per parcel and are willing to pay for it, you can buy a lot on Horizons. The land there has gotten to be very expensive, but it does have a double LI allowance of 702 LI per parcel -- and comes as empty lot so you can purchase/place the house of your choice. The price has almost doubled since I bought mine. The cheapest lot I could find on the map near me was 92,150L many of them were over 150,000L and some of the more premium spots over 200,000L. So definitely not cheap But if you really want to increase land allowance, you can buy two on the same region and have allowance of 1404LI. Linden homes are only 1 per owner, so you cant gain more LI by having 2 houses on same region.. but on horizons you can own more than 1 (assuming you are willing to pay for it). If you search around you can probably find better prices than my quick look of the map in my area.

great price, ty Eddy, and nice work. But the ones I looked at were not that low li.. like around 20. I rarely have that many LI left over. So not a good fit for me personally. I have a favorite nature scene skybox that I love... is only 1 LI can easily be resized/reshaped to fit on 32x32 parcel. It is not cheap but oh.. so worth it! It comes with a bunch of scenes to choose from, with excellent panorama photography so it doesnt look like you are in a box... https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/NATURE-Skybox-MESH-1-Prim-12-SCENES-seamless-panorama-low-forest-beach-meadow-mountain-privacy-surroundings-EXTRAS/5295726

I ran out of picture space in previous post, so continuing here.... note that the beach bar and rez zone is not attached to my home, but it is a very short walk away...

OK I fell in love with an OL stilt that many people would consider being located in a less-than-1st-choice location. It is very inland, away from the water, across the street from some OLs that boarder the water. But once I relaxed my "criteria" of wanting to boarder water, I found all sorts of things I loved about it. 1. it has ponds on both sides 2. It has a cute little roped off trail right next to it 3. it backs a tall hill, giving privacy for the back deck. 4. nice view of beach and stilts across street 5. It is only a couple of houses away from a cute beach bar and rez zone. I have only had it for about 6 weeks now, but I wanted to show it off.... so here is a short photo tour about why I love my totally inland OL stilt:

I was a bad girl once and got caught. I had a home on the edge of a region, with a totally empty region behind it. I used an offsim extender to put some trees out behind the house in the empty unused area, extending about 6 or 7 M into the empty region. One day the trees were returned.. I popped over to see a mole busy at work starting to setup framework to build on that region. I promptly apologized for having had the trees in his way. He was very nice about it. I learned that moles can return things at their discretion. and in this case it was totally obvious to everyone that my trees had to go so he could do his work and set up the new homes.

Mariesteich chalets is newly released... a few spots are taken but many are still linden homes. This is a very mountianous area with a windmill in center and no noticeable water.

I am interested to see if Arbor or Patch will reply. The best anyone who is not on LL's enforcement team can do is guess. My own guess (and this is just a guess) is that decor that does not block off common property as your own, and fits the theme and adds to the overall beauty, it will probably be ignored. But if it causes any problems or is deemed an eyesore or anything like that, then it could be returned. All I can say is this: if it is returned then dont rerez it. I had a friend who told me this story: he had a car extended to be on the street in front of his home. One day that car was in his lost and found. He replaced it. Shortly after that he had access to his account suspended for 24 hours for rule breaking because it had been returned by LL and he ignored them and put it back out.

oh pretty!

I have had this OW stilt on Leaky Hold since early Jan (over 6 months now), and just love it. It has some really nice features including a boat rez zone right in front, a pier very close by, a small public island just meters away with a really cute fish bar and a few other fun things on it. I built a deck extension that goes 3/4 around the house. The only downside is that no matter how many invisible cat barrier prims I put up, and no matter how short I set their wander range, my two kitties kept "falling" through the floor and ending up in the water under the house. Once I removed the kitties, a bunch of birds moved in and took over my deck. It is not too bad having them there -- as long as I come bearing gifts (bread or fish scraps), they will let me out on the deck with them to enjoy the view.

So at his talk today, Patch said that the homes will have regular day cycles and that the glow would only be on at night, not during the day. He also said the glow will do seasons of a sort.. for example winter will have a region-wide blue color, and each of the seasons will have their own color scheme. He also said that the fantasy region would not be inside Bellisseria directly but its own subcontinent. And when asked "when" he did his usual Trademark "Soon" .. with the caveat that it could be a couple of months because LL still has some details to sort out... including how the fantasy regions would connect to the rest of the word. The word "portal" was thrown out as a possibility ... but nothing was decided yet.

I will definitely get one. I am awed by the beautiful plants/surroundings. However, I am not sure how long I will want to stay there... I am a bit concerned about the "always dark outside" environment and not sure I can decorate those large houses to my satisfaction with only 351 LI. I will have to play with it and get my hands on it to determine if it becomes a forever home or not.

here is one end of it. if you want to see the other end, then walk/fly/drive through it http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Brady Stream/127/227/23

Rabid, thank you for all those lovely pictures!! Abnor, thank you for the information!

I have visited and revisited the demo area and I have a couple of questions for the developers (moles and/or Lindens). 1. Every time I have gone there, it is always nighttime.. stayed for 2 hours and was night the whole time. Leads me to ask, are the environments for these homes always set to night? 2. I noticed that the LI allowance on the demo parcels was 468 instead of the usual 351. Is that just a coincidence of the demo area, or will we get 1/3 extra LI on these homes? I would be very grateful if someone official and "in the know" could please answer them. Thanks much.