Re: Thinking about infrastructure
Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 4:47 pm
That is a lovely reply, JW. Thank you so much for providing this resource! I shall stop worrying now!
Thinking about how servers/regions might be used... I'm basing this on what seemed to work in Devokan. Other teams will have other insights to offer.
When developing an SL/OS area, it helps to be able to work as a team in world.
For the tree-village area in SL, the team worked on large sky platforms, high above the main island (Devokan). There they made the individual components, flying across to see what each other was doing, asking for help, giving advice. Because we spanned several time zones and some of us are insomniacs, it helped to have the island online the whole time during this development period.
The development took place on the main island because its underlying server specs allowed more prims to be used, so building large stuff wouldn't necessarily make houses down below lose bits of walls because prim allowances had been used up. Prims roughly equate to memory in the underlying server, though each avatar on the island takes up even more memory (I hope I have interpreted the technical explanations correctly).
During this development time, the eventual home for the build does not need to exist on the grid. However, it did in Devokan's case, since that is how SL is set up. When the components were ready, we moved down to the region's ground level, again working as a team, and built up the area, including terraforming the land.
The SL tree village proved extremely popular, which meant people were visiting it at all times of day and night, again suggesting that it might be necessary to have some ages available at all times. However, as time wears on, and people's interests move on, fewer visitors might mean a move to a 'sim-on-demand' model; unlike SL, it is possible to save and store OS-based areas and builds, so that they might be kept in a central repository archive, to be called up when booked by a group for a special occasion perhaps. This backup and/or restoration has to be done by the server admin person -- it isn't possible to do it in world (I think).
When building the tree village on the OS grid, it was a different situation. Here, very few people knew about it, so Paislee and I were able to work on ground level, in place and in peace. The area we have on the OSgrid spans four regions in a square; this is run on a server with 1GB RAM (package specs here -- we got a sizable discount, by the way ). Being able to work on adjacent regions meant that we could look at sightlines from one area to the other, and thereby improve the views. It took us just over a month to build the two areas developed so far, mostly from scratch (it helps that Paislee has school holidays).
The OSgrid is nowhere near as densely populated as SL is, so it is hard to judge how much use an individual region/server might have during a day.
When thinking about a central portal area a parallel might be one of the OSgrid's plazas, which are designed to be central gathering places. The OSgrid main page includes links in the bottom left-hand corner to live statistics for two plazas (plaza 2 and plaza 4), as well as for the whole grid.
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Edit: The two areas on the OSgrid are mostly scenic; no puzzles or heavy scripting or lots of interactivity. It would take a lot longer to set up a puzzle or interactive area.
Thinking about how servers/regions might be used... I'm basing this on what seemed to work in Devokan. Other teams will have other insights to offer.
When developing an SL/OS area, it helps to be able to work as a team in world.
For the tree-village area in SL, the team worked on large sky platforms, high above the main island (Devokan). There they made the individual components, flying across to see what each other was doing, asking for help, giving advice. Because we spanned several time zones and some of us are insomniacs, it helped to have the island online the whole time during this development period.
The development took place on the main island because its underlying server specs allowed more prims to be used, so building large stuff wouldn't necessarily make houses down below lose bits of walls because prim allowances had been used up. Prims roughly equate to memory in the underlying server, though each avatar on the island takes up even more memory (I hope I have interpreted the technical explanations correctly).
During this development time, the eventual home for the build does not need to exist on the grid. However, it did in Devokan's case, since that is how SL is set up. When the components were ready, we moved down to the region's ground level, again working as a team, and built up the area, including terraforming the land.
The SL tree village proved extremely popular, which meant people were visiting it at all times of day and night, again suggesting that it might be necessary to have some ages available at all times. However, as time wears on, and people's interests move on, fewer visitors might mean a move to a 'sim-on-demand' model; unlike SL, it is possible to save and store OS-based areas and builds, so that they might be kept in a central repository archive, to be called up when booked by a group for a special occasion perhaps. This backup and/or restoration has to be done by the server admin person -- it isn't possible to do it in world (I think).
When building the tree village on the OS grid, it was a different situation. Here, very few people knew about it, so Paislee and I were able to work on ground level, in place and in peace. The area we have on the OSgrid spans four regions in a square; this is run on a server with 1GB RAM (package specs here -- we got a sizable discount, by the way ). Being able to work on adjacent regions meant that we could look at sightlines from one area to the other, and thereby improve the views. It took us just over a month to build the two areas developed so far, mostly from scratch (it helps that Paislee has school holidays).
The OSgrid is nowhere near as densely populated as SL is, so it is hard to judge how much use an individual region/server might have during a day.
When thinking about a central portal area a parallel might be one of the OSgrid's plazas, which are designed to be central gathering places. The OSgrid main page includes links in the bottom left-hand corner to live statistics for two plazas (plaza 2 and plaza 4), as well as for the whole grid.
=======
Edit: The two areas on the OSgrid are mostly scenic; no puzzles or heavy scripting or lots of interactivity. It would take a lot longer to set up a puzzle or interactive area.