A house among the ruins – take 4!

We’re reaching the end of another quarter, and guess what? I’ve been back making changes to the home island 🙂 . I know, I know; “You’re still fiddling around with it? It’s a wonder Caitlyn hasn’t launched you off of the nearest cliff!”

While I’ve been largely happy with the most recent work on the island hope, the three different levels of the island have been something of a bugaboo with me. So I started fiddling with an idea to see what things would be like if I removed one of them. The intent wasn’t actually to make huge changes, but things sort-of rolled one into the next.

So, without going into huge amounts of detail, the island is now really pretty much on two levels (other than the beach.). With the house still at the highest point, and then all of the gardens and ruins occupying the same level. This also involved tweaks around the moorings for the ‘planes, G-CAIT and G-NARA, and the stairs linking them to the house gardens.

The change also encouraged me to finally swap back to the original cliffs and rocks, as provided by Axel Bergan and sold under Novocaine Islay’s InVerse brand. By “swap back”, I mean using them with their original texturing, just tinted a little, as the off-white colouring, Caitlyn and I both agree, works better with the new layout of the cliffs compared to completely re-texturing them.

Elsewhere, the change has allowed us to extend the ruins a little, notably with an additional tower, again from Rya Nitely’s selection of Medieval ruins, which sits at the head of the stairs to the ‘plane moorings, and which like the rest of the ruins, as easy to re-texture using Alex Bader’s Lush and Enchanted Walls texture set, which has previously proven to be such a boon in giving all the various parts of the ruins a look of uniform age.

Alex, who provided  generous and invaluable help with the re-development of Holly Kai Park, became the inspiration for almost all of the rest of the changes. His Stone Steps and Enchanted Woods Spring Flowers bolt-on pack have both been used across the island, while the stones from his Rocky Trails Building Set, separated from the base pieces and flattened a little, provided the perfect means of building new footpaths. Also, his Tropical Beach Set meant I could finally get the island’s beach looking a lot more natural than I’ve so far managed; one complete with Dick Oompa’s wooden pier for friends to moor their boats against when visiting.

So, is this really really it for the home island? Well, believe it or not, I actually think so, yes.