Day: September 26, 2017

Going to the Max in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
With thanks to Sophia Harlow

On September 22nd, Maxwell Graf issues a deeply personal, heart-breaking request via Plurk. Related to a personal situation, it included a request for people to buy from his store (in-world or on the Marketplace). The news was broken by Prim Perfect, and quickly circulated by other bloggers (my own report can a little late in the day, so to speak).

For obvious reasons Max didn’t feel comfortable in asking for more than this, despite the severity of his situation, but that hasn’t stopped friends and fellow creators from rallying around; and on Monday, September 25th, Going to the Max, a special shopping event, organised by Charlotte Bartlett, Sophia Harlow and Blazin Arubet, was announced.

Sponsored by Callie Cline, the event will run from Tuesday October 3rd through Tuesday October 10th. Details are still being put together, but the initial announcement for the event, posted to Plurk by Sophia Harlow and reproduced above,  reveals the line-up thus far.

Responding to the news, Max said:

I don’t know how to receive the massive amounts of love and kindness from so many I know and so many more I don’t…It is a foreign concept to me to get such a cosmic blast of positive affection and concern from so many people at once. It’s really overwhelming and I’m so small right now I can’t do anything but say this over and over, I am humbled beyond my ability to express.

In gaming parlance, this would be like if I was a tank amid a team of 10,000 healers and they all suddenly got very gracious on me at the same time and I started growing and then glowing and then my mana reached peak and my head exploded as I turned in to a demigod and could face any enemy.

Full details on the event  – SLurl for the region, etc. – will be posted in due course, again as things come together, as will more details on how people can get involved. Plurk is one place to keep up with the news, as is Scarlett Creative Facebook page (no Facebook log-in required). In the meantime, don’t forget you can still help Max directly by visiting Rustica in-world or on the MP and buying an item or two … or three!

Links

Holly Kai Park: Caitinara remodelling

Posted on by Inara Pey
The new Caitinara Bar façade (with thanks for the inspiration to Dandy and Belle)

In February, Holly Kai Park went through a revamp, which included the introduction of a new subterranean Caitinara Bar. When I started on the park re-design, Caitlyn and I mulled over numerous ideas for taking the bar underground, including looking at various ideas for containing an entire building within a rocky structure. In the end, nothing seemed to fit until we opted for the “subway” style of layout we’ve had in place since February.

However, if I’m totally honest, the front façade of the club hasn’t entirely sat well with me; the cave-like entrance fitted the broad theme of the club being within a rocky plateau, but it didn’t really draw attention to the place. Simply put: if you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t know it was there; Which is a bit of a shame, given the public waterways passing by the park. The problem has been what to do about it.

The new saloon bar sits within its own façade to one side of the dance floor

I didn’t really come up with an answer until CAitlyn and I visited BarDeco and Kekeland, the fabulous region designed by Dandy Warhloll (Terry Fotherington) and Belle des Champs (Bridget Genna) (see my review here). As soon as I saw the façade they’d created, I realised what Caitinara Bar was lacking. So taking their idea, I set out to see what I could do with it, and dropped them both a line to let them know what I was doing.

My first port of call was to ArmyStone’s store. He produced the façade used at BarDeco, and frankly, I wanted to use the same item, just modified somewhat to suit our needs. It comes in a pack of units, and I wasn’t sure if it would be something the creator would be prepared to modify as a one-off. My concern was ill-founded. Not only was he more than willing – the work was done within 24 hours of my request being made, the only condition being I bought an entire version of the kit (for the same retail price – L$600) containing the updated section. This also turned out to be a benefit, as looking at the other items, the idea of a complete rebuild of the club presented itself to me, from dance floor, through bar to art display area.

The Gallery area overlooking the dance floor – staircase by

So, cutting a long story short, the new bar design is now up and running. For those familiar with the “old” design, the club is smaller than it was – which is no bad thing. It’s also now spilt into three areas: the dance floor (with a mezzanine gallery above the entrance), flanked on either side by a new saloon bar and the art display area.

The idea for the snug-style saloon bar came as a direct result of another of the buildings in the pack from ArmyStone: a wall with an ornate lintel over the doorway simply demanded to be used. I also had a wall panelling set from LISP I’d never put to use, and that fitted the idea of the saloon bar perfectly. With additional table and wall lighting from Maxwell Graf, we were all set.

The Saloon. Panelling from Apple Fall, lighting by Maxwell Graf

We’re not planning any kind of grand opening or suchlike, but we do hope those visiting the park will pop in to Caitinara and have a look around – and if the mood takes, hop along to either our Wednesday or Friday music evenings, both of which start at 4:00pm SLT. Should you do so, projected lighting is used throughout the design (as it was in the “old” bar), so a visit with Advanced Lighting Model (ALM) enabled is recommended (you doe not have to enable performance-killing shadows to see projected lighting effects). If your Windlight doesn’t change on entering the bar structure, please flick over to Midnight as well.

SLurl Details

  • Caitinara Bar, Holly Kai Park (Holly Kai Estates, rated: Moderate)