GWA Project/Welcome Area Concept

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Note:

This page contains obsolete information and is supposed to be updated after the meeting at September 7th 2008

About

The GWA Project wants to build a Community Gateway with connected Welcome Area. This page is supposed to provide some space to plan the Welcome Area part.

Conceptual Ideas

Concept 1

Draft by Fr43k Paine

Concept out of date !! Will be edited

• 2 closed sims (just for new Residents and Mentors) and 2 open sims for educational purposes.
• Closed sims offer a linear walkthrough that covers basic SL knowledge (moving, chatting, etc.).
• New residents should be allowed to use the map and the search so they aren't trapped there.
• Open sims contain different parts: village, city, nature, tutorials (VHS, GNC, ...), Park, Freebie-Shops, Sandbox,...
• Open sims invite people to share their knowledge or to ask a Mentor for advice or guideance.
• Mentors wait at costumizable huts for Residents.
• Communitys, groups and schools might advertise their educational and non-commercial(!) offers at the open sims.
• Mentoring panels like the Buddy Panels at SLVEC show available Mentors and their skills (scripting, building, land management, ...).
• These panels should be placed on one of the open sims.

Concept 2

Draft by Danziel Lane

SIM 2 - 4, first outline

For creative use only!

This is a suggestion, an idea. It's not the end of all thoughts.

Preamble

Creative processes often need a trigger, a first idea, that can be flamed, deleted, blamed, used, changed, held against the creator, taken over, torn into pieces … whatever. But a first idea is a fountain of other ideas, a great tool to start a complex creative process like we have to go through with the building of 3 (three) new SIMs.

This is about SIM 2-4, SIM 1 (orientation) is left out here and planned to have no connection to these SIMs.

I apologize for the rough painting and little details. On the other hand I think, it might be helpful for your creativity if only few details are given.

Objectives:

What we want in SIM 2-4:

• a mentor only area, closed for public, with a place for linguists and a meeting point for mentors
• a place to show and teach advanced content creation and themes like muting, AR, support ticket (remark: sorry, but in the formerly presented picture the sentence "advanced content creation like mute, AR …" does not make sense to me)
• lots of places to do live help (mentors - new residents)
• teaching places
• tutorials
• freebie shops
• a park to relax and meet other residents (socialisation)
• places to offer teleports, notecard givers and landmarks
• a big variety of landscapes presented to the new residents
• offering activities, sports, …
• a place that can be used for big meetings, parties, classes, events
• chances to add things into the SIMs if we will realize, we need them (some free space)
• places where mentors and residents can meet, like little huts or something like that

Maybe I forgot some objectives we discussed, feel free to add them.

Here is an explanation of the places, roughly going left to right in my painting.

SIM 2

is a water SIM with islands and shores. The borderline between the public and the mentor area should be completely offshore, so ban lines will not be seen very often. The character of the landscape is water/sand with tropical or subtropical plants and buildings.

Mentor Meeting Point The biggest of the islands in the mentor only area is the meeting point for German mentors. There might be a grassy spot to feel at home on meetings.

Linguists Island An island where the linguists will meet and build what they need for their work.

Little islands Spare room, if we find out, we need something. Till we have an idea for the very little island, we might build a colorful tipi there for the chief.

hopping over to the public area

Start Island A tropical island where residents land, when they tp from OI or HI. They will find places here to meet mentors, they will find a map which will help to explore the SIMs, they will get a notecard that might help to read the map, they will find tips, which places to visit. Tutorials here will be about advanced content creation and about contacting LL by AR or support ticket and also first hints to deal with griefers (mute, sit, …)

Under Water World A fantasy world to explore and get a first idea of what makes SL different from RL. All things here are completely under water. Tutorials and other content not yet planned for this part. Feel free to add.

The Beach This is a bigger area built for meetings, parties, education, events. Build over 2 SIMs it allows to have events with a lot of avatars. The ambiance is beachy. Sand and little grass. No stands or rows of seats, no rebuild of a RL meeting place (rows of seats are deadly for camera control and moving of avatars). Equipment to sit here are poseballs (sit on ground), towels, rocks, tree trunks, etc. Maybe we add some camp fires or other decorative stuff. This demonstrates residents right from the beginning that learning in SL might be quite a fun thing with nothing reminding them of an often hated school classroom.

with The Beach we arrive at SIM 3

This SIM is grassy (except the desert) land, almost flat, a few low hills. Flora is almost mid European (builders, make smooth changes between the areas, please).

The Desert This will be the sandbox. Free for building. The Desert is sandy or rocky (depends on the creativity of our builders and designers). All residents can build here and try scripts. Flat with not more than 2 dunes. As an amount of free objects is needed to allow building here, SIM 3 should not use too much of the prim count. My plan follows this idea by putting areas with high object count to the other 2 SIMs, see City, Start Island, Village, Park, Underwater, …)

Jungle Island Just an idea that came upon me, when I created the river. Given to your creativity to offer residents an interesting spot to explore.

School A place, where tutorial are offered and also communities and schools can promote their range of services, classes, products. Free tutorials here, also a board of classes given here or at The Beach.

we come into the city and arrive on SIM 4

• Planning group: Alexa, Mayumi, Robby, Zai

This sim is flat only in the city area, but shows hills elsewhere, which change into a big mountain in the corner. There might be snow on top of the mountain.

The City

• City will be planned with the SIM3 group, since it's overlapping. City should contain spaces (houses) for communities to advertise.

The city is an assembly of shops, where freebies can be given out to the residents. There should be a hair shop, a house shop, a flower shop, a furniture shop, several shops for clothing etc. etc. All the things we can give out for free make a nice number of shops that might sum up to a nice city. We also can add other houses here with different content, but residents should know, if they want freebies, they should come into the city.

The Park

• Park needs to be planned with SIM3 group as well.

An area where residents can meet, relax, socialize. Feel free to add ideas.

The Village

• village might not be build. up for further discussion

Snowy Mountain

• Mountain should contain a cave with a Jeti (build by Mayumi) and a Reinhold Messner.
• Zai will contact a friend who might help to get sculty parts for the mountain
  • An old goldmines entrance, blocked by rocks, will be at the mountain. Traintracks leading from the goldmine to the old house above the Mystic World

The Pond From the mountain a waterfall fills The Pond, where the river starts that winds through the SIMs and flows into the sea of SIM 2. There might be a cave behind the waterfall for the brave residents that dare to explore this. The cave will lead them to the next area, the Mystic World.

Mystic World

• Mystic world will be similar to the hidden cave at the Stadtrand sim. See "Hidden cave near the Psi Beta Stargate " at User:Zai Lynch/Sightseeing.
• Above the cave, an old house (like in the movie "Psycho" will be placed to hide the cave)

The Street to SL Leading from The City to a corner of the SIM … the Street. Residents may walk along them and see promotion boards with TPs or LMs, grab them and hop away or explore the next offer. The street ends at a parking lot (might also be a small heli airport) which is surrounded by a lot of TPs to nice places in SL (or community places).

The River Running from the Mountain to the sea, the river winds through the SIMs. Residents are offered rafts/tires/canoes to sit in and drift along the river from pond to the sea or all the way back. Along the river fruits may be offered that contain little presents or pieces of information. So residents can collect more information while drifting down the river.

Activities

Residents should have opportunities to make use of some activities.

• floating down the river
• windsurfing in the sea
• ice skating somewhere on the mountain
• and some more

Mentor huts All over the SIM we will place mentor huts, where mentors can meet residents or residents can meet mentors. These huts can be:

• huts, tipis or just 2 towels on the islands or at the beach
• a tree trunk
• a little house in the city or village
• a bench in the park, village or city, along the street
• a mussel under water
• a piece of ice up on the mountain
• anything else all over the SIMs

I dream of a hud for the mentors to occupy one of these places and then to be shown on a central board, from where residents can see, if the mentor is free and then tp to that place.

OK, only a first idea. Thought I built in some of the ideas other mentors had said on several meetings.

Maybe you have other ideas. Feel free to add them, or replace mine by something better, nicer, bigger, greater. Or - if you like my plan - feel free to add details, content, ideas.