Retro SL: BSD Archer House

Who doesn't remember wandering Help Island as a noob and marveling at Our World and the idea that you, too, could have a fabulous Free House? Well, anyone who didn't go through that part of Orientation, actually, as so many relatively recent Residents can attest. But you can still visit any Help Island Public and pretend to be a Noob again and grab such a house (SLurl).

The BSD Archer House, as seen in the historic photo included with the house itself. Note how the land refused to rez clearly. Back in the day that was a common problem. The windows change opacity via touch script and the door is lockable. You can mod this build all you want and re-use the scripts in your own builds.

This classic of Second Life architecture, the BSD Archer House, weighs in at 39 prims as boxed and is a size just right to fit on what was once known as First Land, a parcel of 16m x 32m. It was built by Bill Stirling in December 2005 with scripts and some bits for the scripts made by Jo Sartre (no longer in-world, it seems).

If you visit the BSD Mall in Cranberry (SLurl) you can see what Bill is up to today either through his current selection of homes to buy or checking out pictures of his in-world projects. One such is the SS Galaxy, a luxury liner so big it needs three regions just to rez it all (SLurl).

A portrait of the SS Galaxy hangs in the BSD shop. Click it for a landmark to the ship itself or use the SLurl above. According to the ship's Website, it is the largest build in all Second Life. You can see the BSD Archer House history in the ship as they share some textures, such as the railing and the ship's decking is this house's ceiling.

The ship is an example of what I've called Deja Visit (Web) as I remember visiting the ship when it was new back in 2007, but here I run across it today during my serial exploration, starting with the Retro SL house. We live in a very big world that acts very small at times.

Retro SL: Starter Home

While I was at the sandbox for yesterday's post, I figured I could knock out another house, the September 2003 House in a Box: Starter Home, as 72 prims (finished) its a plain yet attractive structure with lots of possibilities for modding ... if I could get the doors to work. More on that in a moment.

Laying the floor piece with the main positioning pin. I set it at (X=128, Y=128, Z=36.5) in Sandbox Verenda to get started.

I snapped the walls to the same coordinates but found that the Z (altitude) needed to be different.

The Interior Walls and Cabinets had the exact same coordinates as the Outer Walls. A nice surprise. At this point it would have been easier to add the doors, but the directions said to add the Roof.

Better and better, the Roof shares coordinates with the previous two steps.

No position pins for the doors so I noted the X coordinate for the wall then used it for the door, eyeballing the Y and Z. The Front Door shown here is 11 prims. Each Interior door is 5 prims and the French Doors are 10 prims total.

The instructions simply stated "2. Select and reposition each of these in the locations they belong; Front Door at the front of the house with the vertical door handle facing outward, Interior Door inside the house (copy for more doors if you like), and the French Doors at the rear of the house." I put in three, with one that was a hair too small, but that was easily adjusted. 

Ah, the French Doors. Like the other doors, all the fiddling I tried couldn't get any of them to open. The scripts looked okay and I set them to Running, reset them, and more ... nothing. I wonder if there is a function in them that has been depreciated since the script was originally written. If I get the urge and am bored one day, I'll try them again.

Generally speaking this was a very, very simple house to assemble and the prim count was pretty reasonable, too. A dozen extra textures are included so the adventurous or experienced builder has a number of choices. With a little skill some prims could be trimmed to lessen the land impact, but if you have a 1024m² parcel you'd easily have about 160 prims with which to furnish your new home. The instructions you can get by with 576m², but that wouldn't leave room for furniture and you'd have no lawn.

Retro SL: The Wright House

Another Retro SL classic structure is the September 2003 House In A Box: Wright House — 282 prims (finished) inspired by Real Life architect Frank Lloyd Wright's famous house, Falling Water. It is a complicated build from the modern view because it is not in a build rezzer nor is it assembled as an unlinked coalesced object (i.e., you drag it out from your inventory while in Build mode so all the unlinked parts hold together). It is boxed with detailed construction instructions for aligning six "position pins" that are eventually unlinked and deleted. For some reason the instructions don't mention the idea of snapping the first part to a specific point on the grid then entering the same position coordinates for the subsequent pieces. Not that works any better than working by eye, though, as the parts dont align properly when following the directions.

 However, several warnings come first in a note card appears as soon as you rez the box to unpack it:

There are a few things you'll need to know and understand before you begin.

1. This is a fairly large house, and it will cost you a pretty penny to build. Depending on some customization choices, the actual building can cost as much as L$3000, and your maintenance taxes will be considerable. This house is better suited to someone with an established income than a first-time Second Life homeowner. packed before the idea of grabbing a coalesced object existed?

"... cost you a pretty penny to build ..." Remember that at one time, it cost homeowner L$10 per prim just to rez the structure — plus L$10 to rez the packing box just to get the pieces out. Each positioning pin was L$10, too. Total cost from start to finish if you use one copy of the extra decorative lamp: L$2,900 plus land costs (the maintenance costs mentioned).

Eventually the directions tell you to link everything together, except the doors, and run through how to use the window and door controls, then admonishing that you take a backup copy:

As a safety precaution, copy the entire completed, linked house object into your Inventory: Right-click > Acquire > Take Copy. This way if something goes wrong with your customization, you can delete the old house, pull out a new one and start over. 

Which begs the question "Why wasn't it all linked in the first place?" The answer may lie in the ten alternate textures included in the box. Every Resident was a Builder back in the day and Bill Linden the maker of the Wright House, probably thought folks would customize his build. Second life was a frontier and we were all homesteaders taming the wilds. Most regions like my home sim Nangrim didn't even have roads.

At the end of the assembly process, after deleting the position prims, I had to align the windows properly then the doors, and I was still left with what really appears to be a half-finished building with a poorly anchored roof strip, just like a few years ago when I built the first one. I fixed a couple prim overlaps and thought about the changes I made the first time ... adding an elevator, making a proper roof, etc. ... just as Bill Linden probably wanted.

The Wright House was way too prim intensive when it was "new" to use on the wee bit of land that I had at the time, so like today I built it in a sandbox, had my way with it, then deleted it and moved on to other things. And other houses were far nicer and far more land-friendly though I lived in a small cave when I wasn't on the Isle of Lesbos. Even today I wonder why people have houses, but that is another post and I have more structures from the early days to build and blog about.

Retro SL: The Alpine House

Way back in the day, it cost L$10 to rez a prim. Any prim. Marianne McCann reminded me about this once regular fee when she noted the Prim Tax prank in her April 1st blog post, and while I wasn't on the Main Grid to witness that, I remember getting a free Alpine House from a now-defunct freebie board in Waterhead (SLurl to the blank wall where the board used to be) and seeing the box labeled "... only $200L to build" (note the old-style of indicating the L$) which is what it would have cost at the time to rez all 20 prims of the house on your land. On a 117 prim, 512m² "First Land" lot, that was quite a dent in resources.

With a slightly larger than 10m² footprint, this classic building by Lifetime resident Juro Kothari was a regular sight back in the day and can sometimes be seen on most any trip around the Mainland. I've modified copies of this building more times than I can remember, making new houses and skyboxes, using the roof prims for the texture on other builds, or just practicing my building skills. With sculpties, I bet this could easily be re-created with just 8 or 9 prims and a talented Mesh builder could probably re-create it in 1or even 2 prims — maybe 3 with a door, which the original didn't have, either.

Checking out historical architecture at the Astutla Sandbox (SLurl)

I've been combing through my Storage Alt's Inventory and my own Inventory to find other classic builds of days gone by and I'll probably write some posts about them in the future because Retro SL can be as fun as current SL.