By now, you’ve seen changes with the build taking place on the sims. However, what you probably not have seen are changes to group, roles, and the development of new features. A lot of time, effort, and patience has gone into coming up with original ideas; while what we have in store for CD will certainly be new, it will also be pushing immersive role-play in SL to a whole new level.

I'm going to break up this teaser announcement into three parts. As mentioned before, the additions to CD are quite significant and it'll take several posts to really introduce it all. With this thread, I will go over the first set of stuff we've already been talking about in other parts of the forum.

Why 4.0?

Every new feature and update we're introducing has been thought out rigorously and is designed to address a variety of issues. Whether it's enabling better communication between players in different timezones, reducing lag, lack of prims, to increasing player retention, we've made sure there's a legit case for each and that we've come up with original solutions for our community. Feedback collected from thousands of applications over the years, forum discussions, to individual conversations have all played a role too.

To put simply, CD4 takes all the growth and accomplishments we've made over the last 5 years and repackages it into a much more unified, innovative, and manageable setup.

The Build

There are several key goals with the new build:

• Bleed realism; I’m custom texturing everything that I can for best performance and quality. Sculpts will be appropriately used; I’m even playing with mesh so we can be one of the first environments to incorporate that when it goes to production.
• Hathian is based on a weathered, run-down industrial city near the coast. I’m putting emphasis on portraying a lot of culture and despair within the build. It isn’t just going to be another urban sim; it’ll be unique and true to our southern backstory.
• CD will look very different during the night than it does during the day. I’ve been working on scripts and textures to make sure when the sun sets, the city continues to feel very alive.
• Hathian’s new layout will be segmented into areas for “red-light”, "dangerous", “family appropriate”, "back alley dealings", etc. type scenes. The deeper you go into Hathian, the more dangerous it becomes.
• A lot of good feedback on these forums for new businesses will be taken into account when setting up storefronts.
• We will have a handful of empty fronts available for rent to support player-run IC business ventures.
• Columtreal University campus is also getting completely redone.

New Player Registration & Groups

Our application system has clocked 13,833 submissions to date, since the end of 2008. I’ve identified a lot of bugs in it, fixed them, and also redesigned it to flow better. However, changes didn’t stop there. We also redesigned the way we’re going to be handling groups:

• We will be decommissioning the “CD Civilians & Religious” and “CD Criminals” group to and move to a single group. All new players who successfully register will be added to it with the general “Citizens” title. Existing community will not need to re-register; I will release details on migration later on.
• Citizens will be able to instantly join most small businesses and have access to a variety of features in the Den.
• "CD Criminal" and other roles will still be available, however I'll touch on those in the next announcement.

Law Enforcement & Criminal Database

All new tools have been developed to bring the next level immersion for police and the criminal base in Hathian.

• Citations - Citizens can be written up by Police for various misdemeanors. Once written up, our NPC court system will mail a letter (note) to the offender a week later, informing them they need to come in between certain dates to “clear” fines. Failure to do so will result in a warrant issued for their arrest. While geared towards newer players in CD, even more experienced players will have fun w/ this one.
• Arrests & Jail - Police can haul criminals in, book them, and put them behind bars. The booking process actually keeps records of the criminal and is designed to guide the officer in setting actual jail time. There are a lot of algorithmic details that go into figuring out the jail time so I will touch on this subject later on -- let's just say, that FAIR play with serving time will be rewarded.
• Case Files - Detectives and citizens can maintain stories better with actual case files that can be stored and recalled easily.
• NPC Dispatcher - Radio use will extend to being able to call in IDs and learn of any attachments (warrants, etc.). Vehicle permit holders will be able to access more “media rich” versions of reports because of the computer in their vehicle.
• Activity Reports - The force will be better maintained and kept track of with activity reports being generated based on player citations, arrests, radio use, etc. Promotions will also be easily maintained with a group roster.
• Rap Sheets - Every character will have their own rap sheet, detailing the history of their arrests and interaction with the police.

Medical & Patient Database

The hospital has always been the lifeline of the city. Everyone at some point finds themselves at HGH. With this in mind, I’ve put together some tools that is already in beta.

• Patient Charts & Recovery - Medical staff can write charts for patients; for those that need hospitalization, they will have a recovery time associated with their case that is automatically tracked and informed to all involved parties when patient is ready for discharge.
• Medical History - Every character will have their entire history kept on file to review at anytime, and also for staff to look up and apply during new scenes.
• Activity Reports - Staff can view summaries of cases and active patients in the recovery ward.

More to come ...

I've been able to touch on about 30% of the things you can expect in the coming overhaul. Read through it us know what you think! As the build progresses, I'll post more screenshots here too.