As announced in our new years post, one of our goals during the first quarter of the year was to bring our city up to speed. For those who don't know, most of our structures in Hathian have been standing since 2006! Yet, I don't think anyone can dispute how impressive it looks despite being over 4 yrs old 🙂

Regardless, with some techniques i've been perfecting in previous builds and what SL offers now, it's time to update while addressing some important issues:

• Free up prims -- for the kind of traffic we get, we need more than a couple hundred free
• Fix the lag - less prim usage and standardization of textures is key
• Look into relocating popular buildings to help spread out RP
• Design RP storefronts in such a way where we can easily try diff concepts at anytime

As mentioned, Hathian is pretty damn good as-is, so only the obvious areas will be addressed first. I'll work with Paulo to identify blocks that predate 2007. Some of those include Twister, Chopsticks, and the Pawn Shop ... that whole side of the street could use a major overhaul. Anyways, here's the game plan with the preliminary details:

Phase 1 - Rebuild Downtown, District 8
This area of CD really needs some love. By the time I am done, I'll have new street, sidewalk, concrete, and misc textures all ready to roll into Hathian. I'm also going to get artsy w/ Downtown in hopes to showcase the creative essence of CD -- I could really use some ideas as to how we can showcase our artists on Flickr and blogs here! I hope we can make it a unique atmosphere for IC/OOC hangout.

• update storefronts and buildings
• Proper intra-sim subway hub as "the" urban commerce district between all our sims
• Proper park w/ event stage
• Rog has a list of things he wants done to the FDH

Phase 2 - Street Cleanup in Hathian

• Update street/sidewalks
• Update urban props
• Update landscaping

Phase 3 - Apps / OOC Area(s)

• Roll out application system 2.0 -- lots of bug fixes
• new RP guide
• More user-friendly OOC area layout in both Hathian and Columtreal
• Reintroduce Armed Criminal
• Recruit new RP leads for derelict businesses in Hathian

Phase 4 - Update Buildings

More details to come once we get closer to that ...

Overall, I think this is going exciting times for CD. We just finished and launched the seaside schools last month, which have been such a success, and we're going back to put some lovin' into CU and Hathian. Our community has undoubtedly been the best at what it does, for long time too, and we're going to make sure it has the best to work with!

We started tinkering with Downtown a week or two ago when we wrapped up the Seaside build ... now that I have more time, I want to push forward with this. Here's a teaser of what the Downtown storefronts are shaping up to look like: