THE OTHERLAND COVENANT

Welcome to OTHERLAND. If you are looking for some truly beautiful land in SL in a pleasant neighborhood, carefully maintained and reasonably priced ... you have found it.

The OTHERLAND Archipelago is a collection of large and smaller islands in the southeast of the Second Life grid. All the land here is "zoned", meaning that there is a set of rules to which everyone who wants to become a resident of OTHERLAND has to agree. (A few sims are themed in addition. Check here for a list of available themes.) These rules make sure that the land stays what it is now: a beautiful area, realistically landscaped, reminiscent of RLs most attractive landscapes, free of griefers and excessive lag, with a pleasant neighborhood that makes you feel right at home.

SUMMARY

Most people don't like rules that much. We are no exception. Therefore, the OTHERLAND COVENANT isn't much more than common sense put in words plus some rules that should make sure that the general character of the land is preserved. You came here, because you liked the land and the neighborhood. Let’s try to keep it like that:

     0. No Ban Lines!

1. Build your house such that it could fit (with a grain of salt) into a residential area in RL!
2. Preserve some vegetation and keep it with the style of the sim you are living in!
3. Preserve the general style of the landscape when terraforming!
4. Respect your fellow residents privacy!
5. Don’t raise your own fences (prims, bans or aggressive scripts) too high!
6. Use the resources of your sim in a fair way (watch the lag you might be causing)!
7. Be nice to your neighbours! Remember: you want them to be nice to you, too!

That’s it – in principle. But as we all know, there are many ways to interpret a few simple sentences. So, I will try to elaborate a little on some of them. What follows describes, combined with a document called OTHERLAND FINEPRINT, the contract you are entering with the THE OTHERLAND GROUP, should you decide to become an OTHERLAND resident.

BUILDING

Most people, who come to live here on the OTHERLAND Archipelago, come because they like the landscape and the overall style of the land. Please try to conserve this while setting up your builds, too. This is a residential area. No skyscrapers and no parcel-filling boxes. If you want some dirt cheap land where you can build anything that the prim allowance makes possible, there are other offers in SL.

This said:

• Flying houses and other large structures in the sky (skyboxes) are only allowed above 300m
• No skyscrapers (this is residential, not downtown)
• No houses "floating on water"; rocks created by you don't cound as "land" ;)
• Don't build directly on the border of your property. Keep a distance that is in proportion with the height of your build.
• General rule of thumb is: allowable height = 2 times distance from border.
• If you absolutely NEED to build nearer to the border, ask the neighbor. If the neigbor agrees, you might build near the border on ONE side of your land. Get your neighbors agreement in writing: on a non-modifiable notecard that should show your neighbor as the creator of this notecard is best. ATTN: the next owner of the land might not agree! If this happens, you would have to change the building.

Keep a balance between parcel area and building size. On all parcels of 4000 sqm or more:

• Don't cover more than a third of the area with a building.
• Swimming pools or pathes don't count as building ;)
• Never cover more than half of the area with prims

If the sim you are living in, is not “themed”, the style in which you build is yours to decide. (Here is a list of our current themes) But please remember: “Build your house that it would fit (with a grain of salt) into a residential area in RL!”

If you can make that possible in any way, please leave at least some 32 prims unused on your parcels! That makes it possible for other residents to fly over your land with a vehicle or to sail the waterways of OTHERLAND.

VEGETATION

We put a lot of effort into setting up the initial vegetation on the land. This is maybe as important for the overall impression and beauty as the shape of the land. So please follow the following rules

• Every parcel on the OTHERLAND Archipelago has to contain some trees and plants!
• You can delete the ones we planted. But then you have to put up your own instead. You do not have to create a forest! :) But put something green around your house. You will see, that you like it!
• If you place your own vegetation on the land, please preserve the general character of the vegetation on the sim. Don't fill your parcel with palms and tropical plants on sims which have initially been forested with needle trees or vice versa. Have a look around before you become a resident of OTHERLAND. We offer different styles of vegetation and landscape. Choose the one you prefer before you select your land.

If you ask, we will provide you with automatic planters that contain the original vegetation of the sim. It is easy to reforest large areas very efficiently with these devices.
 

TERRAFORMING

You - and your neighbours, too - came here because you liked the landscape. Please keep it that way. You can terraform the land within the limits of the tools SL supplies you with, but

• Don't change the general style of the land. If you bought flat or gently sloped land, don't raise a steep mountain in the middle. If the land is hilly, don't make a perfectly flat tabletop of it. (It does not matter how the land looks below your builds of course.)
• No stair cases! Don't raise or lower the land so far, that a sharp edge (stair case) is created at the border of the land between your and your neighbors property.
• Don’t block rivers or other waterways; neither with terraforming, nor with prims or with scripted devices.
• Don’t build land with prims where there is none. No astroturf islands please.

 

USAGE

If not noted otherwise in any agreement between you and THE OTHERLAND GROUP, this is residential land. So, you can have a yard sale. No problem. You can throw a party. You can play a round of poker with your friends. But:

• No shops.
• No clubs.
• No malls.
• No casinos.
• No scripted weapons.
• No large advertisements (billboards).
• No *ingo.

We are not adverse to any of these; but not in a residential neighborhood. If you need land for these purposes, ask. We always have to offer some nice parcels on the mainland and will set up sims especially for these purposes in the second expansion round of THE OTHERLAND Archipelago.

PRIVACY

Please preserve your neighbor’s privacy. No stalking, no spying or eavesdropping scripts. If someone does not want you on their land, please respect this wish. It should not be necessary to ban you for that.

If you want some privacy your own, please refrain from making your land accessible to your group only. You can do this for a short time if you absolutely feel it is necessary. But don’t set it up permanently. Before you leave SL (log off) please clear any general access limitation.

If you absolutely don’t want someone on your land, ban him or her.

If you don’t know who it might be that will bother you and still want to ensure a maximum of privacy, please build yourself a nice sky box above 300m (there are prefabs for that purpose, too) and install a polite security device there. A polite security device is one that

• does not use push
• works only over the land that is yours
• gives trespassers at least 20 secs warning

And please ... If you can make that possible in any way, please leave at least some 32 prims unused on your parcels! That makes it possible for other residents to fly over your land with a vehicle or to sail the waterways of OTHERLAND. If you fill up your prims "to the top" that effectively destroys any boat or plane entering your land. And I don't think that is polite, especially with owners of large parcels and those which include open waterways.

LAG CONTROL

All residents and all parcels in one sim share the resources of one server. If this server has to work too hard and can’t keep up with the demands of the residents currently in it, “lag” happens. Lag often is not local. Too many scripts running in one parcel, can lag the whole server down and every AV in it will experience it.

Nobody likes lag. But sometimes it is hard to foresee what causes lag. In theory it is simple: scripts, a large number of large textures, prims (especially tortured ones) and many AVs coming together in one sim cause lag.

It is not that easy to determine the causes of lag in real (??) life (*cough*, obviously we mean Second Life here), though. The following rules help to keep lag down and be nice to your neighbors:

• Keep the number of guests on your parcel in proportion to the parcels size! What this means? For example: If you don’t own half the sim, don’t throw parties with more than 20 guests regularly.
• Don’t set up too many devices with lagging scripts on your land! (For the experts: a large number of scripts with a large number of listeners is bad.) We actually can check this with some tools. Ask someone from the team when you suspect lag nests in your sim.
• Try to minimize textures on your parcel especially, when they can be seen outside your building. Use 256*256 sized textures if possible, 512*512 maximum.

CONSEQUENCES

This covenant constitutes a contract between you and THE OTHERLAND group. You agree to it by becoming a resident on a private sim owned by the OTHERLAND GROUP.
Breaking these rules or the TOS of Second Life constitutes a breach of contract. This might lead to the termination of the contract. Termination of contract because of a violation of the covenant becomes effective immediately. There are no refunds in this case. Depending on the violation you might be banned from the OTHERLAND estate.