From my Teleports List: Seiya's Orchard Home

BuildCity - Verdant Valley - Seiya's Orchard Home (Plot #24)

Builder: Seiya

Teleport: BuildCity 6.212n 28.272e 0.3a 0

Jump Point: ^jump Seiya's Home

While I was performing maintenance on BuildCity last week, one of my goals was to memorialize Seiya's work in the world.  Following her passing, many of her builds were visited and highlighted by the community, and I expect this one may not have gotten much attention due to its location.

Seiya was among the first set of builders in BuildCity's first (and only) competitive session during the Virtual Game Festival 2010.  BuildCity challengers players to create a build within a themed community, and the builder is assigned specific tasks to guide the themes and motifs of the build, or otherwise add to the challenge of creating the build.  Seiya picked an especially challenging plot, where the task given was to build a two-story home within an orchard... in 3 hours.

When I was generating tasks for the plots in Verdant Valley, I expected this plot to be filled by a simple wood home and some terrible sprite trees.  Seiya took that thought and turned it on its head, and then crafted a building under it.  In something of a poetic gesture, Seiya wasn't satisfied with the house and the orchard being two separate components.  Why couldn't the orchard BE the house?

And so it was -- in three hours, a metallic outcropping appeared on the site, covered by the canopy of many small trees on the roof.  The build is then bisected near its midpoint, and a secondary hill offers some geometric contrast at an angle.  Seiya's design is brilliant not simply in its quick conception, but as well as its execution, and to me the exhibition of this particular piece is not the piece itself, but rather the designer.  Seiya's sharp "design wit" in the face of challenge, combined with the masterful crafting of geometry, worked with an intense ethic in a small window of time to produce an intriguing concept and execute it with extreme clarity.

A metallic outcropping terminates the hill.

The Orchard Home is a good example of the intrigue of her work -- her ideas, that they were executed in her builds and that you could clearly see what she was going for in the builds themselves.  Take some time to sample more of her work, and you'll notice this trend.  Her ideas, concepts, motivations, and even humor can be found in the carefully sculpted geometries that she made, and they take on a different identity because of that.  They are expressive of Seiya's personality, and since the time of her passing this is all the more apparent in her work.  We may never share another conversation, but in the Orchard Home, I can see her ideas.  Her brilliance.

A back staircase offers access to the orchard above.

In that sense, perhaps 'memorialize' was not quite the correct term earlier, because even though Seiya may be gone... what she left behind is more characteristic of who she was than any monument or obituary could hope to be. And so it is, I've decided to write this today instead of making a marker in BuildCity, and whenever I visit the Orchard Home, I will be able to enjoy the beautiful expression that my friend left behind.

Gaming - BuildCity Updates

Hey everyone, if you've followed me for a while you'll know that I manage the BuildCity Gaming World in AW.  I've been meaning to get things in order there for a while (meaning that they'll mostly manage themselves) so I took some time this weekend to do some maintenance.  Here's what's new:

• Off-season play rules are still in-effect.
• Abandoned/Incomplete plots have been maintenance and are available to new builders.
• Tourist building has been disabled.
• The global bot is ONLINE 24/7... this grants access to global chat and jump points for ease of reference. It will also save your last in-world location so you don't start in the tutorial when you enter the world.
• Players can earn Airpark Achievements for completing certain tasks, such as completing their first build or earning a certain amount of credits. Check the signs in-world for more info on that.

I am still maintaining the world so telegram me if you want to play, but expect a 1-3 day turnaround time as I'm not active daily anymore. Alternatively, you may reply to this thread and receive a quicker response as I am active daily on the forums.

Gaming - BuildCity Now Open for 'Off-Season' Play

Hey all, I've had some people contact me recently letting me know that they were interested in playing Builder's Challenge, and the game has been inactive for some time... so the other day I cleaned off the cobwebs in BuildCity world and have opened it in a setting that I'm tentatively calling the 'off-season.'

During the off-season:

• The chief end of the off-season session is to allow players to practice for times of competition.
• The world is not in active competition. The scoreboard will continue being maintained, but prizes will not be rewarded.
• Building lots will still be judged as normal, with a score and comments given to the builder.
• The global bot is not guaranteed to be online 24/7.
• Requests will be processed slower than usual. Expect turn-around times of up to 2 days during the off-season.
• Area restrictions are DISABLED -- this means that higher tier areas do not have to be unlocked like they normally do to be built in. However, the player still does have to lock them individually -- they must begin with a plot in Verdant Valley and progress to higher tiers on an individual basis. The only difference now is that they won't have to be held up by other players.

The global bot's online time will be sporadic until I have completed the semester and returned home. This period will last for about another week, and then the bot should be up 24/7.

The off-season will end when we're ready to hold another session of Builder's Challenge, at which time existing builds in the world will be wiped. There is no time-table at present for this, as I wish to automate much of the registration and judging process before I hold another session.

I'll post further updates concerning the off-season to this thread in the AW forums. In the meantime, here are a couple of images from the first plot of the off-season: A Cattle Ranch by Conqueror

Overview of the Ranch

Front-view with completed comment card for the builder.

 I'll have some more updates on this after I complete my finals.  In the meantime, give the world a tour.  It's a P-50 world and for the most part it's completely filled out (except for builder plots!)