I Make Bellisseria Maps: Naming the Nameless Places, Making Bellisseria USB Routes, and I Mapped of All Rez Zones in Old Bellisseria

[bubblesort]

I just released a bunch of maps I've been working on for a while now. I have no background in cartography, so this is a first attempt. I would be very grateful for any feedback at all on these maps.

What's in it:

A map of Old Bellisseria, with all the places named (I named unnamed places).

A map of all rez zones in Bellisseria.

12 USB Routes to Explore Old Bellisseria, Along With Maps!

If you are interested, I also included a lot of production notes, about how I named nameless places, and details about the routes and rez zones.

How to get it:

Go to Smokey Pier, in Bellisseria. My house borders the pier, so I put a big map giving sign in my front yard. You click the sign and get the maps that way. All my routes start out at smokey pier, so you probably want to take a LM here, if you plan on using my USB routes. Click here to go there: Smokey

Tip: If you try only one route, try the Smokey to Campwich Lodge route. I put a lot of weird little stories in the comments of that route. It's kind of like the stories my scout leaders used to tell us on the trail when I was a kid. I don't know if my flavor text is annoying or fun, so if you like it, let me know, and I'll make more routes like that. If not, I'll just make normal routes from now on.

This is my initial release. If all goes well, I'll put it on the marketplace for free in a couple of weeks, after people have had a chance to try the maps and routes and give some feedback. If I put it on the marketplace, I will update this post with a link to it.

 

[Noodles]

Because I didn't know what USB HUD was, I am going to say it's this?

Second Life Marketplace - Ultimate Sailor Buddy Basic - 1.4

 

[bubblesort]

Because I didn't know what USB HUD was, I am going to say it's this?

Second Life Marketplace - Ultimate Sailor Buddy Basic - 1.4

Yes! Sorry I wasn't clear on that point. Most people use the Ultimate Sailor Buddy or Wind Compass for navigation. The Ultimate Sailor Buddy is the device that set the standard protocol for creating a route. The Wind Compass is an indispensable gadget for all sailors. It doesn't just tell you the wind direction, it lets you change the wind direction, and runs USB notecards, and lots of other things.

Personally, I like the Wind Compass better for navigating, but I love the sounds Ultimate Sailor Buddy makes, so I commonly sail with both, even if I am using a motor boat that doesn't need wind direction. I keep the USB on, because nothing will grab your attention more than the klaxon wail of the USB when you are pointed at a region corner and about to go down. The sounds are really important if you sail coast lines like Bellisseria. If you circumnavigate the fantasy coast, for example, you're always on the edge of a region, so that warning is very important.

Kim Farleigh, the Wind Compass creator, was super nice to me when I asked her for help with this map and route project. My Smokey to Campwich Lodge USB notecard had massive comments on it, because I'm experimenting with telling stories with USB routes. A normal line in a USB card looks like this:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Limevale/35/164/23

My version of that entry looks like this:

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Limevale/35/164/23,PointOfInterest,65,Limevale Falls is on the Western bank here.  I caught the biggest cat fish you ever saw here at Limevale Falls.  It was ten feet long if it was an inch!  Honest!  Her name was Glory and she was so big she wouldn't fit in the boat so she fell into the water and got away.  Some day I'll catch Glory again.

(If you want more stories like that, try my Smokey Pier to Campwich Lodge route)

Those massive comments worked in the Ultimate Sailor Buddy, because that's a more specialized device, so it had more available memory. The Wind Compass choked on a notecard of waypoints with paragraphs like that, and threw stack heap collision errors. I thought there's no way she will be able to fix that, but I reported it as a bug anyway. To my surprise, she not only fixed the bug, she set it up so that you can put even more massive comments than that in USB route notecards. Hypothetically, there's some limit to how big comments can get before you get stack heap collisions like this, but I don't think I'll ever hit it. She was testing it with massive comments and hundreds of waypoints, to the point where I'll never need that much capacity, but it's nice to know it's there if I ever want to use it.

Anyway, both the Ultimate Sailor Buddy and the Wind Compass come in 3 versions: Basic, Light, and Pro. They were made by different people, but these names are used by both. Here are some links to them in the marketplace:

Ultimate Sailor Buddy:
Free: Second Life Marketplace - Ultimate Sailor Buddy Basic - 1.4
L$200: Second Life Marketplace - Ultimate Sailor Buddy Light - 1.4
L$400: Second Life Marketplace - Ultimate Sailor Buddy Pro - 1.4

WindCompass (there are also free demos of every version):
L$249: Second Life Marketplace - WindCompass Light
L$149: Second Life Marketplace - WindCompass BASIC
L$449: Second Life Marketplace - WindCompass PRO

While we are on the topic of vehicle gadgets, if you are interested in this kind of thing at all, you should check out the Ban Line HUD. You don't need this for any of my maps or routes, but I use it when I travel, to keep track of where the sim boundaries are, and to find places to rez, and to log my trips, so I know the distance and time of my routes. The SL Coast Guard uses it. There's no free version of it, but IMHO, it's worth it.

L$490: Second Life Marketplace - Ban Line / Explorer HUD / Professional Quality for Pilots, Boaters, Planes, All Vehicles, even Landlords!

Disclaimer: I want to make clear that I am not associated with any of these devices, at all. This is not an advertisement for anything, it's just information.

 

[Noodles]

Ban Lines HUD is super useful if only for finding rez zones

 

[sldenizen]

I just use my minimap to tell directions. But then, I'm not recreating RL orienteering or celestial navigation or whatever.