UO Diary: February 26, 2015

This house design turned out completely different from anything I'd originally planned for it to be. Initially I was going to make a vendor area outside in the grass with the building itself being my personal domain. If the part of the building my character is standing on looks out of place, it's because it was added as an afterthought, when I'd suddenly decided I wanted to make an inn/apartment type establishment instead. I've spent pretty much all day looking for decorations and tweaking the design until I was satisfied. After that I went shopping and built things for this design. I had all sorts of ideas in my head. A RP-friendly establishment intended to give traveling shardhoppers or someone just down on their luck a place to keep their goods. I even had and tested a way for each room to keep their goods protected from other tenants. A secured, locked chest cannot be pick-locked. A locked chest can, but secured? No.
I even decided to include my plot directly West of this one in it. This plot would be the apartment, the other would be the vendor/community area. I customized the  other house...

Here you can see the general, if unfinished idea. A public bar/restaurant. The second floor was to have vendors. The third floor would be my character's personal apartment, complete with bath area and an area for her to do her finances.
I have never spent 8+ hours on an idea working and decorating and tweaking to fruition only to wipe the slate clean, and yet that is exactly what I did today. Both of my house plots are yet again completely empty. The ideas still swim in my head, and yet I can't get it to sit right on the plots. While customizing the second plot, I decided I wanted a greenhouse as well. But if I had a greenhouse, how in the world could I afford the time and money to run an inn? Did I even want it to be an inn or did I specifically want extended-stay people here? Was it actually going to function if someone would ask about it? Or was this all going to be for show? If it was going to function, what pricing did I need? How much gold had I already sunken into the venture?
I suffered from a virtual version of reality crashing down on me. The fact of the matter is this is Atlantic, and I do not have all of my characters built up in skill like I do on Lake Austin. I do not settle when it comes to decorating, and a lot of the time I could not find that particular craftable that I wanted. Truth be told, it's been a very long time since I've worked on any sort of decorating on a production shard. I've taken to spending my time on Test Center, where I can craft any and everything I could possibly want while decorating. While the idea of limiting myself while decorating is invigorating, it's also exhausting. After figuring out what it is I want, I have to first search for the item to see if I have it already. If I don't, I have to locate the item on a vendor, with the new but helpful vendor search option. Then I have to shell out more gold than I'd like for stuff I'm normally able to craft myself. I don't even have a character with enough Tailoring to craft beds!
So now I'm back to the drawing board. I'm thinking I will make my secondary house a greenhouse with a vendor area downstairs, and my main house will remain a private dwelling. I most likely will not be decorating the private dwelling at this point. Getting a garden started, however, will be quite easy.

UO Diary: February 25, 2015

I've been fighting the UO bug for a few months now. With nothing to do in my free time I've found myself hopping on more and more, and actually planning out stuff to do on the two shards I play on. Test Center got wiped, and I didn't get the Luna house spot I always strive for. It's probably best, seeing as all the stuff I usually set up on Test Center would hardly be used.
I'm rather proud of this house design. I hopped into customize mode and didn't have anything planned out, on paper or in my head. Instead I just started working around with different wall types, making sure not to use a typical set I've used before. I recorded myself customizing, and once (if) I finish decorating I'll put together a video as well as a post. As you can probably figure out, I'm wanting to set up some vendors. Most likely plant vendors, as that's all I ever consistently do. Other stuff I would extend to would be inscription or alchemy based. But selling resources? Not for me. I don't have enough resources to start selling them, for one.

I'm starting up growing plants again. I have an excel sheet where I can inventory what seeds I do and don't have. It's rather hard to build up what you have on Lake Austin. If I were to start growing plants on Atlantic I could easily get my hands on every single seed available. Not to mention ridiculously cheap kegs of potions already premade. On Lake Austin I either have to shell out 50k for a keg, or spend the time making the kegs myself. Whenever I'm surfing the web I tend to hop on my alchemist and have him make potions.
I plan to do several rounds of the Naturalist quest to get some seeds. I'll possibly set up a vendor or two in Luna and start selling off my plants. I've been going through all the boxes and boxes of storage in the castle and I realize that I have entirely too many plants. If they were worth more for Clean Up Britannia I might consider tossing them, but they're valued at under a point each. Not quite worth it to me.

Kammie's House Tidbits: May 2009

This is the only screenshot I have of this house, and it's a great disappointment. I was so proud of this at the time. I still vaguely remember it and am impressed with what I did.
Usually when I customize a house, I have set 'rooms' and needs that I know I have, and I build the house around those needs. Here, I did whatever fitted my fancy, making a point to purposely make weird shapes and sizes for rooms and forcing myself to think outside the box in order to decorate the house. I ended up being rather proud of what I did. I remember the 3rd floor being a crafting area, and the roof being tiles much like the design from April, but the first few floors I was very happy with, though truth be told I remember nothing of the 2nd floor. I want to say it was a very large bedroom with no doors and archways with curtains covering the entrance from the 1st floor/exit to the 3rd floor.
The area near the front door acted as a front door, heavily decorated with plants and other oriental-style decorations. The room the purple water trough is in ended up being a kitchen, with the little 2x3 room being a pantry with stacks of chests to help with the storage. The room with the blue water trough was the dining room/hallway, and the room that the green writing desk is outside of ended up being a 'pirate mappers room' of sorts. The porch that lead of off this pirates room ended up being full of plants, and served no real purpose besides being a place for me to put plants in. I love plants, as you should be able to tell in any of my designs.
The room that has the stacks of boxes ended up being a writing nook.
To fit the customization, I remade all of my furniture in a regular color. I think this was my permanent transition from dying all of my furniture to staying in a rather 'neutral'/original color palette. 
The little closet that nested in the "L" of the steps served as a hidden treasures closet. It basically had a stack of chests with rares and miscellaneous supplies.
So there this is. A vague outline of a house, left for your imagination to fill.

Kammie's House Tidbits: April 2009

This is the only good screenshot that I have of this house design. That's not to say I don't have other screenshots, but this is the best one to showcase this design with. The roof had nothing on it besides some plants and I used the first floor as a plant farm that was only accessible by walking through the waterfall. The only thing of note here is my little waterfall I had going that extended across every floor. It was usable, too! Imagine that!
This also documents before I really stepped out of my comfort zones in terms of decorating and customizing a house. Part of it was my inability at the time to really think of new and exciting designs. The most notable part of this design to this day was my fairly fluid looking waterfall.
Now let's visit some other screenshots and look at this beauty! *cough*

 

Yes, I do fail at life my dear. :)

This was the second floor which was meant to act as a vendor area (look at the tables on the right) and I didn't really know what else to do with the floor so I started putting my T-BOD items here (keep in mind that this was Test Center, and T-BOD items were a hot commodity!).

 I don't think I did anything with the area immediately surrounding the stairs. If I wanted to, I never had a chance to before I decided to change around the design.

 This illustrates my little plant farm I had going. This was before the days of the grow plant command for Test Center, so you had to take as much care growing plants here as you did on a production shard. The 'shelves' made out of purple benches were used to separate plants that were still in their starter pot. It made it easier for me to make sure I tended to each plant.
At  the very very bottom, right behind the waterfall, you can see my little writing nook/special storage area. I stored higher end items there as well as some nicknacks. Really things that are of low value on TC (you could use commands to get them) but I kept them just in case I needed them, or the command/item was taken out of easy circulation as has happened before. Several years before this, around 2004-2006, the Pigments of Tokuno were taken out of TC artifact box circulation while the TC at the time was kept live. As a result, PoTs experienced a great influx in trading value.