Tharsis Estates on Blue Mars

City Updates and Home Kit 2.0

2010-11-10T09:01:00.000-08:00

Both Tharsis and Sandbox have been updated in the last couple of days. The main changes are to replace all but one of the model homes in Tharsis with ones built from my modular parts kit, and put some of the individual parts on display in Sandbox. The one shown here is two stories with a basement made by cutting a hole in the terrain. That is not just pushing it down, it's actually removing part of the ground.

The 2.0 version of the kit has grown to over 90 parts (3D models), and over 160 material files. Many of the models have alternate textures applied, like brick/wood siding/stone/stucco for the outside walls. Each alternate needs a different material file to call out the right textures, so there will be more of them than the model files.

The demo homes are mostly unfurnished right now. I plan to start adding new furniture, as well as making more parts for more variety, and more "active" components. So far I have working doors and fireplaces, and working lights are next.

Besides the kit and model homes, I set up a new block with placeholder house, and more details on the pond in Sandbox city.

City Updates and Blue Mars News

2010-10-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy month, and lots to report this time. Both Sandbox City and Tharsis Estates were updated yesterday. I needed to do both at once because the Common data package (Blue Mars\Game\Levels\SAND\SAND_Common.pak) used by both cities was changed. I have been adding to my modular Home kits, and realized that hundreds of house parts in one folder would not be practical. I moved the parts into separate folders by type (walls, doors, windows, etc), which will scale a lot better. Since both cities have houses using those parts already, I had to update both to point to the new folders.

The home kit has grown to about 75 parts in this version. The first version only had the parts for the red brick house pictured last month here. This one (let's call it version 1.5) has added alternate wood and stone exteriors. More options are coming as I get them done, such as the wallpaper pictured above. Tenants in either city are welcome to use these parts, as well as anything else in the Common data, for their block or shop.

Coming Changes to Blue Mars

Approximately tomorrow (Thursday), a new website and version of the software will be released, if they don't find any errors. Changes include:

* Better display of city info. I submitted larger (1280x720) photos for both cities for this update.
* New movement and camera system. Added to movement will be mouse steering, and the camera
will be able to detach from being centered on the avatar.
* Ability to use "residences" and "apartments" and upload animations.

There will likely be other improvements, but we will have to wait to see the final release notes to know exactly what made it into this update. After the new year, Blue Mars intends to go "public" in a major way when they add games from a major online game provider, and activate the cloud render servers. Those servers move the graphics rendering from the PC to their servers, and sends finished video instead. That will make it possible for most any PC or handheld device to use Blue Mars. Right now you need a PC with a pretty good graphics card. I am not sure if they will call beta over at that time, but they will be trying to get a lot more players than the small number of early users and developers we have now.

Other Changes in Sandbox City from version 5 to version 6 (25 Oct 2010):

* A pond was added to the leased block at x=1685 y=793

* The red brick house near the spawn point was moved closer to the water, and a start made at displaying the home kit parts at x=2080 y=1651. That area is intended to be a "showroom" or visual catalog of what's available.

Changes in Tharsis from version 17 to version 18 (25 Oct 2010):

* The cottage with wood siding at x=198 y=153 is being replaced with an updated version using home kit parts. It is missing some roof parts which did not make it into this update. I plan to update all the demo houses using home kit parts over the next month or so. I am also continuing to make clothes, which has grown to about 100 items in my Tirion Designs shop. Once the demo houses are updated, I also plan to start working on new furniture. (Yes, I am keeping myself very busy).

Tharsis Estates Updated to Version 17 - 30 Sep 2010

2010-09-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

The latest version of Tharsis Estates just went online. Here's what's new:

* Tiki torches on the waterfront bar are now working. I will gradually add more decor to the bar.

* I removed the "prim yard" and texture demo items, since Sandbox City will be the building tutorial area in the future.

* I imported the red brick model home via Block_1. It had been set up as a prefab in Sandbox city, so I wanted to learn how to move things from one city to another. Block 1 I use for myself to test things. Importing as an AR_Prefab does not allow the doors to function, but extracting the parts allowed them to work.

In general I plan to upgrade all the model homes, since I know a lot more about building than when I first did them, and the modular design (kits) works better for custom homes.

* Added clickable signs at Tirion Designs main store and model home linking to new website. The website will hold building tutorials and info about my clothing and house items.

Sandbox City updated to Version 4 - 27 Sept 2010

2010-09-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

The next version of Sandbox City went online last night. Here are the detailed changes:

* Added modular house kit components to common data, and built a demo house from the components. The demo house has been converted to an AR_Prefab, and features working doors using flowgraph. See the previous post for more details.

* Added prim kit display to sandbox area, and changed ground texture to sand (obviously :-) )

* Added signs to house and sandbox linking to information web pages. I now have a website for Tirion Designs, so I am starting to put information/tutorials on there.

* Added 3 terrain transition textures and applied them to a few roads to cover the seams where terrain textures meet. The main terrain textures are defined per grid point, which has a two meter spacing in Sandbox City. At the seam where two textures meet, it leaves an aliased (jagged) transition. Roads lay flat to the terrain, and by blending the two textures on either side in Photoshop, I can apply the blended transition to the road, and use that to cover the unsightly seams.

Prefab House Kit v1.0

2010-09-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

For the past few weeks I have been working on a "Prefab House Kit" for Blue Mars. It is a set of parts which can be used like fancy prims to build your own custom houses, without having to dive into a 3D program. Once you have a layout done, you can convert the parts into a "prefab", which then acts as a single object.

The City and Block Editors have a "snap to grid" setting which can be anywhere from 1/8 to 64 meters. I designed these parts to fit with 0.5 and 1.0 meter snap settings to make it easier to line things up. The doors open and close with a click thanks to a flowgraph supplied by Simpsoid.

For this first version, I made enough parts to build one fairly ordinary brick house. I plan to add lots more parts and add alternate textures/materials to the kit, and people using the kit can replace the textures or adjust the colors and other material settings beyond what I supply.

Some statistics on the pictured house:

14x17m main dimensions (248 sq m / 2670 sq ft)
3.2m ceiling height + 30cm floor thickness = 3.5m/floor height

44 different parts (3d models) with 50 material files. Some parts have alternate textures or tiling settings which are defined by which .mtl file is assigned to the model. The models + material files use up 35kb of my 1 GB total data allowance. Blue Mars uses total size of the city files instead of prim count as a limit on what you can build. Textures are in addition to this, but my textures can be used on different objects, so it's not clear cut what data use to charge to the house kit. The ten new textures I added for this house build take 1158 kb ie a lot more than the models. So roughly to total cost of the kit is 1.2 MB.

419 pieces as built, which use up 50kb of data in the object list which tracks what is rezzed within the city. Therefore each additional house with a different floor plan but the same total parts count would add another 50kb. The City Editor can track a maximum of 64K total objects, so if you make a lot of houses, then its best to convert them to prefabs, which only count as one object to track. The "parts list" for a prefab is saved as a separate xml file.

The reasons I am taking this kit approach rather than doing complete house models is that inevitably people will want to customize them. This lets them do it easily. It also saves total data to the extent parts are re-used in multiple builds vs having complete house models.

More photos are here: Blue Mars Houses And Buildings Album

Sandbox City Updated to Version 3 - 01 Sep 2010

2010-09-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

I uploaded the latest version of Sandbox City yesterday. The big new thing was my first attempts at using scripts and flowgraphs. In more detail I made the following additions:

* Clickable welcome and sandbox signs that open a web page when you click on them. These use the ARItem entity with a link to a web page via flowgraph. The welcome sign comes here to this blog, and the sandbox sign goes to a tutorial list on the Blue Mars wiki. Flowgraphs are a graphical way to program actions within Blue Mars:

* A teleport network and sky platform with map. Since Sandbox City is 4096m x 4096m with a bunch of islands, visitors need a way to get around faster than jogging or swimming. Clicking any sign takes you up to the sky platform, then clicking any pin on the map takes you to that location. The map is simply a screenshot of the city from above, so hopefully it will be clear what to do without instructions.

* Tiki huts to the right of the spawn point. I am working on a series of modular Tiki style hut parts as a kit. There are several sizes so far (8x8, 8x12, and 12x12m), and three wall styles. The wall/door/window sections can be used in any combination to make different layouts, and then the finished hut can be turned into a "prefab" and placed as a unit or copied as needed.

* A scripted boat near the spawn point as a test item. This uses a script made by Davy and Corey, and adapted for my city and the boat model. It works, but it is a little unstable. This is a first step to having vehicles, and I hope we get much better working ones in the future. Controls are: click to get on, WASD to steer, and space bar to get off. If you fall off, then use spacebar and click the boat again to get back on.

Blue Mars New Member Promotion: 1000 Blu$ & Software Update

2010-08-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

Blue Mars is offering 1000 BLU$ to new members! From August 23 to August 30, if you are not already a member of Blue Mars, create a new Blue Mars account and log in to win 1000 BLU$. Full details are on the 20 August: Blue Mars Blog

In addition to the promotion, the software and website will be updated about Thursday. New features include an Animation Editor (to upload custom animations), a new Welcome Area, and other changes which I don't know about until we get the release notes and the actual update.

City Updates for Both Tharsis and Sandbox Go Online

2010-08-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

Both cities had updates within the past few days. Since they share the "SAND_Common.pak" file, that will tend happen in the future. Otherwise changes like the ones I did to the terrain materials will leave them out of step. Currently the common data is 40.6MB, and the city data are 13.9MB for Sandbox and 12.8MB for Tharsis. We are allowed a total of 2048MB between the two cities, so we are only 3.3% full on data allowance overall.

Specific changes and my comments are as follows:

=== SANDBOX CITY v.2 (17 Aug 2010) ===

* Added 35 islands around the perimeter of the terrain map. These are intended for future leased private island blocks. They have the terrain textures and trees done. A teleport network to visit them will be added next.

* Made slight changes to the terrain textures so they blend better. The main terrain layers will always have visible seams where they change from one to the next. They are defined per point on the terrain grid, ie each point records the height at that point, and which terrain texture layer is assigned at that point. Between points they are blended by the graphics engine, but the human eye is very good at picking out edges where something changes.

The way to smooth over the edges is to use "roads" and "decals" to cover them. These lie flat to the terrain and can have custom materials. So besides using the Road object for actual brick and asphalt roads, I have used a sand to grass blend material on the edge of the beaches in both cities to hide the blocky seams in the main terrain layers.

* Added a welcome sign and tutorial signs near the spawn point (the boat dock)

* Added the "Sandbox" area for which Sandbox City is named. This is intended as a new developer tutorial area. Currently it only has a demo of Rigid object physics (if you touch the cylinders they will explode).

=== THARSIS ESTATES v.15 (19 Aug 2010) ===

* Since the terrain materials are shared between both cities, the changes I made are also applied to Tharsis.

* Updated the Modern House (the one with the blue car parked in front) walls with normal maps. I plan to update the other houses now that I have more experience with 3d modeling and BM materials.

* Updated the basic Tiki Hut model & textures. Added a deck and bar to the one on the water. Created a prefab out of a second tiki hut using new wall, door, window, and stair components, and placed a copy near the other boat dock. Like the shop buildings, I am using modular parts on the tiki huts, so they can be used in different in different layouts. I plan to add more parts, and make it available for tenants to use on their lots.

Private Islands Available in Sandbox City

2010-08-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

I am adding islands around the large central "Mainland" of Sandbox City for people who want a large, semi- or fully private location, but for much less than a full Blue Mars city goes for. Islands have four times the mainland allowance in area, but otherwise have the same data and object allowance. Although I have provided default terrain textures, elevation map, and trees, they are fully customizable. Lease details can be downloaded from the links to the right, and you can contact me with any questions you have.

SANDBOX CITY GOES ONLINE

2010-08-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

The big news, of course, is the opening of my second city in Blue Mars, "Sandbox City". The reason was we simply ran out of shop space in Tharsis. You are allowed 500 shop shelves in an Outpost, and 250 were taken for my own use, and the rest by other shop owners. There isn't much there yet, mainly one street of shops, but more will be added over time, as well as to Tharsis.

Sandbox City (SBC for short) is intended to provide rental private islands. This is due to the closing of the "Outpost" price plan in Blue Mars. Since the minimum entry price is now $275 a month for a full city, I expect some people will want less expensive options. I made SBC's map fairly large, to allow making islands with a good amount of land, but with a fairly low cost. SBC went online Friday. In addition, I submitted an update to Tharsis Estates. Here are the changes for the latest versions:

=== SANDBOX CITY v.1 (06 Aug 2010) ===

* Terrain map set to 4096x4096m and water depth to 50m. Main island is approx 900x900m, with future private islands to be added later.
* Basic terrain textures set up and first cut at layer painting
* Basic vegetation set up
* Clouds set up
* Dock and a few roads set up
* One block set up, containing 22 shop entities/250 shelves and one large mall building.

=== THARSIS ESTATES v.14 (09 Aug 2010) ===

* Updated textures and interiors at #5 & #6 Main Street. Asytra and Ahmed are opening shops in those buildings, so welcome!
* Replaced beach sand terrain layer with better version, and did some minor layer painting.
* Updated boat docks with new models & tweaked boat material.
* Added beach furniture, surfboards, and towels to left of spawn point. I hope to get a copy of Davy's boat script from Misty Hollow
and get the boat and surfboards to do something besides look nice.
* Added Tiki Hut on the waterfront far to left of spawn point. This is the start of a tiki house and furniture line to be used on the Sandbox City private islands. Those islands will be pulled up from the ocean bottom as needed when people tell me what they want.

Newest Store Items

2010-08-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the latest items released and in the Tirion Designs main store. I have about 60 items total there now (counting different colors), and all my items are listed in my photo album linked on the right.


Bettie Page Bangs Black


Fishnet Stockings and Garter Black

Fashion Vest - Beige and Gold

Tharsis version 13 - New Stores Open!

2010-07-26T09:49:00.000-07:00

I just uploaded the latest version of Tharsis Estates to the Blue Mars site. It needs to go through their QA, and hopefully will get online late tonight.

Brack Breen and El Electron now have their shops populated at #3 and #2 Main Street respectively, so
congratulations to them getting open.

City file changes were:

- Corrected some missing textures around main store back doors, and added some interior store signs. My new main store is now set up with all my items and the old building emptied out. I needed to move to a larger store simply because the old one was full.

- Added buildings at #5 & #6 Main Street with added shop entities. Removed for lease signs and yellow construction strips from those lots. Total shelf count is now at maximum for Outpost (500), so there will be no more shops until traffic increases and the city can upgrade to a higher price plan with higher limits. Tharsis was intended to grow to Village level (50 concurrent avatars maximum), but there is no point in paying the higher hosting fees until it's necessary.

- Removed interior items from #1 Main Street (my old store), and rebuilt #1 and #2 Main Street in the Block Editor rather than city editor so they will appear in the Shop Editor. If you have a shop in one of those buildings, try to download the shop data again and see if the buildings show up. This is one of those "I didn't know I had to do it that way when I first did the buildings" things.

- Extended Main Street to the new club building, and minor terrain modifications around all buildings to better match the structures. Greg has been working on getting a music stream to play in the club, but doing flowgraphs is new to me and I am having trouble getting it to work in Tharsis, even though his demo works fine in a test city. I may have to rebuild that part in the city level from scratch, rather than import it in his block.

- Added trees around Main Street and Diffuse Drive houses for overall looks. In particular I didn't want my big main store to mess up the view from the beach houses, but also in general to buffer the shop from residential areas.

Tharsis version 12 - 21 July 2010 & Building Code

2010-07-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

Tharsis Updated to version 12:

The next version of Tharsis was uploaded and passed QA yesterday, and is online now. Here is what's new:

- Modified my new main store at #1 Diffuse Drive (left side from spawn point) by editing textures, fixing some missing shadows, and adding store signs. I will be moving out of #1 Main Street over the next couple of weeks as I get the shop interiors set up in the new building. The shoes and boots department is the first to move, and is online with this update.

- Removed "For Lease" sign from #2 Main Street as the building is now rented.

- Added new tenant block at end of Main Street with future club building. Welcome to Greg at Hen Soup Studios! He is working on playing music in the club only (ie not the entire city). I look forward to that becoming a popular hangout.

- Added a new tenant block down Alpha Lane (turn right at the blue teleporter). Its at X=632, so more than halfway to the next intersection. It's currently rented, but empty.

New Building Code:

I create and build things myself, and do not like to impose on anyone else's creative freedom. Tharsis Estates has an overall theme, though, and I want it to look good for other tenants and visitors, so I have set the following conditions on building there:

(1) In the Main Street and residential areas, publicly visible exteriors should fit the theme, quality, and scale of the area. Interiors and areas hidden by plants, privacy fences, or the equivalent are up to tenant discretion.

(2) Builds which have technical errors when the city loads such as missing textures, collision boundaries extending past the property line, broken scripts, etc may be repaired or left out of the city upload as needed so the entire city can pass QA. I will try to help correct such problems when I find them.

(3) Areas outside Main Street and residential areas do not need to fit any particular theme or standards if not visible from those areas. They only need to be able to pass Blue Mars Quality Assurance. These include: Educational, Demonstration, Experimental Sandbox, Outer Islands, Sky Platforms, and Caves, and any other type of areas people think up.

Tharsis Updated July 12th - Software Update July 15th

2010-07-15T21:15:00.000-07:00

Tharsis Update

The existing shops, including my own, were getting filled/rented, so it was time to add more. The photo is an aerial view of "Main Street" which is just up the road from the landing point. The main changes this time were to add two new buildings, and more shelves to my own shop. The large building on the left will be my future main shop, and the one on the top right with the skylights has been rented for another tenant. I also added 25 more shelves to my own shop (on the second floor), because the first 50 were filled.

Total use is now 205 of 500 allowed shop shelves, so Tharsis is 41% of shop capacity as an outpost. There is room for a couple of more buildings on Main street on the right, and once I move to my larger quarters my original building can be rented out. Tharsis is now self-supporting on rents, not counting any clothes I manage to sell, which is wonderful considering it has only been online a couple of months. Designers are now producing items at an accelerated rate (5-10 new items a day I estimate), so the days of avatars all looking alike are rapidly being left behind.

Software Update

A minor update to the Blue Mars software was released this afternoon, both the player client, and the developer kit. See the Blue Mars Developer Wiki Release Notes Page for details.

Tharsis Updated June 30th

2010-07-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

I sent in an update to my city files yesterday, and it went online last night. Way to go, QA staff. Same day response time is outstanding! The following changes were made:

- Added a second beach house built by Amanda

- Added two more shop entities at #2 Main Street (15 and 25 shelf capacity), which are available to rent. The other three (my own, Marlii's and Gloria's) are in use. You can see my shop is filling up with items.

- Added the store sign in the photo above (click photo for a large version), and changed the window glass on the Main Street shops to not have active reflections. It appears that having *lots* of reflecting windows puts a strain on the graphics engine.

- Tried to fix the cosmetic glitches on the blue car and barn. These seemed to be caused by how I imported them to Blue Mars. I still have some minor glitches on other items, which I will try to fix over time.

First Resident House and More Shops Come to Tharsis Estates

2010-06-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

A new city update was just released for Tharsis Estates with a couple of significant updates:

We now have a resident-built house on the left as you arrive in the city. As near as I can tell this is the second one in all of Blue Mars, and the first to be furnished. Congratulations to Babette!

Main Street has expanded also. My own shop (Tirion Designs) has grown from 40 to 50 item capacity, since I am making new items fairly fast. I also put in some basic display stands. Two new shops were set up across the street as far as the "Shop Entities". #2 Main will have a 10 item shop on the downstairs left by Gloria, and #4 Main has a new one story building for Marlii, with 50 item capacity. It will be a little while before the shops have items in them. The process is first set up the entities, then place an "interior" with items and decorations.

New Clothing in Work: Fantasy Dress

2010-06-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

I'm working on more clothes to fill up my shop. This is a 3 piece fantasy dress. I am uploading it to see how it looks in-game, but will probably do more work on it after that. (click the photo to see it full size)

Shop now updated with items in their proper places

2010-06-02T22:54:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo with my current items in the shop (click to enlarge)

My City is Online!, and the first shop is sort of open.....

2010-06-01T20:11:00.000-07:00

It actually went online about 10 days ago, but through a series of misadventures on the Blue Mars side, it took till today to make the first update to load my shop contents. I now have 40 "shelves" (vending units), though they are set up backwards from the layout I intended. That will get fixed, but this gives me ten times the 4 shelves I had previously.

Tharsis Estates Uploaded, To be online soon....

2010-05-20T10:14:00.000-07:00

I uploaded my city files yesterday, and it passed the initial Quality Assurance screening, so it should be online soon. There are still some defects in the blue car and some of the furniture items, and I have lots more improvements to add in the future, but at least you will be able to visit it in normal player mode rather than downloading my preview versions in the future.

Here is the "icon" I submitted as what will show in the Places browser:

New Blue Mars Features & Tharsis Upload

2010-05-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

A new version of the Blue Mars software is due out between 2 and 6 pm Hawaii Standard Time tomorrow. Why HST? That is where their offices are.

Confirmed new feature is the ability to upload new avatar shapes and skins. More features are expected, and I will update this post when I know more for sure.

Tharsis Estates, which I have been working on the last 4 months, by coincidence, is ready for upload. I hit a small snag that the "Buy City" button on my account page, where I sign up to pay the hosting fees, was not working because their "Save Card Info" was broken (I had used my card last month to get a starter amount of Blue Mars currency (blu$). Jim Sink, the CEO of the company, emailed me tonight that the fix was to re-enter my card data. Now that is customer service!

Since other people will hopefully be renting space in the city from me, that means I will no longer be updating the preview versions of the city as I have been in the past. I cannot just send out files that contain other people's items. But you will be able to visit it live on Blue Mars. If I start up a new city project, then likely I will do previews again so people can visit it ahead of time.

I prepared a large map of the city, which you can download from Tharsis 2048x2048 pixel map from Mediafire

Tharsis Version 6 Available for Download

2010-05-06T21:15:00.000-07:00

Download Link is to the right ---->

What's New:

- This release I tried to clean up most of the remaining startup errors to get it ready for
QA/Launch. If you see any missing textures or other errors, please let me know.

- Moved spawn point to boat dock, and added covered walkway.

- Added another shop building with additional modular shop components and extended
shopping street.

- Added teleport network using the police call boxes.

Future work to get ready to launch:
-----------------------------------

- Set up blocks and shops with rental shelves.

- Remove female models since they are too "adult" to pass QA.

- Improvements to sample houses and added furniture as time permits

Getting Ready for Tharsis Version 6

2010-05-05T17:52:00.000-07:00

I've been working on the arrival and shopping areas to get another version of Tharsis out. These photos are work-in-progress shots. Click the images for a larger view.

First Try at Hair - Now released

2010-04-30T14:51:00.000-07:00

This is my first try at doing hair for Blue Mars. It's going through their technical check, and should be out in the next few days.

EDIT: The hair was released yesterday (May 3).

My Clothing Collection So Far

2010-04-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

I have a few items for sale now in Beach City (in the secret hidden shops *laugh* - actually two shops close to the landing point, but they are not marked). The items that are done and available part time are shown here: Clothing Gallery

Since they only have a few shops spaces, I can only display 4 items at a time for now, so I have to rotate them out periodically.

Rezzing a Prim in Blue Mars

2010-04-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

Blue Mars Block Editor Rez a Prim from Danielle Eber on Vimeo.

I did this video to show it's possible to build in Blue Mars in a very similar way to how building is done in Second Life.

In the video I have the "Block Editor" open. Blocks are the equivalent of land parcels in SL. I have two floating windows open to save time in the video, the RollupBar, and Material Editor, which are docked as tabs. They are detachable and can be moved outside the editor entirely onto a second monitor, which is what I usually do when working.

Clicking on the RollupBar shows the Browser list, which is similar to the Objects part of SL inventory. Then drag a cube from the list to the perspective view to "rez" it. The object properties now show on the RollupBar, and I go ahead and turn on shadows as an example. Note there is an "Edit Mesh" button there, so you *can* in theory edit objects directly there, but it's a pretty crappy editor, so everyone I know uses an external 3D program to do that.

Switching to the Material Editor tab, this is the equivalent to the SL Edit window Textures Tab. Clicking the folder icon on the Diffuse texture slot opens a file chooser, and I go ahead and pick a different one from my wood textures folder. In the cube I have one sub-material per side set up, which are listed in the explorer pane, but you can assign your own arbitrary mapping of polygons and UV coordinates to which sub-material they show.

The seventh sub-material is the "Collision Proxy", which defaults to the "bounding box" of the model, but if you want to make a custom proxy, you can, like if for some reason you want avatars to sink to the waist when walking on a surface, you can set up the proxy that way.

Last I switch to Preview Mode and drop an avatar into view to bump into the box. This makes it easy to test things as you build. The next step would be to save your build and "Export to Engine", where you can log in to the Blue Mars servers and test your project with a live avatar.

Tharsis Version 5 Available for Download

2010-04-06T20:13:00.000-07:00

The latest version of my under-construction city is now posted for download (on the right)

The reason for the two month gap since the last version is I was mostly doing several other things: updating the builders kit, and writing a tutorial on the "Material Editor". New stuff in this version includes:

- Replaced most textures that were DXT3 with DXT1 (except alpha textures), since that takes half the file size. Optimized some texture sizes. A lot of behind the scenes fixes to file pointers and cleaning up editor errors. Not all models have been fixed of glitches yet.

- Added demo shopping street and modular store/office building. It is built on with 4 meter modules that can be put together in many floor plans.

- Improved terrain layer textures for the mountain area

- Added a Demo house built entirely with the builder kit shapes and textures, to prove you can actually use the kit for interesting projects.

- Added some sample boxes with bump textures, and a sample material display model (the box with the ball on it). Sample displays like this are a standard way to show how 3D materials look.

- Added Kitchen appliances model to the Modern House

- Added Earth globe just for fun.

Material Editor Tutorial Finished

2010-03-29T23:15:00.000-07:00

I have finished writing a tutorial on the "Material Editor" component of the Blue Mars editors. It is not 100% complete - there are parts of the editor I do not know about, but it is everything I know about it right now:

Blue Mars Developer Wiki: Material Editor page

What this editor does is to edit an XML file which contains all the settings for the CryEngine 2 graphics engine to follow when displaying an object. There are over 200 settings total which can be applied to each part of an object's surface, and one object can have many "sub materials" on different parts. Not all the settings can be used at once, they come in sets which are defined by the basic Shader you choose (glass, cloth, metal, etc), and apply the texture maps you input in various ways.

The link to the right will now point to my tutorials list on the Blue Mars Dev Wiki instead of a file you download. More people will be looking there for information, and one link can point to a growing list of tutorials as I write more of them.

Blue Mars gets $4.2 million in Venture Financing

2010-03-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

The original blog post from the CEO, Jim Sink is here: Blue Mars Blog

What this means in practical terms is enough funding to go for a year to 18 months, which should be enough to get them out of beta and hopefully self-supporting. Anyone worried that Blue Mars would fold from lack of funding should rest easy now.

Meanwhile I have been working on a tutorial for the "Material Editor" in the various Blue Mars Editor programs. If you are doing much of anything in Blue Mars as far as creating things, you need to know how that works, since it controls how things look. I'm about halfway done with it. I am migrating all my tutorials to the wiki since it will be easier for people to find who have not found this blog.

My Tutorials List

Half finished Material Editor Tutorial

Builders kit Part 2 - Models and Software

2010-03-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

As noted two posts ago, here is the second part of the builder's kit (download link to the right). Included are 150 premade models of simple shapes. Along with the textures in part 1 you can use these for simple building projects. I have also included copies of 7-zip file utility, and Google Sketchup 7.0, the manual for Sketchup, and a README file on how to install and use the kit.

I have also been working on tutorials on the Blue Mars Developer wiki. A list of them is at my Wiki User Page
More tutorials, and more stuff for the kit will be coming. If you have something you would like to see, let me know.

New Avatar Templates

2010-03-09T18:34:00.000-08:00

So like the day after I posted the Textures Pack, Blue Mars released an updated developer's kit, with new avatar templates. This is the fun part of being in beta, I get to do my annotations on the templates again.

To get them in peoples hands as soon as possible, I updated the Textures pack to version 0.75A, and posted the raw templates as a separate download (Mar 2010), both to the right. If you already have the textures pack, just download the new templates and replace the folder contents.

New Builders Kit Part 1 With more textures and update to Avatar Templates

2010-03-08T11:56:00.000-08:00

This is the first part of version 0.75 of my builders kit for Blue Mars. Download link is to the right. It has 450 textures this time, including a partial update to the avatar templates. The template links to the right are the "raw" version, directly as they came from the models supplied by Blue Mars. The raw version has no labels or helpful guides like are found on the nice Second Life templates. I'm working on making better ones, but since they seem to be popular, I have left the links for the raw version up. The set in the Builders Kit includes some .dds formatted ones that can be loaded directly into the Body Editor on the female model so you can see what parts go where, and I have gotten about 1/4 of them labelled. When I finish I will replace the raw version links and post the new set instead.

In addition to the avatar templates, I have added a bunch of new textures, and converted most of them to DXT1 format. The documentation for Blue Mars is still in pretty sorry shape, and I didn't know that DXT1 is preferred. Its half the size of the DXT3 I used before (better compression). The exception are the ones with alpha (transparency) channels, which need DXT3, and the ones being used for terrain distance viewing, which need to be uncompressed. Terrain close up textures are normal ones, and both types are used to make a complete terrain layer set.

Part 2 of the Builders kit will include a set of simple 3D objects, a copy of Google Sketchup 7.0, 7zip, whatever other useful software I can find, and whatever tutorials I finish in time for this update. I split the kit into two parts for size reasons. Note that Sketchup 7.0 is NOT the latest version (7.1 is the current one). For some reason the latest version does not export properly for Blue Mars. Since the old version will get harder to find, I decided to include it in the kit. You can use any 3D software for making Blue Mars items as long as you can export to the correct COLLADA format. But Sketchup is free, and appears to be the easiest one for new people to get started with.

Avatar Templates

2010-02-25T23:13:00.000-08:00

A set of templates are available for download to the right. These show where to put images in order to create custom skins for Blue Mars. The basic method is to load a template as the base layer in Photoshop or other image software. Then place the your own textures on top of that, and make it slightly transparent so you can see the lines underneath to line things up properly. When lined up, make it 100% opaque again, and export your finished texture.

Custom Avatars Now Possible in Blue Mars

2010-02-20T10:08:00.000-08:00

The "Body Editor" was released just recently, which allows editing the shape and skin of a Blue Mars avatar. This is a major step forward, although they still have a number of major steps to getting finished. I mostly do non-human items like furniture, but I did a new face and skin-layer clothing just to see how it works.

CORRECTED VERSION OF THARSIS v4a

2010-02-10T20:32:00.001-08:00

My original upload to Mediafire got corrupted, as one of the other developers found out (thank you). I have re-uploaded it and this time downloaded it back to myself to make sure it works :-)

New Download Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?tcyzdwmtxyi
New File Name: SANDv4a-10Feb2010.zip (45.9MB)

I also updated the README file to explain to change the name of the unpacked folder from SANDv4-10Feb2010 to SAND and then move it to the Levels folder to run.

Tharsis Version 4 Available for Download

2010-02-10T02:46:00.000-08:00

The latest version is out, download link is to the right. Here's whats new:

- A Police Call Box at the landing point with special effects.
- Background islands to make the city feel part of an island chain and not isolated in an infinite ocean.
- A power boat at one of the waterfront piers (not drivable)
- Creepy Barn imported from CryMod EOD team (thanks) as demo of import from that community.
- Split-rail fence and two types of chairs to Tin Roof house.
- Interior walls, lots of furniture, some decorations, and 5 static female models to the modern house. I added occluders to improve performance.

Instructions are included in the zip file. The total package is more than double in size because I added a lot of items, but I will be able to reduce that a fair amount the next time, since I discovered we can use DXT1 formatted texture files instead of DXT3, which will cut them in half in size.

Whats Been Going On Lately:

2010-01-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

Me personally:

The past week I have been working on my Houses and Furniture Collection for Blue Mars. My goal is to sell those items to people who need them when Blue Mars starts to fill up with regular users, and I am using one corner of Tharsis Estates to set up those items as a kind of "showroom". There is still plenty of room for other people to build on there though. I may end up using perhaps 5% of the city for that at *most* (right now its more like 0.5%).When there are enough changes to Tharsis that it makes sense, I'll post an updated set of files for people to download and visit.

Blue Mars in general:

There was a bit of a flap the last few days when it appeared they had lowered the data package (3D model and textures) to 512kB per sellable item, which is *very* restrictive. It turns out that is only an initial limit for wearable items, and for furniture it is 2MB. That still means I have to pay attention to model complexity and texture size, but most of the items I have made so far, and which can be seen in the gallery, will fit.

The developer forums have been pretty active lately, with the Blue Mars staff trying to answer questions as they come up, and they are starting to make progress on the Wiki to document things. There's still a long way to go on instructions and tutorials, but at least they are working on it.

They have updated the developer "MyPage", which is where you upload items, post blocks to rent, etc, so the business end of Blue Mars is getting closer to being ready. Last we heard, the next user software update is expected mid-Feb, which is only a couple of weeks away. Hopefully we will see some new features for the user side of things.

Tharsis Version 3 Available for Download

2010-01-22T17:00:00.000-08:00

Download link is to the right. Changes in this update:

- I added a third house (the one with the paved driveway) and a "bus station"
- Added two kinds of fence to two of the houses, and additional furniture.
- I have added a couple of car models, the blue one is sittable, though I know there are graphics glitches with it, and I have not figured out how to make them drive.

One of the things I have been doing is trying different size doorways, ceiling heights, and room sizes to see how they "feel". Normally with virtual worlds you need to oversize things a bit since the screen viewpoint is not at the same place as the avatar's eyes, and real people can maneuver better than avatars. Until Blue Mars settles on the updated movement and camera controls, I will leave the different sizes around for testing.

This package is a lot smaller than the last version, since I removed textures which are not being used. I had just included my whole texture set the first time around.

A Walk Through Tharsis - A Video Tour

2010-01-19T03:32:00.000-08:00

A Walk Through Tharsis - I made this video tour for people to see what it looks like in motion.

Our First Live Visitor to Tharsis

2010-01-18T20:59:00.000-08:00

I had my first guest log in to Tharsis Estates tonight live while I was also there. I talked him through downloading and installing the city files, then we both logged in and had a look around and sat down for a chat. This shows that the city files are fully functional and developer mode works. Thank you to everyone who helped get to this point.

Currently I am working on more furniture for the house, and trying to make a car you can drive around (the one in the photo you can sit in, but it doesn't go anywhere yet)

Tharsis City Download Version 2 Available

2010-01-14T09:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the people who tested the city download. We found out the file references were not exporting correctly. I have gone in and tried to fix all the references, and also added a few more items over the last few days (finished the modern house, added a fireplace and some furniture, and finished the river).

Version 2 is available to download on the right. I think the process is more or less figured out on how to share the files. In the future I will update it as often as needed when people send me block files or I make my own changes.

Tharsis Full City Test Download

2010-01-12T13:27:00.000-08:00

I have put my current city files for Tharsis Estates on a file hosting site. I am hoping some people can download it and run it in developer mode to see if it works, basically to find out if I got the right files included, and correct instructions. You will need a Blue Mars developer account and the developer kit installed to log into the city.

The city itself is far from done, but feel free to run around in it . I did test this on my own PC, but I wanted to make sure it works for other people before writing it up as a tutorial for how to work with other developers on a single city.

Download link is to the right....

Blue Mars Builder's Kit Available

2010-01-07T16:06:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this pack is to be a "starter set" to help new Blue Mars developers. Learning both the Blue Mars editing tools and 3D and graphics software all at the same time is a lot to start with, and not everyone has the textures or the software to convert them.

So this package contains pre-made basic shapes and textures that you can use directly in the Blue Mars editors. For more advanced or custom items, you will need to learn those other programs, but you can do a lot with just this set. For those coming from Second Life, this is essentially a prim and textures kit. If any part of the instructions are unclear, or if you would like to see some changes or additions, please let me know so I can improve them.

The download link is to the right. For those who had the textures pack, that is almost the same, I have added the shapes collection and updated instructions.

Clouds and Landscaping

2010-01-05T19:51:00.000-08:00

Been adding new things to the Tharsis Estates build. First up is landscaping for the house. The grass is a Blue Mars "common" item (provided to all developers). For now I applied it to the "Grass_clover" terrain layer as a "vegetation" item. That means it is low cost in data, and automatically bends in the wind. Since it's applied to the whole terrain, its popping up some places I don't want it, like the brick path. That can be worked on later.

The rocks and plants in the picture are actually copies of *one* rock model and *one* plant model, with various sizes, rotations, and color tints applied. This shows how to be efficient with your data allowance for a city. Copies cost a lot less than unique items.

The second photo shows the cloud effects. There are two layers of clouds here. One is a flat texture placed at high altitude. The other is a 3D cloud that moves according to whatever speed and direction you set. Both are special types of items you place in the sky, so that the CryEngine 2 software knows how to adjust their appearance for different times of day.

Some other items that are not as visible are adjusting the water waves, adding more variety to the trees, and smoothing rough spots in the terrain.

Building a House in Blue Mars

2010-01-03T11:17:00.001-08:00

This was mainly practice in building and setting up a house, not a commentary on my favorite architecture style. The house is made in 4 sections (walls, front windows, door, and roof), which allows making mix-and-match variations. I actually made it as a whole house in 3ds Max, then saved it in sections (by deleting everything but the section I wanted). That way I could be sure all the parts would line up.

Also, I wanted the door to be walk-through, so it had to be imported as a separate item with the Item Editor and unchecking the "create auto proxy" box. That way it ends up "no collision", ie the avatar can walk through it. All the rest of the house pieces are ungrouped individual parts, so their collision boxes are around each piece. If your pieces are not box shaped you will have to mess around with collision "proxies". That is a separate invisible model which has collision turned on, while the main model does not. For example, with a tree, the default collision is a box that the whole tree fits in, out to the leaves. Instead I use a copy of the trunk as my invisible collider, so the avatar can walk under the branches. Besides telling the software *where* you bump into or walk on things, a simple collision shape like a box or cylinder is much faster for the software to deal with than a model with thousands of triangles in it.

Building with Prims

2009-12-30T09:54:00.000-08:00

Primitive shapes, or prims, are basic 3d shapes like boxes, cones, and cylinders which have textures applied to them and assembled in groups to make more complicated objects. In a 3D modeling program such as 3Ds Max or Google Sketchup they are your starting point to create complex items. Not everyone knows how to use these programs or is ready to learn them, and people did quite a lot in Second Life with only prims to build with (they have since added more complex shapes called sculpties)

To make it easier for people just starting out, I am working on a building kit of pre-made prims, which you can install in your Blue Mars directories and just drag into the perspective view to use. Currently if you resize an object by different amounts in the XYZ dimensions, it breaks the physics collisions. That means an avatar will not walk on or bump into the item properly. If you change all three dimensions together, it still works. Therefore I have to make a variety of shapes in different proportions to cover what people will want. If you want a shape not in the kit or want something more complex or custom, then you will need to go use one of the 3D programs to make it. It will take a while to make the full kit and instructions, but I wanted to show a preview and let you know I am working on it. Along with the texture pack that is already available these will let you start building right away.

The first photo shows the various categories of shapes (box, cone, cylinder, etc). The second shows the various box shapes I have made so far. I need to do the same for the other shapes. There is also a flat alignment grid to help you measure and line up what you are building, then you can delete it once you finish.

What to do with your block instructions

2009-12-27T16:13:00.000-08:00

I have posted an updated set of instructions on how to work with blocks to the Blue Mars Developer Forum
(see the third post in that topic)

Oh and I made a cheesy real estate sign for block 1 *smile*

Tharsis Estates Available for Download

2009-12-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

I have exported a sample block file (Block number 1) and posted it to Block 1 Download at Mediafire. This file contains all of the Tharsis Estates city data so you can look at it, though you cannot edit the objects there. To view it:

* First register as a Blue Mars Developer if you have not done so
* Download and install the developer kit, which should include the Block Editor
* Create a folder under the Blue Mars City Developer Tools\Game\Objects\Mydata\SAND_Tharsis\Block_Data\Block_1
* Place the SAND_Tharsis_Block_1.bld file you downloaded in that folder
* Run the Block Editor and select the file. You should see a view like the photo above. The sample block is outlined in yellow.
* Use menu Config Spec > Very High to get the best view of everything
* Use menu Display > Hide Helpers to unclutter the view.

You can use the arrow keys and mouse to move around. The block editor is too complicated to explain in one blog post, so actually editing I will work on a tutorial for. This download is intended to let you explore the layout, and perhaps choose a location for your own block.

UPDATE: Apparently the block export misses the two modified terrain materials I used.
Go get them at: MediaFire and follow the attached note about where to put them

Tharsis Estates Open for Lease

2009-12-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

Tharsis Estates is the residential and commercial partner to Sandbox City. The main difference is size (1024x1024m) and primary purpose. Sandbox City is larger (4096x4096m) and is primarily intended for experimental and learning use, or for people who want a lot of room.

I am accepting residents for Tharsis Estates on a free trial experimental basis for lots up to 16K square meters, and for larger lots with 50% of the setup fee in advance. The reason for the up front payment for larger lots is to prevent one person from grabbing all the waterfront and road frontage for free. When there are enough residents for the city to go live on the Blue Mars servers, then the balance of the setup and monthly hosting will be due.

During the experimental period, you can receive your block, edit it with your items, and have it merged back to the city file. The city file will be distributed to residents, so they can see and play with the whole thing, and log in with other residents and guests in "developer mode". Within reason I will modify the landscape for you, and add infrastructure items. I have already put in a couple of roads, two boat docks, and a bunch of trees.

I have marked out a few starter lots. Others can be cut as needed. A flyby video is available on Vimeo, and photos on Picasa

The rates are as follows (both US$, and Second Life L$ - the Blue Mars economy is too new for me to accept their money yet). For intermediate sizes, add units of the various lines to get a total.

Area / Data allowance / Setup fee / Hosting /
------------------------------------------------------
1024m / 0.25MB / $3 (L$800) / $1/mo (L$60/wk)
4096m / 1.0MB / $10 (L$2700) / $3.5/mo (L$210/wk)
16K m / 4.0MB / $30 (L$8000) / $12/mo (L$725/wk)
64K m / 16.0MB / $100 (L$27,000) / $40/mo (L$2400/wk)

If you have questions, you can leave it here in the comments, or contact me in Second Life (DanielRavenNest Noe). My user name is danielravennest on gmail and Blue Mars also.

Tutorial 1 - City Map Setup

2009-12-24T16:08:00.000-08:00

I've posted the first of what I hope to be a series of tutorials on how to do things with Blue Mars. This one covers setting up and painting a city map. Normally this would be the first step in setting up a city, since everything else goes on top of the basic terrain. The link is over to the right.

Sandbox City Flyby Video

2009-12-23T21:06:00.001-08:00

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Flyby Video

(soundtrack: Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Siberian Sleigh Ride)

Video Notes:

Blue Mars (http://www.bluemars.com/) is a 3D virtual world in development, based on the CryENGINE 2 graphics engine. Its currently in early beta, and should be done sometime in 2010.

Sandbox City (http://sandboxcitymars.blogspot.com/) is my project to open up a public building area within Blue Mars, similar to SL sandboxes. The terrain map is 4096x4096m. I built the map from scratch :-) and recorded the video.

We start at the 0,0 corner, and fly past the building area (the area with roads), up to the mountains, and back. The furthest we get is about 40% of the way across the map. Since it is under construction, there is very little there yet aside from the landscape. People will use their imagination to add whatever they want to it. You can too if you want.

Blue Mars Information Center in Second Life

2009-12-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

We are starting to set up an information center in Second Life for people to find out about Blue Mars in general, our Sandbox City project, and other cities. There is not much to see there at the moment besides a globe of Mars, but the link to visit it (SLurl) is on the right in the links section.

If you have items or links you would like to see posted there please contact me in SL under DanielRavenNest Noe.

Setting Up Blocks

2009-12-22T13:32:00.000-08:00

In Blue Mars, blocks are pieces of a city that are exported, and which can then be worked on by someone else separately. When they are done, they send it back to the city developer, who merges it back into the city file. So knowing how to deal with blocks is an essential part of making Sandbox City work.

Over the past couple of days I have been struggling with the process of exporting and importing blocks. Unfortunately, with Blue Mars still in the middle of beta development, the documentation is not complete. What is there can be found on these wiki pages:

City Editor Workflow
Block Editor Instructions

I have worked out added instructions, but there are some bugs and open questions still, so I'm not ready to offer blocks for people to use just yet. If any of those pages are not viewable, let me know.

I did manage to get a couple of blocks set up, and imported a few text boxes, so it's working on a basic level, but I would like to be sure we know the right way to do it before opening it up for everyone to mess with.

The blue lines in the picture are "helpers" which can be turned on and off. They show where roads, shapes, and various other objects are located, and their item names. In particular, one shape is the outline of the block border, which defines what area you can work in.

Sandbox Area Layout and Prices

2009-12-20T14:57:00.000-08:00

Today's additions to the city are some roads and markers for the sandbox area, and setting it up so you can actually log in to the city. I decided to start with a 256m layout, since Second Life users are used to thinking in those terms. There are 6m wide roads and white columns to mark the edges of the layout. Unlike Second Life, where land comes in 4m minimum units and 256m regions, in Blue Mars this is entirely up to us. There are narrow paths at 64m intervals, to mark out areas 4096 sqm each (less the road width). These will be the initial building areas for people to use. The next step will be to convert them to Blue Mars "blocks". Blocks are exported as separate files for you to work on, then are merged back into the main city file.

Blocks will be on a first come / first served basis. In keeping with the spirit of Second Life sandboxes, there is no charge to use a block temporarily. If we run out of spaces and someone else needs it, then your stuff may be deleted. If you want to hold on to a space for the longer term, because you have an extended project, or even want to set up a house to live on, then I am asking 256L$ per 4096m block per month. This will cover the Blue Mars hosting costs if and when the city goes live on their servers. For the moment I am not taking any rental fees, until we are sure the block export and import is working, and people can run the city in developer mode.

The next photo shows how a city is set up so that you can log into it. "Entities" are Blue Mars items which can contain a script and optionally a 3D model. This is different than SL, where a script has to be contained within an object to run. In Blue Mars, if you have no 3D model assigned, the entity is just invisible. The RollupBar window shows the features of whatever item you currently have selected in the perspective view. The ugly pink mannikin, and the little camera by his feet are the necessary entities to log in. They are placed by dragging from the list of default entities found under the Objects header > Entity button.

The spawn point entity sets the login location for the city. Im not a good scripter, but I assume the script sets the avatar position to be equal to the spawn point position. The ARDefaultCamera entity sets the behavior of the camera view which moves with the avatar. You need one of each of these per city. These entities are invisible when you are logged in, but in the editor you can turn on Display > Show Helpers to show their names, and some markers so you can click on them.

The last photo shows my Blue Mars avatar logged in to the Sandbox City in Developer Mode. In this mode, he is actually logged in to the Blue Mars system. The only difference between this and normal play, is the city file is fetched from my "Blue Mars City Developer Tools" directory instead of my "Blue Mars" game directory.

In regular play, the city files are downloaded from their servers. In Developer Mode, the files are distributed direct from the city owner. Anyone with a copy can then log in, and we can see each other. The plan is to operate that way to start with, until we are ready to go live.

Blue Mars Texture Pack

2009-12-19T23:20:00.000-08:00

Over on the download link to the right you can grab my first cut texture pack for Blue Mars. It includes about 300 textures, already converted to the .dds format, so you can apply them directly in the material editor, though I use them in 3ds Max to preview my models while working on them.

Welcome to the Sandbox City Blue Mars Project

2009-12-19T10:26:00.000-08:00

"Sandbox City" is a project to develop a cooperative building area in the 3D virtual world Blue Mars. It is named both for the "Blue Mars Sandbox" editor used to assemble projects within Blue Mars, and sandbox areas within the Second Life virtual world, which are places to build and test items. The goal is to provide a place for creators to get their feet wet, learn how Blue Mars works, and display and share their creations.

The plan is to offer free non-dedicated building areas, which you can use until someone else needs it, and rented dedicated spaces which you can use long term. The city data will be downloadable and used in developer mode to start with. If we get enough people involved to cover Blue Mars' city hosting fees, then the city go live for anyone to visit.

Since Blue Mars itself is still in beta, I and everyone else working with it are new and learning as we go, so we have not figured out all the details yet. More information will be posted here as things develop.

The photos above are the basic terrain I set up for the city. Think of it as a blank canvas that you can paint on. The city is 4096x4096 meters in size, so plenty of room.