MAZE GARDENS and VISITOR CENTER

A miniature Piccoli world on a terrace within Maze Gardens.

     I went shopping today after speaking with a friend who has a collection of interactive animated little figures. Hers were birds. Intrigued, I went to the shop and found the Piccoli2 line. I believe the makers are d-lab and Lizail. The selection of toys and fantasy-like trees kept me busy for a long time, and I returned home to ACC Alpha loaded down with new treasures for the sim. I replaced some of the older trees at MAZE GARDENS with the new colorful ones, and transformed a terrace into a miniature woods for the new Piccoli figures. Each figure has a home base that you rezz, and once done, the figures (called dolls) interact by travelling between the various bases. They water the plants, they sit on mushrooms, and due to their slow yet nearly constant motion, I made a new texture for the ground on one of the terraces in Maze Gardens: a patch of moss with little roads for the busy little inhabitants. The tree trunks of this area are chairs. Click to sit on them, and enjoy this curious little civilization as if you were Gulliver.

The Visitor Center is not wall to wall carpeted, but wall to wall watered.
Enjoy the Crossroads game on the wall. Fair warning: it is addictive. 

     A couple days earlier, I'd worked on the Visitor Center. It's across the Paper Tower Court from the newly remodeled spa. As if there weren't enough water up there, I decided to go even further with the water motif at the Visitor Center. I bought a pool. It wasn't modify, so I had to cover much of the decking with my own prims, and grind my teeth just a bit, for the pool (and the jacuzzi at the spa, for that matter) do not have copy/mod permissions. To accommodate this pool which was too large for the space, I thinned down the side walls of the building, and did some fancy positioning of the new aquatic feature. Unfortunately there was a camp fire by the pool, and a shower. Being no mod, I extended a sand dune to hide the fire that is not separable from the pool. A few flames still shoot up past the sand. You can impress your friends by your fire walking, or bring some veggies on a skewer to roast there. Inside the Visitor Center are posters with information about the sim, and a link to suggested music to listen to while walking around the city. By chance, the wide view from the Center onto Maze Gardens, now enjoys the scene of the Piccoli figures roaming around the middle terrace. While in the pool, click the dark brown areas of the deck, or the shower to get a blue menu. There are ample animations to enjoy using the pool, and cooling off your feet in case you did do some fire walking after all.

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New Spa at ACC Alpha

Not shown in the picture above are the tub and the shower, but you can see
a slice of the stream behind the masseur.

     The public bath is a key feature in many cultures across the world, and across time. In such countries, the bath is a place where people take cures, or socialize. ACC Alpha joins in, and so I remodeled the interior of a pavilion on the Paper Tower Court. It is currently set up like a spa with semi private areas, all with views onto Equus Fields outside the huge moving window. My hope is that people visiting will relax with their thoughts as if at home.

A day after writing this post, I found a jacuzzi that sits three. I placed one of
Lilia Artis' poem paintings on the wall there, and also a functional
tic tac toe game. This view is looking out toward Paper Tower Court.

     This new establishment on the Paper Tower Court, rests atop one of the oldest surviving structures of early ACC Alpha history. The colonnade supporting the Court was built in early 2010. The buildings atop the colonnade were once in the shape of a drum, but in later years, the walls were broken into sections to eventually yield the three pavilions we see today. The spa is in one of these updated structures.

     If you do some of your best thinking in the shower or tub, come over to the spa. The animations in the appliances are very good quality. One of my favorites is at the washbasin in the jacuzzi area. I just shaved there, and combed my hair, then followed that up with the same, in Real Life. Such an inspiration!

Click here to visit the spa in Second Life.

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