Homes


Homes or Home Base? People use their properties for different things. Some sell out of their homes. Others, who have only 2D capability, utilize only their inbox and personal message board. Their needs vary as greatly as the cost of houses:

The Cheapies

Cheapies have a buggy lightswitch feature which is semi global. If you turned on
the light and someone arrives and turns it on for themselves, you're in the dark.
They each come in two prices, for furnished and unfurnished (But why pay extra
for furnished? Where will you put your acquisitions?).

Tenament Apartment - See the slummy highrise complex from your windows. My art gallery started out in this.


Brick Wall Apartment - slum chic



House with Yard - Lags like crazy. Sort of this poor side of town getup. The
only thing it's missing are some clothes lines. Furnished version displayed.

Moderate 2k Homes

Each has a little dragover gizmo on their patio which can alter the environment to reflect various
times of the day. If you're good, you can maneuver it into a starry night with cricket sounds.
They also have turbospeed elevators which often miss their mark and leave you either
above or below the property. Should this occur, access the area via Viewpoints.


Modern Ugly - modernistic cold grey meets checkerboard floors and orange carpeting. Yikes! The tubelike elevator sends you upstairs to a contained greenhouse which is already occupied with shrubbery and discourages any customization. You need effective lighting in this one.



Traditional - A favorite of many, despite the orange rug upstairs and a hideous zebra striped floor in the basement. What they call the living room everybody uses for the bedroom. Rolling lawns surround the house, and there's this nondescript swimming hole which most owners are probably unaware of. This is perhaps the coziest house among the whole lot.

The Mansions

Each mansion has its own animated bar, pool, non-working Vidnet screen, and recreational interface which pops up a game window. They're each entirely too big to properly furnish within the 32 objects limit, so most people cheat and it lags like crazy. At last count I had a modest 47 objects in mine. They also each have an avatar wardrobe interface. Whatever you do, don't touch them while visiting one of these homes. It may be some time before someone drops a hint to tip you off that you've become a bumble bee or something.

Cliffside Mansion - A waterfall flows into the backyard and underneath the home out to a freshwater pool in front. Domed structures are linked with stairs and elevators.

Once you know where everything is, it's not too bad. It took me a mere two weeks to get the hang of the property's labyrinth, while it took me but two hours to familiarize myself with the Nieuw Amsterdam ocean liner in real life. Most people just use the Viewpoints. The bedroom is the size of a football field, so I leave it empty and use the recroom.

The terrace is great for parties.



Seaside Mansion - Perhaps the most elegant and desired property. But once you have it, you realize how buggy it is - if you're in it long enough to realize it before crashing. For most users, even the headlight won't illuminate things properly and the illumination from supplemental lighting is sucked into a black hole (try viewing a carpet in there), and the move tool used to place objects is defective. It's a real shame, because it's otherwise elegant and very inviting. The pier for boats, private beach, basement rooms with view of sealife from the windows, could be a hedonist's dream.



Space Station

Awsome concept, a planet all to one's self, with a lone space station as home base.
Game room pod, meditation pod, bedroom pod with jacuzzi, useless Vidnet pod, several levels for stuffspace at the center, most viewpoints are enhanced with some sort of animation. But overall this property is cold and impersonal.


Specialty Homes


This gizmo in the first room is visible only to the
owner, and is used to customize an HB house.

The Intel "HB" Homebuilder Homes

I refer to them as "tube homes." They're one of three 200cc properties one may purchase at the mall in the Homebuilder shop. The "home" consists of structures connected by tubelike corridors that sit on a hideous chartreuse lawn beneath a shocking hot blue sky.

The interesting thing about these cheapo houses is that they're customizable. You choose the wall and floor/ceiling patterns, either from built in texture files, a host of websites linked from a book sitting in the shop, or upload your own graphics.

How do they look? Well, that's up to the owner. The biggest pitfall is that people automatically select the largest one because they think it's a good deal. But they end up with a gymnasium for a living room. Just about the only competent way I've seen the main space in that one utilized was as a walkthrough starfield.


Cyberhood Colony Homes

Sewers and junkyards are the norm in Cyberhood Colony, which is the designated slum district of Cybertown. Giant rats and stray dogs are proprietary roomates.

There's a ladder or passage leading directly to the colony chat from these homes. One would assume with such a convenience, their plaza would be well attended. I suppose it never occurred to the planners that such a depressing atmosphere tends to attract loners. Oopsie...


Hi Tek Colony

A series of new houses were created for Hi Tek Colony as part of Cybertown's "Next Generation" project.

Although intentions are good - as are a few offerings - most new homes are an exercise in disorientation and overkill. Again we have overwhelming space and CT's 32-object limit. Many of them fall into the same pitfall as the Space Station mansion and are just too cold to call home. The most modest home is decidedly bland with no place to put one's own kitchen.

The best property thus far appears to have been created by Zoozee (see Creators & Friends): a private island with a grand view of the neighborhood from across the lake.

IMHO, the city would have benefit from a fix of the seaside property with some of that funding.


back to star

The graphics for this site are based on that of Cybertown, the format and layout mine. All screenshots are
property of HolodocDR unless credited otherwise, and may not be used without permission.