Cove Islands

Ok, so attached is a pretty picture of Just Dinkin and Josue Habana pretending to be Smurfs at some top secret and very cool place in Second Life™. By top secret, I mean the Screwball Cartoon Avatars region.

But anyway….It’s caption competition time! Win L$ 1000 in tier by coming up with our favourite caption. This will be judged by staff when entries close on Friday 21st November.

Please leave your entries as comments on this post (post as your avatar name so we know who you are please)! We’ll only be able to consider entries left here.

Happy captioning! (God that’s lame. I should have had something witty to end this on. Oh well).

Hey guys! Just a quick post as I’ve been on a bit of a mission this week checking out top scripts on sims that aren’t making their top performance stats. In almost all the cases in which I have had to contact people about particularly laggy scripts, the problem has been with temp rezzers. While we have no plans to ban temp rezzers in the covenant, I would very much like ask that if you do use them, you do so within reason.

We do have a clause in the covenant that asks all residents to be aware of the fact that they are living on shared sims and therefore lag produced by their own items causes lag for everyone else on that sim. It seems on talking to some of you that there are a few misunderstandings about what a temp rezzer is and how it works. So I thought I would just clarify….

A temp rezzer is often advertised as ‘bypassing prim allowances’ and allowing you to rezz more prims on your parcel than your parcel supports. However, what advertising will often fail to mention is that while it may let you bypass a prim allowance for a parcel, it still consumes the resources of the sim as a whole. They work by rezzing temporary copies of an item, deleting them and rerezzing another temporary copy on a timer, thus working around prim count of a parcel. However, this means they are consistently counting down and often show a massive spike during the moment of erasing the old one and rerezzing the new temporary copy. As such, those that are the worst for sims are those used to rezz out a number of objects. The issues this causes when more than one are being used on a region are pretty bad. It can make movement difficult and create a generally laggy environment for everyone on that region.

As I said, we won’t be prohibiting them in the covenant, but we do ask that residents take particular caution in using these and consider the effects on the sim. I know prim limits are a bit of a pain, which is why all our parcels have a prim bonus assigned.

Thanks, guys :)

Josue

Hi everyone,

I would just like to let you know that, with immediate effect, there is a slight amendment to the covenant concerning ban lines and security systems. If you refer to clause 10 under “All Zones,” you will see what I mean! For clarity, here is that clause:-

10. BAN LINES AND SECURITY SYSTEMS
Ban lines (i.e restricting access to your parcel per avatar/group/payment status/age verification) are not allowed. We do allow security systems providing that the minimum time between a trespasser being warned and any action being taken is 10 seconds. On any security system below 250m, you will be required to add the following avatars to the ‘allow list’ for land maintenance purposes:-

Jenee Marten
Just Dinkin
Josue Habana
Coveislands Milestone

Although prohibition of ban lines is nothing new and there is no change to the minimum warning time, what we have done is to make it a requirement that the above named avatars are on your security system allow list. The reason for this is that these are the avatars most performing land maintenance tasks such as parcel reclaims, tier terminal maintenance and dealing with any griefer attacks that might occur. The other night we had a minor incident with multiplying objects on the snow regions. Jenee and myself were able to get over there immediately and rectify the issue but we were somewhat hindered by a large number of security systems trying to teleport us home. For this reason we would ask that those 4 avatars be added to security system lists.

We understand you want your privacy and for this reason the clause only applies on security systems rezzed out below 250m. This means that skybox security systems are completely exempt.

If you do have any questions at all, please feel free to contact support.

Thank you for your understanding and co-operation.

Josue

In response to conversations with residents both on a previous blog post and in world, we have set up a group for the residents to chat in! The Cove Islands Social Chat group is an optional join group that residents are invited to use for free chat and social purposes.

The main group will still be necessary in order to request assistance from staff and receive updates and so on, but please do feel free to contact one of the CSRs to request an invitation to the social group if you just fancy a quick natter!

Our CSRs are:-

Wayne Babii
Beth Dale
M4TT Humphreys

Thanks :)

Hey all!

Owing to the recent Openspace and Homestead changes, we have had to opt to convert our few openspaces into full prim sims. As such, we have relocated some of the facilities. Here’s a rundown:-

The Sandbox

The sandbox, with it already being its own full prim sim, remains as was. Yardsales will still take place here on the first Sunday of each month :)

The Club

As Makani Cove is being converted and turned into parcels for sale, Club Makani now stands on its own little parcel in the corner of the sandbox sim. As ever, we will hold events here from time to time and welcome residents to hire this out free of charge for their own events. You can now find Club Makani here.

Resident Freebies

The prefabs, outdoor furnishings and palm trees etc that residents can take for free have been moved to Headquarters. You will still need to wear the group tag to take copies of these. You can find them here!

7Seas Fishing

As Makani Cove is chaning, as above, the 7Seas Fishing lake will be removed. All residents are invited to use the 7-Seas lake on co-owner Jenee Marten’s sim on the Cove Islands Estate, Screwball Cartoon Avatars. You will find the fishing location here.

Games Room

The games room remains unaffected by the changes and can still be found (for those keen to indulge in some freeplay Greedy Greedy) here.

Following interest in the main group chat channel earlier on, we are offering you the chance to vote on whether or not you would be interested in joining a social group for the residents.

The setup would be as follows:

- This group would be IN ADDITION to the main group.
- It would be optional to join
- The main group would still be essential for receiving notices etc.
- Staff may choose not to be in the social group and therefore the main group would still be the means of staff contact.

Please do also feel free to leave comments and suggestions here. They will be read :) If there is reasonable amount of interest in this then we would implement that for you all, no problem.

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Just a reminder to all our residents that if you’re feeling like a bit of a change you are entitled to parcel swaps! Perhaps you are feeling festive and want to live on snow…or maybe you’re already on snow and need to top up your tan… or maybe even you just want to move to the plot next door because, well, just because you feel like it!

Either way, this is just a reminder that we do allow residents to swap parcels :) Please refer to this post for full details.

Cove Islands will be holding a 30 minute building challenge for residents on the Cove Islands Resident Sandbox on Saturday 11th October at 1.30pm. The prize for the winning build is L$ 1200 in tier and entries will be judged by staff.

The idea here having fun and getting those creative juices flowing! We’ll announce a theme when everyone gets there and you will then have 30 minutes to build. Interpret the theme as you see fit. That’s most of the fun!

There will be rules. Sorry… but let’s keep it fair hehe!

* No sculpties!
* No scripts!
* Builds must be done during the event. Nothing pre-existing can be entered. We will inspect ;-)

Even if you don’t want to build, feel free to come along and cheer on your fellow residents :)

Hope to see you there!

Resident Sandbox, 1.30pm SLT/PDT, Saturday 11th October.

Have fun :)

We would like to announce that with immediate effect, we are terminating the Live Support service. This is simply because the platform has proven a little unreliable with a number of residents struggling to operate the Live Chats in their browsers, which makes for a fairly frustrating situation for you all.

However, we would like to emphasise that this in no way means we are reducing our support services. Quite the contrary. We will still be offering support both in and out of world. Out of world support will be via tickets sent to support@coveislands.com (which you can either do by direct email or via the support site).

In world, well the options are numerous! We have three dedicated support reps in Beth Dale, M4TT Humphreys and Wayne Babii, who can be IMed directly if you require assistance. Additionally, we welcome you to ask for assistance in the group IM as these staff, as well as management, are all in the group and will see when assistance is required. We would ask that for direct IMs to individuals, however, that you stick with the support reps named above :-)

Apologies for any inconvenience caused to the few of you who did use the Live Support service. We just believe that the time of our support reps can be much more efficiently used assisting residents in other ways, when not fighting with the Live Support platform!

Thanks muchly :-)

Unfortunately the town hall meeting scheduled for this morning had to be abandoned owing to low attendance. We have decided, therefore, to publicise information intended for discussion there on the Blog instead so that everyone has access :) We would love some feedback in regard to the matters here. Please feel free to leave a comment or to email support@coveislands.com with your feedback and suggestions to these topics.

Eyesores

The poll results on a blog posting on eyesores recently suggested that many of you want to see some form of covenant clause brought in to enable staff to ask for the removal of ‘ugly’ buildings on residential sims. Of course this opens up the problems of ‘what is an ugly building?’ and how we would decide what qualifies etc. We are keen to hear your views and would welcome responses to this blog post to indicate feelings towards this or suggestions.

Minimum Security Orb Time

At present, the minimum time stated in the covenant, that a security orb must provide between warning an avatar and actually teleporting them off your land is ten seconds. We have received feedback from a number of residents who believe this is too short a period of time to allow for an avatar to fly onto a parcel, realise they need to leave and to actually get back off again before action is taken against them. We would like to know how you all feel about a raise in the minimum time to 15 or 20 seconds. Again, feedback in the form of blog comments or support tickets is appreciated.

Newbie Rentals

Recently, Cove Islands set up 18 houses in Hoku Cove which we rent out cost free to avatars under 60 days old. These new avatars then have a 70 prim allowance for person furnishings etc and there is a freebie store on site stocking high quality, low prim furnishings as well as one or two other bits and pieces. Residents are welcome to lay out their products free with a LM to their store in a box. To do so please contact one of the CSRs:- (M4TT Humphreys, Beth Dale or Sinnamon Carter) who will arrange for you to receive a group invitation to lay out your items. Of course you’re all welcome to take what’s already there too! The store is here.

Additionally, we welcome residents (as a couple of you already have done) to take on the role of ‘Resident Volunteer’ within that group, assisting these new players in getting to grips with the game! Of course anyone opting to stay on with Cove Islands as a landowner after the ripe old age of 60 days, quoting you as a referrer will also mean a friend referral for you. Anyone wanting to participate as a resident volunteer is again encouraged to contact one of the CSRs who will send you the appropriate group invitation.

Group Notices

In a bid to reduce the number of group notices we send out to you all (afterall there is nothing worse than logging in to a million notices, right?) from tomorrow, Monday 22nd September, we will be sending a weekly notice on a Monday with a notecard attached detailing forthcoming events or news. Further group notices will then be reserved only for essential information (such as sim rollback requests etc). We hope this helps to consolidate information being sent to you as well as provide you with one simple notecard per week to which you can refer back when you require information regarding Cove Islands events and news.

Website Updates

On October 1st, there will be a couple of very cool updates to the website! Primarily, we will have a Business Listings page, which will enable our commerce and commercial residents to list their businesses on the Cove Islands website. These listings will contain a description, image and a teleport link to the parcel in world. We will release full details of how to have your parcel listed there as soon as it’s ready to go!

The other change will be the addition of a calendar, which will allow any resident of Cove Islands to submit their forthcoming events and social goings on! This will be a great facility to enable residents to find out what’s going on on the estate, as well as for you to invite your fellow residents to any parties or other events.

Resident Run Events

This week we began inviting residents to run events for their fellow residents on Cove Islands facilities in exchange for L$ 1200 in tier! If you are interested in doing so, please drop a notecard on Josue Habana with your preferred date and time and some information about the event. The event may not be commercial in nature, nor may it contain advertising that seeks to promote commercial gain for yourself. However, we are interested in a variety of different types of events so if you have an original idea, whether it be a class, party or something totally different, please do get in touch.

Once again, we invite feedback on any of these topics (or anything else) in the form of comments or emails to support@coveislands.com.

Thanks for your time and do enjoy what remains of your weekend :)

Josue