The last months have been quite busy for me, being part of a big project, the redesign of the Fermi Sandbox. Not only the entire sim was set upside down, also the amount of rentals was reduced from 200 to 155. This had all to do with the lag problems we had lately. Since Fermi is one of the major sandboxes around, it quickly became clear that, together with all its visitors, the items in the shops were causing a not-that-great experience for builders. Reducing on rentals when having them all rented out was also the biggest challenge. All tenants that lost their space had to be contacted, relocated or put on hold. As soon as a spot became available, we had to get in touch with them and give them their shop back, together with the saved days from their old rental.
The move was planned for Saturday the 19th of September and turned out to be a long but smooth day (17 hours for me). Together with Arthur Fermi we started on checking rentals, updating my rental system with the days a tenant had and returning their items if they didn’t respond on our calls and notices.
When we cleared out the entire sim we used a great yet tiny script that Arthur made to move the buildings from the platform high up in the sky to the ground-floor. Though we had closed access to the sim allowing a quick move, we did had a great audience from the neighbouring sim, watching us drop the buildings into place.
The new design is quite a change if you compare it with the old one: Shops around the entire sim with an arrival point that is at the border of it, creating a large, undivided sandbox. Instead of just one theme we now have four different ones in each corner: A city look, one based on the “Erasmus” bridge in Rotterdam, a Ponderosa (Western look) and the corner which I made which is based on the ocean’s waves.
Now, after almost two weeks, all the hard work really payed off. Not only it is much easier for our managers to work griefers out of the sandbox, people have a greater and bigger place to show their creativity. With an increasing traffic every day and the sim being full regularly it is again a great place to Build, Shop, learn and have fun.The Fermi Sandbox: