[Human 4.0 Dev Blog] Part 6: The Royal Palace

[Aetosion 2062]

Solid Work, Senda

[Helbolt 129]

Looks great Senda.

 

Hopefully the other races have it this much together too, because I haven't seen any posts like this from them.  Would be nice to know everyone is thinking this way for 4.0.  Seems like a waste if only one race is putting this much thought/effort into it (from an overall game perspective).

[hjgklmn0ajuvxc 688]

giant city, 8 buildings. each 100 blocks apart

!

[Cjmate 1270]

It's pretty good, but as someone who has been on the server to actually see the building I can point out problems not seen in the picture so well.

 

The actual design of the keep and church is great, no problems. The texture needs working on.

 

1. The texturing on the road, as well as the walls, is awful. You're better of mixing it up more instead of making diagonal lines of stone brick with the cobblestone. You can't see it in the picture because of the texture pack, but I will post it in default so you can see it better.

 

2. The layout of the houses is boring, but more importantly you are going to run into problems if the amount of people living in the city exceeds the amount of houses. It is impossible to expand without destroying walls. You're better off making the houses more compact. This map is much smaller than Oren, and you need to make space count. You're not going to have as many micro villages, and people are going to be forced into going to this city because of that. Consider making the houses closer together.

 

3. Your texture pack makes this look better than it really is. Try building in default so you can actually see how plain it is.

 

Edit: This picture is a bit old, but the only thing that has changed much is the design of the castle and church. My problem is mainly with the walls and the roads, which has not changed.

 

Edit 2: You built next to a mountain. People can parkour over the walls because of that. It's a military flaw rply.

 

[Flayings 165]

A glass floor for the throne room? Is that meant to be there?

[Rivk Zavadsky 700]

[VonEbs 1224]

The pictures on the previous dev blogs do not seem to work for me.

 

[WuHanXianShi14 0]

Dayum..

[Senda 472]

~snip~

 

Thank you for your kind words Cjmate8, it actually means the world to me to have people deeply embedded in the "messy medieval" community state they approve of the shape of the church/keep.

 

As for your feedback, I will try to answer the three main points you make:

 

• Layout of the Houses

This might actually stem from a partial miscommunication, but the Capitol in 4.0 has a pre-determined, fixed size. We do not, at any point, intend to expand the city.

We do not want to build more houses (and/or other things) for one reason: The Capitol is not in place to gobble up all the roleplay.

 

The main idea i that the Capitol will act as a funnel for the human nation. established players will visit it frequently, as it is the tradehub and seat of the government, while new players intuitively find their way to it, virtue of the main road leading directly to it.

 

The first thing new players will see is this city.

 

But.. it is not our job to claim all these new players, 'recruit them to the city' and set them up to live there. The Capitol, come 4.0, has the responsibility of informing all new (and old) players of what /other/ places can be found in the Empire.

We want smaller towns and forts to recieve their fair share of new recruits as well. We want /all/ of Oren to thrive.

 

We shall do this in two ways: 

 

#1: Put a hard cap on the size of the Capitol

 

#2: Work on providing new and old players alike with information about the rest of Oren.

 

Obviously, we intend the city to have a (large) population, but prior experience teaches us that attaining this population is not an issue. People will settle in the Capitol in large numbers and we have designed the city to accommodate this (ref.: Dev Blog 4: Housing Explained)

 

Once we reach our capacity, we work on redirecting the overflow by continuous evaluation of our inhabitants (via means such as the taxation system) and the simple act of having the Stewarding team talk to new and old players alike, to help determine their path within Oren. 

 

• Texturing of the roads and walls.

An interesting point. I can see where you stand on the matter and appreciate you taking the screenshot as a sample to further illustrate what you mean.

 

This is of course, step one. 

 

Now, I do not fully hold to the ideals which permeate the messy medieval community (aka: build in default, make it look good in default.), as I truly detest the default textures in minecraft.

It is the reason I use a texture pack to begin with, after all.

 

I firmly believe that /any/ texture pack (as long as it is 32 bit and up) will make this build seem 'more interesting' then the default textures, simply by virtue of being 32 bit or higher in detail.

 

Having said that, I am never one to put down an opportunity to learn. I am not all-knowing (far from it) and I truly appreciate the feedback.

Therefore, I propose the two of us sit down and discuss the various options for adding detail into the walls and roads in private. (I believe we have each other on Skype already.. if not, my details can be found in my forum profile.)

 

 

• Parkouring into the city via the Mountainside

This last point is one I can be short about: There is a substantial gap between the mountain and the rear wall. As far as mechanics are concerned, it should be impossible to jump said distances.

 

 

 

A glass floor for the throne room? Is that meant to be there?

 

Yes, in fact.

 

The glass floor covers the 3d (sculpted) map of Oren lands. 

It is a glass floor.. so people can walk up to the throne without having to akwardly climb over a sculpted surface, or take a path around the map.

It also enables people to look down onto the map (as the Emperor can do from his throne), while standing in the room.

 

If people want a close-up look, there is a small staircase leading into the map itself, off to the side (outside the screenshot I posted)

 

The pictures on the previous dev blogs do not seem to work for me.

 

~snipped screenshot~

 

 

This.. is actually a tad embarrassing.

 

It seems the amount of people that have taken to reading these Dev Blogs is so large, it has overloaded the bandwidth restriction of my Photobucket account, from where I linked the pictures.

 

For this current blog, I linked the images through Imgur, as I found out about the above problem moments before posting, so thankfully, that got sorted.

 

As for the past Dev Blogs, I need to run a quick inquiry into what this bandwidth restriction actually is and if/how fast it will dissapear.. otherwise i might have to look into rehosting all the images in the previous blogs as well.

[firespirit44 1323]

Well done, presented quite professionally and easy to read. Glad to see you taking the feedback as well.

 

I swear I'll be available this weekend for installation of that dungeon if you still need me.

[Mankaar 166]

Stunning, I just hope this palace isn't so big that it ruins your efforts on downsizing.

[Wobbajack 119]

Amazing. Truly amazing. I can't wait for 4.0.

[bickando 3967]

Althered in museum plz

[LeRenardNoir 413]

Based senda always delivers!

[Senda 472]

In response to a few questions I have recieved about these Dev Blogs:

These Blogs were my own initiative, in response to the growing tensions displayed within the community due to a percieved lack of information about the actual work being done on 4.0.

With this notion, I approached Shiftnative and pitched my idea of a Dev Blog series, to outline the process behind, as well as the progress of, the human capitol prebuilding effort.

Shiftnative approved of the idea, so I got to work. Once my initial draft of the first blog met eith hid continued approval, I started the series.

I encourage the other nations to make their own blogs. Draft a concept-version, run it by Shiftnative and before we know it, all races can read and get excited about the prospects that await them in their new capitols, come the release of 4.0.