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My philosophy for a game with limited blocks, but infinite building potential, is to make as many of the blocks as adaptable or multitasking as possible for my steampunk world. However, I have still designed them to retain some purposeful mystery, I certainly don't want them to appear ridiculous. Remember, many of my blocks were designed at a time when we had far fewer blocks or mods to play around with. At the same time I'm motivated more by building epic architecture and grungy Victorian sci-fi constructions than your typical medieval fantasy survival style type of gameplay.

So if something in Glimmar's Steampunk looks a little weird and you find yourself asking what on earth was this guy 'on' when he decided on this or that for a texture, try instead to ask yourself what other uses you can put things like pumpkins, beds, musicplayers, clockwork cakes in their 'normal' traditional form, when compared to my more gadgety alternatives. In most other packs a cake can only be a cake, a bed can only be a bed, etc.

My steampunk bed can be: a time machine for jumping forwards in time, a medical contraption, a torture device, a piece of equipment for launching torpedoes on a Steampunk battleship, a bed for creating a Frankenstein creature with redstone wires radiating out from it and anything else you care to invent with your imagination...it's not supposed to look comfortable!! How often do you lounge around in bed in Minecraft for goodness sake!!!

I want to create things for my world that look interesting and are as adaptable as possible. The Minecraft bed is a pretty unique shape in the limited building palette we have. I don't intend wasting it on making a pretty Victorian style bed that has one purpose, and one purpose only, to fluff up and look comfy in the corner!

As far as I'm concerned, and this is of course only my opinion (everyone is entitled to theirs), real bed-like beds in Minecraft are a 'one use only' item...if it looks like a bed, you can't combine it with other blocks to make something else it wasn't intended for. My bed allows you to be far more imaginative, bearing in mind the theme.

To reiterate...for me this theme is about making each item, whether block or special (like the bed) do far more than originally intended. And please don't make the mistake and think I like sticking cogs and pipes on everything just for the sake of it...that's not real steampunk...that's just 'decoration'. Real steampunk for me has to look like it has a function, albeit using the technological components from bygone ages. And besides, my adaptable component bed will soon be animated...try finding a valid reason for animating a bed-like bed. :smile.gif:

As regards my Steampunk cake... it can be used as a pretend music player, controls on the bridge of Steampunk vessel, a weird unusual device in a mad scientist's laboratory, etc, etc. and now with the advent of animated functionality, I can make it even more of a useful prop. Yes, there's nothing stopping you animating a standard cake, but unlike a machine, it's going to look pretty strange with rotating cherries on top!! Funny for a while, I grant you, but not something you can seriously use in your plans to create an epic construction.

Changing the blocks the way I have, like most of my decisions about anything in my pack, is to make them more useful, more multifuctional in design for an industrial fantasy world build. Don't forget, I make it clear in my blurb at the top of my thread, that this theme pack is intended for building epic constructions and not designed as the best 'front-end' for role-playing fantasy adventure.

Now, the pumpkin, being the only 'helmet' block we can wear with an editable HUD, was too good an opportunity not to use it for something like a primitive space/diving helmet for building underwater bases, etc. Back then, when the pumpkin first came out in the 'Halloween Update', there was an excellent 'diving' mod by dougbenham that made use of the pumpkin for just this purpose and it worked beautifully in my opinion. Sadly the mod was never supported after further Minecraft updates. Other underwater diving mods just haven't been as well suited to the period nature of a diving helm since. :sad.gif:

Further, the pumpkin is another useful source of light in the game, one that can be used underwater and, unlike the glowstones, can actually be moved around...so, perfect for illuminating underwater bases from the outside!

Making a diving helm texture also second as a lantern texture with pipes around it, that fit my newly animated redstone pipes, made it much more useful in this theme than ever a natural looking pumpkin could have been. They also make excellent Victorian railway lanterns, street lights, directional looking airship spots, underwater beacons, etc., etc!

My lantern/diving helm might look strange in the landscape, unless you consider it from the point of view of this theme...Victorian Industrial Steampunk. Then it's purpose in the landscape can be anything from vents for some underground complex, equipment left behind by some failed expedition, or anything you want to put your imagination to. One thing for sure, you should be able to put them to more use alongside my other weird and multi-functional blocks than ever you could with a simple Halloween pumpkin!

As often repeated, this idea of 'multifunctionality' underpins my approach to all the blocks in Glimmar's Steampunk...even the humble dirt block. I could make it look more like real dirt/soil, but then I'd lose it's use as another 'architectural' building block, in this case something like red sandstone. Stone, cobble, gravel, even dirtgrass are purposefully designed to be useable in as many other ways than their naturally occurring states, so by necessity seem more plain than some other packs.

The 'multifunctionality' of blocks is the reason why glass is the way it is...once the only block that can second as wrought ironwork scaffolding as well as a window... now we have iron bars and I've made those as utilitarian as possible too and don't intend making the glass any the less multi-tasking.

'Individual' blocks like the furnace, craftbench, bed, etc. can have more imaginative detail applied for use as gizmos, especially so now with animated versions. However, for me they must still have as many other uses as possible in a Steampunk world besides their normal Minecraft function. Therefore, furnaces can second as 'vents', etc, and craftbenches can also be 'control stations'.

My 'paintings' in the art folder haven't escaped my peculiar view of Minecraft's possibilities either, hence lots of gadgets, pipes and chains...you can just do a lot more with functional looking things than a nice looking painting that looks a bit strange if you repeat it all over your world, and this is coming from someone who is a landscape painter in real life. However, the paintings do need some major updating to be more useful. The wheels were never as useful as I thought they would be, but if kahr animates the paintings, like he has the items and blocks, they would be an awesome accessory for this theme!

My other imperative is to try to make the textures work as well as possible when seen from a distance, as would be needed for epic builds. This is what I aspire to with Minecraft, rather than 'spelunking cottage style adventuring' - hence my adherence so far to 32x32, and as far as is humanly possible (with my humble skills)...'good tiling'.

If you are trying my pack for the first time, try not to compare it unfavourably with the normal look of Minecraft, as this is after all a 'steampunk' theme pack, not a medieval or modern day realistic texture pack and I've always tried to remain faithful to my original ideas without getting too silly by sticking cogs and pipes on absolutely everything.